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While some Americans seem to have trouble with some "Britishisms"; I think there's a rather large and dedicated "Brit-com" fan base here who either have no problem with them or to whom a bit of cultural "went over my head" doesn't detract from their enjoyment too much.

I grew up watching plenty of British TV including: Dr. Who; The Tomorrow People; Are You Being Served; Monty Python's Flying Circus; The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy; Fresh Fields; May to December; The Prisoner; Benny Hill (didn't like that one so much); Yes Minister; The Young Ones; and more. Maybe I didn't get all the references in terms of cultural significance (who the hell WAS Reginald Maulding; and why were the Pythons so convinced that his naughty bits were particularly naughty?)

As I grew older, I never lost my love of British television. (I think that Spaced is possibly the second funniest TV series I've ever watched ... next to Red Dwarf.

At any rate, I am by far not the only American who enjoys British television and humor (though I may be a bit on the extreme end, owning a region free dvd player with PAL to NTSC conversion and ordering regularly from amazon.co.uk). While I do understand that some folks may not quite get it or like it, my point was not to underestimate the size and loyalty of potential fan base here.

Any animal kept in captivity and inbred for generations

Yeah, just look at European royalty!

This thread isn't complete without a link to the FCC song!

Fuck you very much, the FCC!

• Man enters the brain heatsink shop with an English-Hungarian phrasebook.
• Hungarian (always reading from the phrasebook): I will not buy this Beowulf cluster - it is incompatible with GNU GPL.
• Heatsink seller: This is a brain heatsink shop, Sir, we don't have Beowulf clusters here.
• Hungarian: Ah! I will not buy this brain, it is incompatible with GNU GPL.
• Seller: We only sell heatsinks, see this one here
• Hungarian: Ya! - My CowboyNeal is full of OMG ponies.
• Seller: Do you want a copper brain heatsink or an aluminium one, Sir?
• Hungarian: Will you come to my Soviet Russia, bouncy bouncy?
• Seller: I don't think you are using it right...
• Hungarian: If I said you had a beautiful robotic overlord, would you hold it against me? I... I am no longer infected with Vista (looks at the copper heatsink).
• Seller: The copper brain heatsink, with 3 pipelines connecting directly deep into the spine, costs 6 and 6, please.
• Hungarian: The third step, profit, awaits you naked on my bed.
• Seller: Give it to me, Sir (takes phrasebook, finds a page and reads in Hungarian) - Ön érzéketlen hant [if you are the first to find which slashdot meme these Hungarian words mean you can email me your 3-word answer and I'll give you a free link to a site of your choice except goatse)
• Hungarian violently punches the seller while screaming "developers! developers! developers!"
• Natalie Portman who overheard the discussion comes and abducts the Hungarian into her Beowulf cluster, while the Hungarian repetitively asks "but does it run GNU/Linux?"

(a parody of a Monty Python sketch)

Free Song by the legendary Eric Idle about this administration's FCC

Fuck the FCC: http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3

I can't believe nobody (at least at +3 and above) has linked yet to the FCC song.

The FCC Song by Eric Idle

Fuck you very much the FCC
Fuck you very much for fining me
Five thousand bucks a fuck so I'm really out of luck
Thats more than Heidi Fliess was charging me.
So fuck you very much the FCC
For proving that free speech just isn't free
Clear Channel's a dear channel
so Howard Stern must go
Attorney General Ashcroft doesn't like strong words and so
He's charging twice as much as all the drugs for Rush Limbo
so Fuck you all so very much

So fuck you very much dear Mr. Bush
for heroically sitting on your tush
For Halliburton, Enron, all the companies who fail
Lets send them a clear signal and stick Martha straight in jail
She's an uppity rich bitch, but at least she isn't male
So fuck you all so very much

So fuck you dickhead Mr. Cheney too.
Fuck you and fuck everything you do.
Your pace maker must be fake
You haven't got a heart
As far as I'm concerned your just a pasty faced old fart
And as for Condolezza she an intellectual tart
So fuck you all so very much

So fuck you very much the EPA
For giving all Alaska's oil away
It really is a bummer
When I can't fill my Hummer
The ozone a no go zone now that Arnold's here to say
The nuclear winter games are going to take place in LA
So fuck you all so very much

So what the planet fails
Lets save the great white males
And fuck you all so very much

YouTube video of Idle performing his "FCC Song" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4ajZ-5kTXk
Also available as downloadable MP3 here: http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/index.shtml

Warning: uncensored and contains naughty words. As you might have noticed.

http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U058nz0Jepg

According to Eric Idle, it is dedicated to the FCC, and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars. Have a listen. :)

Fuck you, FCC.

For another similarly-themed song from Monty Python's great Eric Idle, see here: Pythononline > Plugs > Idlewild. Look near the top, where it says "Eric Idle presents... The FCC Song." Warning--not work-safe (Eric, unlike Family Guy, wasn't planning to have this one broadcast).

Just more evidence that the FCC is a corrupt department that has become a government pawn (a sort of "inside man") of the media and telco industries. They did the same thing with the broadcast flag, remember? The courts had to shoot it down. It's time for someone to wake up and smell what they're cookin', and shake things up at the FCC.

"F**k you very much, the FCC" - Eric Idle, The FCC Song - released for free here: http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/

Think Eric Idle sums it up best.

tm

Fuck the FCC.

Surely you mean "Fuck you very much, the FCC".

And then remember AIDS isn't the cause of death, but the state that the body can't fight back...

Depending what you read:

Spinal and throat cancer

Spinal cancer

Throat cancer

He died of having AIDS. Cancer killed him. A bit on the end

But I thought we hate the FCC! I just don't know what to believe anymore!

We hate the FCC when they are an obstacle to free speech, not when they are fining others for being obstacles to new tech.

In this case, they did the right thing by protecting the lil' guy. But in the cases where they want to tell you what your content can or can't be, as Eric Idle says: fuck you very much, the FCC.

http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/index.shtml

obligatory link on the topic.

I wonder how much it would cost to broadcast Eric Idle's FCC Song after this...

Fsck you very much the FCC
Fsck you very much for fining me...
Eric Idle presents... The FCC Song.
"Here's a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge... It's a new song, it's dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars."

See it here!
And hear!

Official Monty Python Site

"And fsck you all so very much!"

Fsck you very much the FCC
Fsck you very much for fining me...
Eric Idle presents... The FCC Song.
"Here's a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge... It's a new song, it's dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars."

See it here!
And hear!

Official Monty Python Site

"And fsck you all so very much!"

Fsck you very much the FCC
Fsck you very much for fining me...
Eric Idle presents... The FCC Song.
"Here's a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge... It's a new song, it's dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars."

See it here!
And hear!

Official Monty Python Site

"And fsck you all so very much!"

I believe Eric Idle put it more succinctly- go download FCCSong.mp3 from that link. (Be warned, there's about 5million in fines worth of F-bombs in the song... :-)

With a link to the song.

No, no, no. This one!

Fuck You Very Much the FCC!

It takes a Brit to say what we feel about this sort of stuff ;)

Eric's got a song on his site about the FCC: The FCC Song

who said it best with The FCC Song

FCC Song

Scrapping the FCC would lead to complete anarchy which would in turn result in very bad things for consumers, such as cell phones that only worked half the time or in certain parts of the country, or radio stations trying to muscle each other out by broadcasting static on each others' stations.

Eric Idle phrased his sentiment differently, but the message is still there.

I agree with Eric Idle's assessment of the FCC (warning: explicit lyrics)

We would never have The FCC Song (monty python)

Funny you should mention that - Eric Idle and the rest of us seem to feel the same about the FCC as of late.

Hum it all together now!

I find it sad the Monty Python would try and cash in like this.

Good thing you never saw the "Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python" show when it was on tour a few years ago. Or Idle's more recent Greedy Bastard Tour.

Linus "I definitely won't be moving back to Finland though."

Tallahassee gets 77% more rain each year than Seattle, on average (I used wunderground.com to look this up). I'm glad Tallahassee doesn't have bridges, otherwise people would be jumping off of them. :^)

So why do you think that west coast people suck? I guess I'm curious about this point because I took a road trip out to California and back last summer, and I didn't really encounter any "meanies" along the way... I'd say the worst I encountered out there was one lady who cut me off somewhere around Modesto, CA, but that could have happened anywhere. People were more to-the-point and didn't coat their conversations with sugar, but that seemed to be the most of it. Somewhere around Bakersfield, CA, I helped one guy start up his ailing '75 VW Bug, and he and his wife sincerely thanked me for the effort. San Francisco was the only major city we visited out of our 6,000 mile trip where we could cross streets and the cars would actually yield to us without honking or otherwise getting mad.

I'm also unsure about your statement about organic vs. planning in cities... If S.F. has improved its livability because its changes aren't so organic anymore, why do you say that the more planning that goes into cities, the more it dies? Perhaps I'm not interpreting right...

Besides the planned vs. organic sides of the argument, I personally believe that there is a certain level of enthusiasm that must be had by citizens of a city in order for the city to thrive. Cultural events are one such outlet for enthusiasm. People here in Tallahassee have football as their common pastime, but that is about it. Occasionally, a good symphony rolls through town, or the North Florida Fair (yippee). I recently looked up the tour schedule for Eric Idle's Greedy Bastard Tour, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company, two tours which I would very much like to see, but unfortunately neither of them comes anywhere near the entire southeast U.S.. If you look around at Boston, Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, etc., it seems like every performer worth their salt goes through these cities. If you don't have culture, all you have is a collection of roads, buildings, and people.

Huh, I thought these guys were the original Spam Kings.

Anyone else have problems with MPFC's Web site? Main page links won't left-click for me ... IE6, WinXP (maybe that's my problem).

Dated 12 September 2003, and 20 August 2003, respectively:

Spamelot(!), The Broadway Musical

Eric Idle's "The Greedy Bastard Tour"

Personally, I liked Good Omens, but then again, I also like British comedy in general. If you aren't a fan of that genre, I can see how some people might not have cared for it. [personally, I think it still ranks as my favorite book to date, but then again, I also love MPFC, Red Dwarf and the like].
[not directly a reply to you, but to some of the others in this thread]

As for Neverwhere, the problem is that you read the book. This is one of those cases where the book didn't come first. [ie, it's like reading the book adaptation of a movie... it's going to suck, so don't bother]. It was decent, but it wasn't nearly as good as the BBC mini series, that Neil Gaimen did with Lenny Henry [whom most Americans would only recognize from Chef! if their PBS station carried it]. The current anticipated release date for it in the US is June 2003. [See the Jan 17th entry]

It was shown in the US, however, as a promotion through the release of the book in the US by Borders, which is when I saw it. [Personally, I know it's sick, but I liked the frog scene]. Oh...and although it was done 6 years ago, and US standards were low, it had that gritty 'Dr. Who' production budget feel to it, but it was still good TV.

No, it's just that no one has subscribed, so Taco sold Slashdot to the Python boys. Now it's nothing but spam, lovely spam.

Soon, they'll be promoting the Spam Club!

I was about to post the same link (I know this is redundant...). I checked to make sure it wasn't a slight advance, since the title (chip > transistor, right?) suggested that there was more progress. There wasn't, the only difference is the last article referenced a press release by Bell Labs and this one references a NYT article.

"It shows what can be the ultimate limit for transistors," Dr. Schön said.

To me, that quote reminds me of the infamous "640K should be enough for anybody" quote by Gates way back when. And the quote back in the 1800's along the lines of "Everything has already been invented" (sorry I can't link the actual quotes, I'm being lazy)... Never, never say that you've found the Holy Grail, at least in terms of computers. Something faster will come out in the future.

finland, finland, finland . . . so sadly neglected, so often ignored . . . PythOnline

C'mon, guys, why link to the domain of some slob trying to get the Python people to buy a domain from him? Link to the real site.

--Matt

Note: the Flying Circus DVDs are now shipping. I received the first thirteen episodes last week. You can get them at pythonline (now showing the 'It Worked! The Apache Web Server is Now Installed on this Web Site!' message. Patience and good for them!) or DVD Express.
I was hoping for the ability to disable the laugh track (exept when part of the sketch). Small disappointment though.