Slashdot Mirror

see Johnny Cash's take on the consequences...

THIS is about as far from Spock as ANY person could ever be:

The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins

In the middle of the earth in the land of the Shire
lives a brave little hobbit whom we all admire.
With his long wooden pipe,
fuzzy, woolly toes,
he lives in a hobbit-hole and everybody knows him

Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
He's only three feet tall
Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

Now hobbits are a peace-lovin' folks you know
They don't like to hurry and they take things slow
They don't like to travel away from home
They just want to eat and be left alone
But one day Bilbo was asked to go
on a big adventure to the caves below,
to help some dwarves get back their gold
that was stolen by a dragon in the days of old.

Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
He's only three feet tall
Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

Well he fought with the goblins!
He battled a troll!!
He riddled with Gollum!!!
A magic ring he stole!!!!
He was chased by wolves!!!!!
Lost in the forest!!!!!!
Escaped in a barrel from the elf-king's halls!!!!!!!

Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

Now he's back in his hole in the land of the Shire,
that brave little hobbit whom we all admire,
just a-sittin' on a treasure of silver and gold
a-puffin' on his pipe in his hobbit-hole.

Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
He's only three feet tall
Bilbo! Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins
The bravest little hobbit of them all

Long term, maglevs/monorails ARE the way to go.

Props given for an obscure reference, however reversal of stance for lack of credit for group that wrote the song.

Offering of better reference in form of a wiki article and song lyrics.

Self-righteous closing

--Witty, yet non-relevant tagline

"GM, Chrysler and Ford announce that they'll transition to "thinking about possibly getting some of those battery-rechargey cars" into production by 2015."

More like: "In the most recent bid to stave off bankruptcy, the remaining fragments of 'merkin motors (formed by the merger of GM, Chrysler, and Ford) announced today a new SUV for 2015, complete with passenger space for 35, and powered by a wood-burning external combustion engine. Rumors are that the new 65-ton SUV gets an impressive 5 A.F.B.P.M. (acres of forest burned per mile), and that "Canyonero" is the likely name of the behemoth. Shares dropped slightly on the news of the vehicle to a 3-month low of $0.01, following a 4-year high of $0.02 per share when K. T. "Rusty" Clown was named CEO of 'merkin motors. Mr. Clown's health problems were considered by analystis as "fictitious" and not detrimental to the job, at least in comparison to outgoing CEO Ruprecht Jameson, who after losing an impressive $10 billion (Approximately $9.9 Billion more than the net worth of 'merkin motors) cost shareholders a futher $20 billion when he deployed his golden parachute after doing a "heckuva job" according to the chairman of the board of directors."

Country: the music of tolerance.

He wouldn't be the first.

I was just thinking about how big we could make our SUVs if we had a cheaper power source :)

You'll have to ask Krusty.

We have "artists" like Gwen Stefani releasing cover after cover, first covering Talk Talk's It's My Life then covering If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof, and both covers are atrocious.

I like No Doubt and Gwen Stefani but I don't care for either cover. However "Rich Girl" is actually a cover of a minor Nineties dancehall hit of the same name by Louchie Lou and Michie One. I like the original "Rich Girl" quite a bit. Obviously it's derived from the song from Fiddler but I wouldn't call it a cover of it.

The money goes to an American that work hard, have good jobs and enjoy decent pay. And in turn these good Americans pay taxes. The rate is not exorbitant if you consider the cost of providing service. Most telecom rates have to go through government bodies for approval. Verizon doesn't willy-nilly set prices at the maximum people are willing to pay.

You fail to understand that Verizon does have employees working in that town. That do eat at Sally's Diner. In any case, both the municipality and Verizon would contract the actual building of the network, so there are no jobs that stay after the initial build out. I highly doubt that this rural community has hoards of individuals with the knowledge to build a city wide network.

Is your point that governent should give money back to the townspeople? Try cutting taxes its much easier! Again not everyone wants broadband service, don' make them pay for your urge to play Doom III over a phat connection. Some people need money to do important things like eat and go to the doctor!

In your world, the consultant that sold them the idea will be doing cocaine and telling his buddies he just duped the poor folks in Bumble#$% out of $100 million, plus a 10% stake in $40/month for network service! Can you say Monorail http://www.leoslyrics.com/listlyrics.php?id=67605 All you have done is shift the money around. Regardless of the exorbitant pay most executives make, none of them sit around smoking cigars.

if it's a soft cell, it's probably gonna hum this tune.

Thank you and a fork isnt very useful for that
unless it has got many vegetables
and then you might be better off with a
chop-stick
unlike the moon
it is up in the sky
its up there very high
but not as high
as maybe
digibles or zeppelins
or lightbulbs
and maybe clouds
and puffins also I think maybe
they go quite high too
maybe not as high as the moon
coz the moon is very high
we like the moon
the moon is very useful everyone
everybody like the moon
because it light up the sky at night
and it lovely
and it makes the tide go and we like it
but not as much as cheese
we really like cheese
we like zeppelins
we really like them
and we like kelp and we like moose
and we like deer and we like marmots
and we like all the fluffy animals
we really like the moon

Thanks to Leo's Lyrics and Joel and Alex Veitch

"...killed [sic] a man in Reno just to watch him die

I have to ask, do you actually know where that quote came from? For those of you that don't know your music, allow me to give you the low-down on those lyrics. Also, your quote is slightly flawed. It's actually:

"But I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die,"

That's a quote from one of the great country western songs, "Folsom Prison Blues", written and sung by the late Johnny Cash, better known as The Man in Black. That song is now one of the staples of country music, hell music in general. For those of you that aren't familar with Cash's music I encourage you to pick up one of his greatest hits albums. The Essential Johnny Cash is a good place to start. I thought I'd make that slightly OT point. Who knows, maybe it'll educate one of you tenderfoots. ;-)

One thing's for certain, rather than that Enya or Annie Lennox rubbish, Spo^H^H^HLeonard Nimoy's masterpiece should be used for the closing credits.

How is the Canadian law a violation of free speech?

By definition. A law that says "we will put you in a cage if you say X" is an abridgement of the freedom of speech.

I would say publishing something for example that says all (insert racial/religious/cultural group here) is less than human and only deserving of persecution and death is a pretty clear violation of that target groups rights...

You have the right not to be killed. (Murder is a crime. Unless it was done by a policeman or aristocrat...) And you have the right to not be threatened or harassed.

You do not have the right to stop others from thinking you should be killed. You do not have the right to stop others from expressing their thought that you should be killed. Of course expressing that thought in certain manners and contexts may constitute threat, harassment, or incitement, but the content of the communication itself is free.

For an example of what you dismissively term "just playing records", might I suggest you check out The Avalanches. They get called DJ's, but it's a very long way away from what a DJ does at an office party (which is actually a more difficult skill than you think, having tried it). Virtually everything on there is sampled from something else, but the sources are very obscure and they're combined in ways you'd never think of.

And as for hip-hop, they're poets who work to a drum beat. Sure, Sturgeon's law applies, but I can name approximately 1 squillion mediocre rock acts. (Creed? Any nu-metal act with a misplaced "k" in their name?) A good example of the close relationship was the well-known poet Allen Ginsberg's 1996 collaboration with Paul McCartney and Phillip Glass, The Ballad of the Skeletons. Or, alternatively, you could try listening closely to Eminem's Stan. It's a very perceptive commentary on the mentality of some of his own fans, and Dr. Dre, his producer, was brilliant to figure out how well Dido's Thank You fitted with it.

Oh, and as for performances based mostly around sequencing, ever heard of 1970's German techno precursors Kraftwerk?

Don't bring me down,grroosss

from here

and all I want is dependable 911 access. 911 is a joke

Dude, just go hardcore and implant your family with Verichip, or Digital Angel. 'INSERT catchy_slogan_thing INTO POST FROM SUBJECT WHERE NAME LIKE missedperception'; "Forget 911 go private consumer based ultra neeto protection. Fun for the cattle and dogs, and now the whole family!"

You don't feel happy? Take Zoloft. Your kid's a bit on the lively side? We can fix that.

This reminds me of the lyrics to a song from Dance Dance Revolution 5th Mix, "Hot Limit" by John Desire, reproduced as heard:

You take Zoloft...
We drink Ritalin...
You take Zoloft...
We drink Ritalin...
Precious love is always eating up my heart!

That's not how the official lyrics go, but I wonder how much Pfizer (Zoloft mfr) and Novartis (Ritalin mfr) paid John Desire to mispronounce "summer love" as "Zoloft" and "revealing" as "Ritalin". (Others have heard "You take Zoloft" as "You chase Solo," referring to Harrison Ford's character in Star Wars episodes IV through VI.)

From here it's just a small step to a world described e.g. in Ira Levin's "A perfect day" (for the German audience: "Die sanften Ungeheuer").

Or the world in The Giver by Lois Lowry, where everybody is perpetually high on drugs that deaden feelings, which are called "Stirrings" in the culture.

...it's time to thaw out John Wayne?

You know, some of the results from Googlism sound like lyrics from Soul Coughing... In particular, they remind me of the song "Casiotone Nation", which keeps saying "The five percent nation of [place random thing here]" among other things.

Mostly because Sir Mix-A-Lot said to "Put 'Em On The Glass".
Oh, wait... silicone, not silicon. Nevermind.