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Terror rains drenchin', quenchin' tha thirst of tha power dons
[...]
What we don't know keeps tha contracts alive an movin'
They don't gotta burn tha books they just remove 'em
While arms warehouses fill as quick as tha cells
[...]
They rally round tha family! With a pocket full of shells

"Bulls on Parade" is a song released by Rage Against the Machine in 1996, and can be found on their second album Evil Empire. One of Rage's signature songs, it deals with what is commonly referred to as the "military-industrial complex", which is the tendency of industry (the arms industry in particular) to encourage military action in order to gain military contracts, and therefore increase its profits. Lines such as "Weapons; not food, not homes, not shoes, not need, just feed the war cannibal-animal," and "what we don't know keeps the contracts alive and moving / they don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em" are just a couple of examples of the several allusions to the military-industrial complex throughout the song. With the words, "Terror rains, drenching, quenching the thirst of the power dons," the song suggests that the fear of terrorism is used to manipulate the American populace into supporting dubious military action. The phrase "terror rains" also serves as a double entendre, which suggests that "terror reigns" by way of the government terror as a tool.

Internet connectivity over cellular networks is already fast enough. However, the cellular carriers have oversold the capacity of their networks (plus they want to give priority to their own subscription-only multimedia services), so they carefully rate-limit services that consume large amounts of bandwidth. For instance, on Verizon's EVDO network (I'm a happy subscriber), I can listen to Secret Agent at 128 kbps for about two minutes before being rate limited to about 1 kbps by Verizon, even though the EVDO network's advertised as capable of 400 kbps and in practice can burst up to around 1000 kbps. (Obviously, there are ways around these kinds of restrictions.)

So for now, my solution is to rip my favorite streams and upload them to my iPod, where I can play them again and again and again. How high am I supposed to jump, again?

Mirrors on 100mbit link here:
http://eddie.ratm.net/slashdot/

For those who can't run bittorent from work :)

Mirror, fast for australians here:

http://eddie.ratm.net/slashdot/1984macintro.mov

This little brother's watching you too

Also mirrored here and is fast for australians (100mbit)

http://eddie.ratm.net/slashdot/skycutter40-1.wmv

But this is a fight we have to take on locally. Find out what's used in your district. If they use black-box machines with no paper trail (virtually everyone does) then hit 'em with a big ole ream of this. Send it your city councilmember, call your Congresscritter and your Senators, bitch to your local paper, blog. Do something.

My favourite excerpts:

"I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb"." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/support.w3archive/200101 /msg00068.html ]

Or how about:

In response to a question about a presentation in El Paso County, Colorado: "For a demonstration I suggest you fake it. Progam them both so they look the same, and then just do the upload fro [sic] the AV. That is what we did in the last AT/AV demo." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/support.w3archive/199903 /msg00098.html ]

Or even:

"Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed." [source: http://chroot.net/s/lists/announce.w3archive/20011 0/msg00002.html ]

Makes me feel all warm and gooey inside, but not in that comfortable, sated, internally glowing way. In that queasy, rumbling, internally bleeding, hosting-an-Alien-baby kind of way.

Mirrors here or here or here.

http://eddie.ratm.net/johnkimble/lists/lists.tgz

100mbit mirror:

http://eddie.ratm.net/kernel/