USB Is the Devil's Connection 474
Jamie handed us Satan's Data Connection. You see, sane and rational human being, the
USB logo is actually in the shape of a trident, and the obvious action to Evangelical Christians in Brazil is to ban its use. Hopefully they don't mispronounce SCSI and find themselves lusting after their PCs.
USB is the devil (Score:3, Insightful)
But not because of any tridents. Because of too many variants of connectors.
And it can be a pita to implement for some things, teeny embedded ones for example. Not horrible, but just to set up serial port emulation can be fairly non-trivial. Although luckily people have written nice libs for a lot of things by now.
Only Apple tried to mispronounce SCSI (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of us always called it "scuzzy", and thought Apple Marketing's attempt to rebrand it as "sexy" was just lame.
Bluetooth... (Score:4, Insightful)
Either way, though, Bluetooth was of course named for a Danish King. While he himself converted to Christianity he certainly ruled over a nontrivial number of non-Christian followers.
Re:it always looked to me like... (Score:2, Insightful)
[i]Hopefully they don't mispronounce SCSI and find themselves lusting after their PCs. [/i]
I don't get it. In what way would they have to mispronounce SCSI?
Re:Sigh, more Christian bashing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, nowhere in the Bible does Satan ever have a trident. But this is Slashdot... sigh let the Christian bashing begin if it must! :(
Perhaps you should explain that to the Evangelical Christians in Brazil.
Not a story... (Score:3, Insightful)
Whew thank God... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is good news!
Just think, if scientology somehow found the keyboard to be a derivative of the devil / whatever-their-evil-avatar-is, the internet would be a much more comforting place also...
But on another note, do these people know that most computers come with the USB symbol next to the port intended for their devil-plugs? I guess there is nothing preventing them from banning most computers!
...
Users over there really shouldn't despair, there are usb-to-firewire adapters [google.com] out there...that way they can send the devilish signal back into the fire-filled hell where it belongs!
Re:Bluetooth... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's even funnier is that most internal Bluetooth cards use... you guessed it. The USB bus. They're still using Satan! Muahahahahahah!
translation of original article according to goog (Score:3, Insightful)
The evangelical cult "Peace Beloved of the Lord" in the interior of Brazil forbids its followers to use any USB technology by contending that it uses a symbol that makes apology to the devil.
According to its founder, the Apostle "Welder Saldanha says that this is just a symbol of Satan, is always present in all Christian homes.
"The symbol of that name (he even likes to pronounce) is a trident, which is used to torture souls go to hell. Use only a symbol of those shows that all users of this technology pífia are actually worshipers of Satan "- explains the " Apostle. "
Measures were taken so that all the USB connections of his followers were exchanged for common connections and even the Bluetooth (sic), which according to Saldanha Welder is permitted, for "Blue was the color of the eyes of our savior Jesus Christ" .
Re:Religion... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, no, no.
The two groups are those who try to divide everyone into two discrete sets and get it wrong, and those who don't try and get it right.
USB is pure evil for different reason. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything in computing from an RJ45 to IEEE 1397 have a obvious shape you can identify the correct orientation from.
Yes, yes. I know the trident is supposed to go "up" in relation to the trident logo by port on the port. But this varies randomly from one manurfacturer to another, from device to device, and thats those that have the trident logo next to the port at all.
Mini-B USB, popular for small gadgets, thank god, has an identfiable orientation.
Re:USB is pure evil for different reason. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I thought this was common knowledge. I mean, who HASN'T experienced a severe homicidal urge while trying to plug a USB connection into the backside of some device?
"Does it go... this way? Nope, lets try the other... no that's not it, maybe the first time was right... well.. no, no I think it IS upside down, hang on... oh fuck, I dropped it! I swear to god if I meet the motherfucker who designed this piece of shit i'm gonna rip his fucking... wait, I GOT IT! Oh thank god! Now, no one touch it, or I will strangle you with the cord and then use it to hang your corpse from a tree. Seriously."
Well, maybe it's just me.
Re:USB is pure evil for different reason. (Score:2, Insightful)
> Without looking closely you have a 50/50 chance of getting the correct orientation.
And yet it typically takes three tries to get it turned the right way...
Re:Sigh, more Christian bashing. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no question in my mind that the point is just to poke more fun at religion, in this case, for no good reason at all.
Poking fun at religion is a good reason in its own right. Mockery is the best response to silliness.
Re:Sad news for believers (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is news like this that gives evangelical Christians a bad rep."
Well that, and direct experience with them also helps. The US Rovian Religious Right are a MASSIVE collection of Evangelical Dominionists bent on turning the US into a theocracy.
Bluetooth is Pagan not USB (Score:3, Insightful)
Measures were taken so that all the USB connections of his followers were exchanged for common connections and even the Bluetooth (sic), which according to Saldanha Welder is permitted, for "Blue was the color of the eyes of our savior Jesus Christ"
Bluetooth is the one using a pagan blind rune as its symbol and they are all excited about using it. Come on, next thing you know you'll see christens celebrating pagan holidays.
Re:Religion... (Score:5, Insightful)
So I assume that you would in the latter group then since you don't understand the difference between faith and religion.
It depends on how it's used. Faith is just belief which is not based on proof. But a lot of people call their religion "faith." It seems especially popular in Christian circles. In most cases, there is no difference.
Modern Atheism is a belief system aka. a religion.
Not even close. Atheism is a lack of theistic beliefs. That's all.
A personal faith in god is not the same as a belief system/religion/philosophy.
What a load of bullshit. If your "faith" includes scriptures, commandments and the like, it's a religion, and your naive sounding assertions are crap.
Religion is a man made system of dogma and rituals.
Modern Atheism has a set of man made rituals and dogma. Ergo, Atheism == Religion.
Since you can't define a single piece of ritual or dogma which would include atheists, aside from the obvious "lack of belief in a god" entailed in the definition, you can't even make this specious piece of reasoning work.
I have a brain and I do not follow a religion. I have a personal faith in god and I share that faith with a community of believers.
In other words, a fucking church. Geez, are you another liar for Jesus?
I call bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)
I smell a tale of utter bullshit. This just sends my bullshit-detector ringing.. cant quite point out why.. Other then the fact.. Nowhere does Satan have a trident.. Polearm perhaps, scythe maybe.. not trident..
Also.. the last comment about bluetooth? naah sounds like the article is a bit of a hoax put out there by someone in the Brazilian media. For reasons unknown.
--
CelticKnight
Re:I thought that was firewire (Score:3, Insightful)
/sarcasm Mod ignorance up. Only the non-religious are the true paragons of morality. /snicker
(Stalin is quoted as saying "You know, they are fooling us, there is no God...all this talk about God is sheer nonsense" in E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1940)
The atheists are just as ignorant of reality as the theists. At least the agnostic have the honesty to admit they DON'T KNOW, which is the first sign of TRUE knowledge. (Of course only the mystic sees the incompleteness in the other three, and laughs inwardly at the atheist blind man telling the other religious blind man that he can't see.)
> really are just practicing magical thinking.
Do Scientists have an answer for the "magical thinking" of the placebo effect yet?? I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that thinking has no effect on changing reality when you don't a) understand what is thinking, thought or consciousness, and b) don't understand the true nature of reality.
> religious leaders steal their money and abuse their children.
Right! Let's toss the baby out with the bathwater! Simply because we have a few religious nuts who are too spiritually stupid to even understand what their religion is about. Every religion teaches the "Golden Rule." The fact that you have some stupid Catholic priests to stupid to even understand why Marriage is the foundation of the original Trinity relationship - father, mother, child - is completely irrelevent to your rant.
How about we simply hold up common sense values regardless of what beliefs a person choses to practise??
The bottom line, there are lot of good people, and lot of ignorant people, religious or not, theist or atheist.
--
Inner Space not Outer Space is the FINAL frontier.
Re:I thought that was firewire (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did I suggest we shun anyone?
Actually you suggested not letting religious leaders steal their money. The stealing that they're doing is pretty much just a matter of asking for offerings based on false doctrines. Stopping that implies a level of coercive control quite a bit beyond "shunning".
Also, it may be reasonable for you to conjecture that other people's gods are unreal. However, since the idea of 'God' is largely an interpretation of internal experiences, and you don't have access to anyone's internal experience except your own, you're only guessing that other people's interpretations are delusional. That may be a reasonable guess, given the evidence you have. But its a guess, and there is a huge variety to human experience. Yours is actually a religious attitude, just an atheistic one, which is why ex-atheists like C. S. Lewis often make such marvelous religious crusaders.
Re:it always looked to me like... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, actually, the www=666 is more or less a long running joke that has existed in some form or another since the mid 1990's. I probably first ran across it on my windows 3.11 running Netscape 2.something dialing into what became one of the largest local internet services in my area. The Hebrew language is a lot like the roman numeral system in that when you put numbers beside each other, they are added together. 666 would actually be 18, 666666 would be something like 36. There are rules in how it's done but I don't know them well enough to say anything.
Here is a link [av1611.org] explaining it a little more. Note that the copyright at the top of the page lists 1999 where the one on the bottom of the page lists 1995. '95 sounds about the right time frame as I may had just upgraded to windows 95.
As for the SCSI being SekSI (sexy), your probably right. I don't remember where I heard that from. I just know I can understand why the Scuzzy sounding name stuck (it's a PITA in some situations)
Re:Sigh, more Christian bashing. (Score:1, Insightful)
FiloEleven finds a factual flaw in the article. Creedo says that doesn't matter because he agrees with the idea of mocking religion. Who gets marked as the troll, and who gets marked as insightful?
(awaits the reply to this, which will no-doubt be marked as insightful, while this is marked down as troll)
Re:Sigh, more Christian bashing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh. The wrong one is marked as troll, and the wrong one as insightful. And your insightful comment stays at zero.
I'm getting tired of slashdot - any good substitutes?
Maybe it's because the rest of the world is getting increasingly tired of the rampant irrational stupidity that religion brings to the table, and we are more and more willing to mock those who keep pushing it. Religion in general is a childish and immature response to life, and I for one believe that it should be treated as such.
Re:Religion... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, not exactly. If one wanted to oversimplify things then sure. For the rest of us who live in reality, we realize there are many different conceptions of atheism, and some of these conceptions would qualify as a religion under some definitions of religion. Thus, it's too simplistic to simply pound the table saying, "Atheism is not a fucking religion."
Though, I can certainly understand the psychology behind why "Internet atheists" would not want atheism to be viewed as a religion, a dogma, a position, or a worldview. I mean, if it were any of these things then an atheist would bare a burden -- the burden of supporting their perspective. As it is, the pansy definition of atheism provides atheists with a means to attack theism, and then when rightly the theists expect the atheists to present and defend an alternative perspective, per the Gricean maxims of conversation, they can simply retreat back to their safety hole. (In other words, I see atheists who push this definition as nothing more than intellectual pussies.)
Re:Religion... (Score:2, Insightful)
I would also add that the smart people usually make decisions for themselves about what they believe in, whether that be religion or atheism, whereas the 'dumbasses' tend to follow whoever has the best propaganda. Sometimes that is atheists who like to evangelise, sometimes it's the religion they have been born into that they never think to question, but the common thread is that they all believe whatever is the accepted belief in their environment.
I have met Atheists who have valid arguments for the non-existence of a god, Atheists who decided to drop any previous theism once they started university (college in the US, I think) because it was 'cool', and Atheists who keep it to themselves.
I have also met Theists who truly believe in God, follow their organised religion and have well thought out, internally consistent arguments for it; Theists who blindly follow their religion without deciding for themselves if it is true or not and try to convert all non-believers with flawed, hypocritical arguments; and Theists who simply follow their beliefs quietly.
The same goes for Agnostics, Polytheists and Pantheists
Re: more Christian/Muslim/Judaism/etc bashing (Score:3, Insightful)
Poking fun at religion is a good reason in its own right. Mockery is the best response to silliness.
I would agree if religion were just silliness. It isn't. It is horribly damaging. The key teaching of religions is that believing in things that are provably false is a virtue. They call it faith. What's worse is that the more absurd a thing that you can believe in the more virtuous you are. A person who believes that the earth is literally about 7,000 years old has much stronger faith than a person who equivocates and says that Genesis is metaphorical. Faith is the one basic teaching that is at the root of so much suffering. It leads directly to fundamentalism. Fundamentalist Islam is the Taliban, and the intensely repressive regimes in Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. Fundamentalist Judaism believes that despite being largely absent for a thousand or so years they have a right given them by some sky guy to possess to the exclusion of all others a bit of real estate at the East end of the Mediterranean Sea. Christian fundamentalists lead America into unwinnable wars that sap our spirits and drain our treasury. Fundamentalist personality cult is the twisted crap that has lead to decades of starvation and tyranny in North Korea.
Please teach your children this: if you have seen it proven then believe it until you see it dis-proven. Be skeptical about everything else.
Re:it always looked to me like... (Score:3, Insightful)
"remake with Kurt Russel"
Is there any way that Satan isn't involved when those words are uttered?