Slashdot Mirror

If you want to argue that the USA won some war in the past that might have helped someone, I'd remind you that the USA did not act alone, and in fact was quite late to the party.

Before WW2 the US was strongly isolationist and had a streak of pacifism. In essence your complaint is that 70 years ago, the US acted the way many Europeans and most leftists want it to act now. When your bacon is in the fire the US should rush to aid, when it is US or other people's bacon in the fire, not so much - slow down - don't be warmongers. When the Soviet Union brought SS20 missiles into Eastern Europe - crickets chirping. When NATO responded with American Pershing missiles - protests - don't be warmongers. When Saddam invaded Kuwait - silence. When the US formed a coalition to drive Saddam's armies out of Kuwait - protests - complaints - human shield volunteers* - don't be war mongers. Yes, we see how that works.

the USA is one of the countries that has routinely shown contempt for the whole concept of rule-or-law or free speech even within it's own borders,

The actual situation is that commentators who show contempt for the US engage in hyperbole and nonsense.

let alone in the rest of the world where they don't even pay lip service to due process.

Not even lip service?

And Contrary to what is shown in Hollywood, the USA didn't win anything by itself.

Do tell. . . . .
A Bridge Too Far
The Longest Day
The Devil's Brigade
The Desert Rats
Sahara

I could go on, but what is the point? You don't know what you are talking about, although you project many negative things on the United States.

*Who received quite an education from Saddam what what a genuine evil tyrant is like, to their sorrow.

Someone already thought of it. Obligatory link to a tag from the article.

IMDB Linkie
Ring any bells?

Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

Reading the criticisms levied against the site is like listening to those two elderly women who just like to complain: "Boy, the music at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know; and there isn't nearly enough of it!"

I think quantity needed to be more important than quality for this project. Sure, they need to have a minimum standard of quality, but the idea was to free as much music as possible. Some kid somewhere in the world would never have heard this music because he's not going to pay $1.29 for some music he's never heard (that they're not playing on the radio) and the sheet music isn't exactly jumping off the page to ensnare his imagination. However, something that's well-written and decently-performed on this site may get his attention and maybe someday he'll perform a better version and give back to us all. But that won't ever happen if he never hears it. That first exposure is key.

The first time I heard Scheherazade it was in a movie (The Man With One Red Shoe). I didn't know what it was, but it got my attention. I was about seven. Years later I came across it again as a track that was tacked onto a $3 budget classical CD, and it got my attention again. I suggested it to the orchestra director in my high school and hundreds of people got to hear it. It's all about the exposure.

If you want to be a snob about the quality, go pay for a performance and share it with the rest of us so we won't have to live our lives not knowing what good music sounds like. Frankly, I prefer the Scheherazade recording on that budget CD to any I've found on iTunes. The first performance of a piece is often the one you like best, because it's the one you fell in love with. I have a very old recording of Stokowski and the NY Philharmonic performing Stravinsky's Firebird suite that is full of hiss and crackle, but I prefer it over a clean-sounding recording of Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic performing the same piece. Bernstein's performance, which is well-done, just doesn't sound urgent enough to me because I heard Stokowski's first. Perhaps what you're really concerned about is the possibility that the masses may come to prefer a version other than what you like.

There's still a lot to be added, so go ahead and donate. Sure, they've got Stravinsky's Firebird, but not The Rite of Spring. The Rite of Spring was so radical and jarring to the ears of the "more cultured representatives of society" at its 1913 premiere in Paris that the audience began yelling so loudly no one could hear the music. Eventually the scene devolved into chairs being thrown and fires set. So go ahead, throw your chairs at this new site in disgust because it doesn't agree with your notion of how the music should sound. The music that stripped away the cultured veneer of those Parisans is worth hearing, and a public domain music site that so-ruffled the feathers of the "free-as-in-beer" and "information wants to be free" slashdot crowd is worth visiting.

How about a Pepsi can?

Hmm. A remake of Route 66. With a twist.

Call me when they will have created Weird Science material :p http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108988/

when can we expect "conspiracy to defraud" cases to be initiated e.g., the suits in charge of RBS

As soon one of them pirates Margin Call.

For those that didn't catch the This Is Spinal Tap reference:

Video Proof

Why yes, I'm all for more efficient methods for re-creating Brazil.

FTFY

Johnny Mnemonic: Yeah, the Black Shakes. What causes it?
Spider: What causes it?
[points to various pieces of equipment throughout the room]
Spider: This causes it! This causes it! This causes it! Information overload! All the electronics around you poisoning the airwaves. Technological fucking civilization. But we still have all this shit, because we can't live without it. Let me do my work.
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113481/quotes

I wonder if it's actually possible to commit suicide by swallowing placebos? Or is there some limit to the nocebo effect's severity that'd prevent that?

It can certainly lead to you hearing your neighbor's dog talk to you.

Then, Windows 9 will come out in a year or two and suddenly have the option of booting to the old Start menu, thus perpetuating the "every other version of Windows is good" trend.

Just like in Tomorrow Never Dies:

Elliot Carver: Mr. Jones, are we ready to release our new software?
Jones: Yes, sir. As requested, it's full of bugs, which means people will be forced to upgrade for years.
Elliot Carver: Outstanding.

Um... no. I know everyone likes to believe this, but it's baloney.

Translation: I want to know everything right now, putting in as little effort as possible, and I firmly believe that everybody who knows better and warns me this is a bad idea is wrong. If you want to teach children (including adults who need instant gratification) how to code, you give them Logo. If you want to teach someone to be a decent programmer you give them a learning language that requires they develop a few good habits. Otherwise you end up with the average MatLab programmer. Giving your program a name and typing 'begin' and 'end' isn't really that demanding.

You should probably watch this.

Turbo Pascal was an extension of the Pascal standard. Saying it didn't follow the standard is kind of like saying GCC doesn't follow the C standard because it's not strictly a K&R C compiler.

Or rather this one being the coconut-laden discussion.

Where did you get the thing about coconut-laden swallow anyway? Was that a line from a movie or something?

Are you... are you being... serious?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
the quote in question

Where did you get the thing about coconut-laden swallow anyway? Was that a line from a movie or something?

Are you... are you being... serious?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
the quote in question

I'm sorry, Lad.

1975 was a long time ago... Nearly in a galaxy, far, far away....

You could probably get a better yield if you used copies of Gigli, but for the ultimate bomb you would need to use copies of The Hottie & the Nottie.

There was a scene like that in the movie Dark Star, as I recall. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069945/ There is a smart bomb that is going to destroy the ship, and one of the crew goes out to talk the bomb out of it.

Funny, I thought you were quoting Hollywood. Perhaps The Happening? One of the biggest bombs I've seen in a long time...

and good lord was it an impressive piece of hardware. Makes me all gooey just thinking about it.

I can watch Trinity and Beyond every year http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114728/ Nuke porn at it's most glorious. Narrated by Shatner himself and with an awesome orchestra to boot. Man that bomb was impressive.

(yes, I love nukes!)

A movie with the submarine's name for title (instead of the book's) in many countries has been made in 2000 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219224 - reminiscent of The Day After http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404 (no, this one ain't no Emmerich, and definitely without any Tomorrow). Both as bleak as it gets on TV too.

A movie with the submarine's name for title (instead of the book's) in many countries has been made in 2000 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219224 - reminiscent of The Day After http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404 (no, this one ain't no Emmerich, and definitely without any Tomorrow). Both as bleak as it gets on TV too.

A movie, not a book, but the ultimate downer. US and Russia have a nuclear exchange. Civilization wiped out. A woman watches her kids die slowly of radiation poisoning. She rounds up her last child and a mentally handicapped neighbor sits them in the car in the closed garage and is ready to turn the engine on but changes her mind.

There are good arguments for and against manmade global warming, and personally I think there is no such thing as MMGW.

Remind us again what the 'good' arguments against it are...?

The guy with tiger's blood would probably say otherwise... Then again, who knows what he will say next.

What do gay people have against turtles?

"Republicans will love moving to Mars - no gays."

But the gay niggers come from outer space! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274518/

The "Academy of Tobacco Studies" is a made-up industry trade group in the satirical film Thank You for Smoking. You're probably thinking of the Tobacco Institute.

JON-A-THON! JON-A-THON!

I've noticed we keep looking to movies as mindless popcorn entertainment, yet they have this nasty habit where they keep showing us the future.

See the following documentary on why this is a bad idea:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/
It documents an early attempt to remove the humans from the loop, and some of the problems encountered.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3749416704/tt1132620

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3749416704/tt1132620

Now all they gotta do is shrink 'em down to human sizes!
[The post title is the first thing that came to mind when I saw this story. Couldn't put a better version of it in because the filter said 'TOO MUCH REPETITION']

Becoming "members of society"?

Normally, I don't respond twice to a post here, but I happened to think of something germane. If you'd like to see a great example of how the Melting Pot used to work, watch the movie Hester Street, from 1975. It takes place in New York in 1896 and the protagonist is a Russian Jew who'd been living on the Lower East Side for about three years, and was mostly assimilated. Then he brings his wife and son over. At first, of course, they speak only Yiddish, and unless you're fluent in it you'll need the subtitles. By the end of the movie, the wife's English is good enough that there's almost no more Yiddish, and his son's fit in with the other children in his neighborhood. In fact, much of the dramatic tension in the movie comes from her trying to learn how to live in America and becoming fluent in English while still hanging on to some of the more restrictive Russian customs she grew up with.

William Shatner did a GREAT JOB narrating Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie as himself.

Playing the starship captain James T. Kirk in STAR TREK is just his 'day job' he is most famous for.

If you want to see these scanners in use then watch Jacked.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1280619/

They drive around in SUV's with reinforced bumpers with the scanners mounted around the SUV so any vehicle near them is automatically scanned.

Someone should do a study to determine which religion to best control the population with after an apocalypse, like in "The Book of Eli", so we can stock up on the most useful books.

If they really want to reduce the amount of offensive postings, they would moderate their forums. I find that the sites with human-moderated forums are very much clean of the drivel you usually see on other sites. Granted, human moderation brings its own set of issues, such as the prejudices of the moderator, but the results are plain to see. Just compare a human moderated site, such as boargamegeek to an unmoderated one, such as IMDB , or Yahoo News.

Sorry all, can't resist. Here's another example of loudness war ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/quotes ):

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. Wha
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

There was a movie about this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/

Hey, what do you know, someone made that same joke 2.5 hours earlier. And someone else did it a minute later.

There was a movie about this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/

Could Mars have oil? Film at 11.

Dunno if it has oil, but Mars Needs Women! (oddly enough - we've know this since *before* we first walked on the moon)

Does anybody else remember the movie 'Looker'?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/

Looks like Hollywood has got prior art.

Turn in your geek card now.

You should have linked to the original Comic or at least the Stallone movie.

mmmm.... three sea shells....

Maybe this means that the UK will have assange tried by Judge Dredd

Think about it. Someone is sitting in a room with monitors apparently watching/listening to these feeds? My god why...

I can think of some reasons

Maybe we should repurpose all our prisons to locking up children until they're 18?

I think I already saw that one.

So, um, where would one of these untrustworthy scanning stations be set up?

At your local optician. Watch out for those human clones, stealing your identity, family and really thinking that they are you when you challenge them for it.