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Well, we could go nuclear

Nuclear waste needs to be stored forever. I don't know if that's worse than emmissions and global warming or not; I'm just a layman.

By the time fusion happens, all our present tech will be obsolete anyway.

I don't know why, but I want one.

Twenty years ago we had a Compaq portable that ran on a 16 mhz 286 at work, and it was HOT. Blazingly fast, could do anything. That is, for its time. The supercomputers then weren't as powerful as your laptop today.

So if I can manage to stay alive for another 20 years, I'll probably have a laptop more powerful than the supercomputer in TFA. I guess I'll just have to wait a while.

-mcgrew (link is to "Growing Up With Computers", a 2 year old K5 article)

Insightful: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/01/in_praise_of_se.html

Cynical, but very funny: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/7/26/1497/94515

(yeah yeah... boo hiss!! I must be a troll!!)

Here in Springfield we do our trolling offline ;)

More onntopic and less trollishly flamebaiting, the discussion the other day about Lessig had some comments in response to a comment I made that changed my mind almost completely; I had blamed Lessig for what he himself called his greatest failure, the loss of the copyright case where the definition of "limited" means "whatever the turds in Congress say it means."

Today's changed it for me completely. I rather think Lessig would not only make a better Congressman than he is a lawyer, but far, far better than any of the Congresscriitters there today.

Unfortunately, unlike a Bill Gates or a corporation, I have no say whatever whether or not Lessig becomes a Congressman. I only have a vote, and I can only cast my vote for politicians who are on the ballot in Illinois. That is in stark contrast to Sony, BP, Shell, and the other fine "American" corporations who can bribe... er, excuse me, "contribute to" both major party candidates so that no matter which American candidate loses, the foreign corporation wins.

And you guys wonder why we're having balance of trade problems?

I would hope if Lessig or Paul or other non-corrupt people get in Congress and teh Senate they would try to both make it illegal to contribute to more than one candidate in any given race (call it the "No Bribery Allowed Act") and make it illegal to contribute to the campaign of any candidate one is not eligible to vote for.

I mean, Bill gates' monor children in Washington State can have more influence in Illinois politics than I can. If I were a billionaire I could influence whether or not Lessig became Representative of whatever the hell state he's running in even though I don't live there. Shouldn't John Shimkis be representing ME and not some Japanese corporation?

I went to the "Lessig 08" site and the first thing I would suggest is that he fire his web designers. Running IE6 the first thing that happened was that the damned thing asked me if I wanted to debug it. The second thing that happened was that it was more content-free than Uncyclopedia, not even telling me what state he's running in!

Guys, get a clue. If that site is representative of the campaign itself, Lessig has less chance of getting elected than he did getting Bono overturned.

-mcgrew

(sorry if I'm a bit ascerbic today, I went blind in my good eye Monday night. I should get my vision back but I'm still a bit shaken by it.)

Your idea of "instantly" is confusing. Albeit, physics makes for an amazing computer; the problem lies in constructing the algorithm.

Volume control knobs
You're driving down the road and that song comes on. You know the one, it really rocks and you must crank that sucker up.

But there's no crank any more. You have to take your eyes off of the road to find the one button on the fifty buttons to turn the damned thing up or down. Thank God they invented cell phones so you can call an ambulance after you wreck your car trying to turn the volume down to answer your cell phone!

And if you want to adjust the tone, balance, or rear fade, forget it. You're either going to have to stop the car, or get a passenger to do it for you. If, that is, he or she can find the owner's manual to figure out how to.

The automobile distributor and points
Unless you are a classic car collector, or a geezer, you have no idea how much of a pain in the butt these things were. About every oil change or two, your car's performance and gas mileage would go down, and you would need a tuneup.

To tune your car, you could simply hire someone. That is, if you were a sissy.

A real man changed his own oil and tuned his own car up. You could tell a real man by the scars and scabs on his knuckles from working on his car.

First you had to change all eight of your spark plugs. What? You only have six? Pussy! Make sure you don't get the wires on wrong, or if your car will start at all, it will lurch and backfire and run like crap.

Then you had to take off the distributor cap, usually held on by two clips that would cut your fingers and were harder than a rubic cube solution to get clipped back on.

Under the distributor cap was the contact points. These had to be replaced. Then you had to adjust the gap on the points. Oh shit, I forgot to adjust the gaps on the spark plugs... do that all over again...

Now that the plugs are gapped and the points are replaced and gapped, you put the new distributor cap on... Come on... SHIT... GOD DAMNED PIECE OF SHI... ok, there it goes. Good. Gimme a bandaid, would ya?

Now you have to set the points' dwell. What's "dwell?" Beats the hell out of me, maybe it's the amount of time the points are closed. But you have to set it with a dwell meter or your car will run like it's powered by gerbils and will suck gas like Bush sucks at being President.

Then you have to get out your strobe and set the timing. You loosen the distributor, point your strobe at the mark on the... wait a minute... I can't see the damned mark. Stop the engine, would you?

Damn, it's all rusty and... to hell with it, start it back up and I'll time the God damned thing by ear, piece of shit...

Thank God and modern electronics for electronic ignition!

Volume control knobs
You're driving down the road and that song comes on. You know the one, it really rocks and you must crank that sucker up.

But there's no crank any more. You have to take your eyes off of the road to find the one button on the fifty buttons to turn the damned thing up or down. Thank God they invented cell phones so you can call an ambulance after you wreck your car trying to turn the volume down to answer your cell phone!

And if you want to adjust the tone, balance, or rear fade, forget it. You're either going to have to stop the car, or get a passenger to do it for you. If, that is, he or she can find the owner's manual to figure out how to.

The automobile distributor and points
Unless you are a classic car collector, or a geezer, you have no idea how much of a pain in the butt these things were. About every oil change or two, your car's performance and gas mileage would go down, and you would need a tuneup.

To tune your car, you could simply hire someone. That is, if you were a sissy.

A real man changed his own oil and tuned his own car up. You could tell a real man by the scars and scabs on his knuckles from working on his car.

First you had to change all eight of your spark plugs. What? You only have six? Pussy! Make sure you don't get the wires on wrong, or if your car will start at all, it will lurch and backfire and run like crap.

Then you had to take off the distributor cap, usually held on by two clips that would cut your fingers and were harder than a rubic cube solution to get clipped back on.

Under the distributor cap was the contact points. These had to be replaced. Then you had to adjust the gap on the points. Oh shit, I forgot to adjust the gaps on the spark plugs... do that all over again...

Now that the plugs are gapped and the points are replaced and gapped, you put the new distributor cap on... Come on... SHIT... GOD DAMNED PIECE OF SHI... ok, there it goes. Good. Gimme a bandaid, would ya?

Now you have to set the points' dwell. What's "dwell?" Beats the hell out of me, maybe it's the amount of time the points are closed. But you have to set it with a dwell meter or your car will run like it's powered by gerbils and will suck gas like Bush sucks at being President.

Then you have to get out your strobe and set the timing. You loosen the distributor, point your strobe at the mark on the... wait a minute... I can't see the damned mark. Stop the engine, would you?

Damn, it's all rusty and... to hell with it, start it back up and I'll time the God damned thing by ear, piece of shit...

Thank God and modern electronics for electronic ignition!

All they need is some dedicated flaggers. And face it, anyone who is willing to stand outside handing out personality tests is willing to sit on their rear and click "scam". I recommend auctioning material on Scatentology. It's Scientology crazy but free. As a matter of fact, I think I'll list an auction for Scatentology secrets and an F-Meter (a seashell. You hold it to your ear and listen to the cretans instruct you).

Smokers can choose to not smoke

That's easy for someone who was never addicted to the filthy things to say. I was a nicotine addict for 30 years, having smoked my last cigaterre eight years ago I have to tell you that quitting was the hardest thing I've ever done. The damned things should be outlawed, or all other drugs should be legalized.

If you want to know how damned addictive this drug is, I was stationed in Thailand in 1974, where they had 99% pure heroin. 99% of the lifers drank like fish, 99% of the white first termers smoked Thailand's killer bud, and the 99% of the black first termers smoked heroin.

They would let half the tobacco out of a Kool cigarette, tear the filter in half lengthwise and reinsert it, dip the end in the heroin and smoke it. I understand it was to American heroin what crack is to powder cocaine.

Some of these guys had never smoked anything before going to Thailand. I met some of them later in the US, and not a single one of them was still doing heroin but every single one was still smoking those Kools.

When I was a kid they sold candy cigaretes in boxes branded by the cigarette companies. They advertised them on TV. You could smoke anywhere, even in a college classroom, and 3/4 of adults did.

I was probably an addict before I ever put a cigarette in my mouth. Unlike a needle junkie, cigarette's toxins and drugs go to other people, not just the drug addict.

The idiot in the SUV is simply an idiot and can't help himself, (s)he doesn't know how to drive and doesn't know (s)he doesn't know how to drive. The tobacco executives KNOW what they're doing, but they put their own profits ahead of anyone else's lives.

This link:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/1/17/21155/1564

The comment, "The first Slashdot troll post investigation" has at the time I write this, gotten moderated 126 times (Moderation Totals: Offtopic=53, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=10, Interesting=38, Informative=11, Funny=2, Overrated=2, Underrated=4, Total=126.), and all of the 75 replies have also been moderated to -1 (Offtopic).

The concensus of the posters is that one, or more, of the editors of slashdot decided that this thread shouldn't be viewed, and used a hitherto unknown power of the editors (infinite moderation points) to bitchslap the whole thread to -1 (offtopic).

Slashdot claims to be a user moderated news site. If the users want to discuss the slashdot moderation system under an article about Oracle security problems, shouldn't they be allowed to do so? What good is user moderation if an editor decides that the subject is non grata?

Clearly, the slashdot users wanted to discuss the topic, as seen by the amount of replies in the thread. They weren't allowed to.

Finally I want to pose a question: What if this happened here? What would our feelings toward Rusty be then? Would we still feel that Kuro5hin was a place where we could discuss whatever people wanted to discuss?

Ah well, it was time to give up on slashdot anyway... *sigh*

Original != optimal. Is this theoretically ultimate format DVD-A? 'Cause I, for one, am tired of buying the damned White Album.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/8/134958/152

In the late 1970s when digital recording was born, 44 k samples per second was the best the equipment of the time could do. It was deemed "good enough," since the labels "golden ears" (humans with hearing well above average) didn't hear any noise and the sound of aliasing was something they had never encountered. They knew what hiss sounded like. They knew what a "muddy" recording sounded like. They knew what harmonic distortion sounded like. They knew what clipping sounded like. But aliasing was new, and they didn't hear it- because they could not possibly listen for it, as they listened for the above mentioned distortions they knew.

At a CD's 44 ksps sample rate, the very highest frequency it can reproduce at all is 22 khz. This is well above human hearing- but here, the model fails. Because its 22 khz frequency response is not an undistorted response.

Number 1 rule of message board self-promotion, when you refer to your project ALWAYS provide the link you want people to use.

I found an interview with iRATE Radio Creator Anthony Jones, a SourceForge page, and the Wikipedia article.

Number 2 rule of self-promotion, explain why I should care. In the case of iRate, you should probably say something like:

iRate is a Legal Mp3 aggregation tool that finds highly rated, copyleft music that matches a users preferences and automagically downloads it into the user's library.

Number 3 rule... get it posted on the message board mainpage when it is ready for general consumption. Because people are less likely to check it out if it is only posted in a comment.

i live and work in midtown, have an hd camera and an editting set up, and a burning passion in support of a common sense approach to intellectual property

i am not looking for a soap box, i am offering you a soap box. if you ever had dreams of pulling a michael moore or a morgan spurlock on the riaa, let's do it

call it "taking on the riaa", or i am sure you can think of a better title. we can sample some of the more egregious bastard things these guys pull, and document, in real time, as they are taken down in case after case, digesting it into something more palatable for the mainstream public by explaining to them why it should matter (in a cinematic way, not a talky way: interview say that woman from wappingers falls who was attacked). emotionally, it would simply be little guy versus vile conglomerate. all factual, no stagey theatrics. but not boring and dry legalese. done right, it would be cinema gold

i'm 100% serious. if you are game, i am willing to commit serious time to this. lead us on nycl. i am sure there are other slashdotters who would sign on to this too

Trolls are often on topic but are expressing unpopular opinions.

Just because a slashdot moderator mods a comment as "troll" doesn't mean it's a troll. The parent comment is a bit offtopic, as this duscusses trolls and flamers on the internet in general, and has nothing whatever to do with how slashdot comments are modded.

Make a few posts supporting copyrights or speaking out against illegal downloading and see how fast you get trolled or flamebaited

I've made comments that were supportive of P2P and argued that any nonncommercial use not be considered infringement and have been modded both "troll" and "flamebait", although they usually wind up being modded back up after all is said and done. So I guess some MAFIAA members have mod points sometimes.

Here in Springfield where Alderman Simpson serves on the city council, we do our trolling offline. Internet trolls are cowards, offline trolls are asking for a bottle upside the head.

-mcgrew

Unless the computer is particularly devious and tricks us into firing it into outer space for protection. Mobility could be provided by wheels, hovercraft, floaties and a motor, or something even kookier.

Users worldwide are idiots.

You couldn't be more right.

I'm in danger every day. When I drive my car I'm in incredible danger. I could die, or worse, be confined in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. If you work construction you are in the most dangerous profession there is. If I'm in a bar I'm in danger of some drunk busting a bottle over my head. If I walk outside I can get struck by lightning. If I cross the street I can be hit by a car.

Danger? I don't think that word means what you people on the internet think it means.

I wrote a slashdot journal last year about a local child molester who died in the Sangamon County Jail. "Klutzo the Clown" was a former policeman, day care worker, clown, and preacher. Klutzo is the guy you and your children need to fear, not some clown on slashdot.

I fear fearmongers more than anyone, because these are the people who want to take away my rights.

Folks who fear the internet yet fearlessly jaywalk at night wearing dark clothing are the same people who, when a gun is pointed at them and the man with the gun says "your money or your life" say "wait a minute, let me think..."

-mcgrew
(Now watch, this guy referenced in an update to this journal will find me and pop a cap in my ass.

I decided to walk down to Duff's Pub and get one of their $3.00 pitchers of beer. Yeah, the place you saw in The Simpsons, this is Springfield. The real "one". Groening got a lot of stuff wrong- like, Duffy is fat, not skinny. And there is no "Capital City"- Springfield is the capital city. And only a few of the denizens are bugeyed. And a lot of other, non-Groening cartoon characters live here, too. Olive Oyle, for example, only the real Olive is flatter chested than Popeye's Olive. Popeye lives here too, but afik Olive isn't with Popeye, Bluto, OR Brutus (all of whom also live here). Betty Boop lives here, too, only the real Betty's head is bigger.

Now you all think I'm full of shit. But I'm not. No shit, this is a weird place full of weird people.

At least in the US, when was the last time you went to a TLD that WASN'T a .com, .net, .edu, or .gov?

I already have CDs like that. And oddly (ok not that odd), the MP3s actually make the pops louder.

If you isten to the KISS vinyl album with the song "Mister Speed" on it (the album cover just says "kiss") you can hear bleedthrough on the master tape on one tune, and if you listen to the first Aerosmith album on vinyl you can hear tape hiss. Pink Floyd fired their first label for that kind of crap!

But if you make a CD of Led Zeppelin's "Presence" or Boston's first vinyl albums with a good enough turntable, your home made CD will have more dynamic range and better frequency response than the store-bought CD.

-mcgrew

But religions are a threat to rational thought all by themselves

You may be right, but religions certainly don't have a monopoly on that particular threat. I think it is a basic survival skill. Since humans are social animals it occasionally behooves us to not question authority. In prehistory, and still today in many parts of the world having too rational a mind can get you killed. Now, that's certainly not something we should try to exploit when building future civilizations, but it is a fundamental and unalterable portion of human nature.

I get your point here, but I'm not agreeing 100%

My point is that even the staunchest atheist yelling about how reason trumps all else can still get swept up in ultra-nationalistic fervor - against all reason. We are simply not programmed to examine every choice with a critical mind, and even if a few individuals are able to rise to that standard the vast majority of humanity never will.

Even if all religion is eliminated, people will still be swayed by irrational rhetoric that seeks to group and separate people. The goal of a secularist shouldn't be to eliminate religion, it should be to eliminate the us vs. them attitude that all large scale violence is contingent upon. Here's why your views make me uneasy, they promote that mentality. In my opinion your views, carried to their logical conclusion wouldn't do anything to quell violence in the long term, they would simply substitute groups of atheists chanting anti-religious slogans for Islamists chanting anti-western slogans.

No, no, no. Not MY ideas. MY ideas are to educate people to the point that religion is an historical curiosity, ridiculous in its obsolete phrases that say things that are WRONG. Even S. Freud, who only ever thought with, through, by, about, his penis, predicted that religion will ome day eventually collapse under its own inconsistence and how obvious it is that it's wrong. How can you believe in Flat Earth when you've got a device in your hand that talks to satellites? Some day, we will know so much, and use so many things that directly contradict everything that religion says, it will collapse. We are a species inteligent enough for that.
Oh, yes, the goose and the farmer, and geese never learned... (that the farmer means food until he means axe), but WE can.

About Us Vs Them : it's what we are, yes. Suppressing that means transforming humans into solitary feral animals. Go read this, it will explain better than I can.

On the subject of heckling, I'm afraid you've misunderstood me, at least in part. The reason that any movement is successful is that, at least in its founding stages, it gathers in private where the members participation reinforces the speakers message. If a heckler disrupts a private gathering he will be asked (or forced) to leave. During these private gatherings the virulent speeches and the congregation's tacit acceptance has phenomenal recruiting power. It goes back to what I said earlier about how humans, as social animals, have a great ability to turn off all reason. A successful group will not endanger itself by staging poorly planned public events where hecklers can disrupt the message. These groups gain members not by massive public demonstrations, but rather by individual private recruiting. Even if a group does hold public gathering, hecklers will tend to increase the us vs. them mentality, and thus the groups solidarity, and may even win the group more recruits.

As an aside, heckling may be successful against poorly planned or executed gatherings like the KKK's of late, but it could never be successful against a better organized group. Heckling isn't what caused the KKK's membership to plummet from it's heyday, it was changing social views. That is precisely why secularists shouldn't seek to create their own group to do battle with the religious groups.

First off - Troll much?

Have you seen the latest journal? Actually, here in Springfield we do our trolling offline. I really am a geezer, I was born three months before the term "rock and roll" was coined.

when Myspace says nobody but you and your friends or nobody but you can see these pictures, they should be able to back that up.

I would agree with that, but teenagers ESPECIALLY (judging from the internet anyway) should know better than to trust a faceless, soulless corporation. Especially one run by Fox (MySpace was bought by Murdoch, right?)

While Myspace did a timely job in fixing the exploit, they are just as much at fault as the users who put private pictures there in the first place.

I'd say they were MORE at fault, and if a single one of the pictures is of a European I'd like to see Murdoch hung out to dry for it. The governments in Europe actually value privacy for the citizens, unlike the sleazy congresscritters in my once proud nation.

I grew up with a father who dubbed every movie that we rented and almost every movie that came onto HBO, almost reflexively. It was an impressive collection - almost never used, and one that ultimately cost the studios absolutely nothing.

Patty? Is that you?

-mcgrew
(No spam for YOU!)

Shiver me timbers! Yarr, it oin't piracy unless thar's blood spilled, matey. We pirates don't infrinege copyright, we rape pillage and plunder and drink gallons of rum.

Stupid copyright infringers don't even steal, they're in trouble for giving shit away. We REAL pirates don't give nothin' away, we cut yer throat and keep it ourselves. Now get your arsse on that plank, yer gettin' keel hauled.

While I got you here, I'm feedin' ya some Spam since thar ain't no real meat today. Now tell me before I run ya through, should I find a publisher for The Paxil Diaries?

Wow, I clicked your link. It's been a few years since I've been to K5, and I must say that place has really gone to the shitter. From the DRM article you linked it seems all the respectable folks have gone to HuSi and all that are left are Balsamic Vinega (formerly known as "nigga" before he was banned) and his fellow shiteating trolls.

And to think I was thinking of going back there... I'd have to start taking Paxil again. Or at least start smoking again.

-mcgrew

(the mcgrew slashdot journals continue the old Paxil Diaries, only with hookers instead of paxil, for those of you who used to haunt K5 before Pete Jongular fucked it up)

Wow, I clicked your link. It's been a few years since I've been to K5, and I must say that place has really gone to the shitter. From the DRM article you linked it seems all the respectable folks have gone to HuSi and all that are left are Balsamic Vinega (formerly known as "nigga" before he was banned) and his fellow shiteating trolls.

And to think I was thinking of going back there... I'd have to start taking Paxil again. Or at least start smoking again.

-mcgrew

(the mcgrew slashdot journals continue the old Paxil Diaries, only with hookers instead of paxil, for those of you who used to haunt K5 before Pete Jongular fucked it up)

My content from the financial perspective of DRM.. and pretty much why they're done for.

___
What alternatives do we have?

Our body of law gives rights to the creators and their protected ability of being the one to approve copies. Regardless of whether we agree or now with this, that is our situation.

Now, we take this to the "digital domain". Those older creators want, no.. need these protections as they see in the non-internet world. The only real way to "guarantee" this is by digital restrictions. The best way I think of this is that of a akin to a capability system and the copyright maintainer has an account on your machine.

However, our machines are ours. The geeks amongst us demand that we are able to control our software and hardware. What was unable to do in WinXP, Vista seems to offer the beginning of that capability system with the media companies at the kill switch. And to top it off, Vista has remotely disabling drivers for "holes" that might appear. For those that own a machine, this OS laughs in their face, as if saying "Bring It On!"

And there are many casualties. Those casualties are the Joe and Jane Publics that don't understand this issue close enough, or think that all needs to be done is burn to DVD... just like the iPod to music. When they find out that they are locked with binary garbage that cannot be used for any fair use purpose (backing up owned DVDs is fair usage).

And where are we now? When the users know they are eventually shafted, those that have the know-how will show others where to download the movies and the music they legitimately bought. Once they know they were taken advantage of, any feeling of "theft" (or whatever you call it) will be gone. The media companies had their chance to do their dealings with the public honestly, but have failed.

Just like língchí.. Death by a thousand cuts.

From K5

And just to expand on that, the media guys had their chance to do honest dealings with the public and the artists. They instead thought they could continue on with their little game. They simply cant.

As a last comment, ill give the link and the quote of the starting of the nasty fall of the media empire...

This past week's issue of The Economist has a heart-rending vignette from one of the most ruthlessly capitalist industries on the planet: "In 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realized the game was completely up," an EMI exec told the magazine.

Oh, and here's the K5 story with his suicide note.

Truly an american icon ;)

Truly an american icon ;)

Truly an american icon ;)

There is no need too have the source. All that's needed is a little bit of knowledge about the history of NT and BSD, and a bit of common sense.

You wanna know what parts of NT were amde using BSD code? grep the binaries and dlls for "regents". ping, ftp, rsh, and rcp, finger and probably some other networking tools that I forgot is what you will get. Since the license permits it's use, I don't see why Microsoft would admit to using BSD code in a few low level network utilities but not in other areas. And why would a former Microsoft employee write this, when again there was no legal restriction against them using BSD licensed code in their operating system?

Aside from that, NT and UNIX are fundamentally different from the core. BSD code would have been of little use to the people who originally built NT.

I think you will find a satisfactory solutution by clicking this link

As a Christian, I have toi say that the parent comment is the best modded comment I've seen today. Science and religion ask completely different questions. Science asks "how", religion asks "why".For the religious to try to undermine a useful scientific theory with an untestable "theory" like "creationism" is to show an appalling lack of faith in the God they claim to worship.

My take on it? Creationism per se is bunk, and evolution is the best theory I've seen to explein how God went about growing this wonderous universe.

Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.

You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.

See also this short story: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/4/3/19455/41933

• I don't have an smtp server, but my ISP has one. Aside from IP-address blocks, there is no infallible method to tell whether or not an individual email is spam.
• Some people say that spam takes only a few kilobytes in your mailbox. They forget about the fact that there are many people on the internet, where a few kilobytes suddenly becomes a few gigabytes. As you know, corporations pay by the GB - in either bandwidth fees or for place to store the spam.
• A majority of spam that I receive is for online-pharmacy, enlargement pills, "dating sites", or other crap that has no real value. Whether or not "my" smtp server accepts this is moot - there are plenty of other smtp servers that receive this, and at least one user on the many SMTP servers that will attempt to make purchase. (I would be one of those users, but the online pharmacy sites aren't accepting my randomly generated contact information anymore.)
• Spam is based solely around false pretenses. If the anti-spam Haiku is required to receive e-mails (or otherwise treat it as a legitimate e-mail), spammers will simply lie about the purpose of the haiku (e.g. say it's a mailing list for people interested in pharmescutical news) and send mail in bulk.
• I read Slashdot for a long time - long enough to see the effects of a massive spam campaign designed solely to disrupt the flow of comments. That same user found it funny to crapflood Kuro5hin as well.

The K5 article Useful Dead Technologies highlighted some older, now gone (or nearly gone) technologies I sorely miss.

"McGrew," the Kurobots squealed, "You're a geezer! A crazy old, ranting coot! A Luddite! Aren't there any technologies you're glad are gone?"

Actually, there are. Here are a few of them, and like the useful dead technologies, some of these inventions (like the power pile and gravity furnace) were before my time, and I only knew this technology from being in the possession of an antique something or other like a house, or just reading about them.

...snip...

The automobile distributor and points
Unless you are a classic car collector, or a geezer, you have no idea how much of a pain in the butt these things were. About every oil change or two, your car's performance and gas mileage would go down, and you would need a tuneup.

To tune your car, you could simply hire someone. That is, if you were a sissy.

A real man changed his own oil and tuned his own car up. You could tell a real man by the scars and scabs on his knuckles from working on his car.

First you had to change all eight of your spark plugs. What? You only have six? Pussy! Make sure you don't get the wires on wrong, or if your car will start at all, it will lurch and backfire and run like crap.

Then you had to take off the distributor cap, usually held on by two clips that would cut your fingers and were harder than a rubic cube solution to get clipped back on.

Under the distributor cap was the contact points. These had to be replaced. Then you had to adjust the gap on the points. Oh shit, I forgot to adjust the gaps on the spark plugs... do that all over again...

Now that the plugs are gapped and the points are replaced and gapped, you put the new distributor cap on... Come on... SHIT... GOD DAMNED PIECE OF SHI... ok, there it goes. Good. Gimme a bandaid, would ya?

Now you have to set the points' dwell. What's "dwell?" Beats the hell out of me, maybe it's the amount of time the points are closed. But you have to set it with a dwell meter or your car will run like it's powered by gerbils and will suck gas like Bush sucks at being President.

Then you have to get out your strobe and set the timing. You loosen the distributor, point your strobe at the mark on the... wait a minute... I can't see the damned mark. Stop the engine, would you?

Damn, it's all rusty and... to hell with it, start it back up and I'll time the God damned thing by ear, piece of shit...

Thank God and modern electronics for electronic ignition!

Steel gears
During the 1950s when I was a young boy, machinery was made of steel. Not just machinery, but almost everything. Even my toys were made of solid steel. I learned at an early age not to drop things on my foot.

All the mechanical parts in your automobile, your washer and dryer, your furnace, etc were made of solid steel. Good strong durable steel. If a gear broke, it usually broke within the machinery's warranty period, as a broken gear meant that its casting or tempering was flawed.

Nylon and other plastics replaced the steel for many gears, including in your washing machine, in your car's now obsolete distributor, and in almost all electric motors.

Now, some time after your warranty expires, your washing machine or dryer or dishwasher or other appliance will fail it. Old appliances' lifespans were in the decades. In the late 1960s when I worked in a drive-in theater, its refrigerator was a model made in the 1920s and still hummed along merrily. For all I know, it's cooling someone's beer today.

Today's appliances will give you a few short years - if you're lucky. Then, one of its cheap plastic parts will break, usually a part that cannot be replaced; a part that was designed to never be able to be replaced or repaired. If you're lucky you'll shell out big bucks to get your cheap appliance repaired. If not, and more and more often these days, it will be unrepairable and you will shell out even bigger bucks to replace it, as your old (but not very old at all) nylon-gear laden piece of junk goes into a landfill.

They don't make 'em like they used to. They used to make 'em solid, to last. Now they're made of materials designed and guaranteed to break. Get out your wallets, suckers!

A nice example of how to earn money with GPL can be found under here

Dear Michael Crawford, Please keep your schizophrenic all too conveniently personal stories to the asshole of the internet. We at Slashdot are all out to get you just like the thought police. Sincerely, The Slashdot Community

Ryan's political career was marred by a scandal involving the illegal sale of government licenses, contracts and leases by state employees during his prior service as Secretary of State; in the wake of numerous convictions of former aides, he chose not to run for reelection in 2002. The scandals are widely believed to have hurt Republicans' short- (and, perhaps long-) term chances for re-winning Illinois' governorship; state Attorney General Jim Ryan (no relation) lost to Rod Blagojevich in the 2002 election, ending 25 years of Republican governorships. All told, seventy-nine former state officials, lobbyists, truck drivers and others have been since charged in the investigation, and at least 76 have been convicted.

The corruption scandal that led to Ryan's downfall began over a decade earlier as a federal investigation into a deadly crash in Wisconsin that killed six children. The investigation revealed a scheme inside Ryan's secretary of state's office in which unqualified truck drivers obtained licenses through bribes. As the AP wrote: "The probe expanded over the next eight years into a wide-ranging corruption investigation that eventually reached Ryan in the governor's office."

Maybe he hopes to reach a singularity point and have a Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect "Failure".
http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/

Troll? MAFIAA shills must have mod points today; I agree with you almost wholeheartedly. If you're trolling, then so am I. And here in Springfield we do our trolling offfline.

The two disagreements I have is that first, I think twenty cents is high for a NEW download. And second, stuff from the 1987 and before should be in the public domain and downloaded free and legal from P2P. That's twenty years. How is giving Janice Joplin a 200 year copyright going to entice her to sing? She's dead, Jim!

Free Steamboat Willie!

-mcgrew

Such an obviously bad point.

RIAA music isn't worth the money (maybe make it a dime and I'll buy it) nor is it worth the effort to torrent. I'll rip my MP3s from indie CDs, and if I want any RIAA MP3s I'll sample them off the damned radio, way less hassle than either legal or illicit internet downloads.

And the formats aren't good enough. I buy lossless music on CD, vinyl, and cassette. And download lossless indie files from archive.org. Here are some files from some old friends of mine in SHN. FOLAC, MP3 and Ogg format)

-mcgrew

(The linked diary is an account of the night I met Dave & company: "Holly walks up and starts chatting! Cool. She could be a movie star. The word 'Hollywood' takes on a whole new meaning.")

If you want people skills go post on kuro5hin.

Aww, Bill haven't we been through this already. Remember how much Vista cost us? There's no way we can afford to write the damn thing ourselves. We are morons, Bill, but we know how to spend money. We must spend every penny possible to FUCKING KILL GOOGLE. KILL! -drool-

Aww, Bill haven't we been through this already. Remember how much Vista cost us? There's no way we can afford to write the damn thing ourselves. We are morons, Bill, but we know how to spend money. We must spend every penny possible to FUCKING KILL GOOGLE. KILL! -drool-

Day 1: Mommy, I'm scared, there's some guy that's trying to have sex with me. He looks like a tadpole! Help me!

Day 2: Oh wow that was intense! Oh I do love my sperm cell, he was just AWESOME!

Day 3: Oh look I have a twin sister. No, wait, three sisters. No, seven... thirteen... what's this? They're part of me!

Day 4: Mommie look I'm a mass of cells about the size of the hangnail. I'm not even a fetus and won't be for quite some time, let alone a baby.

Day 5: Oh look, mommie, the parent post is a troll!

Day 6: Mommie, I think you should go to Biters Anonymous for their twelve step program to try and stop biting at trolls.

Day 7: Oh shit mommie's Huffing kittens!

Day 8: I hear trolls eat babies!

Day 9: Mommie, that troll is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHGHHHH---------

Day ten: Mommy, I am okay. I am in the flying spagetti monster's arms. he is holding me. He told me about kitten huffing and baby-eating trolls. Why didn't you want to eat me Mommy?

One more heart that never started. Two more eyes that never grew. Two more hands that will never exist and didn't exist. One more mouth that will never eat babies.

REPOST THIS IF U HATE TROLLS

Day 1: Mommy, I'm scared, there's some guy that's trying to have sex with me. He looks like a tadpole! Help me!

Day 2: Oh wow that was intense! Oh I do love my sperm cell, he was just AWESOME!

Day 3: Oh look I have a twin sister. No, wait, three sisters. No, seven... thirteen... what's this? They're part of me!

Day 4: Mommie look I'm a mass of cells about the size of the hangnail. I'm not even a fetus and won't be for quite some time, let alone a baby.

Day 5: Oh look, mommie, the parent post is a troll!

Day 6: Mommie, I think you should go to Biters Anonymous for their twelve step program to try and stop biting at trolls.

Day 7: Oh shit mommie's Huffing kittens!

Day 8: I hear trolls eat babies!

Day 9: Mommie, that troll is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHGHHHH---------

Day ten: Mommy, I am okay. I am in the flying spagetti monster's arms. he is holding me. He told me about kitten huffing and baby-eating trolls. Why didn't you want to eat me Mommy?

One more heart that never started. Two more eyes that never grew. Two more hands that will never exist and didn't exist. One more mouth that will never eat babies.

REPOST THIS IF U HATE TROLLS