Slashdot Mirror
Surround Sound Quickies
Let's start this off with
SanLouBlues's submission
about a video made by splicing
old 8bit video
games (I don't think it'll work on Linux, but it's worth finding a
box to watch this).
And now, the senseless destruction portion of the show:
stevenma sent an ISP's
excuse letter,
including a photo of the bullet damage from the wire!
friedo knows how to
make a hard drive
squeal, but on purpose. If that's not enough destruction for you, knisa
sent in a story about a meteor destroying a
1980 Ford. Slightly less-destructive violence was submitted by Steve Stag,
who notes that Nerf has discovered that their weapons appeal to adults
too. (well duh!)
An anonymous reader noted that Liam Neeson's lightsaber from Phantom Menace
is being
auctioned off for charity.
WhyPanic sent us a site that talks about
Vintage Unix.
An anonymous reader noted that in Finland, you pay traffic violations based
on your income, and this dot-com millionaire was fined $70,000 for 20
miles/hour over the speed limit! Speaking of dot-coms, warland wonders if
todays dot-coms would get funding if they tried to pitch their
ideas today?
And now for the truly strange stuff:
conraduno sent in a palindromic C program.
NinjaPablo
sent in a link about a guy breaking a
centipede 14-year-old record by scoring 7,111,111 points (and I thought breaking 200,000
on joust made me cool ;)
head_the_mongoose sent us "Call Me Darth", a Darth Vader site that simply needs to be seen.
while it may look symmetrical, it's hardly palindromic. it would have to be able to be read identically backwards and forwards to be palindromic.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Call Darth Vader a gay sadomasochist on a web page and you get a story on slashdot
This sort of 'ironicly pointing out slashdot's shocking hyprocisy' comment is becoming more and more popular. Normally I ignore them as the work of the foolish, but every once and a while something comes along that's truly inane and I feel the urge to respond. So here we go...
I've had some of my most insightful comments (IMO, natch) marked down as trolls. Some of my trolls were marked up. Such is life in an imperfect universe. Moderators will have differing opinions, as will slashdot readers. Deal with it.
You really don't see any difference between a one-line 'Darth Vader is a Gay Sadomasochist' posted on a discussion about bandwidth and a web page - replete with (pretty crappy, but who cares) artwork - dedicated to brightening the lives of the few who find it? Make no mistake; the only reason people find pages like that is because they were sent the url. It's not the sort of thing you come across accidentally[1].
[1]Obviously, if you're going to ask jeeves where you can find gay, sadomasochistic lords of the sith then you might.
I used to take apart all sorts of computer parts that weren't supposed to be taken apart in highschool. I would also try to find the most creative way to destroy computer components that didn't work that great anymore. A few of the ways I wasted time in class were:
Using a hard drive while it is open (only lasts about 15-20 minutes)
Crossing 120 volts to various leads on the motherboard and watch what parts in between start smoking
Using about 12 different scan disk programs on an older 386 and see how long the drive lasts
Hotswapping everything.....
I probably had way too much time on my hands, but I got an A in that class.
you can download the original Unix right before the BSD split right here8
.14 & .99
.99
http://www.abandonkeep.com/os/All.shtml?x=10&y=
sorry I don't know html, or I'd dress it up for ya as a nice happy link
at that site you can also download
linux
ICQ
Mosaic
Windows 1-3
Dos 3-6.22
NT 3.10
IBM DOS and CALDERA Dos
OS/2 1.00
And all other kinds of nifty stuff
aswell as a wealth of old games
What if I own a business that's losing money? Will they pay me to speed?
--
The most valuable commodity I know of is information. - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street
(Disclaimer: IANAL)
Well, according to the old law codes in England, Denmark, etc, I believe this is exactly how the law worked. If you killed someone, even if it was ruled justifiable (ie he called you a wanker and you killed him in a fair duel), his family could still force you to pay his wergild (lit. "man-price"), which was supposed to compensate them for the income the deceased would have provided them.
I believe there's an analogous concept today in English common law.
Finland has it backwards. If you're rich, you should pay *less*, not more. I mean, the US has it down pat. If you're rich and famous, you can get away with robbing a bank (or murder). Meanwhile the less well-off have to struggle with ugly things like fairness and justice.
You crazy Finns! Damn you ALLLL!
-JB
http://xtux.sourceforge.net/
It has software logos battle it out, and you can play on a slashdot map too
After having no story about it he was convinced he'd get in on quickies.
So atleast my post here makes his wish half true in a rather sad kinda way.
Enjoy
It's turtles all the way down.
I read that gay Vader thing.... it was just bad. I'm sorry, but it was. Don't bother.
Sheesh, talk about punative damages. Imagine if your stock falls between the time they evaluate you at the time you pay. Maybe that's why Linux is so safe, Bill Gates wouldn't dare go to Finland.
Have you read my journal today?
No, it hasn't inspired me to make "nerf on or fuck off" my signature, nor has it inspired me to write one huge, rambling, incoherent, 5 page paragraph.
It has inspired me to get rich!
You see if adults like childrens guns, then it would seem logical that children would like adult guns.
I'm going to make a fortune.
Now I'm off to the local high school to sell my gun collection to disaffected video gamers.
Wish me luck!
--Shoeboy
Following standard operating procedure, Optimum field staff resolved the issue as quickly as possible..."
What IS the standard operating procedure when a fibre cable is severed by a bullet?
I can just see it now - a black van pulls up at the Optimum Online office, the side door slides open, and several black-clad men jump out, and do what? Take cover, and start returning fire?
Should it work the same way for liability? If your tottering grandmother runs over a millionaire, should she be fined 500,000 to make restitution for the victim's family, so they can maintain their standard of living?
http://www.ioccc.org/1987/westley.c
Should really be fucking credited to Brian Westley. Pisses me off.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
There are many that are for a "flat" tax and our current "flat" fine system. Unfortunatly, flat mean regressive. What a progressive tax and fine system does is make the actual cost incurred by the person equal across economic classes.
A fine is designed to cost someone a certain amount in an effort to deter them from a violation. If I make $25K/year (net), and get a $250 speeding ticket, that just cost me 1% of my annual income. Better yet, subtract a reasonable cost of living for my region and marital/child status, and you've just fined me a large chunk of my available cash. If I make $250K/year (net) and that just cost me 1/10th of a percent of my income. The individual making the lower amount actually pays a higher fine - as a person it bears more of a financial burden. Therefore the richer are pretty much unaffected and the fine is simply a "flesh wound" where the lower classes get thier arms chopped off (oh, wait, that's also simply a flesh wound).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips