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I read from the printer friendly version, no ads and stuff...

But anyway, this is simply unbelievable. The idea that if someone says something bad about their own experiences can somehow justify suing them for 15 million dollars. And then to sue a defense fund! WTF is going through people's mind?

Instead of wasting their time with such frivalous legal actions, they should perhaps try to improve their aquatic plants division.

But I guess trying to serve customers is a harder way to get money than just sueing people.

Why do you hate America so much? :)

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/04/03/web_r adio_redux/print.html

I like this last bit:

As for SoundExchange's inability to update its Web site due to not having an on-staff webmaster, please take a look at this 10-minute guide to HTML. I'm sure some of the talented folks at SoundExchange could pick up the skills needed to update the text of your Web site within a couple of days, and it would have saved many hours of many people's time (and prevented much confusion) if there hadn't been a number of folks pointing to the SoundExchange site as proof that (for instance) SoundExchange will not be paying the artists directly.

It is always good to encourage techical literacy.

I absolutely agree 100%.

You will probably find this amusing

Its about FUD && Propaganda - and RMS knows this, he may seem like a 'broken' record to "us", but he is spreading his meme well. Read some Chomsky - language is a complex tool.

This whole thing reminds me of the time when Microsoft released an annual report which was made on a Mac. The embedded meta-data Word puts in gave them away.

Secondly, and this is more about semantics, but in modern "creative" industries, the creator, per se, does not own the copyright; the copyright is owned by a company with which the creator has contracted. Granted the creator receives some money, but people in the industry (here the recording industry) like Courtney Love have stated [salon.com] the amount is nowhere near what Joe Sixpack believes it is. I should have clarifies my point. The use of contracts is the Way Things Work, granted, and that in these contracts, the artist signs over copyright to the label. However, it seems that the RIAA trots out the Poor, Starving Artist (tm) and bemoans his/her plight while turning on them once out of the public spotlight and raping them with a whale (figurativly, of course). (Don't believe me? What about Don Henly, Courtney Love (yes, again), the Dixie Chicks, and LeAnn Rimes? They seem to agree that the labels have an unequal relationship with artists.) My point is that the RIAA cries about how piracy hurts the artist, yet they do as much or more to hurt the artist. -MKD Poor, Starving Artist is a register trademark of the Recording Industry Association of America and is used without permission

Wrong on two accounts. First, copyright (and patents) does have its basis in the Constitution. Article I, sect 8, paragraph 8:

I don't know what information vacuum you've been living in but there were a significant number of innocent victims in the bombing campaign who had nothing to do with bin Laden, in fact, they were victims as well. By the way, bin Laden is still at large and suprise! suprise! Nobody seems to care about him anymore. This is looking less and less like a "war on terrorism" and more like a war of imperialism.

People died because madmen hijacked two jetliners and deliberately slammed them into skyscrapers full of thousands of innocent human beings. Corporate greed and stockholders had nothing to do with it, and it is callous, irresponsible, and shallow of you to even suggest such a thing to further your obvious hatred of corporate America.

Glad to see that Yahoo has learned from Steve Case's example. I wrote about this in 1999 when AOL pulled this one

It's a shame that this is such a crappy book review because I rather liked the books. They really are worth reading. There's a more in depth review on salon. The review is just for The Amber Spyglass, but it talks about the whole trilogy.

In the interim, there's Ogg Tarkin, but it looks like they're too busy with Vorbis right now.

Open-source can also mean "closed climate," with developers working only to meet their own desires and those of a relatively small and stable base of users and fans. The strength of the movement -- distributed development by volunteer programmers worldwide -- isn't geared toward the sudden appearance of clamoring consumers with questions, complaints and wish lists in hand.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Check out the Salon article about this. This is also a good writeup.

Other attested spellings are

Shake-speare (very common)

Shakespear

Shakspeer

Shaksperr

and

Sheakspear

You forgot "Marlowe."

More Marlowe Fun.

InigoMontoya(tm)

I can't believe either LOTR or ABM were in the running for best adapted screenplay with a film like Ghost World. It was an amazing comic that was perfectly adapted to the screen. It captured all the sadness and beauty of that story without resorting to cheap manipulation (cough...A Beutiful Mind...cough). It's an insanely underappreciated film, and I can't believe it gets no mention on a site supposedly devoted to "nerds".

Check this article on Salon. Perfectly mirrors my thoughts on the Oscars.

$OBSCURE_PORT_1 = obscure port # on your local machine
$OBSCURE_PORT_2 = obscure port # on machine outside firewall

On the machine where you have the shell account, download and compile the ucspi-tcp package, and micro_proxy. Put the tcpserver and micro_proxy binaries in your $PATH; throw everything else away.

To run the proxy:

From your local machine,
ssh -C -L $OBSCURE_PORT_1:127.0.0.1:$OBSCURE_PORT_2 -l [username] machine.where.you.have.shell.account.co.va
(or if you use some fancy Windoze SSH client, forward $OBSCURE_PORT_1 on your local machine to $OBSCURE_PORT_2 on the remote machine)

Once logged in, run tcpserver -DHlR 127.0.0.1 $OBSCURE_PORT_2 micro_proxy & on the remote machine

On your local machine, set your browser to use HTTP and HTTPS (IE)/SSL (Mozilla) proxies on host 127.0.0.1, port $OBSCURE_PORT_1

Surf to your heart's content.

Throughout history, governments have been subject to corruption and all too often have sold the rights of their citizens away to the highest bidder. The US now faces such a time, as it has before. Therefore, I offer this proposal to solve the problems of rule by the highest bidder.

Now, before I am labelled as an anti-establishment hippie, allow me to present my case to you. I will outline the historic case of government corruption in the United States as well as offering a method to ensure that such corruption will never happen again. Hear me out before you make your decisions. The Historic Case: America in the Gilded Age (1870-1930) The years following the Civil War in the US, often called Reconstruction, are also known as the Gilded Age. During this period, political parties, using political machines like Tammany Hall, they were able to harass, threaten, and force people to vote in the manner the party wanted. All government actions were in control of the party. Appointments, elections, campaigns, etc were all controlled by corrupt party bosses. Voters were often gathered together like a flock of sheep on Election Day, taken to local bars, intoxicated, and then taken around to vote at several different polling stations under the lead of party bosses. Edgar Allan Poe died because of these party bosses, who filled him with liquor (which he was allergic to), took him around to get him to vote five or six times, and then left him for dead.

Such concern for the public is touching, is it not?

Also, during this period, Big Business, fueled by the Industrial Revolution, grew more and more powerful and more and more corrupt. Standard Oil, the Rockefellers, Carnagie, the RailRoads; all of these businesses used a system of bribery and quid pro quo to keep the government from investigating their illegal and immoral practices. The Railroads changed rates, gouged customers, impoverished farmers, all to make a profit. The meat factories in the cities exploited their workers. Upton Sinclair, in his book The Jungle, described the unsafe and unsanitary conditions under which meat was packaged. The American Federation of Labor lobbied for workers' rights and protection against the abuse of Big Business.

Finally, under Theodore Roosevelt, Big Business was muzzled. The FDA, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and other Progressive legislation were all passed. Big Business had a standard to live up to. Workers had rights and dignity guarenteed to them. Finally, the evils of the Gilded Age seemed to be at an end. Will We Never Learn? America in the Second Gilded Age (1950-2002) Now America faces a new Gilded Age. Money is considered a form of Free Speech. Corporations are allowed the rights of citizens (except that a corporation doesn't have to pay taxes and can't be tried for criminal conduct). Once again, industries are trying to enslave their workers and their consumers, all for the Almighty Dollar.

The Recording Industry Artists Association, a group of distributers who can't play Mary Had A Little Lamb on the piano, are now legally allowed to hold the copyright on any work they distribute in perpetuity. The Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999 has a clause that makes all sound recordings works-for-hire. Courtney Love has spoken out against the RIAA and its illegal actions at Salon.com. This bill was altered after all the arguments and debates were settled. There was no chance for a revisiting of this issue before it was sent off to the President. A boy who only had the authority to spellcheck the bill altered it at the request of the RIAA, in such a way as that no one had a chance to fight the alteration.

The RIAA, the MPAA, Disney, and other Hollywood industries are now trying to force another bill through the Senate. The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), a bill that outlaws all fair use rights of the consumer as well as outlawing innovation in technology has been proposed by Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. This Senator recieved over $300,000.00 in campaign contributions from Disney alone. Tell me there is no quid pro quo going on now.

As bad as the RIAA is with its desire to enslave musicians in contracts illegal under California law, Disney is worse.

Disney has stolen and made its fortune from the public domain without giving one thing back to the very people they have stolen from. Where would Disney be without Snow White? Without Cinderella? Without Pocahontas? Without the Little Mermaid? Disney has raped the public domain and not given one whit in return. Every time the trademark on Mickey Mouse gets ready to expire, Disney lobbies to have the trademark law extended. Sorry, uncle Walt, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You raped the people, and they demand the Mouse and His Furry Friends for sacrifice.

And Einser, the CEO of Disney, is the chief backer of the CBDTPA.

Let me tell you what will happen if this bill passes:

1. It will be illegal to record anything off of your TV.

2. It will be illegal to listen to CDs you've bought on your computer.

3. It will be illegal to own an MP3 player.

4. The computer you are currently using will be illegal since it's not fitted with Copy Protection.

5. It will be illegal to innovate, to create, or to even write without the blessing of the Entertainment industry.

I've already spoken at length about this here. The Solution Since we can't outlaw soft money altogether to get rid of the quid pro quo going on right now, we'll have to regulate it. I propose that all campaign contributions over $5 be forced to be anonymous. Claims can't be made for tax write-offs on campaign contributions.

Think it over. If all donations are anonymous, there can be no quid pro quo. That way, it doesn't matter how much Disney et al give. With no quid pro quo, Congressmen can't be bought as they can now. They will have to face the people who elected them and do their will.

Does this seem too simple? Well, maybe it is. Maybe only the firebombing of California off of the map of the US will stop this garbage. But, a girl can dream can't she?

Phoenix

I'm surprised to read quite a few posts from people saying "What's Nethack?" ... well, here's some information to get you started on an answer:

Unsung Heros: NetHack : "NetHack is a spectacular dungeon crawl that has been in development for more than 15 years. It's the only game in this feature that we can refer to in the present tense, because it is the only game still being actively worked on. It features random dungeons, enough monsters to fill an AD&D menagerie, and enough commands to create a programming language."

The Gamespy Hall of Fame : "Here's a game that's been under continuous development for over 15 years. It has no graphics, unless you count the primitive patterns made of ascii characters. And yet is has a huge following -- a very active newsgroup, fans all over the globe, and many instances of major media coverage. There's some kind of magic in NetHack, a world so huge and complex that every game is completely different, where each new item can twist the gameplay in new directions. Mostly we love it for the surprises -- the number of times you try some amazingly obscure action and find out that it works, leaving slump back in your chair and exclaim, 'They thought of everything!'"

Salon: The Best Game Ever : "But as any hacker worth the title will tell you, Nethack is still one of the best games ever made. What's more, it's one of the best open-source games ever made -- meaning anyone who cares can grab ahold of the game's source code and make changes and improvements. The player's guide is even authored by none other than open-source ontologist Eric S. Raymond..."

The Nethack Homepage : "Nethack is a single player, ASCII graphics-based adventure game, similar to the lines of Dungeons & Dragons and similar fantasy games. It is commonly classified in the larger group of Rogue-like Games, which generally are all text-based, solo adventures. Within the game, your character is after the infamous Wizard of Yendor, who has stolen the Amulet of Yendor and plans to use it for his evil purposes. You, a young member of your chosen class, have been blessed by your people and your god to retrieve the Amulet, and to save the world from the Wizard's evil plans."

Variants and Utilities : "One of the most impressive features of Nethack is the amount of 3rd party developed material that either is a varient of the Nethack game, or can be used to enhance your Nethack gaming experience. You'll find both variants and utilites for Nethack listed on this page."

But this one may be (in my biased opinion) the coolest project of all...

Nethack-Palm Porting Project : "The Nethack-Palm porting project is a loosely-knit group of Nethack and Palm enthusiasts who are working to port the classic game Nethack to the Palm platform. The project is well underway, but still far from complete so we welcome any new contributors." (See also Roguelikes for PalmOS)

from:

Article

Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)

Last November, a Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier, with the support of the RIAA, added a "technical amendment" to a bill that defined recorded music as "works for hire" under the 1978 Copyright Act.

He did this after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. The bill was on its way to the White House for the president's signature.

That subtle change in copyright law will add billions of dollars to record company bank accounts over the next few years -- billions of dollars that rightfully should have been paid to artists. A "work for hire" is now owned in perpetuity by the record company.

Under the 1978 Copyright Act, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. If you wrote and recorded "Everybody Hurts," you at least got it back to as a family legacy after 35 years. But now, because of this corrupt little pisher, "Everybody Hurts" never gets returned to your family, and can now be sold to the highest bidder.

Over the years record companies have tried to put "work for hire" provisions in their contracts, and Mr. Glazier claims that the "work for hire" only "codified" a standard industry practice. But copyright laws didn't identify sound recordings as being eligible to be called "works for hire," so those contracts didn't mean anything. Until now.

Writing and recording "Hey Jude" is now the same thing as writing an English textbook, writing standardized tests, translating a novel from one language to another or making a map. These are the types of things addressed in the "work for hire" act. And writing a standardized test is a work for hire. Not making a record.

So an assistant substantially altered a major law when he only had the authority to make spelling corrections. That's not what I learned about how government works in my high school civics class.

Three months later, the RIAA hired Mr. Glazier to become its top lobbyist at a salary that was obviously much greater than the one he had as the spelling corrector guy.

The RIAA tries to argue that this change was necessary because of a provision in the bill that musicians supported. That provision prevents anyone from registering a famous person's name as a Web address without that person's permission. That's great. I own my name, and should be able to do what I want with my name.

But the bill also created an exception that allows a company to take a person's name for a Web address if they create a work for hire. Which means a record company would be allowed to own your Web site when you record your "work for hire" album. Like I said: Sharecropping.

Although I've never met any one at a record company who "believed in the Internet," they've all been trying to cover their asses by securing everyone's digital rights. Not that they know what to do with them. Go to a major label-owned band site. Give me a dollar for every time you see an annoying "under construction" sign. I used to pester Geffen (when it was a label) to do a better job. I was totally ignored for two years, until I got my band name back. The Goo Goo Dolls are struggling to gain control of their domain name from Warner Bros., who claim they own the name because they set up a shitty promotional Web site for the band.

Orrin Hatch, songwriter and Republican senator from Utah, seems to be the only person in Washington with a progressive view of copyright law. One lobbyist says that there's no one in the House with a similar view and that "this would have never happened if Sonny Bono was still alive."

Courtney Does the Math

" Over the years record companies have tried to put "work for hire" provisions in their contracts, and Mr. Glazier claims that the "work for hire" only "codified" a standard industry practice. But copyright laws didn't identify sound recordings as being eligible to be called "works for hire," so those contracts didn't mean anything."

Who cares? Why don't you report about the
Cheney-Rumsfeld administration propagandizing
about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction"?

Go to Salon
and read about it.

Is there anything in the plan that's useful?

I think it would make great kindling for a fire. There's nothing in it that's useful.

It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called 'alternative sexuality,' which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to paedophilia.

What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:

• Linus Torvalds is an anagram of slit anus or VD 'L,' clearly referring to himself by the first initial.
• Richard M. Stallman, spokespervert for the Gaysex's Not Unusual 'movement' is an anagram of mans cram thrill ad.
• Alan Cox is barely an anagram of anal cox which is just so filthy and unchristian it unnerves me.

I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for secondary rim and cord in my arse. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.

Update the Second: It is also documented that Evil Sicko Gaymond is responsible for a nauseating piece of code called Fetchmail, which is obviously sinister sodomite slang for 'Felch Male' -- a disgusting practice. For those not in the know, 'felching' is the act performed by two perverts wherein one sucks their own post-coital ejaculate out of the other's rectum. In fact, it appears that the dirty Linux faggots set out to undermine the good Republican institution of e-mail, turning it into 'e-male.'

As far as Richard 'Master' Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following: 'I've been resistant to the pressure to conform in any circumstance,' he says. 'It's about being able to question conventional wisdom,' he asserts. 'I believe in love, but not monogamy,' he says plainly.

And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!

Speaking about 'flaming,' who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of corrupting the innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:

'I've got a rare kidney disease,' I told her. 'I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?'

Is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, Jon? And letting the other boys touch it too?

We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as 'Slashdot's resident Gasbag.' Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux 'Sauce Code,' a 'Gasbag' is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering together their postings and publishing them en masse to further his twisted and manipulative journalistic agenda.

Sick, disgusting antichristian perverts, the lot of them.

In addition, many of the Linux distributions (a 'distribution' is the most common way to spread the faggots' wares) are run by faggot groups. The Slackware distro is named after the 'Slack-wear' fags wear to allow easy access to the anus for sexual purposes. Furthermore, Slackware is a close anagram of claw arse, a reference to the homosexual practise of anal fisting. The Mandrake product is run by a group of French faggot satanists, and is named after the faggot nickname for the vibrator. It was also chosen because it is an anagram for dark amen and ram naked, which is what they do.

Another 'distro,' (abbrieviated as such because it sounds a bit like 'Disco,' which is where homosexuals preyed on young boys in the 1970s), is Debian, an anagram of in a bed, which could be considered innocent enough (after all, a bed is both where we sleep and pray), until we realise what other names Debian uses to describe their foul wares. 'Woody' is obvious enough, being a term for the erect male penis, glistening with pre-cum. But far sicker is the phrase 'Frozen Potato' that they use. This filthy term, again found in the secret homosexual 'Sauce Code,' refers to the solo homosexual practice of defecating into a clear polythene bag, shaping the turd into a crude approximation of the male phallus, then leaving it in the freezer overnight until it becomes solid. The practitioner then proceeds to push the frozen 'potato' up his own rectum, squeezing it in and out until his tight young balls erupt in a screaming orgasm.

And Red Hat is secret homo slang for the tip of a penis that is soaked in blood from a freshly violated underage ringpiece.

The fags have even invented special tools to aid their faggotry! For example, the 'supermount' tool was devised to allow deeper penetration, which is good for fags because it gives more pressure on the prostate gland. 'Automount' is used, on the other hand, because Linux users are all fat and gay, and need to mount each other automatically.

The depths of their depravity can be seen in their use of 'mount points.' These are, plainly speaking, the different points of penetration. The main one is obviously /anus, but there are others. Militant fags even say 'there is no /opt mount point' because for these dirty perverts faggotry is not optional but a way of life.

More evidence is in the fact that Linux users say how much they love `man`, even going so far as to say that all new Linux users (who are in fact just innocent heterosexuals indoctrinated by the gay propaganda) should try out `man`. In no other system do users boast of their frequent recourse to a man.

Other areas of the system also show Linux's inherit gayness. For example, people are often told of the 'FAQ,' but how many innocent heterosexual Windows users know what this actually means. The answer is shocking: Faggot Anal Quest: the voyage of discovery for newly converted fags!

Even the title 'Slashdot' originally referred to a homosexual practice. Slashdot of course refers to the popular gay practice of blood-letting. The Slashbots, of course are those super-zealous homosexuals who take this perversion to its extreme by ripping open their anuses, as seen on the site most popular with Slashdot users, the depraved work of Satan, http://www.eff.org/.

The editors of Slashdot also have homosexual names: 'Hemos' is obvious in itself, being one vowel away from 'Homos.' But even more sickening is 'Commander Taco' which sounds a bit like 'Commode in Taco,' filthy gay slang for a pair of spreadeagled buttocks that are caked with excrement. (The best form of lubrication, they insist.) Sometimes, these 'Taco Commodes' have special 'Salsa Sauce' (blood from a ruptured rectum) and 'Cheese' (rancid flakes of penis discharge) toppings. And to make it even worse, Slashdot runs on Apache!

The Apache server, whose use among fags is as prevalent as AIDS, is named after homosexual activity -- as everyone knows, popular faggot band, the Village People, featured an Apache Indian, and it is for him that this gay program is named.

And that's not forgetting the use of patches in the Linux fag world -- patches are used to make the anus accessible for repeated anal sex even after its rupture by a session of fisting.

To summarise: Linux is gay. 'Slash -- Dot' is the graphical description of the space between a young boy's scrotum and anus. And BeOS is for hermaphrodites and disabled 'stumpers.'

FEEDBACK

What worries me is how much you know about what gay people do. I'm scared I actually read this whole thing. I think this post is a good example of the negative effects of Internet usage on people. This person obviously has no social life anymore and had to result to writing something as stupid as this. And actually take the time to do it too. Although... I think it was satire.. blah.. it's early. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

Well, the only reason I know all about this is because I had the misfortune to read the Linux 'Sauce code' once. Although publicised as the computer code needed to get Linux up and running on a computer (and haven't you always been worried about the phrase 'Monolithic Kernel'?), this foul document is actually a detailed and graphic description of every conceivable degrading perversion known to the human race, as well as a few of the major animal species. It has shocked and disturbed me, to the point of needing to shock and disturb the common man to warn them of the impending homo-calypse which threatens to engulf our planet.

You must work for the government. Trying to post the most obscene stuff in hopes that slashdot won't be able to continue or something, due to legal woes. If i ever see your ugly face, i'm going to stick my fireplace poker up your ass, after it's nice and hot, to weld shut that nasty gaping hole of yours. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

Doesn't it give you a hard-on to imagine your thick strong poker ramming it's way up my most sacred of sphincters? You're beyond help, my friend, as the only thing you can imagine is the foul penetrative violation of another man. Are you sure you're not Eric Raymond? The government, being populated by limp-wristed liberals, could never stem the sickening tide of homosexual child molesting Linux advocacy. Hell, they've given NAMBLA free reign for years!

you really should post this logged in. i wish i could remember jebus's password, cuz i'd give it to you. -- mighty jebus, Slashdot

Thank you for your kind words of support. However, this document shall only ever be posted anonymously. This is because the 'Open Sauce' movement is a sham, proposing homoerotic cults of hero worshipping in the name of freedom. I speak for the common man. For any man who prefers the warm, enveloping velvet folds of a woman's vagina to the tight puckered ringpiece of a child. These men, being common, decent folk, don't have a say in the political hypocrisy that is Slashdot culture. I am the unknown liberator.

ROLF LAMO i hate linux FAGGOTS -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

We shouldn't hate them, we should pity them for the misguided fools they are... Fanatical Linux zeal-outs need to be herded into camps for re-education and subsequent rehabilitation into normal heterosexual society. This re-education shall be achieved by forcing them to watch repeats of Baywatch until the very mention of Pamela Anderson causes them to fill their pants with healthy heterosexual jism.

Actually, that's not at all how scrotal inflation works. I understand it involves injecting sterile saline solution into the scrotum. I've never tried this, but you can read how to do it safely in case you're interested. (Before you moderate this down, ask yourself honestly -- who are the real crazies -- people who do scrotal inflation, or people who pay $1000+ for a game console?) -- double_h, Slashdot

Well, it just goes to show that even the holy Linux 'sauce code' is riddled with bugs that need fixing. (The irony of Jon Katz not even being able to inflate his scrotum correctly has not been lost on me.) The Linux pervert elite already acknowledge this, with their queer slogan: 'Given enough arms, all rectums are shallow.' And anyway, the PS2 sucks major cock and isn't worth the money. Intellivision forever!

dude did u used to post on msnbc's nt bulletin board now that u are doing anti-gay posts u also need to start in with anti-black stuff too c u in church -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

For one thing, whilst Linux is a cavalcade of queer propaganda masquerading as the future of computing, NT is used by people who think nothing better of encasing their genitals in quick setting plaster then going to see a really dirty porno film, enjoying the restriction enforced onto them. Remember, a wasted arousal is a sin in the eyes of the Catholic church. Clearly, the only god-fearing Christian operating system in existence is CP/M -- The Christian Program Monitor. All computer users should immediately ask their local pastor to install this fine OS onto their systems. It is the only route to salvation.

Secondly, this message is for every man. Computers know no colour. Not only that, but one of the finest websites in the world is maintained by a Black Man . Now fuck off you racist donkey felcher.

And don't forget that slashdot was written in Perl, which is just too close to 'Pearl Necklace' for comfort.... oh wait; that's something all you heterosexuals do.... I can't help but wonder how much faster the trolls could do First-Posts on this site if it were redone in PHP... I could hand-type dynamic HTML pages faster than Perl can do them. -- phee, Slashdot

Although there is nothing unholy about the fine heterosexual act of ejaculating between a woman's breasts, squirting one's load up towards her neck and chin area, it should be noted that Perl (standing for Pansies Entering Rectums Locally) is also close to 'Pearl Monocle,' 'Pearl Nosering,' and the ubiquitous 'Pearl Enema.'

One scary thing about Perl is that it contains hidden homosexual messages. Take the following code: LWP::Simple -- It looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? But look at the line closely: There are two colons next to each other! As Larry 'Balls to the' Wall would openly admit in the Perl Documentation, Perl was designed from the ground up to indoctrinate it's programmers into performing unnatural sexual acts -- having two colons so closely together is clearly a reference to the perverse sickening act of 'colon kissing,' whereby two homosexual queers spread their buttocks wide, pressing their filthy torn sphincters together. They then share small round objects like marbles or golfballs by passing them from one rectum to another using muscle contraction alone. This is also referred to in programming 'circles' as 'Parameter Passing.'

And PHP stands for Perverted Homosexual Penetration. Didn't you know?

Thank you for your valuable input on this. I am sure you will be never forgotten. BTW: Did I mention that this could be useful in terraforming Mars? Mars rulaa. -- Eimernase, Slashdot

Well, I don't know about terraforming Mars, but I do know that homosexual Linux Advocates have been probing Uranus for years.

That's inspiring. Keep up the good work, AC. May God in his wisdom grant you the strength to bring the plain honest truth to this community, and make it pure again. Yours, Cerberus. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

*sniff* That brings a tear to my eye. Thank you once more for your kind support. I have taken faith in the knowledge that I am doing the Good Lord's work, but it is encouraging to know that I am helping out the common man here.

However, I should be cautious about revealing your name 'Cerberus' on such a filthy den of depravity as Slashdot. It is a well known fact that the 'Kerberos' documentation from Microsoft is a detailed manual describing, in intimate, exacting detail, how to sexually penetrate a variety of unwilling canine animals; be they domesticated, wild, or mythical. Slashdot posters have taken great pleasure in illegally spreading this documentation far and wide, treating it as an 'extension' to the Linux 'Sauce Code,' for the sake of 'interoperability.' (The slang term they use for nonconsensual intercourse -- their favourite kind.)

In fact, sick twisted Linux deviants are known to have LAN parties, (Love of Anal Naughtiness, needless to say.), wherein they entice a stray dog, known as the 'Samba Mount,' into their homes. Up to four of these filth-sodden blasphemers against nature take turns to plunge their erect, throbbing, uncircumcised members, conkers-deep, into the rectum, mouth, and other fleshy orifices of the poor animal. Eventually, the 'Samba Mount' collapses due to 'overload,' and needs to be 'rebooted.' (i.e., kicked out into the street, and left to fend for itself.) Many Linux users boast about their 'uptime' in such situations.

Inspiring stuff! If only all trolls were this quality! -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

If only indeed. You can help our brave cause by moderating this message up as often as possible. I recommend '+1, Underrated,' as that will protect your precious Karma in Metamoderation. Only then can we break through the glass ceiling of Homosexual Slashdot Culture. Is it any wonder that the new version of Slashcode has been christened 'Bender'???

If we can get just one of these postings up to at least '+1,' then it will be archived forever! Others will learn of our struggle, and join with us in our battle for freedom!

It's pathetic you've spent so much time writing this. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

I am compelled to document the foulness and carnal depravity that is Linux, in order that we may prepare ourselves for the great holy war that is to follow. It is my solemn duty to peel back the foreskin of ignorance and apply the wire brush of enlightenment.

As with any great open-source project, you need someone asking this question, so I'll do it. When the hell is version 2.0 going to be ready?!?! -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

I could make an arrogant, childish comment along the lines of 'Every time someone asks for 2.0, I won't release it for another 24 hours,' but the truth of the matter is that I'm quite nervous of releasing a 'number two,' as I can guarantee some filthy shit-slurping Linux pervert would want to suck it straight out of my anus before I've even had chance to wipe.

I desperately want to suck your monolithic kernel, you sexy hunk, you. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

I sincerely hope you're Natalie Portman.

Dude, nothing on slashdot larger than 3 paragraphs is worth reading. Try to distill the message, whatever it was, and maybe I'll read it. As it is, I have to much open source software to write to waste even 10 seconds of precious time. 10 seconds is all its gonna take M$ to whoop Linux's ass. Vigilence is the price of Free (as in libre -- from the fine, frou frou French language) Software. Hack on fellow geeks, and remember: Friday is Bouillabaisse day except for heathens who do not believe that Jesus died for their sins. Those godless, oil drench, bearded sexist clowns can pull grits from their pantaloons (another fine, fine French word) and eat that. Anyway, try to keep your message focused and concise. For concision is the soul of derision. Way. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

What the fuck?

I've read your gay conspiracy post version 1.3.0 and I must say I'm impressed. In particular, I appreciate how you have managed to squeeze in a healthy dose of the latent homosexuality you gay-bashing homos tend to be full of. Thank you again. -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

Well bugger me!

ooooh honey. how insecure are you!!! wann a little massage from deare bruci. love you -- Anonymous Coward, Slashdot

Fuck right off!

IMPORTANT: This message needs to be heard (Not HURD, which is an acronym for 'Huge Unclean Rectal Dilator') across the whole community, so it has been released into the Public Domain. You know, that licence that we all had before those homoerotic crypto-fascists came out with the GPL (Gay Penetration License) that is no more than an excuse to see who's got the biggest feces-encrusted cock. I would have put this up on Freshmeat, but that name is known to be a euphemism for the tight rump of a young boy.

Come to think of it, the whole concept of 'Source Control' unnerves me, because it sounds a bit like 'Sauce Control,' which is a description of the homosexual practice of holding the base of the cock shaft tightly upon the point of ejaculation, thus causing a build up of semenal fluid that is only released upon entry into an incision made into the base of the receiver's scrotum. And 'Open Sauce' is the act of ejaculating into another mans face or perhaps a biscuit to be shared later. Obviously, 'Closed Sauce' is the only Christian thing to do, as evidenced by the fact that it is what Cathedrals are all about.

Contributors: (although not to the eternal game of 'soggy biscuit' that open 'sauce' development has become) Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, phee, Anonymous Coward, mighty jebus, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, double_h, Anonymous Coward, Eimernase, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward, Anonymous Coward. Further contributions are welcome.

Current changes: This version sent to FreeWIPO by 'Bring BackATV' as plain text. Reformatted everything, added all links back in (that we could match from the previous version), many new ones (Slashbot bait links). Even more spelling fixed. Who wrote this thing, CmdrTaco himself?

Previous changes: Yet more changes added. Spelling fixed. Feedback added. Explanation of 'distro' system. 'Mount Point' syntax described. More filth regarding `man` and Slashdot. Yet more fucking spelling fixed. 'Fetchmail' uncovered further. More Slashbot baiting. Apache exposed. Distribution licence at foot of document.

ANUX -- A full Linux distribution... Up your ass!

that I seem to be missing?

After reading the Salon article about how improved and fast it was now, I decided to give it a whirl on my NT desktop at work.

I uninstalled it after about 15 minutes. It was just slow. Sluggish in loading pages, slow in creating new windows, everything. Not only was it slower than IE 5.5 but what surprised me was that it was slower than *Netscape* 4.7, which is what I primarily use. It's a shame because it had some nice options.

What am I missing? Is it not meant to run on NT? Is it debugging code? Would it run better on XP? I'd love to give it a chance but apparently, I got some other Mozilla browser instead of the one everyone here is raving about.

Here's the lazy direct link version

Pamela Anderson had hers taken out three years back, dummy.

Link

Yeah, that was a good article, and here is a link to the real url, no typos ;)

As far as I know is that they get the software and hardware at very discounted prices, particularly from SGI, Alias/Wavefront and Pixar. With Pixar it seems that one of the conditions for Lucas to sell it to Jobs was to have early access to Pixar's technology, mainly PRMan (and I could guess also RAT now). From SGI they get early access to hardware thanks to their JEDI agreement (Joint Environment for Digital Imaging), I think it's JEDI III at the moment. According to some rumors is that part of the agreement is that ILM doesn't mention other platforms. They get the gear and give feedback to SGI along braging rights. From Alias/Wavefront they are also among the beta testers for all new versions. But in the end they wouldn't give it away as an incentive. Even if it was free if it didn't fit their pipeline it would be pointless.

There are plenty of articles detailing Linux increasing use in VFX. Here are a some:

Linux Helps Bring Titanic to Life
The Little Engine That Could
Penguin Power
Linux Invades Hollywood
VESTECH 2000
Linux takes Hollywood by storm
Linux goes to the movies
Nixed for Linux
DreamWorks Feature Linux and Animation
Industry of Change: Linux Storms Hollywood

Much more practical, I'd think, to get an FM transmitter installed in your PC [yahoo.com], or even just attach one to your speaker jack [drbott.com]. Noticably cheaper, than a Rio Receiver either way. This way you can pick up your MP3 collection from any FM radio in the house, even untethered battery-powered ones.

Why that's brilliant! Of course, you'll need a little extra hardware if you want to actually control what you listen to.

Aside from not having to run back to the computer to skip to the next song, the big advantage of these networked players is that not everybody has to listen to the same thing. A friend of mine has audiotrons around his house; he, his wife, and his daughter can all listen to different things.

Apparently, the atricle originally said that Felton was the subject of a DMCA-inspired lawsuit. It was corrected to say that he was merely threatened with legal action, and not really "sued".

Does anyone else find it odd that the SDMI people (at least, I assume that's who it was) was able to get this correction put on Salon so quickly?

Could anybody inform me what would happen if I burgled a music store and made off with a single CD? Would I get my hand chopped off?

Actually a lot of their research depends on basic science done in publicly funded institutions. For example, the HIV virus was isolated by scientist at the NIH and equivalent organization in France(I know there is some controversies there).

If you actually look at the budgets of the large drug companies, they spend more on marketing than research. For example see this article.

The "societal benefit" is that it's protecting jobs of the people who work in that industry in that country.

I suggest you read Courtney Does the Math and educate yourself. Here's an excerpt:

This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?

They grossed $11 million.

Go read it. Do the research. These tariffs are completely grossly out of scope.

One thing people don't seem to realize also, is that by paying a royalty on blank media, you are legally allowed to use that media to make a copy of anything you want on it, files, data, music, whatever.. without being required to implement copy-protection schemes on that data. The RIAA is trying to "double-dip" on this by requiring that you pay a royalty on the original purchase as well as require that you record that media on a device which implements copy-protection. Sorry, not allowed. Pick one or the other, you can't have both. That's the law.

"He loved Big Brother" -- last words of '1984' by George Orwell
"Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4, when that is granted all else follows." 1984

The real question is why should people be taxed to backup their computer on CD or DVD if they already have that right and have paid for the products?
I want to know why I should have to pay a tax to make a digital copy of my content, why should I pay to record music I bought or video I produced?

Before:

The last time I tried it, a year and a half ago, it was so buggy, slow and lacking in features that I gave up in disgust after a week of software pain. Ever since, I had dismissed as overly idealistic advocacy the mumbling I kept hearing from various developers who touted each new Mozilla "milestone" release as incrementally better than the one before.

Now:

As I write these words, I've been running Mozilla for Windows for almost five hours. While that's obviously not enough time to make a detailed technical appraisal, I can say that Mozilla has already become my default browser and that it is as fast and slick and full-featured as I want.

Nuff said!

For example, the USENET archives resurrected by Google had two big problems:

Jones would spend the next two weeks rescuing the data off them. Not only was the tape technology rapidly becoming obsolete -- just try to find a working tape-reader today -- but the tapes themselves do not have anything like a 10-year shelf life.

Also be very careful to choose a compatible software layout. If you're using SuperWhammyDyne Backup(tm) 1.0 because it's fast and came with your DVD-<flavor-of-the-month> drive prepare to be disappointed when you need to read those disks even just a few years from now. Will SuperWhammyDyne Backup(tm) 1.0 run for the OS that you have later?

Fortunately, this wasn't a concern with the UNIX systems. "dump" and "tar" are both open standards (no need to reverse engineer the data bits off tape) and often open source as well (just port and recompile for the current UNIX world).

I suspect that reasonably "safe" software formats are:

• tar
• cpio
• ISO9660 (CD-ROM) w/Rock Ridge and Joliet extensions (just don't rely on the extensions)
• UDF [maybe] (DVD-ROM, CD-RW)

• CD-R
• DVD-R

Actually, it appears that task has been done. Salon has a nice story on it and doing a google search on Phantom Edit should enable you to find it. As an aside, rumor has it that Kevin Smith, of Clerks and Jay & Silent Bob fame, was the one behind this.

How much ass does Google kick? All of it.

Remember when searching the Internet was hard? The dark days when we relied on dumb-as-sand machine intelligences, like those on the back-ends of AltaVista and Lycos, to rank the documents that matched our keywords? The grim era before Google, when searching was a spew of boolean mumbo-jumbo, NEAR this, NOT that, AND the other?

God, that sucked.

Lucky for the Internet, Google figured out the One True Way to make sense of the Internet, to defeat gamers of the system and send info-free brochureware plummeting to number n - 1 out of n results.

They did it with our help. Google's near-magical ordering of the Internet is built around the notion that computers are good at doing repetitive, uncreative things -- fetishistically counting things, for example -- and rotten at understanding why they're being asked to do these boring tasks. By contrast, human beings are great at understanding why they're doing something, but they're woefully deficient in the do-the-same-thing-perfectly-and-forever department.

AltaVista tried to get computers to do both the repetitive parts (capturing billions of documents) and the creative parts (figuring out what the documents are about). This yielded the largest collection of randomly organized documents in the world, a Web-accessible version of a library where all the books have been re-shelved by axe-grinding illiterates who wanted to make sure that no matter what you were looking for, you'd find porn.

Yahoo tried just the opposite, getting human beings to manually identify and describe all the documents comprising what was meant to be an exhaustive index of all the worthwhile pages on the Web. There were "scaling issues" involved in this laudable effort (for "scaling issues" here, substitute "catastrophic failures"), and over time, Yahoo's directory dwindled to an increasingly marginal sliver of the Internet's vastness. At the rate that Yahoo's army of indexers work, and at the rate that the Internet's unwashed horde of writers is adding to the noosphere, it's only a matter of a few years before every human being alive will have to pass his or her every working hour contributing to Yahoo's index, just to keep its sliver from dwindling into utter pointlessness.

Let humans do what they do; let computers do the same.

Google bridges the divide between human-generated indexes and machine-generated analysis.

Y'see, the Web is full of people like you and me, making links between documents; human beings, making decisions about documents, voting with their links. When I link to some arbitrary document, it's an indication that I think that it's in some way authoritative. When you link to a document I wrote, you're indicating that I'm in some way authoritative. The Internet is already structured in a meaningful way, but that structure is obscured. Google teases out the relationship between the URLs, examining the webs of authority: this person is linked to by 50,000 others, and he links to this other person over here, which indicates that person one is a pretty sharp individual, one who's inspired 50,000 human beings to take time out of their busy schedules to link to him; and person one thinks that person two is on the ball, which suggests that person two knows what she's on about.

It's a best-of-both-worlds solution. The computers at Google are asked to tirelessly count and re-count the number and destination of links on every page that Scooter, the Googlebot, can lay its user-agent on. Those links are made by human beings, doing what they do best, link by link, drip by drip, layering a film of order over the Internet.

The approach works well. Eerily well. Enter a couple of search terms, and biff-bam, the most authoritative documents containing those keywords are served up in an instant. Nearly every document on the Web has a human decision associated with it for Google to glom onto; that's because nearly every document on the Web has a human author. Human authors don't just put documents onto the Web; they put them into the Web, into the meshed hairball of incoming and outgoing links, indicating not only what keywords the document contains, but also who the document's author believes is authoritative, and vice versa.

It's quite elegant.

An imperfect forgettery

Meatspace ASCII, the revered printed word, has many things going for it:

• It's high-resolution: Whether scrawled with a toddler's crayon or hammered out by a quaint, humming Selectric's print-ball, a traditionally printed word is an order of magnitude sharper and better-defined than the phosphors marching across your screen.
• It requires no specialized reader: A printed word can be read by any literate human being during daylight hours without any particular technological assist, specialized readers, or even electricity.
• It is hard to make obsolete: Printed works don't staledate the way that electronic words do. It's difficult to apply "digital rights management" schemes to the printed word that will stymie generations to come with bizarre cryptosystems that seek to circumvent posterity.

As someone in possession of tens of thousands of books, I understand why people get misty and sentimental about dead-tree libraries. As someone who has moved twice in the past 18 months, I feel compelled to point out that the printed word has a couple of major downsides:

• It is fragile: We print books on the same substrate we employ for cleaning our nether regions after excreting. Think about that for a second: Paper is considered degradable enough to flush billions of sheets of it down the crapper every day, and yet we entrust our precious words to a material that auto-incinerates if you put it into contact with oxygen.

  Well, so what? We've got mass production techniques that will let us preserve our most important documents by making millions of copies of them. Which brings us to the next problem:

• It is bulky. Moving-box companies sell specialized shipping boxes for books, boxes that are smaller than all the other species of boxen. That's because books are freakin' heavy. They're made from trees!

Every year, storage media increases in density, decreases in size, and gets cheaper. I can fit all the hard drives of all the computers I've owned, plus all the floppies for all the computers that I owned before hard drives were common, onto the hard drive of my latest laptop, with storage to spare. Hell, most of that stuff will fit on my iPod! The data that previously occupied a roomful of storage devices now fits comfortably in my pocket.

In a world of degradable storage, replicating copies is the surest way to guarantee longevity. Whether your data is in atoms or bits, the more copies you make of it and the more widely you disperse it, the greater the likelihood that your data will persist forever. (That's why Jaron Lanier jokingly proposed encoding printed matter into the DNA of the notoriously prolific cockroach, as a means of ensuring archives through a nuclear war and beyond.)

With bulky printed words, only the commercially successful (and hence prolific) and very lucky works are likely to survive the voyage through history. All the words we write try to crowd into the lifeboat, but only a lucky few survive.

The historical forgettery is something of a blessing, though. Many's the word that's been penned, in casual correspondence or published works, that is best forgotten. I know that I've written a few things I'd rather no one ever saw. Much of it is embarrassing; most of it is banal. History flenses away the great bulk of utterance and leaves behind a barely manageable archive that we can get our heads around.

Words-as-bytes need not be forgotten! Storage is cheap, storage is compact, and the lifeboat has got plenty of room for every jot and tittle keyed into the Internet. Brewster Kahle built an archive with several copies of the Web at different times, using off-the-shelf PCs and standard drives.

This is a good thing, but it's also a pain in the ass. Our embarrassing excesses, drunken rants, typos and brain farts and flames no longer vanish into our sub-consciences, but rather hang around like embarrassing relatives, undeniably ours, with us forever.

There's an upside, of course. The enduring presence of our publicly stated positions acts as an accountability system, making us own up to our errors and perhaps encouraging us to think carefully before putting our fingers on our keyboards. Old Usenet clients used to have a standard warning that would appear the first time you used Usenet to send a message, a dire warning to the effect that your words were about to pass from your computer and onto the computers of thousands of other people, and are you really sure that you've expressed yourself adequately?

Perfect surveillance

Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn features Lionel Essrog, a private detective with Tourette's Syndrome whose obsessive-compulsive illness makes him ideal for long, boring stake outs and wiretap parties. Once the compulsion to listen for a keyword in the soup of a rambling conversation or to continually re-check a staked-out doorway for a suspect has been planted in Lionel's Tourettic brain, he is unable to do anything except listen and watch until the compulsion has been satisfied.

Boring, repetitive, endless tasks don't actually require someone with a compulsive disorder to do them; computers can do them just fine. A computer can sieve through the torrent of packets passing over the Internet and look for keywords like "terrorism" and "anthrax" and "fissile" and "child-porn," then flag them for later consideration by law-enforcement officials at spooky three-letter agencies.

Law enforcement doesn't really need any specialized equipment to surveil the average netizen. Google does it better than anything else possibly could (dirty snitch), and it doesn't cost a cent.

But Google only acts on the public data that human beings are free to link to and that the Googlebot is free to discover. Private documents (email, instant messages, internal memos) are off-limits to Google. Even if you manually poured them down the Googlebot's throat, the absence of incoming or outgoing links to these documents means that they won't be placed in any meaningful context in the Googleverse.

Increasingly, law-enforcement agencies are pushing for (or owning up to) the creation of really creepy spyware projects like Eschelon, Magic Lantern, and Carnivore, systems that are placed on your computer, at your ISP or at a major Internet backbone, and used to indiscriminately capture all of the data they encounter, shunting it off to shadowy bunkers where the secret masters of the universe can use it to shine a light up the skirts of your privacy and, possibly, that of criminals, too.

People are, rightfully, very upset about all of this. Continuous wiretapping of the entire Internet is a revolting idea, something like the Panopticon, a prison where the warders can see your every move from perfect obscurity. It's enough to make you want to draw your blinds and curl up under the sofa.

AltaVista for them, Google for us

But what do they do with all of that data that they collect? Filter it for keywords? Fat chance. The volume of false positives (e.g., people talking about child pornography who aren't child pornographers) far exceeds the volume of actual criminal activity. Even creaky old Lycos gave up on plain-old keyword matching a long, long time ago.

Maybe they manually check it. After all, that approach worked for Yahoo, right? Oh, right, it didn't work. Scratch that.

Then they must use some hybrid approach: human editors and AI (Artificial Intelligence or Almost Implemented, take your pick) working in concert to tweeze out the most relevant material as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Right. AltaVista.

Poor bastards.

Between the fact that Xbox sold more in the first weekend of launch than Dreamcast did in its first week, and that Japan has sunk into its worst recession in decades, I think Xbox is doing allright in Japan. Not to mention that if Japanese companies only released products if they were sure they were going to be successful in their home market, they wouldn't be dominating US electronics market like they do. Being successful in the US is plenty enough of success.

Somebody listens to it. Someone buys the albums. N'Sync didn't get big because of major label payola, they got big because some clown looked at a shelf in a record store, and said, 'I want THIS one!'

I don't believe you. Do you know how N'Sync was created? It's an artificial "band." Lou Pearlman, CEO of Trans Continental Entertainment basically did a talent search, picked out a few boys the girls would like, did a big production number with them, did promotion work (payola, basically) and TA-DA, you have N'Sync. He also put together the Backstreet Boys. Here is some info on his lattest idea.

The origin of such pop phenomena has nothing to do with a grass-roots swelling of pupularity from people likeing the music. It's all about promotion, image, and lots and lots and lots of money.

You're damn right I blame the record companies for the shallow pop crap dominating the waves these days.

Salon.com had a brilliant series of articles on the modern day payola system. They mostly focused on Clear Channel which is buying up these promoter companies(so you pay a middleman which is owned by the station) and penalizing artists(by not airing their songs) who don't use their promoters.

The articles aren't on Premium so y'all should be able to read them just fine.

There is certainly a subset of users using Linux, developing interesting applications, and whatnot, but they are reportedly a sad minority.

On the other hand, hope can be found in the relative poverty of respectable organizations in China - they can't really afford Microsoft software, and are therefore more likely to look at free software for open, legitimate purposes.

On the gripping hand...But I ramble.

actually, these days, moot of Salon's more interesting articles are pay-only (eg: this one.

...the graphic at the top of the article - captioned "Stop, Pay Toll, Download" - describes Salon's current offerings rather well, don't you think? :)

...the graphic at the top of the article - captioned "Stop, Pay Toll, Download" - describes Salon's current offerings rather well, don't you think? :)

when it comes down to it, HERE's an actual Mac OS9 screenshot to compare to the Xfree anti-aliasing.

notice that OS9 doesn't anti-alias text below (user settable) 12 points (handy, and faster). i've set the browser font to be: Times-12 -> imo, after examining both the X shot and this shot at 400% magnification, it seems to me that the hinting and definition of the MacOS still yields clearer text.

someone might also want to post up a OS-X and XP screenshot of the same web page:

http://salon.com/ent/feature/2002/03/02/shakespear e/index.html

so we can have a REAL comparison of actual screenshots instead of a lot of /. theorizing about about the Nyquist limit.

regards,
johnrpenner.

when it comes down to it, HERE's an actual Mac OS9 screenshot to compare to the Xfree anti-aliasing. notice that OS9 doesn't anti-alias text below (user settable) 12 points (handy, and faster). i've set the browser font to be: Times-12 -> imo, after examining both the X shot and this shot at 400% magnification, it seems to me that the hinting and definition of the MacOS still yields clearer text. someone might also want to post up a OS-X and XP screenshot of the same web page: http://salon.com/ent/feature/2002/03/02/shakespear e/index.html so we can have a REAL comparison of actual screenshots instead of a lot of /. theorizing about about the Nyquist limit. regards, johnrpenner.

Absolutely, because we all know that the Supreme Court justices are paragons of virtue. They make their rulings strictly according to the law, and would never find in favor of one side or the other due to political or personal reasons. The very notion is ridiculous.