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Oh, you mean that singer guy...
for a second there I thought someone wrote an A.I. program to download songs for you.
LISP is dead. Long Live LISP!

It's All About The Pentiums. By Al Yankovic

You know, I bet if we unravelled that sucker,
It'd roll all the way down to Fargo, North Dakota
'Cause it's the biggest DNA in Minnesota
I'm talkin' 'bout the biggest DNA in Minnesota

- with apologies to Weird Al Yankovic, Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota

Pentiums baby!

It's a joke. ^_^ Then again, after the whole Amish Paradaise, Gangsta Paradise, Pastime Paradise debacle, it's not that unreasonable. Heck, I almost modded you informative without doing the fact checking...

If you aren't familiar with Weird Al's "It's all about the Pentiums, baby!" then I suggest you pick up a copy of his album, Running With Scissors.

Here's a link to the lyrics.

http://www.com-www.com/weirdal/itsallaboutthepenti ums.html

illustrating why they are not just mindless kneejerk technophobes."

As opposed to mindless kneejerk slashdot technophiles?

Anyway time to get out Weird Al's Amish Paradise.

Part of some geneticist's plan (plan-plan-plan)
Born to be a carbon copy man (man-man-man)

That's right, Al--You lost. And let me tell you what you didn't win: a twenty colume set of the Encyclopedia International, a case of Turtle Wax, and a yeard's supply of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat. But that's not all. You also made yourself look like a jerk in front of millions of people. You brought shame and disgrace to your family name for generations to come. You don't get to come back tomorrow. You don't even get a lousy copy of our home game. You're a complete loser!


Rest of the lyrics!

at first the slasdot title puzzled me, then I remembered It's All About The Pentiums by Al Yankovic?

a parody of "It's All About The Benjamins" by Puff Daddy


It's all about the Pentiums, baby
Uhh, uh-huh, yeah
Uhh, uh-huh, yeah
It's all about the Pentiums, baby
It's all about the Pentiums, baby
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
Yeah ...

Now, what y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?

Uh, uh, loggin' in now
Wanna run wit my crew, hah?
Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?
They call me the king of the spreadsheets
Got 'em printed out on my bedsheets
My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique
Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great
If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight
My digital media is write-protected
Every file inspected, no viruses detected
I beta tested every operating system
Gave props to some, and others? I dissed 'em
While your computer's crashin', mine's multitaskin'
It does all my work without me even askin'
Got a flat-screen monitor forty inches wide wide
I believe that your says "Etch-A-Sketch" on the side
In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user
You've got your own newsgroup, "alt.total-loser"
Your motherboard melts when you try to send a fax
Where'd you get your CPU, in a box of Cracker Jacks?
Play me online? Well, you know that I'll beat you
If I ever meet you I'll control-alt-delete you
What? What? What? What? What?

Wow, my post had too few characters per line to be accepted by /. (currently 33.6) - I have two choices: abandon my post (which I probably just should have) or add as much text on one 'line' as needed to bring my average up to some magical number that makes it acceptable. Well, I chose to drop a few lines of the lyrics and type in a paragraph here to make it balance out. Mod me down if you must. ;-)

My mistake, I remembered that song from a radio interview with Weird Al quite some time ago. I heard that song on the interview and also heard Al mentioning a tribute to Frank Zappa, so I associated the two. After doing some digging, I realize I was wrong.

Weird Al's tribute to Frank Zappa is actually this song on his albumn Poodle Hat which Dweezil contributed to.

Thanks for asking.

Makes me think of Weird Al Yankovic's ode to Frank Zappa, Frank's 2000 inch TV

Hey, it's still a lot smaller then Frank's Two Thousand Inch TV.

It dwarfs the mighty redwoods and it towers over everyone.

But not, I think, as clever as Weird Al. :)

I'm not meaning this as a troll, but I don't see this huge difference between "stealing" and "copyright infringement."

Firstly, I have to say that yes, the spyware approach is a bit drastic.

Secondly, I can appreciate the distinction between physical theft and pirating an unlicensed copy of software. But I'm still having trouble reconciling with the idea that 'Information "theft" is not really theft or stealing.'

I'm not a programmer, but I am a musician, and I think there can be a common viewpoint between the two, or at least similarities.

Let me further complicate things by saying I support the sharing of .mp3 (ogg, whatever you like) files. Dave Matthews has allowed recording of his shows since day one, and he can afford to eat out once or twice a week. It gives more exposure to a performer than it detracts from that performer's profits.

[hypocrisy disclaimer]This is not to say I agree with the idea that it's everyone's right to make a copy for themselves.[/hypocrisy disclaimer]

Music fans that expect everything to be free are wrong, no matter what they tell themselves in justification. If you like someone's .mp3s, pay for a concert ticket, buy a shirt while you're there. At least go buy the CD from the artist's website. The notion that "NO ONE has a natural right to profit" isn't very clear. Are you saying that when someone works on something, they don't have a right to be paid for it? As arguable as it might be, I think Billy Ray deserves to be paid for every hopeless lemming that he managed to con into purchasing a copy of the painful abomination he released in the early 90s. If the artist chooses to sell their records through the RIAA, then it's their own fault if they're not getting a decent cut. But are you fixing that by not paying at all?

"Thousands of my users probably "steal" my software, but guess what! I DON'T CARE! It is information, which I CANNOT OWN!"

You wrote the code, and you can distribute it for free if you like, or you can charge (don't you?) for a pro version. Besides, don't you make money from the ad supported version of bearshare as well? As owner of BearShare, it would be a bit of a stretch for us to accept your opinion as completely unbiased. You SIG says, "Help me out, and use BearShare." Is that just for celebrity status?

AFA molecular reconstruction, I can't imagine technology like that being available to the average consumer to the point where it would be economically viable for anyone to "morph" themselves a brake pad. Ever.

Where does the my-copy-your-copy distinction lie in code? Open source is open source because people have voluntarily worked on it knowing that it will be shared. Smart money says these people have external sources of income; you can't pay the mortgage by working for free. There's a difference between 'personal "posession & ownership" of information' and writing original code with the intent of selling it. I don't see anything wrong with a programmer expecting money for every copy of his/her software that gets distributed.

Hmmm. "stealing money/goods/services" vs. merely "potential profits," I'll offer my Dad as an example. If he was going to buy a new computer, he could call Gateway or Dell, and he'd end up getting a licensed copy of M$ crap, for which they (M$) would receive a royalty. If I knew about it before he made the purchase, I'd have him get online, and we'd find and order the parts he needed, and then I'd... er, refer him to a friend who has an old copy of WinBlows he doesn't use anymore, and my Dad would no longer be contributing to the Expansion Of The Empire. Now assuming this would be an

The Weird All Reffrence is about his song UHF not his Pentiums song... Youg uy can't remember Weird All music from the 80s.... and you still call yourself geeks ;-)