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GaHillBilly

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Everything posted by GaHillBilly

  1. NJCubScouter wrote: "ScoutMom, you certainly have the right -- even the responsibility -- not to put your children in a situation that makes you uncomfortable" NJCubScouter, I can guess what you might have meant, and I'm pretty sure I might even agree with you. But, what you actually wrote is seriously mistaken! Now, I have a high view of parental authority and responsibility. In every situation, someone (or some institution) has the 'right to be wrong'. Different politics, different religions decide who that is, differently. In the USA, with soldiers, for example, it's the Presi
  2. ScoutMomSD wrote "Its just something I have never seen in Girl Scouting except in leadership positions, which are not troop involved. And the Girl Scouts dont have the same rep as Boys scouts with regard to discrimination, leader/boy "issues" etc." Well, I've seen it. I've NEVER been involved in GSUSA, except as an outside contractor providing technical services at GSUSA camps. But, the stuff I, and my employees, encountered PERSONALLY at GSUSA camps would curl any responsible parent's hair. My experiences and observations at one GSUSA camp were precisely what caused me to warn
  3. As I read this thread, I find that my opinions are all over the place. + Having worked professionally in a technical services capacity with a variety of camps over a number of years . . . I've seen things that have led me to repeatedly warn friends to check into why folks 'volunteered'. I know of at least one youth (not BSA) camp that is specifically organized with sexual exploitation as a major sub-purpose. (Yes, I "KNOW" it. No, I can't "PROVE" it! The problem is widely known among their neighbors, but they advertise only 'out of state'.) + Having been in a variety of churches over
  4. For those who've suggested I'm being unreasonable by taking LNT "literally", I would make a counter suggestion: please take the time to actually and carefully READ the "principles" of LNT. You can do so here: http://www.lnt.org/programs/principles.php For those of you who won't bother, here are a few: => "Preserve the past: examine, but do not touch, cultural or historic structures and artifacts." "Leave rocks, plants and other natural objects as you find them." In other words, "the raving lunatic of a Girl Scout leader" was actually dead on target! => "Campfires can
  5. An altogether interesting thread . . . can't wait to jump in with my two cents. After almost 2 years in Scouts, here are some conclusions I've reached: 1. Men who are obese and physically unfit are fundamentally incapable of being effective Scoutmasters. Period. If are under 6' tall, and wear a size 40 or larger pants, you are failing as a Scoutmaster. 2. Many men today do NOT have a background that equips them with the fundamental skills needed to be an expert 1st Class Scout, and a teacher of 1st Class skills. For them, acquiring this expertise is hard work, but essential. Wee
  6. In response to Lisabob's question, "Why in color . . .?" Bob White wrote, "Cost-wise it is not that much more costly to do color instead of black and white due to digital printing as opposed to four-color offset which used to be the only way to get a full color image. The reason for the change is they are more attractive and more pleasurable to read." Scoutldr wrote, "Sorry to be cynical, but has anyone picked up a high school textbook lately? Kids won't read black and white. If they read at all, we have to make it look like a comic book so they can be "entertained
  7. Well, I won't join the rant, not because I don't agree, but because I've already ranted more than my share on this topic. More than that, things are looking up in my son's troop right now. So far, one step has followed another down a path to provide every Scout the opportunity to legitimately make FC by May . . . and actually possess the requisite skills at that point. Things may get derailed tomorrow (or more to the point, tonight!), but -- thank God, and I mean that! -- more progress has been made than I had reason to hope for. So, rather than rant, I'll share what's in the back of
  8. shortridge wrote: "Unspoken was the reason: "But that's when We get to hang out, get a break from our families, drink coffee and show off to each other!!" " Boy, that seems to be it, in a nutshell! Our troop has, somewhat reluctantly, committed to a training schedule that will provide every Scout the opportunity to become FC by May. This is long overdue; some of them have been Scout 'rank' for over 15 months, but the focus has been on what the older boys wanted to do. And, the Camporees are something they, and some of the long time adults want to participate in. Unfortunately,
  9. This is bad . . . how? From the article, "The guidance says leaders should "encourage young people to resist pressure to have early sex" and to talk to their parents or carers, but "should be prepared to offer appropriate information" if it is needed." I wish I could do something like that! Many parents won't / don't talk to their kids effectively about sex, for all sorts of reasons, including a desire to avoid personal dishonesty AND to avoid having to acknowledge how THEY screwed up. I've watched this happen repeatedly with kids in the conservative churches we've belonged to, over
  10. Brent Allen wrote: "I see the purpose as preparing young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetime by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law. Those would include duty to God, and being reverent. We try to run our Troop in a manner that glorifies God. This can be challenging when we have members who are Christian, Jewish and Hindu. :-)" If you are only teaching Judeo-Christian character values . . . certainly there's common ground with between Christians and Jews. Of course, some Jewish groups perceive rather different obligation to fellow Jews than
  11. OGE wrote, "B-P said, and I know this to be true, that Scouting is to be a school of character and train young men to be good citizens." . . . as I noted myself. But, this is not an adequate purpose for Christians, UNLESS, you define "citizen" as "citizen of God's kingdom". That is a purpose I've considered. Indeed, that's very much the purpose I understand LDS churches to hold. However adopting would almost certainly entail a level of explicit evangelism that would exclude most boys. GaHillBilly
  12. NJCubScouter wrote "your views on selfishness vs. selflessness do not match what I have understood to be Christian teaching. I do not pretend to be an expert on Christian teaching, as I am not a Christian, orthodox or otherwise, but that is my understanding, and maybe some of the other Christians in this forum might want to weigh in that. I also think that most religions, and the BSA as well, strike a balance between duty to self and duty to others." As I noted, it's also not what many Xians assume to be Xian teaching. Rather it's one of those things that people (Xian's in this case)
  13. Thanks to Kudu, I'm aware that B-P never said "scouting is a game with a purpose". But, he did say something similar if less succinct and memorable. I'm also aware that B-P's purpose is not mine: making good citizens for the British Empire is not what I'm working toward. Nor do I share B-P's philosophy and anthropology: I don't believe man is the apex of evolution, as nature spirals upward to an ever higher and more majestic destiny; I don't believe that men (or boys) naturally become stronger and more ethical, or believers in God, simply because they have experiences in nature, even
  14. BadenP wrote, "and if Kudu's assertions are correct makes Birkby nothing more than a hack." I don't mean this sarcastically, but I'm not sure that there's any real difference between a 'professional' writer, ie., a writer for hire or free-lancer, and a 'hack'. By definition, they write the stuff their employers want. If they don't, they don't have employers! I think people assume that there's some code of journalistic ethics that apply to professional writers, but AFAIK, that's not true at all. They are simply people who are pretty good at putting readable sentences, paragraphs, and
  15. nolesrule commented, "Is that "falsely attributed" or "incorrectly attributed"? There's a difference of intent within the connotations of those two phrases. Perhaps the guy made a mistake. It's up to the editors (BSA) to correct it." Not sure how you'd want to characterize it . . . but at least in my own industry, these sorts of errors are characteristic of documents with ancestries involving several generations of "professional" writers. Again, in my own industry, I can identify characteristic errors that go back to handbooks and manuals published between 1900 and 1920, that made t
  16. Kudu, do you have documentation of the faked quotes? This is not a hostile challenge: I'm just wanting to 'reload' my 'Even though I was never a Scout, I know more about Scouting than you' shotgun ;-). I've found this 'shotgun' extremely helpful in my quest to move my son's troop away from its history as a troop-method Webelos III (momma camps with the SPL) troop toward a patrol method troop with strong outdoor skills and a non-bullying SPL. GaHillBilly
  17. GW, believe me, I haven't tried to insult you yet. I am getting tired of your determination to inflict your ignorance on others. For example, you write "a brute force spam assault is easy to set up and goes very quickly when you are using distributed processing", as if this would make a million spams per SECOND possible. Perhaps you have trouble with units. The largest common botnets -- which provide the 'distributed processing' to which you refer -- run to the low 100,000's. With such a botnet, you could possibly handle a million spams per HOUR, but not a million spams per SECOND.
  18. Not to put too fine a point on it, OGE, but I've come to the conclusion that what GW understands is a mystery even to him . . . GaHillBilly
  19. Gold Winger, do you always make fun of stuff you don't understand . . . or is it just when you are replying to me? For what it's worth, my 13 year old Scout can do the math involved here, with some effort. So, it's really not that hard. My 21 year old's reaction would be along the lines of, "Well, duh!". You've already told us -- in your own words -- that you help Scouts analyze rocks by separating them into "three types of rocks: big rocks, little rocks and ones that hit you in the head." Do you also help them separate numbers into 'big numbers, little numbers, and numbers that are
  20. Goldwinger, you posted before you did the math. If you've been spammed on an address like "Zasrbedsm12832782@aol.com", it did NOT happen randomly. Either you exposed that address somewhere, or someone you gave it to did so. In order to randomly spam an address like that, the spammer would have to walk through each possible address. The NUMERIC portion of that address allows for 100 million possible variations. But the ALPHABETIC portion allows for over 5 QUADRILLION variations. If a spammer started spamming in 1974, when Intel's 8080 cpu was released, and was able to spam at the rate of 1
  21. SCOUTER-Terry, PM me, and I'll show you the raw headers from the emails I've received. I think the problem will be clear when I do so. If you are not providing email addresses to others, then someone has gained access to your user info. Sincerely, GaHillBilly PS: the domain associated with the address used to register here receives less than 30 total spams per month. EDITED ADDITION: Scouter-Terry, if you'll look at the source addresses SiteAdvisor reports: Your New Web Hosting Account at SCOUTER.com inf...@scouter.com 2008 May Dear Friend, sof...@hotma
  22. I didn't attribute maliciousness. I only described what was happening. And as a sysadmin myself, I'm well aware that there may be a security problem. But, if there's been a security breach, there's also a duty to inform. And, if there's been a security breach that they don't yet know about, they need to start looking, post-haste! So, yet again, why is this spam happening? GaHillBilly
  23. I'm sorry, but you're theory is working under false assumptions. Relying on obfuscation is no guarantee of preventing randomly generated spam. Once email harvesters find a domain with a working MX entry, they will find a way to discover valid email addresses on the domain. Well, I'm not that sorry, but you are the one with false assumptions. I know what the mail-bombings from random email address searches look like, and have seen them on some of my better known domains. While it's true that a random address search might not be visible to all owners of wierd and random email addresse
  24. That only happens when the address is guess-able or randomly testable. Spammers broadcast to millions of possible addresses, and note which ones do not "bounce". For example, "johnsmith AT aol.com" will be spammed, even if it's never published. So will "SamanthaTurner AT aol.com". But, "GustavusTurnipseed AT aol.com" probably will not, because it's too uncommon. And, "QWEVsd23AXXdfj2sx AT aol.com" will never be spammed, unless it's published. There's another way this applies, too. "johnsmith@somewierddomain.com" will might be test-spammed, shortly after the domain is registered
  25. scoutingintexas wrote, "I am just wanting to prevent visitors invited by our scoutmater who thinks HE owns the troop and we have no say." As a once-upon-a-time Literature major, I tend to pay attention to words (which is not to say I don't often fail to let poorly selected ones flood out!), but I couldn't help but notice the phrase above, "who thinks HE owns the troop and we have no say". It reminds me a scene in Disney's Aristocat's movie that's often been quoted in our household, when someone climbs up on their high horse, "That wuz a little ol' cricket bug", followed by "Ah'm the
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