Slashdot Mirror

Eldred v Ashcroft? That's the sort of liberal bias I expect from cnn or NPR. Fact is, This law was pushed through by the Democratic Congress and Senate (e.g. Rep. Bono, D Ca.), and signed by Bill Clinton.

American People Shrug, Line Up For Fingerprinting
WASHINGTON, DCAssuming that there must be a good reason for the order, U.S. citizens lined up at elementary schools and community centers across the nation Monday for government-mandated fingerprinting. I'm not exactly sure what this is all about, said Ft. Smith, AR, resident Meredith Lovell while waiting in line. But given all the crazy stuff that's going on these days, I'm sure the government has a very good reason. Said Amos Hawkins, a Rockford, IL, delivery driver: I guess this is another thing they have to do to ensure our freedom.

I love the onion. :)
/joeyo

Funny semi-relevant article for those who don't read the Onion:

RIAA Sues Radio Stations

No sane person has problems with cameras in banks and other private places. As long as there are a minority who want a camera-free/guns-alllowed/smoke-free kind of business, there will be one of those businesses available. If not near you, move. If the minority is too small, you will have to pay a premium for the service (The absolute largest premium would be funding your own private business of that type). If the minority is big enough, it will cost you only the extra time to drive to your preferred place over the other one. If you are in a 49.99% minority, half the time it would be farther to visit the place you dislike

Gov't is a whole nother matter, with monitoring (or your-cause-here) the alternatives become nil quickly. You can change states, but much of law these days is federal law. Your best choice is disobedience (you are the minority, remember?) or eductation - create a majority. Your only choices are disobey a law you find immoral or get the law changed. People who aren't idiots (minority or majority - your call) fight against gov't particulars that limit choice -because there is only one- and also partonize businesses that cater to their choices.

I'm currently shopping for apartments and a landlord asked me if I have guns in a way that implied they would not be allowed. I'm not living there; not because I have a gun (note to burglars : varried calibers) but because he was advertising to anyone who stopped by that the whole building was likely unarmed.

To quote The Onion RE: NYC smoking ban
"As a bar waitress, I'm glad someone is protecting my right to work in a bar that doesn't make any money."

by eating the yummy, healthy brain of a living.

See here.

Mmmm... braaaaiiinnnss...

TheOnion seems to be reading Slashdot (or the other way round), because the articles mix pretty neatly. It would appear that after Kazaa we won't even have radio...

I think this week's The Onion sums it all up: Bush Seeks U.N. Support For 'U.S. Does Whatever It Wants' Plan

I think this week's The Onion sums it all up: Bush Seeks U.N. Support For 'U.S. Does Whatever It Wants' Plan

Unless the world agrees to let the US's copyright laws rule the net, there's a big roadbump... Either the world must agree on some copyright laws (requires new global governance structure), or companies like KaZaa can continue merrily...

I take it you've never heard of Bush's "U.S. Does whatever it wants" plan?

All this, and more would be possible, under such a proposal.

Support the Vowels For Bosnia campaign!

It was only a matter of time.

On the other side of the spectrum though have to be those who think everything that goes wrong is a virus. I can't find my document, it's a virus! (no it's not, you saved it somewhere else, doofus) I can't highlight this word in Excel - it's a virus! (no, you just need to RTFM) I'm getting spam, so I must have a virus! (sigh...)

It's true - getting some people online is a Sisyphean ordeal. My parents bought a Dell because of the kid in the commercials...

Yep, even the world's finest newspaper just ran an article about democracy geeks.

As for the big distinctions between the current geek and the aboriginal geek, I agree. The people hanging out in computer labs would hardly be recognized by the early primitve neolithic hunter-geek. We forge email using holes in sendmail and tools such as prebuilt rootkits; they forged email using a hot fire and tools of chipped stone, and later, bronze and iron.

As others have pointed out, it was the development of agriculture that allowed the hunter-geeks to change from a nomadic lifestyle to a more stationary one, resulting in both an interest in the world around them (politics, opposite sex, etc) and often a tendency to be slightly overweight.

While on the topic of music and P2P, I hope nobody missed this Onion jewel?

http://www.theonion.com/onion3836/riaa_sues_radio_ stations.html

We're currently /.ing the shitdyke plaintiff's website, Professor Faggot Q. Boredom's Lame-U-Cational Cocksuckery. (Alright, I stole that last bit from an Onion article. Shit, that's funny.)

The RIAA has sued radio stations for pirating music

RIAA Sues Radio Stations For Giving Away Free Music

ARE YOU A PHP DEVELOPER? WORK WITH ME ANE MAKE MILLIONS!
Web Developer II

RIAA Sues Radio Stations for Giving Away Free Music

LOS ANGELES--The Recording Industry Association of America filed a $7.1 billion lawsuit against the nation's radio stations Monday, accusing them of freely distributing copyrighted music.

"It's criminal," RIAA president Hilary Rosen said. "Anyone at any time can simply turn on a radio and hear a copyrighted song. Making matters worse, these radio stations often play the best, catchiest song off the album over and over until people get sick of it. Where is the incentive for people to go out and buy the album?"

According to Rosen, the radio stations acquire copies of RIAA artists' CDs and then broadcast them using a special transmitter, making it possible for anyone with a compatible radio-wave receiver to listen to the songs. ...

Couldn't really let this topic pass without linking to the story:
RIAA Sues Radio Stations For Giving Away Free Music.

But then I don't know where exactly the would be expecting to land...

No; but they do like vicious censorship of dissenting political opinions. If this appears in People's Daily, it is basically straight from the government's mouth, and is most likely meant as an anti-American sleight-of-hand. Remember, these folks are the same ones who thought The Onion really was America's Finest New Source.

Okay. I just want to know something. Do you, on any level, realize how silly this whole God thing is? Here, read this.

Allow me to belabor the point: The Old Testament of the Bible is a collection of myths and metaphorical stories that ancient people told each other before they had exciting things like "writing" or "TV" or "a working understanding of physics and biology". After generations of retelling (during which they were undoubtably altered) these stories were written down and subjected to editing, mistranslating, and even politically motivated wholesale cuts. Did you ever wonder why the "Literal Word of God" has a fucking census in the middle of it? Who really cares how many goats Eliab sacrificed this one time?

The New Testament is a collection of memoirs and letters by some guys who used to hang around with a fellow who said he was the son of God. I know that sounds like a big deal, but he wasn't the first and he was not the last.

So what I don't get is why you have this absolute faith in book that is, at best, only interesting to historians of early Middle Eastern civilization. I don't want to hear that it's "because the Bible tells me so." I can write an internally consistent account of an invisible pink unicorn by tomorrow. I don't want to hear that it's because there are other Christians; there are plenty of Muslims, too, so you'd better have a good reason for rejecting all the other popular religions in favor of Christianity. And if you're one of those people who've felt God speak to them, well, that's never happened to me, and I'd like to know how that's different from just being another crazy with a chemical imbalance.

I promise I'm almost done. You have an invisible friend. It's cute, but I grew out of that phase.

What makes stoning immoral?

You are killing another human being. It denies us our ability to be "higher beings" and is illogical from the point of view of the survival of the species.

Or, if you prefer, "Thou shalt not kill"

Parents, would you prefer your kid to murder someone or play doctor?

In the context of the question, I would prefer them to do neither, and would let them play video games that let them take out their aggression/satisfy their curiosity instead of playing games with their lives/bodies.

There's an excellent book entitled Killing Monsters that discusses the real impact of media/entertainment violence on children. One of the many reasons author Gerard Jones feels that violent entertainment is beneficial is that it allows children, who have next to no control over the world around them, to take events and people and situations and put them in a context that they can control - shoot the bad guy and he's dead. Send a platoon of plastic soldiers in to kill the terrorists. Have Barbie and Ken duke it out in place of Mom and Dad. Instead of making kids bottle up their natural aggression, violent play encourages them to explore their feelings and become more comfortable with situations that they cannot improve or eliminate.

I suppose I'm replying to the wrong post here, but I think your argument is a red herring - sex is not ignored by the media or by entertainment. (Hel-lo? Zippergate?) At the end of your post, you imply a connection between violent games and actual violence (and sexual games and sex play); a connection, yes, but much different than the one you describe.

The reason that the picked-on kids are the ones who come back and shoot up their schools is because they are subject to large amounts of violent stress that they cannot control or deal with effectively - perhaps because their parents are God-fearing Mormons who heard that computer games teach kids to love Satan and subsequently installed filtering software for the Web while only letting their children watch the ABC Family Channel and PAX TV. Oversimplified, yes, but these kids are like any fluid-holding vessel - fill it up past its capacity, and you'll have a big mess on your hands. We passed our capacity with Zippergate, and as a result, 8-year-old children were asking their parents what oral sex was after they saw it on the front page of the paper.

The "monkey see, monkey do" argument is fundamentally flawed, and it is truly unfortunate to see it reincarnated in so many different ways, and considered fact by so many well-meaning people.

(/rant)

obligatory Onion link.

R

Kid Rock Starves To Death: MP3 Piracy Blamed.

Linking to an Onion article on /.: -1 Karmawhore.

Next Step: Outlaw all sarcastic humor.

Watch out, Onion, you're on the hit list. Cuz' I'm pretty sure that Bush didn't actually threaten to invade the West Nile in response to the West Virus.

Hello? Sarcasm? Where did that go?

Pirate Radio

Believe me, if there was some way to get Bush to STFU about his stupid Iraq-invading obsession, we would.

Does anyone in the US have the slightest interest in (a) invading Iraq or (b) using the "War on Terror" momentum up on Iraq, which had nothing the hell to do with Sept. 11th at all?

If you want to see the real effects that this could have on society, I suggest you pay a visit to the Midstate Office Supply Accounts Receiveable Department.

Good call. They will be like MC Hawking with a very expensive exoskeleton.

You sound like a walking, talking Onion story.

that nobody's linked this yet.

Besides, as Indiana Jones taught us, 8"x8" holes in the wall are normally filled with bugs. And who wants to stick their arms into holes filled with bugs.

Engineer 1 must be an ancient ancestor of this dude.

They might find more information about the ancient race of skeleton people.

I have no idea why. I'm not Jewish or anything. It just seems to encapsulate a certain feeling. I didn't consciously start it, it just started to happen. I realize it's weird, but c'est la vie. I blame the media! :)

Normally when the media gets blamed for anything, I shrug it off. But as far as influencing middle class suburban black kids (or even worse, their white neighbors) to act like they're ghetto, I honestly don't see any other source to blame. I grew up in a fairly well off majority black county. In fourth grade all my classmates spoke standard English. By 10th grade only a few percent did. But there's a big difference between talking like a gangsta with your pals and ACTING like a gangsta and buying into that image. Language is very important in bonding groups together and establishing a group identity. When I worked construction in a small southern town I would start work monday morning with a standard accent, and by friday afternoon I'd have a southern accent. I'd never had a southern accent before in my life. It operated on a completely subconscious level. So people may very well not be 'pretending' anything, just beign shaped by their environment.

Or maybe that white yuppie bar just happens to be the hangout of the H-Dawg - "Tha Lowdown Funky-Fresh Gangsta Bad Ass of the Accountz Reeceevable Department of Midstate Office Supply, Tha Righteous Funk Masta, Tha Stone-Cold Muthafuckin' Playa with all tha dope spreadsheets and fly alphabetized invoice files and shit. Y'all be down with the H-Dog, know what I'm sayin'?"

Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu

...a movie might be a good way for people to stop thinking of him as that poor 'wheelchair guy' and see him as something more.

I think I know what you have in mind, but "the contest is not open to science fiction."

Shortly after Microsoft finished patenting ones and zeros, Microsoft decided to patent "The Smile" and "The Frown". By owning the rights to these two figures, Microsoft also owns the rights to the ":", the "-", the "(", and the ")" characters.

Microsoft intends to capitalize on their exclusive rights to the "-" character, and sue Linux users for using them in escape characters without paying tribute to Microsoft.

In addition, Microsoft plans to sue AOL for use of "The Smile", and estimates a total of 1 trillion dollars should be given back to Microsoft due to the approximately 1 thousand "Smiley things" which the average AOL user appears to use on a daily basis.

Also, Microsoft plans to sue all software which uses the "-" (AKA "The Nose") operator in their code without paying Microsoft.

The list just goes on...

I'm tired of people parading and commercializing this damn event as if it's something to be sensationalized. Accept it and move on. If you want to remember or grieve in your own way, so be it, but honestly, they're going too far. My favorite TV station cancelled all programming and ran some 9/11 special ALL DAY LONG. I honestly feel bad for people who have birthdays on this day and now have to live with this crap.

Magius_AR

I'm tired of people parading and commercializing this damn event as if it's something to be sensationalized. Accept it and move on. If you want to remember or grieve in your own way, so be it, but honestly, they're going too far. My favorite TV station cancelled all programming and ran some 9/11 special ALL DAY LONG. I honestly feel bad for people who have birthdays on this day and now have to live with this crap.

Magius_AR

While watching a marathon of The Prisoner.

I remember the The Onion's Bob Seigel saying that Irony was dead, a bit premature I think. When they came back, their 9/11 coverage was excellent.

Ridiculopathy.com's 9/11 year in review also seems worth the read. Some of the stuff, quite dated by subsequent events, reads like a time capsule of topical humor immediately following that horrible day.

...I found express what I feel quite nicely. The first article was found through Kuro5hin. The second article is from The Onion. The scary thing about The Onion article is how close to the truth they came this time while still maintaining the parody. I guess the only thing that dies on 9/11 is irony. Go figure.

The biggest problem for me is that about once a week I go to a rehearsal that is in a building in downtown Boston that's close to the Hancock building. For those not familiar with it, this is one of the tallest buildings in Boston. For the past year, barriers have blocked all the parking spaces for the blocks around the Hancock, and the result is an even more serious parking shortage than usual in the area. It's a good deal for the commercial parking lots, though.

Cute story: I couple of months back, I was walking past the Hancock, close to a small group of people who were obviously from out of town. One woman asked why all the barriers were in the street. A man replied "They're to keep people from flying planes into the building." Without missing a beat, another guy said "Looks like it worked!"

The Onion isn't the only gang to manage to find humor in the situation.

what does yoda's penis look like?

I heard them and The Onion are trying to start a grass roots campaign to get ethical reporting back into mainstream media.