Atheism +

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

I can't stand PZ Myers. He's the Michael Savage of atheism. He always so bitter and mean in most of his posts.

[Cyberman]

I used to have time for PZ Myers, as a biologist and as a source of information about what kooky things the crazies are up to lately. For instance, his skirmish with Hamza Tzortzis, the Muslim William Lane Craig, is compellingly watchable and almost required viewing. In fact, it was because of the heads-up I got from him that my sweet Sam and I got to take part in the "homeopathic overdose" event in early 2010. But yeah, I got put off by the increasingly toxic levels of meanness, which initially I could sort of tune out. Then came "Elevatorgate"...

[Whitewolf]

You make rather fast assumptions on what people think. I said 'fuck them' not that I hate them. Dawkins may be a good biologist and I accept him as an autority on that, but when it comes to atheism he really makes infantile arguments. PZ, since his involvement in certain messes doesn't speak for me as an atheist.

You don't like that I don't particulary care for them? Buh-uh, cry me a river, you missed the point of my post anyway, because somehow, it offended your sensibilities. And that is another thing I don't care either.

Like what?

Like I said, petty reasons.

[LastPoet]

Oh, well if your majesty say It's petty then it should be. You keep missing the point of that post of mine. Wanna have reasons not to be a Dawkins, PZ & others fanboy? Do a forum search.

[TaraJo]

PZ, since his involvement in certain messes doesn't speak for me as an atheist.

Ditto, although, to expand on that, I have my own mouth and tongue and I have my own fingers to type with. I don't need anyone to speak for me. I despise groupthink.

Also, what is the objection people here have about Thunderf00t?

[Cyberman]

I'm quite a fan of old Thunderf00t; his Why Do People Laugh At Creationists? is essential viewing. My only gripe would be, in my opinion of course, he has a tendency to go all around the Wrekin (as we say round these parts) when interacting with theists - in plainer language, he does tend to dance around somewhat and obscure whatever point he's trying to make. Also he sometimes allows himself to chase after red herrings thrown at him specifically for that purpose. Those are only cosmetic things though. Any dramatics over his spat with PZ Myers and Freethought Blogs are, to me, quite irrelevant.

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

Didn't he illegally get access to the FTB private mailing list? http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesv...l-crusade/

[TaraJo]

Didn't he illegally get access to the FTB private mailing list? http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesv...l-crusade/

Possibly, but this is coming from the same people who think talking to a girl on an elevator is the same as rape, so I'm going to take whatever they tell me with a grain of salt.

[Autumnlicious]

Is it possible that the morons at FTB added him to their list but didn't properly remove him?

REF: http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2...obsession/

A few hours later, I received an email from a longtime commenter on the site telling me that “your email distribution list is not secure. Take the time to verify that only the people who are supposed to be on the list are actually members, as messages have been leaked.” Prompted by those messages, I went into the admin panel of our mailing list software, did some checking and discovered that Thunderfoot had somehow managed to get back on the mailing list after he was removed from it on July 1, when the decision was made to close his blog and remove him from the network. I double checked to make sure that he had been removed from the list at that time and he was (I have email confirmation from the system at the time). I then had our site tech do some digging into the database and he discovered that Thunderfoot had used a security loophole (now fixed) to regain admission to the list only a few minutes after he was removed from it on July 1 and had been receiving all of the email traffic between everyone else from that moment forward, without our knowledge. When that fact was discovered, he was, of course, removed from the list a second time and the settings were changed to close the loophole in our security that allowed him that access; over the next half hour he tried multiple times to get back on the list again but failed.

Site tech? Security loop hole?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Apparently I'm supposed to believe:
1) The "site tech" (I use that term generously) is, against all odds, a security conscious guy who keeps logs
2) Thunderf00t, a man known not for his technical skills, has found an exploit in MAILING list software, one of the most ancient and well-tested of software families.
3) Said site tech was able to figure out that was an exploit through reading the logs.

For a large business or a security expert like Fyodor, I'd expect exactly that.

For everyone else, and especially some off-the-path shitty blogging network, I'd normally expect the lousiest "techs" given that all the net-sec guys I know from college work for large multinationals.

It is possible FTB's has a magical tech who can efficiently figure this out on his own but never updates his software (?), that Thunderf00t is gifted enough to find an exploit and use it, etc,.

It's more likely that Ed Brayton didn't use the software correctly or the software reverted to an earlier configuration (or there was an integrity loss in the servers/cloud and caused a rollback of a transaction meant to deauthorize Thunderf00t)

Really -- the entire presentation makes it sound like FTB is incredibly vulnerable to script kiddies (digging into the DB? really? That's usually a TREMENDOUS fuck up when someone can insert new entries into the users table) or Thunderf00t is an excellent hacker.

Ok FTB, show us the logs. Where's your proof? These are hefty allegations.

Oh, and I notice the metablogging about blogging there. Quite a masturbatory indulgence...

---

One of Thunderf00t's responses:
REF: http://thunderf00tdotorg.wordpress.com/2...-a-pariah/

[Whitewolf]

Oh, well if your majesty say It's petty then it should be. You keep missing the point of that post of mine. Wanna have reasons not to be a Dawkins, PZ & others fanboy? Do a forum search.

Who said anything about being a pole-jockey?

Simmah don nah