Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Over the last 5 years I have ‘rescued’ about 6 companies that were attacked with ransomware.  4 of them had all their files encrypted on all pc’s and all the network shared folders. I got all their data restored without costing them anything. 2 more had no IT staff or any policies in place and had mapped their backup locations to their own computers and they got hit too. I charged them just to “restore previous versions” which I had setup when they refused to buy a proper solution. Both up and running within 2 hours!

I have spent time on the DarkWeb talking with the hackers. I consider them terrorists as they attack the economic structures of other nations. They are clever people but will never give a discount or give a damn about who they are damaging.

[StregaModerator]

Insurance is getting almost impossible to buy, for cyber cover. Lloyd’s of London, Munich Re and others have now excluded ‘state sponsored terrorism’ attacks from their cover. Which means it actually matters who the attackers are. You won’t know if your insurance will kick in, until this has been determined.  If it can be determined at all.

It’s all a big mess, to be honest – a cyber attack is the sort of event that can’t be predicted regarding frequency or severity, so it doesn’t really fit the insurance models.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

TheEncogitationer wrote:
I’m still the hardened Atheist I was before, and a little pissed that I wasted a moment on it. 😁

I am too. In my youth I was actually worried about not saying prayers correctly or about not being on god’s “A” team or even about burning in hell. Non-belief wasn’t even a consideration. Wasted thoughts, wasted emotions, wasted time and energy that I can never get back.

When I said “it,” of course, I meant wasting time on the so-called levitating video, not my past years as a believer.

Very few people have the good fortune of going through life without some kind of Supernatural belief and I went through my youth as a believer also. It was wasted time, but goodness knows, you can also waste your life looking back in anger at past mistaken beliefs and past ways of living.

What matters most is to exercise Reason now and to make sure old Supernatural superstition doesn’t creep back into your life.

I guess also the video wasn’t a total waste because it got the skeptical part of my brain some exercise trying to figure out the natural explanation. 🤔

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

If he could levitate in my living room I’d be flustered and amazed. However, it’s on film/tape and we only see his feet, so there are several obvious ways to fake levitation that way. How would doing the same trick David Blaine can do prove anything theologically anyway? BTW, at about 30 seconds in watch the floor for a shadow showing something quickly moving aside.

Once, at a magician’s convention at a local mall, a magician gave me the perfect definition: Magic is the art of letting people see only what you want them to see.

The man in the video let people see only what he wanted them to see by what the camera focused upon, but, as you observed with the shadows cast, he didn’t fully succeed. Something clearly held him up over the floor.

My thought was him holding onto the stair rail and the wall, since those were the closest things to him, but it could have easily been a rope and trapeze handle lowered to him by someone above. Either way, there’s always a natural, rational explanation. Supernatural boogums-in-the-closet is never an option.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Humanists call for an end to oaths in court as study finds jurors biased against the non-religious.

If I recall correctly, John Stuart Mill had addressed this in On Liberty. He basically said that people who testify under oath are telling the truth only under fear of divine duress, not because they choose to do so, and nothing said under duress can be taken at face value.

[Author]

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