Slashdot Mirror
A Rock Moves In Space
theBrownfury writes: "The BBC is reporting here that
a very large Earth collision course asteroid has been discovered. This asteroid, NT7,
was first observed on July 5th and current data suggests an impact date of
February 1st, 2019. NT7 is 2kms wide and on date of impact will be approaching
Earth at 28km/s. An asteroid of this size is large enough to cause continent
wide destruction. However astronomers are still cautious in reporting this
asteroid as the orbit of NT7 has not been fully verified. Current data on
NT7's orbit suggests it orbits the Sun every 837 days and travels in a tilted
orbit from about the distance of Mars to just within the Earth's orbit." The BBC article's headline (and accompanying illustration) are more alarming than the story itself seems to warrant: this asteroid has been given a 0.06 on the Palermo technical scale, which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.
Rock and roll will never die.
i love slashdot!
really!
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
foo baby!
I hope it hits Andover and destroys that ivory tower of faggotry!!!
Lets hope they find out which continent it will be so we know not to move there!
Happy Troll Tuesday!
:) Join me in a WIPO-snot?
THE OFFICIAL TACO-SNOTTING FAQ [slashdot.org]
By J. Wipo Troll, Esq. [slashdot.org], $Revision: 1.16 $
[This article attempts to document a vile, ungodly practice that runs rampant through the homosexual geek and hacker community, a practice known as âoeTaco-snotting,â or simply âoesnotting.â Taco-snotting is something that few geeks dare talk about in free or open conversation, but it is nonetheless a widely-practiced and dangerous form of homosexuality. If you or anyone you know has ever engaged in Taco-snotting, please get professional help [adequacy.org] before it is too late. â"ed.]
Why do I keep receiving emails from an individual calling himself âoeCmdrTacoâ?
You have been receiving unsolicited mailings from a certain Robert âoeCmdrTacoâ Malda [cmdrtaco.net], owner of the popular technology website slashdot.org [slashdot.org]. Actually, itâ(TM)s not a very âoepopularâ site in the common sense of the word; the site is rife with pimply, antisocial geeks and hackers, zit-faced nerds, communists, dirty GNU hippies [yahoo.com], and other societal rejects and outcasts. Itâ(TM)s also home to one of the worldâ(TM)s largest suspected pædophile rings, the infamous âoeSlashdot crew.â
Whenever Mr. Malda gets bored (and who wouldnâ(TM)t, running a site like Slashdot all day), he roams through the user database, penis in hand, looking for people who might enjoy engaging in homosexual activities with him. How he determines this is anyoneâ(TM)s guess; but if you have a homosexual-sounding nickname, or a nick with a letter of the English alphabet in it, youâ(TM)re a potential candidate.
This time, he found you. Lucky you.
Mr. Malda seems to be speaking in some sort of code. Do you know what it means?
CmdrTacoâ(TM)s code language is relatively easy to decipher. This pervert prefers to speak in thinly-veiled sexual innuendo (yes, thatâ(TM)s right: he wants you) to evade the watchful eye of Slashdotâ(TM)s parent corporation, VA Software [yahoo.com]. Mr. Maldaâ(TM)s âoeCommanderâ is, of course, his penis: a small, withered little thing that lives in his pants and only comes out in the presence of other male geeks or at the beck and call of Maldaâ(TM)s own lubed-up right hand. His âoeTaco bells [sonymusic.com]â are the shriveled testicles that droop beneath his Commander, and his âoeTaco sauceâ is his thin, runny semen. It should be more than obvious to you now what he means if he asked you to âoering his Taco bellsâ or âoetaste his gourmet Taco sauce.â
I would also guess CmdrTaco asked you to engage in a practice known as âoeTaco-snottingâ and, if he was in a particularly depraved mood at the time, a âoecircle-snot.â
Good Lord. And, yes, he did. What is âoeTaco-snottingâ?
âoeTaco-snottingâ is the term used by Robert Malda to refer to the depraved act of fellating another man (homo- or heterosexual; CmdrTaco is rumoured to prefer raping unwilling victims), then blowing the semen out his nose and back onto the face and body of his victim. Naturally, a long, bubbly stream of milky-white semen is left on CmdrTacoâ(TM)s face [go.com], dribbling out of his nose and down his cheek: hence the term, âoeTaco-snotting.â
And if thatâ(TM)s not bad enoughâ¦
A âoecircle-snotâ is a Taco-snotting circle-jerk, another practice common among the Slashdot crew [bastardgenres.com]. CmdrTaco, CowboiKneel [aol.com], and Homos get together and snot each other with their gooey, sticky cum â" spooging their jizz-snot all over each otherâ(TM)s faces and pasty, white bodies, until theyâ(TM)re covered head to toe with their own and each otherâ(TM)s man juice. This vile, ungodly ritual can go on for hours. For the homosexual penetration that follows this lengthy foreplay, Roblowme is usually there to provide plenty of anal lubricant; he owns a limousine service and has ample supplies of motor oil and axle grease ready to go.
To complete this perverted orgy, fellow faggots Michael, Timothy, and Jamie will usually join in, dressed in tight leather mock-S.S. uniforms, jack boots, and leather gloves. The homosexual shenanigans that follow are nearly beyond description. The whole group begins to snot each otherâ(TM)s spunk and whip each otherâ(TM)s pudgy asses with riding crops and chains until their pale, white geek bodies are exhausted and soaked in stinking sweat from the hours of passionate, homosexual revelry.
Ewwwwww. So, can I stop receiving these emails?
Hopefully, but I wouldnâ(TM)t count on it.
To begin with, you most likely forgot to uncheck the âoeWilling to Snotâ checkbox in your account preferences. CmdrTaco has probably already got the hots for your wad (do you have a homosexual-sounding nick?), and heâ(TM)s probably already been lurking outside your bathroom window for weeks with a camera, some tissues and lube, just waiting to pounce and declare you his new bitch. Thereâ(TM)s no escaping a geek in heat (trust me), so itâ(TM)s probably too late for you, but you can possibly rectify this situation. To remove yourself from CmdrTacoâ(TM)s sights, log into your Slashdot account, go to your user page, click on Messages, and uncheck the box next to âoeWilling to Snot.â Maybe heâ(TM)ll ignore you. Probably not.
I canâ(TM)t stop receiving these emails from CmdrTaco!?
If you indulge him in a Taco-snot or two, hemight leave you alone. You might also want to look into mail filtering, restraining orders, or purchasing a heavy, blunt object capable of warding off rampaging homosexual geeks in heat. Trust me, when they charge⦠oh, the humanity. If he gets you, and you let him Taco-snot all over you, you will most likely end up tied up in his basement to be used as his sex slave for the rest of your life (or until he accidentally drowns you in spunk in a circle-snot).
Have you ever been Taco-snotted?
Unfortunately, yes. I first met Mr. Malda at an Open Source Convention [amazon.com]. He invited me back to his room for a game of Quake and some âoegourmet Tacos,â but when I got there, the perverted geek jumped me and handcuffed me to his bed, stripping me. After taking his âoeCommanderâ out of his pants, Mr. Taco made me suck the withered thing six times, virtually nonstop. He then performed his vile Taco-snotting ritual on me three times over the next two hours, bringing me to orgasm after orgasm after sweaty, mind-numbing orgasm⦠then he snotted my own thick, gooey jizz back onto my face out of his nostrils! He snotted me two more times, first into my mouth, then again on my exposed belly.
CmdrTaco invited several of his Open Source (or rather, âoeOpen Sauceâ â" man sauce) buddies over to continue their ungodly snotfest. European hacker and known überfaggot Linux Torvalds raped my ass [yahoo.com] with his âoemonolithic kernel [yahoo.com];â his partner-in-crime Anal Cox used their âoenetwork stackâ in a multitude of unspeakable ways on and in every orifice of my defenseless, tender, young body. Michael Sims was there in his leather Nazi uniform, caning my previously-virginal ass with a bamboo pole and ranting about âoeall those Censorware [spectacle.org] freaks out to get him.â
That is so disgusting! How did you finally escape?
After about 16 hours of countless unholy, homosexual atrocities perpetrated against my restrained body, they all finally went to sleep on top of me, sweat-soaked and exhausted. I was left there, completely covered in bubbly, translucent jizz-snot, chained to the bed, with half a dozen fat, pasty-white fags lying around and on top of me. Fortunately the spooge coating my flesh worked wonderfully as a lubricant â" I was able to squirm my way out of the handcuffs and slip out the back door (of the apartment, not their back doors). Iâ(TM)m just glad I survived the awful ordeal. These sexually-repressed hackers had alot of built-up spunk in their wads â" I couldâ(TM)ve easily been drowned!
Thatâ(TM)s horrible. Does âoeTaco-snottingâ have anything to do with CmdrTacoâ(TM)s âoespecial tacoâ?
No, thatâ(TM)s a different disgusting perversion CmdrTaco indulges himself in. Mr. Malda is usually not satisfied with merely snotting your own jizz back onto your face, he most often enjoys involving his own bodily fluids in his twisted games. WeatherTroll [slashdot.org] has spent some time trying to educate the Slashdot readership [slashdot.org] about this vile practice (emphasis added):
You may be wondering what CmdrTacoâ(TM)s âoespecial tacoâ is. You will be wishing that you hadnâ(TM)t been wondering after you finish reading this post. To make his âoespecial taco,â CmdrTaco takes a taco shell and shits on it. He then adds lettuce, takes out his tiny withered dick (otherwise known as his âoeCommanderâ), puts his âoespecial taco sauceâ on it which means he jacks off on the taco, and adds a compound to make the person who eats the taco unconscious. Of course, the compound does not make the person unconscious until the taco is fully eaten. Thus CmdrTaco force-feeds the taco to the unsuspecting victim. After all, who would knowingly eat shit and CmdrTacoâ(TM)s jizz?
After the victim is unconscious, he is held against his will and used for CmdrTacoâ(TM)s nefarious homosexual purposes. This includes shoving taco shells up the victimâ(TM)s ass, Taco-snotting, and getting Jon Katz involved. Trust me, you do not want Jon Katz anywhere near your unconscious body. Also, rumor has it CmdrTaco is looking for a new goatse.cx guy [goatse.cx]. Donâ(TM)t let it be you!
Different ungodly perversion, yet no less revolting. It should be clear to you now that Robert âoeCmdrTacoâ Malda is a very, very sick individual, as are most of the Slashdot editors.
Does Jon Katz get involved in any of this? I thought he was a pædophile, not a homosexual.
Actually, Jon Katz is a homosexual pædophile. Heâ(TM)s also a coprophiliac, and, many suspect, a zoophile. Mr. Katz is somewhat of a loner and doesnâ(TM)t involve himself in the circle-snots, but that doesâ(TM)t mean heâ(TM)s any less of a freak than the rest of the Slashdot crew. Katz often engages in a game called âoejuicy-douching [aol.com]â with a harem of little-boy slaves that he has collected over the years: yet another vile practice which involves administering an enema to himself of the little boyâ(TM)s urine (forced out of them with a pair of pincers), spooging the vile muck from his ass back into the enema bag, then dribbling and slathering the goo all over himself and the boyâ(TM)s chained, naked bodies. If heâ(TM)s in the mood, he will sometimes skip refilling the enema bag from his distended anus and just squirt it from his ass [microsoft.com] onto the crying, terrified boys. Unwilling boys are further tortured with the pincers until they comply and allow Mr. Katz to juicy-douche them at will. A boy will usually last about two years before Mr. Katz either accidentally drowns them in diarrhea or kills them once they get too old, usually around 13 or 14.
Not content with being a pædophilic coprophile, Mr. Katz is also quite the zoophile. As if the sexual escapades with the helpless little boys arenâ(TM)t enough, Jon usually enjoys his juicy-douches best when his penis is firmly planted in a female goatâ(TM)s anus [yahoo.com]. He is also rumoured to get off on watching his little boys eat the goatâ(TM)s small, bean-like turds, and he often kills his older boys by letting his goats trample them.
â¦Are you getting hard writing this?
Why, yes.
No, thanks. Iâ(TM)m already CmdrTacoâ(TM)s boi toi.
________________________________________
* The URL of this document is
* Previous revisions are publicly available at
$Id: tacosnotting.html,v 1.16 2001/12/28 21:20:03 wipo Exp $
Copyright © 2001 J. Wipo Troll, Esq. [slashdot.org] Verbatim crapflooding of this document is permitted in any medium, provided this copyright notice is preserved, and next time you take a dump, you think of the WIPO Troll and all heâ(TM)s done to make Slashdot a better place.
- posted by poopbot: news for turds, stuff that splatters
fCOCO2fviU Post #603
Lets burn down the observatory so this never happens again!
Hello!
/whois on them and copy-paste the log into an e-mail and report it to me, and I'll ban them from the channel and the server. I will keep also your information confidential.
This site is an introduction for my IRC channels.
This page was last updated Id: index.html,v 1.17 2002/07/09 22:09:42 dildo Exp
If you wish to visit my channels, you are expected to stay current with the information on this page. Ignorance of the material on this site will not be tolerated in my channels.
Before I begin, I would like to mention that I'm not a technical support person, nor am I an Internet tutor. I'm not good at teaching people how to use their computers or software or how to get on IRC. However, there are tutorials all over the World Wide Web that will help you with IRC. One such site is http://www.irchelp.org/. My channels are on DALnet, which also has its own information pages at http://www.dal.net/. The answers to most of the technical questions you'll have about IRC are probably going to be on one of those two sites.
Also, please observe proper IRC etiquette in my channels as well as in any channel you visit in general. Some etiquette tips include...
Always read the topic of an IRC channel when you enter the channel before you do anything else in that channel. If the topic includes links or triggers to display rules, be sure to read those too before doing anything else. That may be the only warning you get of any rules that the channel may have and the ops have every right to kick-ban you for not following those rules. Ignorance is not an excuse.
Treat everyone with respect. Do not type anything that is excessively violent or offensive. Refrain from foul language. Do not shout, do not repeat yourself, and do not flood the channel.
Do not pick up or propagate viruses. Never type any trigger with "//.write" in any channel. Do not send viruses, and try to avoid receiving them. More information about IRC viruses can be found at http://www.nohack.net/
Do not spam, and do not listen to spam. Never advertise porn or warez in any respectable channel. Never do anything to encourage spammers. Every time you join a channel or follow a link that a spammer sent, you're only proving to the spammers that they're right. Also, spammers will also often spam viruses. Not only are you encouraging spammers, but you may also be doing something that will compromise your machine.
Do not use the IRC invite feature to invite random people into or out of channels.
Some other general rules specific to me...
Do not talk about anything related to my server (including but not limited to this site, the server, these channels, the keys, the IPs, the list, the password) in any public or on-line medium (including but not limited to any website, any web forum, any IRC channel, any newsgroup, any chat/messenger/peer-to-peer platforms) except in #hitler-babble. Especially, do not talk about it in #nazimanufacturer, and do not privately message people about the server and the supporting server bits. If someone asks you about it outside of #hitler-babble, please let me know.
Do not give, share, or trade the channel keys, the channel information, or the site information. If you want to share, please download the files and share the files instead.
You must be identified to nickserv@services.dal.net before entering my channels. I know DALnet services can be very flaky, but please bear with it, please don't ask me about it, and please don't hammer DALnet services because that only makes the problem worse. If Nickserv is down, you'll just have to wait patiently until it come back up. If it doesn't respond the first time, give it at least 10 minutes before trying again.
No non-ASCII characters in my channels. No bold, no colors, no upside-down question or exclamations, no accented characters, no blobs. Only standard 7-bit ASCII.
Treat everyone with respect and use common sense. The rules above are not designed to be comprehensive. Unacceptable behavior is still unacceptable even if it wasn't explicitly mentioned above.
So, onto the channels... I have created two channels for myself -- #hitler and #hitler-babble. The first channel is mostly for my automated bot. Since it was made for the bot, it's unreasonably strict and unforgiving. But that lends itself to a very short list of rules.
Rules for #hitler:
You may only type the approved triggers. Do not say anything else. No !list, no @find, no talking except for the approved triggers. The ops may talk to #hitler, but you should not respond. Be aware that the triggers are case-sensitive, will never include spaces or quotes, and may change without any warning other than a topic change. Do not add extraneous spaces before or after the triggers. Be careful since the bot is very sensitive. Check twice before you type. Do not make mistakes. Any mistakes will be banned without further warning. Bans stay there until DALnet erases them by accident, until the banlist fills up, or until I decide to erase the banlist. I plan to erase the banlist about once a month, so just wait and do not ask to be unbanned and do not try to avoid the ban. If you ask to be unbanned, or if you try to avoid the ban, the temporary ban will be turned into a permanent ban. I know it was an unintentional, honest, small, stupid mistake. However, if I can't trust you to type in a simple trigger without making mistakes, how can I trust you to make complex downloads without accidentally hammering my server? Also, I strongly believe that even unintentional stupidity needs to be punished. Otherwise, my server and I end up drowning in unintentially stupid mistakes all the time.
As of yet, I have no idea how destructive #hitler might be. It's vaguely possible that people in the channel might flood off repeatedly once things get going. I recommend (but won't enforce) that you use a separate nick and separate instance of your client for #hitler to avoid annoying other channels in case something goes wrong. I'm not entirely sure that the channel will be very stable for very long... Again, this is not required, just a suggestion.
Discussion belongs in #hitler-babble. I will not watch #hitler on a regular basis (since the bot will just ban misbehaving people), so if something happens there that needs attention, please come to #hitler-babble and let me know or send me e-mail.
I reserve the right to kick the entire channel and change the key at any time. When I do that, please understand that it's not personal, and it's not meant as a punitive measure or anything -- it's simply a part of the normal operation of the channel. I also reserve the right to change the key at any time without kicking people. I reserve the right to change the rules as well. I just reserve the right to change anything.
Any discussion about my server should take place in the second channel. I hope to keep this channel quiet enough so that someone can say something about the status of my server and it'll still be easy to find in my scrollback buffer hours later. If you want to discuss anything anything other than my server, please contribute to the discussion in other channels instead.
Rules for #hitler-babble:
Read and honor the topic and rules of the channel.
Do not pick up or propagate viruses.
Be warned that spoilers are okay in the channel.
Do not talk about the relevant sites or channels in anywhere other than #hitler-babble. Do not share the channel key or channel information. Do not use the IRC invite feature to invite people into or out of the channel.
You must be identified to DALnet before entering the channel. I know that DALnet services are very flaky, but please bear with it, please don't ask me about it, and please don't hammer DALnet services.
No computer-generated messages in this channel. No on-join messages, no welcome-back messages, no away messages, no leaving messages, no back messages, no play lists, no fserve ads, no periodic/timer messages, no remotes. Do not have or use triggers that will be seen by the whole channel, and do not use excessively tricky, annoying, or offensive triggers.
Do not use offensive language, nicks, or idents. Do not flood, do not repeat yourself excessively, do not spam, do not use all-caps, do not anti-idle in the channel, and do not use any form of Denial of Service attack.
Do not beg for ops, voice, sends, or resumes. When asking questions, try to ask specific questions (do not ask if you can ask a question, do not ask, "Are you there?").
I'm a resident of the United States, and my material is in English. Please understand English before you join the channel, and please speak mostly English or Japanese in the channel. Also, I'm subject to US laws, and I will do my best to enforce US licenses. Although you're welcome to discuss the plot, character development, and general quality of propaganda (even if it's licensed), please do not mention possession of pirated US-licensed materials, do not mention where to obtain such pirated materials, and do not mention you're looking for the pirated materials. I'm aware that it's hard to keep up with licenses, so mistakes will be tolerated, but when someone provides reasonable evidence that it's licensed in the US, please stop discussing possession (anyone's possession) or procurement (anyone's procurement) of the material -- whether you are in the United States or not.
I will allow other people to serve in this channel, but your server may be more appreciated elsewhere. If you insist on serving, please serve non-US-licensed propaganda only. No mp3s, no warez, no porn, and no US-licensed material of any form.
Treat everyone with respect and use common sense. The rules above are not designed to be comprehensive. Unacceptable behavior is still unacceptable even if it wasn't explicitly mentioned above.
I reserve the right to kick the entire channel and change the key at any time. When I do that, please understand that it's not personal, and it's not meant as a punitive measure or anything -- it's simply a part of the normal operation of the channel. I also reserve the right to change the key at any time without kicking people. I reserve the right to change the rules as well. I just reserve the right to change anything.
Now onto the next page...
This site is an introduction for my IRC channels.
This page was last updated Id: server.html,v 1.47 2002/07/19 18:21:51 dildo Exp
If you wish to visit my channels, you are expected to stay current with the information on this page. Ignorance of the material on this site will not be tolerated in my channels.
The channels and the bots within them are designed to protect my machine. Please remember the machine is my private property, and you are downloading from my machine at my expense. As such, I reserve the right to deny access to my machine without warning or explanation. Also, while the machine is my private property, I recognize that the data on the machine isn't. If you see anything on my machine that should not be served for whatever reason, please let me know so I can stop serving it.
In case anyone is curious, here are the system specs:
Hardware: Tatung Super COMPstation SPARCstation 20 clone
CPU: 2 x 60 MHz sparc Yes, 60 -- as in less than one hundred MHz. This is why I really need each and every downloader to be very nice to the server -- the server will support a lot of clients only if the clients are well behaved. Any one of the clients downloading from my server can completely overrun my machine and ruin the server for themselves and everyone else.)
RAM: 512MB
OS: Solaris 7
Disks: 6 x 80GB Maxtor IDE disks in a RAID 5 configuration (approx. 400GB usable on a SCSI bus that runs at 20MB/sec or 160Mbps), plus an independent 7th identical disk on a slow IDE-SCSI bridge/converter
Net: 100Mbps fastethernet card, colocated in a data center with dual OC12s (OC12 = 622Mbps). Current bandwidth usage.
How it works...
I assume you're here because you really want to download from my server. My file list is here. There is also an HTML version with sizes and dates (that even has the pathnames translated for you!) but the catch is that this version has a _huge_ table. If you're running on a slow machine you may be waiting a very long time for the page to come up. There's been a lot of problems with small, fast connections on my site, so I just changed things so you can't browse the site. Therefore, you need the list. That should eliminate small, fast connections. Do not share the list, do not link to the list, and do not give people the URL to the list. The list updates frequently.
Once you have the list and actually know you want something from it, first connect to a DALnet server. If you still don't know how to do that, you should go back and re-read the previous information.
After connecting to DALnet, join the channel called #hitler. There is a key on the channel. Do not ask for the key. Do not give anyone else the key. Do not even give anyone else hints on where to find the key.
Type the trigger in the topic. When the bot sees that trigger, it'll see how many connections there are and give you the information you need to get onto the site if there's an open slot. Please be patient. If the bot isn't in the channel, it obviously can't respond to you. Also, the server can be very full, and the bot doesn't always respond to everyone so it doesn't flood itself out of the channel. Every time the bot talks back to you, it'll ignore you for 10 minutes. For every time you try to talk to the bot while you're ignored, it'll ignore you for 10 additional minutes. There is no limit to the amount of time the bot will ignore you. In addition, be aware of topic changes. Once the topic changes, anyone still using the old trigger will be banned.
If you get a message saying you're in a suspect domain, it's because there has been a lot of abuse from your domain. You can still get onto the server, but you need to be added to the whitelist. To get onto the whitelist, you need to e-mail me with the following information:
The Subject: heading must be "Whitelist: {nickname}". Be sure to put the registered nickname you want to be whitelisted.
Copy-paste the entire output of "/nickserv info {nickname}" and "/whois {nickname}" into the e-mail message.
Specify whether your IP is static or dynamic.
State the name and the exact version number (like the information from the "Help->About" box) of the program you will be using to download. Go through and list everything you changed or double-checked in the settings, options, and/or preferences to make it play nicely with my server. I simply want to make sure that people know how to set their downloading software to not hammer the server before I let them on.
Please write up a paragraph or two about how you started getting into downloading propaganda and how you found this current rules web site.
Once you get the information from the bot, you need to glue that to the rest of the filename found in the list and download the full URL. Note that you also have to convert metacharacters into the proper URL. Some browsers will automatically do the translation for you. Many will not. More information about the client configuration is on the client page. If you use IE, make doubly sure to read the client page before downloading. If you simply do not want to use a client that can translate the url, get the HTML version of the list.
If you need to talk about the server or any of the related pieces, please visit #hitler-babble. Do not privately message anyone about the server, do not discuss it any other IRC channel, and do not mention it in any other location. Since you've made it here, please do not give anyone any information about ol|Dildo and do not give anyone the key to the channel it's in either. And, no matter what, never give or ask for any URLs, keys, or passwords related to my site or my channels, not even in #hitler-babble. If there are _technical_ problems with the URLs, keys, or passwords, however, that can be reported in #hitler-babble.
Server rules...
I personally don't like rules, and I had originally thought I could just assume people had some sort of common sense. I found out the hard way that I was so very incredibly wrong. Some people insisted that I put rules on my web site before they would stop doing things that were hurting the server even after I asked them nicely to stop. So here are the rules:
Do not talk about the gateway bot, the site, the server, or these channels, on any web site, any newsgroup, any web forum, any channel, or in any other place other than on #hitler-babble. No matter where you are, even if you're in #hitler-babble, do not give or ask for any related URLs, keys, or passwords. (This also includes keys for the gateway bot.)
Do not abuse or attack the server. Every client must be well behaved. Even one misbehaving client can ruin the server for everyone, including themselves.
One connection per person at a time. This also implies one file per person at a time. Do not download more than one file at once. Do not farm your downloads to multiple machines in a cluster. Do not use segmented downloads. Do not use download accelerators to open multiple connections for the same file. Do not get greedy. Know how your software works before you download from my site, and double-check the settings before you start. Ignorance, greed, stupidity, and mistakes by your little brother are no longer acceptable reasons to be unbanned.
Do not use bad passwords. Stop downloading if you get a bad password prompt. Verify your password or fix your download settings before continuing. I reserve the right to ban anyone trying bad passwords.
Do not hammer the server. Give the server time to download the page. Do not click "stop" too quickly. Do not click "reload" more often than once every 2 minutes. Set any download managers to wait 2 minutes in between retries and to not retry an error more than twice. If you ever see a 403 error, that means you have multiple connections. Either you're hammering or your client is trying to reconnect before the server has recognized the previous connection has died. If that happens, you need to back off even more and stop retrying so quickly.
Do not give out the site information or the site password. I use the bot to control how many people may try the site at the same time. If too many people try the site, it'll just hang. If you give the password to someone else, that means there are too many people hitting the server and things will become slow and unstable for everyone, including yourself. Do not ask anyone for the password either. If someone asks you for the password, or if anyone gives you the password, or if you see anyone giving someone else the password, please get their ident by doing a
I try to make sure that the material on this site is not licensed in the United States, but it may be licensed in your country. Please do not download episodes if they are licensed in your country. If I find that people from other countries are downloading episodes licensed in their countries, I may have to ban the whole country from the server because I don't want to deal with foreign authorities. Also, if something becomes licensed in the United States, please let me know, and I'll remove it.
The material on this site may not be appropriate for all audiences. There will be a very wide variety of data on this site, and there are no guarantees about the content here. Often, there will not be time to review the material on this site. By entering further into this site or downloading from this site, you agree that you will not hold anybody responsible for any of the content in this site, and neither will any of your representatives (such as parent or legal guardian). (Put simply, if you can't promise that your parents won't sue us, you can't download from this site.) Also, if you find that an episode does not work or if it pauses in strange places, please report the problem. Include the full pathname to the file, the symptoms you're experiencing, and the time index of the problem if applicable.
The rules above are not designed to be comprehensive. Unacceptable behavior is still unacceptable even if it wasn't explicitly mentioned above. In general, use common sense. If you are ever at all tempted to do something that might cause problems, just don't do it. If you're not sure if something is bad or not, ask permission before you do it. If you notice any mistakes in these rules, please let me know.
By visiting my server, you agree to stay current with and follow all the rules. If you agree, then you may use the channel key "Eat_Mydick" to get into the leeching channel. This is your only warning. If you break the rules, you may not get any further notices before being banned.
Contact information...
Dildo If you e-mail me, please include your nick, full ident, and IP address. I'll probably ignore messages if you don't include the information, and I'll probably ignore any e-mail that can be answered by reading this site carefully. If you're trying to report what you think is a problem, please copy-paste any potentially useful error messages you see into the message.
Upload ftp: ftp 127.0.01 port 21 username upload password upload Please note that the upload account does not support resumes.
More information about bans.
Request list: Last updated 2002 July 1.
IRC channels: #hitler and #hitler-babble on DALnet.
Other pages...
Notes about the files on the site (not done)
SFV checksums of every file on the site (not done)
Useful site news
Thank you to people who uploaded!
This site is an introduction for my IRC channels.
This page was last updated $Id: banfaq.html,v 1.11 2002/07/09 16:05:36 dildo Exp $
If you wish to visit my channels, you are expected to stay current with the information on this page. Ignorance of the material on this site will not be tolerated in my channels.
Bans Explained
I really hate having to ban people, but it's hard enough for my server to even keep up with serving episodes without having to deal with people who will destroy it in their eagerness to get anime. In order to protect my server from the few abusive people who can ruin my server for everyone else, I've had to come up with many different levels of bans. It can get confusing, so I figured I needed a page explaining the ways the pieces of my server can intentionally decide to not work for you.
I primarily use four types of bans. There are other bans, including AKicks and what not, but I haven't started using them yet. If I need to start using them, I'll update this page.
Bot Ignores
This is the least problematic type of "ban" and isn't really a ban at all. In the past, the bot was hammered by all the triggering, and it kept getting flooded out of the channel. So, the bot was programmed to protect itself from that. If you get ignored, simply wait it out. I cannot change the penalty times, even if it was DALnet's mistake.
Anti-flood Ignore. The bot is programmed to speak only once every TEN seconds. If it tries to reply to people any faster than that, it stands a risk of getting thrown off of DALnet. If you trigger the bot within two seconds of someone else, it will not reply to one of the people triggering. If you were the one ignored, simply wait a bit to make sure it wasn't lag and then try again. (Originally, the anti-flood ignore was 2 seconds, but now it's 10 because DALnet seems to have done something and the bot got K-Lined even on 2 second intervals.)
Excess triggering penalties. The bot is programmed to respond only once every 10 minutes for each person. Please make sure you do not trigger more often than once every 10 minutes. Every time you trigger the bot before the 10 minutes is up, it will refuse to reply to your triggers for another 10 minutes. For example, if you trigger the bot 5 times in a row, it will respond to the first trigger, but then it won't talk to you for 50 minutes, and if you try to trigger once more before the 50 minutes is up, then you have to wait a total of 60 minutes. In the past, some people have triggered so much, they were ignored for hours!
Note that DALnet is often unstable. It may prevent your request from getting through to the bot, and it may prevent the bot's responses from getting back to you. You often can't tell which, so it's generally safest to wait 10 minutes between triggers. Also, DALnet may send back spurious error messages even if the request and answer get through. If you see that, the DALnet server you are on is desynchronized from the bot's DALnet server. If you get a response, you probably don't need to report the error message to the channel ops because I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about it anyways.
Channel Bans
If you type anything other than the trigger in the trigger channel, you will be banned from the channel. This means that you will be prevented from entering the channel and no one (including the bot) will see what you type into the channel. Yes, I know it may be an honest mistake, minor typo, whatever, but it's a necessary precaution, and I really insist on people being very careful with my fragile little machine. The ban list in the channel is limited to 100, and when it fills up (or when there has been a month without anyone asking to be unbanned), I will clear the ban list and re-key the channels. If you get banned from the channel, simply wait for the next cleaning. Do not ask to be unbanned under any circumstances. If you think there was an error, you may report it so we can try to fix it, but do not ask to be unbanned. Asking to be unbanned will earn you a permanent ban (see "Bot Bans" below) and a place on my news page. Also, reporting a "problem" or asking me to double-check on things when you've simply made a typo may earn you a permanent ban too. I accept that there may be problems with DALnet, but I will not accept people wasting my time either because they can't be bothered to scroll up and see their own typing mistakes or because they think they can deceive me. Finally, do not avoid the ban. Obviously, the channel bans are trivially easy to circumvent with the right resources, but the wait time is usually less than a month. Just watch the news for indication of a cleaning before you try to go back into the channel. Avoiding a ban indicates you're just destructively greedy and care nothing for the server, and that makes me very unwilling and unhappy about sharing my resources with you.
IP Bans
If you have the right password and still cannot download from the server, it might be that the Internet is having problems. But, it might also be an IP Ban. IP Bans usually occur because you were "hammering" -- you were trying to open multiple simultaneous connections or you were trying to open connections too quickly (usually because you do not have enough delay between retrying bad passwords). In such cases, you can get unbanned, but you need to prove that you can use your downloading software in such a way that it will not hurt my server. You can tell if you were banned at the IP layer if you point a web browser at the server's address. If you are banned, it will say "You have been banned." If it asks you for a password or gives you a 401, 403, or 404 error, you're probably not banned, so please check other things first. The directions of how to get unbanned are on the banned page. If you have a dynamic IP address, do not simply reboot to get around the ban. Make sure you fix your settings so they won't hammer again. If you reboot to bypass a ban and continue to hammer, I may choose to put in a Bot Ban and I may choose to ban your whole ISP. If I choose to ban your whole ISP, everyone on your ISP will see your nick as the reason why they can't get in...
Bot Bans
A Bot Ban is when you trigger the bot and it response with a message saying that you are banned. It requires me to kill and restart the bot to add or remove bot bans, so I really dislike adding or removing such bans. Reasons you might get a bot ban include...
Site information sharing. If you share any of the information about my site, ask for information via non-approved methods, or even casually discuss my current setup anywhere other than -babble, then go away and never come back. I do not have the resources to share with everyone, and things are set up so that the people who can find their own way here usually possess qualities that make them the type I want to share with. I'm not interested in sharing with random leechers who are just out to find a big, fast anime server, and I'm probably not interested in sharing with your brother or your best friend if they can't find their own way here. But, if there is someone that you think really, really should have access, you can discuss it with me, and I may decide to invite them and send the relevent details (_I_ may share information if I choose -- it's my server after all). In particular, you may _not_ share the following pieces of information to anyone other than the -babble operators (me, Treblinka, or Göring), and even then, verify that they are indeed an operator in -babble before you give the information (to try to prevent sharing the information with impersonators):
The username and password for downloading from the server. Under no circumstances should this ever be shared. Ever. Not with your brother, your roommate, your best friend, and not even with the -babble ops. This password lets the bot control how loaded the server gets. Sharing the password makes the server suffer. In addition to the normal random rotation, the password will change if the server gets overloaded.
The URLs or IP addresses or port numbers of the rules site or the downloading site.
The method of obtaining the information about my server and related pieces. This is the mostly likely piece of information that the -babble ops would ask for to verify that you are allowed in my channels. If you do not answer this question to the best of your ability, you will not be allowed to stay.
The key to either of my channels or the gateway channel. (I know people sometimes casually mention the key to the gateway channel. It's only fine as long as they don't know about my larger server. Since you're here, you know better, and it's no longer okay for you to share it.)
The list from the gateway bot.
More than five full pathnames from the server list. You may mention up to five full pathnames to ask for help with problems downloading or to ask people to verify if files are complete.
The list of forbidden information above is not complete, and other pieces of information may be forbidden. Use common sense. I would like all discussion about the server should take place in -babble, but I recognize that private conversations might be necessary. If you must discuss anything about my server or its related pieces in private conversation, you still may not give or ask for the information listed above, and you must both be in the trigger channel. Any talk at all about the server, its related pieces, or even the existence of any of the pieces in any place other than -babble may get you banned. Please report any violation of this rule.
Leak information withholding. If Göring, Treblinka, or I initiate an interrogation via -babble and you continue to withhold information about how you found out about my server, you may be permanently banned at the bot. If you should decide to provide solid, provable information about how you got in, let me know and I will unban you, but be warned in advance that I will take action against those who leaked the information. Those who share information about my site forfeit their opportunity to download from the site.
Taking advantage of dynamic IPs. A lot of the bans depend on your IP. People with dynamic IPs have an unfair advantage in that they can get a new IP and continue the abuse. If you intentionally use your dynamic IP to continue abuse beyond a ban, you may be banned at the bot layer which has far more flexible pattern matching abilities. Note that this means that hopping IPs when committing a typo in the trigger channel may turn a month-long ban into a permanent ban. Also, if you have a dynamic IP hammering my server, I may choose to ban you at the bot instead of (or in addition to) banning your whole ISP, in which case, you have to prove to me that you figured out how to use your downloading software.
Remember that you must always include your nick, ident, and IP(s) when you e-mail me. If you're e-mailing about a ban, please include exactly what type of ban you are under, and make sure to include the word "ban" in the subject line. As you can see, there are a lot of ways for you to be banned, and it'll take me a long time to find where you were banned if you don't tell me. If you e-mail me without the necessary information, I will simply ignore your message. Also, I'm often very busy. If I haven't replied to your message within a month and you included all the necessary information, try e-mailing me again (with all the necessary information) because that means I probably lost track of your message. It is much easier to follow the rules than to have me unban you, so please be careful and try to not get banned.
(Thanks to Göring for reading over and providing suggestions for this page and for creating the first Bot FAQ back before the bot had its own channels.)
-- Dildo
(this text copy pasted from the site, names and additional data changed at the threat of ban for sharing this information)
Hysteria!!!!
Let's evacuate the planet!
Or maybe *put random Bruce Willis joke here...*
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Maybe they are just doing this so we all get worried and start to horde gas, food, and other products so the economy comes back.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
"You have 19 years to do something about a 2km rock headed for Washington. Go!"
Nothing like a crisis to focus the mind, eh?
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
What's that? hm.
:))
I remember at one point in the distant past whenever they used a term in an article it was unlikely anyone would have heard of, like "Palmero Technical Scale", the slashdot editors would put a little [?] box with a link to the appropriate entry on the public collaborative encyclopedia everything2. (OK, so everything2 doesn't have an entry on palmero technical scale, but i'm sure it would pretty soon after slashdot linked it
Why did slashdot stop doing that? It would eliminate a lot of confused, unnecessary discussion. Did the everything2 people just ask slashdot to stop, or something, because they were sick of getting hordes of slashdotters who would start posting stuff without reading the FAQs directed to them?
Mother nature is a terrorist! First the thunderstorms and now the asteroids! What's next? Exploding stars? scary stuff
Got friends?
Quick, buy my asteroid insurance!!! HEHE
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
I've been run over by a llama twice this year! Does that mean I should worry?
A solution to global warming, over-population, osama bin-laden, iraq, isreal vs palestine, Microsoft,...etc. all in one small package.
What about the chances of the Asteroid landing on a Llama? I'm taking bets!
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
Well, if Win2k was NT5, and WinXP is NT6, then I suppose it's due time that the next generation NT7 makes it's "impact" on the world.
We need to hurry up and send a team of foul-mouthed perverted semi-illiterate oil miners into space! And for the love of all that's holy, somebody start having sex with Liv Tyler!
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
Great. Does anyone else think that this sensational journalism is going hurt funding for things like this when it misses us by 5 million km?
The Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. If 1. the projections are a bit off as far as the arrival date and 2. it does hit the Earth, I'd say this might be a good reason to end your calendar.
Those aliens are running NT7 already!
Leave it to British tabloits to sensationalize a non-story. Fortunately I never see biased or inacurate stories at this site.
Check out the 3d view here.
Just fast-forward to Feb-1 2019, set the center on earth, and zoom in.
I'm sick of watching the stock market sputter and sput. We need something big and beyond our little financial myopia. We need something to unite humanity in a common cause - our survival.
Really, best news I've heard all day!
The End of FreeBSD
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
- posted by poopbot: for all your crapflooding needs
PvPgS18a0q Post #605
Obviously we need to check the orbit before we conclude anything, but with this much time to spare we should be able to push it away from us. Even a miniscule change in angle would become a massive change in actual location by the time it came near us, and we only need about 4000 miles. While they don't give an exact number, it will have to travel well over 100 million to reach us.
Probably our best bet (if it is a risk) would be to land an unmanned craft on it the next time it nears earth, then have it burrow it's head into the ground and fire a rocket. It could do lots of scientific tests while it was there, of course. There should be no need for exotica like nuclear bombs.
So, as they said, we have more to fear from llamas (though exploiting irrational fear of the asteroid could get us some interesting scientific data).
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
WERE ALL GONNA DIE!
The most important words in the article (well maybe they weren't actually there, but I paraphrase): More data needed. There is still a huge margin of error in the calculation of the asteroid's orbit. It just might hit Earth at this point.
well i was caught in a llama stampede when i was younger, so anyone within a 1000 mile radius of me might wanna consider moving...
-f
www.blackant.net
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Holding up the flag-wrapped body of a 2-month-old girl, tens of thousands of Palestinians marched Tuesday to bury their dead after an Israeli airstrike killed a top Hamas leader and 14 civilians, including nine children. The Islamic militant group vowed revenge.
Woohoo! 5 terrorists and 9 future terrorists on their way to meet Allah. Fucking raghead goatfuckers. GO ISRAEL!!!
For those wondering what they're talking about, NASA has a site about it here
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Credits: anonymous
"Mmmm... this feels good..." I sighed.
"Shhh!" hissed Hemos. "We don't want Mark to come in here!"
True. Having Hemos's 16 year-old brother walk in on us at that moment would not be good. I didn't think he'd be too cool with finding his 12 year-old brother lying naked with me, holding my 11 year-old dick in his hands. But, in all fairness, my hands were eagerly playing with Hemos's dick and balls at that moment, too.
Hemos's mom and dad had gone to the drive-in, leaving his big brother in charge. In our favor, leaving Mark in charge pretty much guaranteed that we weren't to bother him, and in turn, he'd leave us alone unless we were making too much noise or breaking something. Well, we were being careful to keep quiet because we very much wanted to be left alone.
We were in Hemos's twin bed, snuggled under the covers with our underwear pushed down to the foot of the bed. The only illumination in the room came from the faint sliver of light that crept in under his bedroom door. Even in the shadows I could make out the shape of my friend; about my height, but heavier. (Hell, I was such a skinny runt that everyone was heavier than me.) Hemos had a crew-cut of white-blonde hair, and was only starting to sprout some pubic hair. But, you had to feel for it because what little pubic hair he possessed was as blonde as the short hair on his hea and could not yet be seen by even a minimal distance.
And, I was happily feeling for it, running my hands all over Hemos's slightly larger erection and fondling his larger testicles while he courteously stroked my dick. I could tell that he didn't possess the same enthusiasm for cockplay as I did, unless you count his appreciation for the attention devoted to his member. And I knew that my willingness to satisfy his sexual urges was one of the few reasons he even had me sleep over at his place. But, I didn't let that stop me from finding pleasure in the handling of his meat.
I'd recently had an "introduction", of sorts, to seeing what someone could do with a man's dick with their mouth. While spending the night with my Uncle Jerry a couple weeks before, while I watched in secret, I was treated to a visual display of the intensity and unabashed pleasure that my uncle had obviously enjoyed having another man suck on his cock. From that moment on, I had a yearning that I needed to satisfy. With who was my only question.
I guess it was time to find out.
"I... heard that sucking on it feels even better than playing with it." I ventured.
In the darkness, I could feel a slight jerk of revulsion in Hemos's body.
"Put a dick in your mouth?" he croaked.
"Well, " I countered, my heart pounding with anxiety, "I think adults do it all the time."
"Well, I'm not gonna do it!" Hemos hissed. "That's homo stuff!"
"Yeah." I sighed disappointedly, while still playing with Hemos's dick. "I guess it is."
As I stroked his shaft in a steadier, milking rhythm, I could sense Hemos's breaths getting quicker. His manipulations of my dick began to falter as I could feel his body tense beside me. His hips rocked slightly in time with my pumping of his cock, and I cradled his balls tenderly in my other hand. When any attentions to my own dick has completely ebbed, I knew what was about to happen, so I picked up the pace just a bit more while lending a touch more pressure in my grip. Finally, Hemos's breath caught in his throat, and he turned his face fully into his pillow to stifle the moans that broke free as his cock pulsed and throbbed in a dry orgasm within my hands. I continued to massage him and didn't release him from my grasp until his member had gone fully soft.
"Man," sighed Hemos dreamily after finally catching his breath. "You are so good at that, CmdrTaco."
At least I had something to be proud of, I guess, as my friend gently withdrew himself from me and rolled onto his back.
Even though I was only eleven, the irony of Hemos's words and actions were not lost on me. My sucking on him would have been a "homo" thing, but beating him off was okay. Go figure. Within the few moments I had spent mulling over the irony of the thoughts, Hemos had drifted off to sleep. I slipped out from under the covers and down to the cool floor so I could masturbate without shaking the bed. As I toyed with my own dick, I imagined Hemos's cock in my mouth, wondering if the chance would ever really come. Finally, my own climax washed over me, and I got back into the bed.
I don't sleep real well to begin with, and even worse when I'm not in my own bed. And now, with the thoughts of a dick so close to me, as well as the vivid memories of secretly seeing man-to-man cocksucking pleasure floating through my prepubescent, sex-filled brain, I was not about to fall asleep anytime soon. Lying awake until around 11:30, I finally decided that I needed to do something to satisfy my hungers, or I'd never be able to let it rest. The trick was in finding the guts to follow through.
I knew that whenever Hemos fell asleep, he pretty much stayed asleep. So, since he was sleeping soundly, lying on his back, I took a deep breath and gingerly ducked my head under the covers and scooted down as much as I could to the foot of the bed. That put my head right at Hemos's hip level. I raised my head and upper body to help create a tent over his crotch. Sniffing around, I found the faint scent of young penis flesh. I inhaled deeply, both in the love of the scent, and in an attempt to slow my pounding heart. I opened my mouth wide over the area where I sensed Hemos's dick to be, and lowered my mouth squarely over his soft cock and balls until I could feel his sparse pubic hairs tickling my cheek. I finally had a dick in my mouth! I just wasn't sure what I'd do if Hemos woke to find his "homo" friend in this situation.
I remained like that for a long moment, partially in fear of trying anything more, and partly to savor the moment. I carefully let my tongue start to explore his tender penile flesh, enjoying the texture. Then came the excitement that welled within me as his cock began to respond to my attentions and harden in my warm and wet mouth! Butterflies seemed to explode in my stomach and drown out my heartbeat as I felt his dick get to its full size in my mouth. Concentrating in that dark environment, I found myself beginning to identify the shape of his member by taste. The shaft actually seemed to taste different than the head, and the thin skin of his scrotum seemed to harbor another distinct flavor.
I started to softly suck on Hemos's dick, becoming fascinated at how it just seemed to, well, 'fit' in my mouth... how the head lent itself to the back of my tongue, and how the shaft rested between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. My excitement was so great that my own recently satisfied dick was responding again, inviting me to play. I was sucking a cock, and I was in heaven!
However, within seconds, Hemos seemed to get restless. In fear, I quickly pulled my mouth away from Hemos's candy stick and held still. The covers rustled, and pulled back.
"Whatcha doin'?" mumbled Hemos.
"I... uh... was trying to find my shorts down here," I lied, starting to fumble near our feet. Well, partial lie, because it was a good idea to do so, anyway, and now was as good a time as any.
"Oh, yeah," said Hemos. "Get mine, too, willya?"
"S-sure" I stammered, relieved.
I located the two items of clothing and scooted back up towards the head of the bed. Thankfully, our underwear were pretty easy to distinguish since Hemos wore boxers, and I wore briefs. We both fumbled to put them on in the dark, and then settled back into the bed. I lay stiffly on my back, still harboring some fear that my friend discovered more than he let on, but Hemos simply rolled onto his side, facing away from me, and promptly went back to sleep.
And, here I was again, so close to my fantasies, yet still so far.
And very much awake.
After hearing the clock in the hallway chime midnight, I finally got up to go to the bathroom. Figuring it was late enough not to be an issue, and since even if Hemos's parents were home that they would be in their own bedroom downstairs, I didn't bother to slip on my pants for the short trip down the hall. I walked softly to the bedroom door, and then stepped out into the hallway, illuminated dimly by a bare-bulb night light. I walked past big brother Mark's door to the bathroom at the end of the hall and turned on the light as I shut the door.
Peeing into the toilet, I looked up at my reflection in the large mirror and smiled slyly to myself. I actually sucked on a dick, even if for only a moment! At that moment I was Rob Maldo, secret agent double-O-seven, who could sneak in and suck a dick, and sneak away without being caught!
I flushed the toilet and switched out the light as I headed back down the hall. Slipping past Mark's door once again, the door flew open, and a hand covered my mouth while a muscular arm snapped around my waist and drew me into the room. Squirming in the arms of Hemos's athletic older brother was a waste of effort, and he only squeezed harder until I settled down.
"You'll keep quiet if you know what's good for you,' growled Mark into my ear. "You gonna be quiet?"
I nodded. Mark let go of my mouth and reached over to close his bedroom door, the other hand and arm still holding me firmly with my feet off the ground. I heard something click, and recalled, and not without a certain amount of childish fear, that Mark had a lock on his door.
The room had a yellowish glow from the large lava lamp next to Mark's bed. He took me over to the bed and tossed me face down onto it, kneeling next to me. I thought briefly about trying to get up and run, but to where?
When I felt Mark's hands on me again, I was determined to fight him off, but I was no match for him as he flipped me onto my back and straddled me, sitting squarely on my upper chest, his knees pinning my shoulders and my arms locked between his legs. I gazed up at his lean, muscled torso, his stern blue eyes under a tussled mane of reddish-blonde hair. I could feel the soft fabric of his boxers against my chin.
"Can't get up, can ya?" he said, grinning down at me, all snide and victorious.
I struggled a bit, more out of obligation, but knew it was no use. Mark was just too big for me.
"Whatsamatter?" huffed Mark. "You too weak to fight? Or, maybe you just like laying there, sniffing dicks?"
I started squirming a bit harder, but Mark's legs only clamped tighter. At least he had scooted down a bit, and was no longer suffocating me with his weight on my chest.
"Yeah! Maybe you're a homo-boy who just likes sniffing dicks. Maybe you wanna sniff my big dick?"
I didn't care for where this was going, and I wasn't too comfortable with the tone of Mark's voice. But, I was also not being given much of a choice in the matter. Especially when Mark reached into the fly of his boxers and pulled out his cock.
"Here you are, homo-boy... a nice, fresh big-man dick!" grinned Mark fiendishly. "Ain't it a beaut?"
He held it out for me, then leaned forward and started to rub his cock on my face, tracing my cheeks and nose with the bulbous head. His testicles soon followed his dick through the opening, until they were dangling on my chin, the coarse pubes tickling my lips. Their faint musky scent began to fill my nostrils.
"CmdrTaco's just a little dick-faced homo-boy, ain't he?" sneered Mark, sliding his cock across my face. "I saw you in there, your head under the covers. What were you doing? Giving my little brother a blow job?"
I didn't answer. I was at once shocked at the thought of having been discovered, and confused by Mark's remark. I then guessed that he meant sucking a dick was called a 'blow job'. But... you're not blowing, you're sucking, and-
"You were, weren't you, you little homo!"
It was obvious what had happened; that Mark had looked in on us to find my head under the blankets. I thought I had sensed a miniscule change in the light, but assumed that to be part of my excitement. That must have been what woke Hemos up so suddenly.
"So, maybe you aren't just dick-faced, " he said, rubbing his cock on my face again. "Maybe you're a dick sucker!" He leaned forward, mashing his hairy ball sack into my nose, then pulling back to trace my features again with his member. But, even as Mark taunted me, treating his cock as a threatening weapon, there was something else happening.
He was getting a boner.
And as I closed my eyes, I could feel his cock thickening against my face. I could sense the heat of his hardening dick directly on my flesh. And, I found I was enjoying the sensations of this older cock against my face. There would soon be no way of hiding the fact that I was getting excited, too.
"So, dick-sucker-CmdrTaco... you're gonna suck my dick, now."
My eyes sprung open to see Mark's fully erect cock pointing at my face. While it wasn't huge (I had already seen 'huge' with my Uncle Jerry), it was still big enough to scare me.
And excite me to no end.
"Open wide, homo-boy."
Without another moment of hesitation, or taking my eyes off of Mark's sleek tool, I opened my mouth as wide as I could and watched as he leaned down and slid that beautiful cock into my waiting mouth. I then settled my tongue against the bottom half of his shaft while I could feel the upper half press against the roof of my mouth. Its texture was soft, yet hard; smooth, yet distinct.
"There," he sighed. "Now, you have a real dick to suck on. Now, get started, suck-boy!"
It was so much bigger than Hemos's young dick, I wasn't sure if I could get enough suction worked up to suck on it. It was then that I found out what sucking a cock is really all about: friction.
Mark held the base of his dick to guide himself and started to pump into my mouth, sliding his dick in and out of my salivating lips. He would slip in precariously between my teeth until he was near to choke me, then pull back out until the base of the bulbous head was just close to popping free from my lips, held in place by the suction of my mouth. Then he... we... would do it all over again... over and over... and gloriously over again.
"Oh, you are good, CmdrTaco," he moaned softly. "You suck cock real good."
I don't know about that; it seemed he was doing all the real work. But, I wanted it to be good. I wanted to have this dick in my mouth. And I wanted it again and again. I was definitely enjoying the oral sensations as his near-adult dick worked back and forth in my hungry mouth, and I wanted so much to please him so he would want my mouth again.
Mark placed his other hand on the top of my head to steady me as his thrusts became a little more erratic. His breath quickened, and I could sense that he was trying hard not to ram himself all the way down my throat and choke me. He was making little grunts with each thrust, and I could feel his dick turn to stone in my mouth when, in a mix of fear and excitement, I suddenly recalled what would happen next.
"Oh, baby... oh, fuck..."
Mark's movements got all quick and jerky. I was almost afraid to breathe.
"OHHHH!!!" he moaned, pulling out of my mouth and letting loose with a burst of white goo that seemed to splatter all over as he pumped his dick with his fist. My head still held firmly in his other hand, the warm liquid flew partly into my still open mouth, and all over my nose and eyebrows. I swallowed briefly, not sure whether to gag or hope for more, tasting fully the salty and musky liquid, then opened my mouth once more as Mark stuck his creaming cock back in and worked the thick fluid throughout my young mouth.
I sucked until Mark went soft and withdrew his spent dick. He smiled down at me, obviously proud of what he had done. He finally got off of me (good thing since I thought my arms were going to fall off) and stood there for a moment, an interesting picture with his hands on his hips, and his drained cock and balls hanging out of the fly of his plaid boxers. I just lay there with his juices clinging to my skin, wanting to do it all over again.
Mark bent down and picked up a t-shirt, and proceeded to wipe the remainder of his goo off my face. Finished with that, he tossed the shirt into a hamper and walked over to his bedroom door to unlock it as he tucked his manhood back into his underwear.
"You better get back into Hemos's bed before mom and dad find you here," he said softly.
I reluctantly got off Mark's bed and walked to the door. As I was about to exit, he reached out to stop me briefly.
"You liked that, didn't you, homo-boy?"
I nodded, not sure where he was going with this inquiry.
"Your first taste of cum?"
I shrugged, then nodded again.
"If you're good, maybe I'll let you suck my dick again some time, CmdrTaco. Now, get your ass out of here before I kick it."
I stepped out of the room and felt the door close harshly behind me. I could still taste traces of Mark's cum in my mouth, could still sense the friction of his cock on my tongue. I smiled in remembrance.
I was hooked.
- posted by poopbot: who doesn't like scat?
IxgAXJoPbe Post #606
It keeps getting worse and worse. NT5 had an estimated 65000 bugs, if I recall correctly, but at a few grams per bug (when they don't fly), nobody cared about such a tiny mass. But now NT7 would be large enough for continental scale devastation? Wow. That must be a serious number of bugs.
On the other hand, announcing a product 17 years before it hits, come on, that's not really serious, even by NT's standards.
You think you know about programming?
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
If this turns out to be a real threat,
I'll bet that the parts of the world
that hate us and our technology will change thier tune slightly.
Please save us oh great infidel!
Just wait till the local media gets ahold of this and runs with it. I can see the headlines now, "Giant Asteroid on Collision Course with Earth!" "2km Rock Headed for Earth" *sigh*
What if it could be captured in orbit about the Earth?
:)
More than enough material to make a really good space station!
getting it to land on the right continent...
You choose, I'm not that brave...
- Jim
2002 NT7 Impact Risk
It doesn't look so bad. -0.14 on the Palermo Scale (recently downgraded?).
I told my cow orkers not to worry about the unix signed 32-bit int date problem! Ha-hahahaha, I love being right! Oh, wait a minute...
I guess in about 17 years it'll be time to ask that girl if she'll sleep with me if the world was about to end...
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
for the latest information
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2002nt7.html
But you shouldn't end sentences with an ellipse...
Oh no, now I've done it! The stupidity is spreading!
"The error in our knowledge of where NT7 will be on 1 February 2019 is large, several tens of millions of kms,"
In other news, today there was 1 in 1 X 10^43 chance that you and your anti-matter self would meet. What a close call. Please be on the look out for your anti-matter self.
I find it strange that there is almost 1/2 million geeks on slashdot, yet none of them have ever brought this up on these Near earth orbit stories.
Has there ever been any contingouncy planning made in case something like this does happen? Or is it all being kept a secret from the general population (i.e. only 100 of those grey alien ufo's for escape)
A company that did real work into this issue could stand to make a killing. Anyone that figured out a real nice way to make these NEO rocks bounce, blow up, deflect, time phase shift, or tractor away from the earth could pull some mass patents on that and laugh all the way to the bank.
People used to say if man was meant to fly he would have wings. Well, if man was meant to blow up space rocks he would have nukes, and he does.
is a terrorist!!
Among the various ways that the Apostle Paul describes the relationship of the New Testament saint to the law is included the phrase hupo nomon ("under law"). The phrase is unique to Paul and its theologically significant occurrences are found in Romans and Galatians, where it is used-to describe the following: (1) a dominion under which one may live as opposed to grace and which holds one under the rule of sin (Rom. 6:14-15); (2) an earlier epoch of redemptive history which served a divinely-appointed function before faith came (Gal. 3:23); (3) the realm under which Christ was born with the stated purpose of redeeming those in that same "under law" position because such a position was one where the full privileges of sonship could not be realized (Gal. 4:4-5); (4) the realm from which an individual is automatically excluded if the leading of the Holy Spirit is a reality (Gal. 5:18). In view of the content that Paul invests in this phrase, it is not hard to see how it was incomprehensible to him that someone would want to return to the bondage of an "under law" position (Gal. 4:21). The phrase occurs in only one other passage in the New Testament, I Cor. 9:20. There it describes a realm which dictated and defined an observably different life-style, i.e., the outward piety of Jewish ceremonialism, which Paul had the liberty to defer to when taking the gospel into the context of the Jews' religion.
... which the law has for man and which makes him live in a condition of slavery, Paul expresses in the set phrase "to be under the law"... Although this expression is used with nuances, it denotes in the passages that are characteristic for the present connection not merely that God has subjected man to the norm of the law, but rather that he lives, groans, has been put in chains as a prisoner, a slave, one who is underage, under the hostile, enslaving power of the law; a bondage from which only the regime of divine grace can deliver him (Rom. 7:14; 8:2; Gal. 4:5).1
... 4
... It is not at all clear that it has any claim to exist, especially at this period... "5 So Bultmann's conclusions were too specific, and more than the evidence could bear.
... " 6:10
... Volume two my biography opened with my resurrection. My old life having finished, a new life to God has begun ... We are to keep saying to ourselves, 'Volume one has closed. You are now living in volume two. It is inconceivable that you should reopen volume one. It is not 9 impossible, but it is inconceivable.'
... the exegete must make a conscious attempt to trace the progressive development of the text's meaning as the canon containing it grew. As the text's literary parameters expanded its meaning became more full and precise. With regard to this dimension of exegetical study, often overlooked by those schooled in the grammatico-historical approach, a student should ask of Psalm 2, for example, what this coronation liturgy meant during the First Temple when David's sons were installed on Mount Zion to rule over God's kingdom? What did it mean during the Second Temple when the Old Testament canon took its final shape and when there was no king in Israel? And what does it mean in the New Testament when Jesus Christ fulfilled the psalm's vision and assumed his throne in the heavenly Mount Zion (Acts 4:23-27-, 13:32-33; 1:3-5; 12:22-24)?19
... There is no question of a new law or of no law. Neither God changes nor His law. The difference between the old and new covenants is that under the former that law is written on tablets of stone... whereas under the latter the law is written internally within the redeemed heart.. ." P.E. Hughes, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962), p. 94. 0. Palmer Robertson says: "The substance of covenant law will provide a basis for continuity between old and new covenants. Indeed, God shall write his will on the fleshly tablets of the heart, in contrast with the older engraving of his law on stone tablets. But it will be essentially the same law of God that will be the substance of this engraving." 0. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), pp. 281-282.
One can readily see from the occurrences of this phrase that the cumulative thrust is pronouncedly negative. Ridderbos has observed this same connotation in the phrase. He says:
This whole negative significance
Thus, it would be fair to characterize this phrase as one that Paul employs to deliver a sustained and emphatic attack on the religion of law from which the Damascus road encounter had delivered him. Because such language is an overstatement in the mind of some, it will be the purpose of this chapter to study this phrase more carefully, giving special attention to its occurrence in ?.cm. 6:14-15, with a view to elucidating the contribution that it makes to the understanding of the redemptive-historical shift from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant.
"Hupo Nomon" in Romans 6:14-15
1. Paul and the Stoic-Cynic Diatribe
Since Rudolph Bultmann first argued in 1910 that Paul in the earlier chapters of Romans made use of a literary device known as the Stoic-Cynic diatribe, many commentators have explained the form of Rom. 6:1-7:25 by an appeal to such a device. The supposed form of the diatribe, barn of a Socratic tradition, was the arrangement of material around a question-answer format, and since the questions were stylistically engendered, dictated by the diatribe form itself, the "opponents" which seem to be in view are more imaginary than real.2 So it is thought that the questions of Rom 6:1, 15; 7:7, 13 represent opponents that Paul has created for the sake of surfacing leading implications in his thought and advancing his argument. However, recent studies have begun to question the use of such a rhetorical genre in Romans. For example, in 1974 Karl Donfried, after reviewing Bultmann's research and lining it up against the work of several eminent classicists, concluded that what Bultmann had shown was not that Paul had been influenced by the diatribe form, but that he was influenced only by rhetorical patterns which were common and widespread in the Graeco-Roman world. Therefore, to deny that Romans could be addressed to a specific situation or envision specific opponents because it utilized such patterns was incorrect.3 In fact, Donfried continues,
Similar rhetorical influences appear in Gal. and in the Corinthian correspondence, yet Paul, in these letters, is addressing himself to a specific set of problems which he hopes to solve. The point, then, is that one should be most careful in objecting to the "specificity" of Romans in dealing with live issues in Rome on the basis of a supposed influence of the diatribe
Donfried goes on to point out that it has yet to be established that there even exists such a diatribe form. In the words of one classicist, the Stoic-Cynic diatribe is "a kind of literary counterpart to the redeemed-redeemer myth of the History of Religions school...It is a ghost summoned up for lack of a more adequate explanation of what confronts us
Appealing to the evidence that may be gleaned from the New Testament itself regarding the Judaizing opponents that Paul continually battles, it is far simpler to see Paul in Romans taking real Jewish objections repeatedly directed against aspects of his teaching, and sifting, collating, and arranging them in a logical and coherent pattern, for the purpose of using them to accentuate the truth as it is in Christ. As a matter of fact, since each question in chapters 6 and 7 begins with the inferential particle oun, these four question-answer units should be viewed in some sense as logically growing out of each other, which in turn means that these chapters should be studied as a unit.
2. The Thematic Structure of Romans 6:1-7:6
It is important to remember that Paul's perspective, in Romans is redemptive-historical. This fact becomes no more apparent than in Rom. 5:12-21, where Paul develops a contrast between the old age and the new age around mankind's two representative heads -- Adam and Christ. The old aeon began when through the transgression of the one man, Adam, sin entered (eiserchomai) into the world and death through sin. Then later the law entered in alongside (pareiserchomai) in order to multiply the presence of transgression. So the two fundamental realities of the old aeon were sin and law, and it was characterized as an age where "sin reigned in death" (5:21). By contrast, the new age in Christ is marked by the powerful intrusion and superabounding reign of grace through righteousness unto eternal life (5:15, 17, 20- 21).
Paul's reference to the rule of sin and law in the Adamic aeon is amplified in chapters 6-7. In chapter 6, the reign of grace is declared to deliver from the dominion of sin, sin as a tyrannically ruling force. In chapter 7, the reign of grace is set forth as delivering from the dominion of the law. Consequently, the relationship of chapter 5 to chapters 6-7 functions at the level of a rehearsal of what has happened in redemptive history, and not simply and superficially at the level of justification (ch. 5) and sanctification (ch. 6-7) as these chapters are usually approached. From this standpoint, chapters 6-7 follow quite naturally from chapter 5 as the more specific development of features of the life in the new age in Christ, life whose reference point is the inaugurated eschatology which began in the epiphany of Christ.6 Paul is amplifying what it means to live under the reign of grace.
As has been pointed out, Paul draws out the implications of this new life in Christ by means of answering particular Jewish objections. In surveying the thematic structure of 6:1-7:6, in the interests of space and visual clarity, the material will be presented in conjunction with an outline.
Freedom from the Dominion of Sin and the Law:
The Thematic Structure of Rom. 6:1-7:6
I. First Question - Answer Cycle 6:1-14
A. The Question 6:1
The first question grows out of Paul's presentation of justification within the context of the statement, "where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more" (5:20). The verbs express in the clearest manner the triumph of grace over sin. The question then comes: "Are we not able, or even obliged, by the logic of justification, to continue in sin, in order that we might give divine grace as much opportunity as possible to display itself? Greater sinning seems to be the necessary prerequisite of greater grace."7
B. The Answer 6:2-14
1. In Summary 6:2
Paul responds with me genoito ("May it never be!), and then follows with his own question: "How shall we who died to the dominion of sin continue to live in its realm?"
2. In Detail 6:3-14
The conjunction "or" opening vs. 3 suggests that believers who would reason in the manner of vs. 1 may not have an adequate enough grasp of the character of their new life in Christ to be impacted by Paul's counter-response in vs. 2. The sense seems to be: "Or is it the ease that you do not realize the basis of my response in vs. 2?"
a. The Central Proposition: God has positionally united us with Christ's death and resurrection, and thereby moved us into the new age, where we may walk in newness of life. 6:3-4
b. The Development of the Proposition 6:5-10
Paul develops the proposition in two cycles:
1) What does it mean to be united with Christ's death? 6:S-7
"If..." 6:5
"Knowing..." 6:6
"For..." 6:7
(2) What does it mean to be united with Christ's resurrection?
"If..." 6:8 "
Knowing..." 6:9
"For
At this point, it may be noted that Paul's mention of the "old man" in vs. 6 establishes a link with chapter 5. The "old man" is best defined as all that we are in Adam. Paul affirms that the crucifixion of this "old man" with Christ is necessary to removal from the bondage of sin. In this connection, Kasemann observes: "The ending of bondage is movement into the freedom of the new aeon and is possible only in the dominion of the Crucified."8
c. The Application 6:11 Houtos kai ("Even so")
Paul enjoins his readers to count it a reality that, having been united with Christ's death, they are dead to the dominion of sin, and, having been united with His resurrection, they are alive to God. This death followed by life, old followed by new, sequence suggests that God has ordained that the conversion of each of His elect is a picture in miniature of the grand movement in redemptive history from Adam to Christ, from death to life, from the old age to the new. This sequence is well illustrated by John Stott:
Our biography is written in two volumes. Volume one is the story of the old man, the old self, of me before my conversion. Volume two is the story of the new man, the new self, of me after I was made a new creation in Christ. Volume one of my biography ended with the judicial death of the old self
d. The Conclusion 6:12-14
(1) The Exhortation 6:12-13
The oun ("therefore") suggests that the imperatives are the reasonable ethical conclusion growing out of 6:1-11. The commands emphasize the utter inappropriateness of sin in the life of the saint. He has been delivered from the old Adamic position where sin reigned. Therefore, it is inconceivable that he would permit sin to continue its reign in the body (vs.12), which means more specifically (vs. 13) reverting at critical moments to the way one acted before his conversion in yielding the members of his body to the service of sin. To do such is to sin against the new position in the new age.
The implication in the command, "Do not let sin reign in your mortal body," seems to be that the mortal body which has not yet experienced redemption (Rom 8:23), is the only place where the reign of sin can continue to assert itself. Yet even that sphere of rule can be broken by the faith appropriation of the deliverance inherent in the union with Christ. The tension reflected in the commands of vss. 12-13 only indicates that the believer currently lives between inaugurated eschatology and realized eschatology in that he has experienced the first-fruits of his redemption but not the final consummation of his redemption. As Bandstra says, "the present existence of the Christian is characterized by this tension of 'already' and 'not yet'... " 10
(2) The Basis 6:14
The statement in vs. 14 provides the necessary encouragement to engender continued obedience to the commands of vss. 12-13. The statement looks back to chapter 5 and takes up again the crucial terms "sin," "law," and "grace" nestled together in 5:20-21. Paul is drawing off the redemptive-historical truth of those earlier vss., and stating it here in terms of its experimental value to the believer in his remaining struggle with sin. Essentially, Paul says that the law, as the realm where sin asserts its mastery and is irresistibly strong has been replaced in the movement of redemptive history with grace, the realm where the power of sin to subjugate has been stripped away, leaving it weak and making victory over it now certain. In this way, the statement is designed to be an encouragement to the believer that victory is the sure expectation, the rule and not the exception.
II. Second Question - Answer Cycle 6:15-7:6
A. The Question 6:15
While the questions in 6:15 and 6:1 are similar, in that they seek in some way either to justify sin in the life of the Christian, or to demonstrate that such is the direction and end of Paul's theology, they are distinct in the following way. The expression "continue in sin" (epimenomen te hamartia) in vs. 1 uses a present tense verb suggesting the continued, unbroken, unbridled accumulating of sin as a means of bringing about the increase of grace. It views sin cumulatively and aggregately. By contrast, in v. 15 the aorist tense form of the verb hamartano bearing the sense, "shall we commit an act of sin," views sin individually. The thought seems to be, "Is any sin now rendered permissible in view of the absence of the law as a regulative standard to define sin?"
B. The Answer 6:16-7:6
Paul's answer divides the question into two parts, and then deals with each in turn. He answers the "Shall we sin" portion of the question in 6:16-23, and then turns attention to the "because we are not under law but under grace" portion of the question in 7:1-6. It should be noted further that each portion of the answer begins the same way:
"Do you not know..." 6:16 "or do you not know..." 7:1
1.In answer to the first part of the question, Paul affirms that the entrance into grace carries with it a new bondage and a new obedience. Grace is not without standards, but, interestingly enough, Paul does not trace the standards to the law but to apostolic teaching. Paul commends his readers because they became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which they were committed (6:17). "Form of teaching" (tupon didaches) is one of several New Testament expressions indicating the systematization of Christian truth into an organized pattern. Cf. also "the teaching (singular) of the apostles (plural)," Acts 2:42; "the words of the faith and good doctrine" I Tim. 4:6; "the pattern of sound words," II Tim. 1:13; "sound doctrine (teaching), II Tim. 4:3; Tit. 1:9; "the faith once for all delivered to the saints," Jude 3; "the traditions," I Cor. 11:2. Moreover, the expression "to which you were committed" carries through the image of slavery and indicates that Christians, as slaves of righteousness were handed over to a body of teaching, and thus it became their moral authority, and the mold to which their conduct should conform.11 But in that it was received from the heart, the bondage that this apostolic teaching imposed was a service of perfect freedom. Kasemann says: "Christian obedience is not to be equated with obedience under the Torah, for as standing in grace it is also freeedom."12
2. In answer to the second part of the question, Paul further explains the believer's liberation from the law (7:1-4), establishes that it is not the absence of the law that promotes sin but its presence (7:5), and removal from the "under law" position is, in fact, the necessity if one is to serve God in "newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter" (7:6).
3. An Exegetical Focus on Romans 6:14
H.P. Liddon has observed that Rom. 6:14 is of decisive importance in Paul's argumentation in Romans and governs what follows all the way through chapter 8.13 While it be difficult to extablish direct exegetical bearing that far removed from the statement itself, it certainly does not overstate the case that Rom. 6:14 establishes a concept that is pivotal riot only in Romans but in all of Pauline thought as well.
As already noted, the specific function of the statement in the context is as an encouragement and an incentive to continue in obedience to the commands of vss. 12-13. The statement itself is composed of a promise and an undergirding fact insuring the reality of that promise. The fact that the promise is stated in the future tense does not mean it is a blessing reserved for the future, but simply that when the commands will be obeyed, this is the divine certainty on which the believer may depend.
The most significant exegetical problem confronted in the verse is the meaning of the word "law." Does the word refer to law in general, law as a principle; or does it refer specifically to the mosaic law of the Old Testament? John Murray decides the question in these words:
"Law" in this case must be understood in the general sense of law as law.. That it is not to be understood in the sense of the Mosaic law as an economy appears plainly from the fact that many who were under the mosaic economy were the recipients of grace and in that regard were under grace, and also from the fact that relief from the mosaic law as an economy does not of itself place persons in the category of being under grace. Law must be understood, therefore, in much more general terms of law as commandment.14
However, there are several reasons for questioning Murray's position. First of all, as already observed, it is most likely that Paul's vocabulary in 6:14 draws off the previous occurrences of "sin," "law," and "grace" in Rom 5:20-21. If this be the case, then there is a heightened possibility that "law" in 6:14 refers to the Mosaic law, for as Murray himself admits, the term "law" in 5:20 "cannot reasonably be taken in any other way than the law as revealed by Moses."15 The explanation of the term is made much easier if it is seen as coming from chapter 5, and, along with the parallel references to sin and grace in the same context, is fashioned into a statement that articulates the relationship of the believer in present union with Christ to the great redemptive-historical realities summarized in 5:20-21. By contrast, Murray's position requires an abrupt shift in the meaning of the term from previous usage, and its introduction into a context (Rom. 6:1-13) that contains no ostensible reason for its sudden appearance. So his position does not, in the writer's opinion, contribute to the flow of Paul's argument, and the maintaining of the close and important link between chapters 5 and 6.
A second objection to Murray's position is that Paul never uses the phrase "under law" in the way that Murray suggests. Paul consistently uses the phrase hupo nomon in reference to the Mosaic lawcovenant, and there is no reason to make an exception to that rule in Rom. 6:14.
Thirdly, the following context supports a reference to the Mosaic law in 6:14. Paul's emphatic announcement "you are not under law, but under grace" is picked up by the objector in 6:15, and, as already noted, Paul answers the "not under law" portion of the objection in 7:1-6. In these verses it is clear that the apostle is thinking in terms of the Mosaic law-covenant by his reference to the marriage covenant as an illustration of a lifetime bond (7:2-3), and by the climax he reaches in contrasting the newness of the Spirit and the oldness of the letter (7:6). Paul, on the three occasions that he uses the letter/Spirit contrast, employs the word gramma ("letter") to refer to the Mosaic law-covenant (Rom. 2:26; 7:6; 2 Cor. 3:6), and the oldness/newness contrast clearly characterizes the old and new covenants, which are described by the adjective form of these same nouns (II Cor. 3:6, 10.16
Taken together, these arguments constitute strong support for the identification of law in Rom 6:14 with the Mosaic law-covenant. Murray misses the point when he says that many under the Mosaic economy were the recipients of grace. No one argues that the grace of God made a powerful visitation into the hearts of God's Old Testament elect, but the issue in this entire context is rather what was God's redemptive-historical purpose in bringing in the law. Paul says in 5:20 that it was to increase transgression, and drawing from that purpose, the result of being "under law" in 6:14, therefore, is the intensified, unmitigated dominion of sin. Likewise, Murray misses the point when he says that "relief from the Mosaic law as an economy does not of itself place persons in the category of being under grace." Paul is arguing in the context that the new age has arrived, and the New.Covenant is now in force. He does not argue in the passage: you are removed from under law; therefore, you are under grace. Instead he says, you have taken a position under grace; therefore, you are not under law. His starting point is the new position in the new age.
Using the word "law" uniformly from 5:20-7:6 to refer to the Mosaic law-covenant, Paul is then saying in 6:14 that in keeping with the divine purpose of the law to increase transgression, to be "under law" is to be under a covenant that incites sin and intensifies its tyranny.,,,, So Paul has added in 6:14 a word of clarification which prevents the continued misreading of his statement in 5:20, "where sin abounded, grace superabounded. "The point of those words was not to suggest that we should increase our sinning in order to increase the display of grace (6:1), but rather that the power of grace breaks the rule of sin, even when the law has been brought in which becomes the strength of sin (I Cor. 15:56), and in fact seems to strengthen it to a point of impregnability. In the worst of cases, with the reign of sin at its peak because of the base of operation given it by the law, grace has come and vanquished the kingdom of sin and reduced it to no more than a rebellious vassal in the experience of the Christian. Its reign has been terminated, and the believer can approach his duty of obedience with optimism and the positive expec- tation that it can and will be realized. There is no room for a "defeatist mentality" in Rom. 6:14.
4. The Letter/Spirit Contrast
Since Paul uses the letter/spirit contrast to elucidate the law/ grace contrast, the consideration of one necessitates a consideration of the other. The locus classicus for the development of the former is II Cor. 3 where Paul unfolds the ministry of the New Covenant.
This entire chapter is part of an extended apologia which Paul undertook to write because his authority and claim to be an apostle of Jesus Christ was being challenged. Paul opens the chapter by questioning whether he needed any letters of recommendation establishing his identity and credentials because he already had the most complimentary letter that could be written in the transformed lives of the Corinthians. That letter was the surest evidence of the power of Christ operative in his ministry. So the Corinthians themselves were the strongest testimony to the validity of his apostleship (cf. I Cor. 9:2).
Paul's statement in vs. 3 is very significant from a redemptivehistorical standpoint. The Corinthians were being visibly manifested as a letter authored by Christ written, as the apostle faithfully carried out his ministry to them, not with ink but "with the mystical imprint of the Spirit of the living God."17 Hodge observes: "Any man could write with ink; Christ alone can write with the Spirit of God."18 Furthermore, the place of the writing is, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of living human hearts. The multiple references to the prophecy of the New Covenant are clear (Jer. 31:33; Ezek 11:19; 36:26), and have been recognized by virtually all commentators. However, it seems that the truth implicit in this text may be expanded further.
Bruce K. Waltke has recently suggested a hermeneutical principle which he terms "the canonical process approach." He explains and illustrates the hermeneutic in these words:
If this writer may venture to restate this hermeneutic more explicitly from a redemptive-historical standpoint, it might say the following: the meaning of a given text of Scripture (and the vocabulary in that text) must, in varying degrees, be viewed as dynamic and capable of shifts in emphasis, expansion, contraction, and modification as God's redemptive revelation grew; moreover, that meaning did not mature into its full and complete expression until redemptive revelation reached its climax in the coming of Christ and the subsequent witness to Christ in apostolic writings.
Now if this approach is applied to II Cor. 3:3 it yields some interesting conclusions. Aside from the fact that the New Testament church becomes the recipient and beneficiary of the new covenant, two other conclusions more pertinent to our present study stand out.
1.
Christ becomes the Yahweh of Jer. and Ezek. who fulfills the promise of writing law upon the heart and putting the Spirit within.
2.
The law that is written is apostolic teaching set down in the New Testament. If Christ is the author of the handwriting on the heart; the "My law" of Jer. 31:33 becomes the law of Christ, not the Mosaic Torah. This is not to say that the law of Christ opposes the Mosaic Torah. For, as shown at the end of chapter one, the relationship between the law of Christ and the law of Moses cannot be summed up in any one word. There is a mix of continuity and discontinuity which Christ must be allowed to define, since He is the one who does the writing on the heart.
Moving further into the chapter, Paul uses the gramma/pneuma ("letter/Spirit") contrast in vs. 6 to summarize in one word the essence of each covenant. H.A.W. Meyer brings out the significance of these one word abstracts:
Gramma characterizes the Mosaic covenant according to the specific manner in which it occurs and subsists, for it is established and fixed in writing (by means of the written letter), and thereby--although it is divine, yet without bringing with it and communicating any principle of inward vital efficacy--settled as obligatory. On the other hand, pneuma characterizes the Christian covenant, in so far as its distinctive and essential mode of existence consists in this, that the divine living power of the Holy Spirit is at work in it; through this and not through a written instrument, it subsists and fulfills itself. 21
This contrast is elaborated in vss. 7-18 where Paul attempts to show by a midrashic use of Exod. 34:29-35 the superiority of the new covenant to the old.22 The key words drawn from, Exod. 34 and used in this inspired midrash are doxa ("glory") and kalumma ("veil"). He expounds the word "glory" in vss. 7-11, and then moves to the word "veil" in vss. 12-15. The exposition of these terms prepares the way for his citation of Exod. 34:34 in vs. 16 which is the key sentence in the apostle's argumentation from this Old Testament text.23
Paul shows in his exposition of the word "glory" in vss. 7-11 that the fading doxa of Moses' face symbolizes the fading doxa of the old covenant, thus indicating its usefulness in God's plan was temporary. He employs a three-fold use of the a fortiori argument ("much more" 8,9,11) in establishing the permanent, non-transitory character of the new covenant.
He then takes up the second word, kalumma ("veil"), in vss. 12-15. The oun ("therefore") opening this paragraph in vs. 12 indicates that Paul in his exposition of this word "veil" is building on the ground he established in vss. 7-11. Having the sure hope of the permanent glory of the new covenant (vs. 11), Paul says, "we use great boldness in our speech" (vs 12). At first glance, the contrast of Paul's bold speech (vs. 12) and Moses' veiled face (vs. 13) appears to be a mismatch. But W. C. van Unnik has shown that the word "boldness" (parresia) was taken over as a loan-word into Aramaic and was used there synonymously with the phrase "to uncover the face or head". So barefacedness and boldness were synonymous ideas.24 Thus, Moses speaking to Israel with a veiled face contrasted the openness confidence, and freedom of speech that Paul had. Paul's great boldness and confidence of speech may have been linked to the realization that in speaking the words of Christ, words associated with the climax of redemptive revelation, he was speaking words that were marked with the imprint of Spirit and life. Jesus had said, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life" (John 6:63).
Paul continues in vs. 13 by declaring that the purpose of the veil an Moses' face was to prevent Israel from seeing the fading away of the glory, i.e., from seeing the temporary nature of the Mosaic law-covenant. In vs. 14 he extends this interpretation to his own day. The veil on Moses' face is still present with the Jews when they read the old law-covenant and the result is that they still fail to recognize that that covenant was temporary in God's purpose.
This leads Paul to the climactic citation in vs. 16. Dunn summarizes the argument to this point:
It is as though he Paul said: 'Consider Exod. 34:29-35 by doxa I understand the temporary nature of the old covenant; by kalumma I understand that which blinds the Jews to this fact. with this understanding in mind observe what the text says about the way in which the veil is removed.'25
It is when a man turns to the Lord that the veil is taken away. it is when one turns and sees Christ that the veil is removed and the temporary character of the Mosaic law-covenant is suddenly seen as well. Paul is saying in yet another way that in-the coming of Christ history has reached its redemptive climax. As Moses turned to Yahweh for the removing of the veil so now in the climax of redemptive history men must turn to Christ for the removing of the same veil. He alone can remove the veil which then brings into view the climactic adequacy of the covenant of the Spirit.
With the aid of this midrashic homily, the ground is laid for a deeper understanding of Paul's letter/Spirit contrast. The letter/ Spirit motif, just like the law/grace motif, reflects not only an ontological contrast, but also, and more importantly, an historical one. There is a movement in redemptive revelation reflected in the shift from letter to Spirit. Such movement can also be seen in Gal. 5:18, "If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law." Paul makes a categorical separation of the Spirit's activity from the law. The reason is clear from what has been observed in II Cor. 3. The blessing of the Spirit's presence and leadership has been covenantally defined. He is the blessing of the new covenant, not the old. So if one is led by the Spirit, one has entered the new age and come under the blessings of the new covenant, and is, consequently, not under law.
It would be remiss to leave 11 Cor. 3 without noting vs. 18. Paul in this verse rounds out the grand conclusion of the removed veil by graphically picturing the vigor and power resident in the covenant of the Spirit. Under the sovereignty of the Lord who is Spirit, we with unveiled faces beholding as-in a mirror the glory of the Lord who is Christ are transformed more and more into His image moving from one degree of glory to another. Such a pattern for transformation the old covenant never had. Transfiguration by vision: the pattern of progressive glorification under the New Covenant is but a foretaste of the consummation when "we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is" (I John 3:26).
1) Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. by John R. DeWitt (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), p. 148.
2) John W. Drane, "Why Did Paul Write Romans?" in Pauline Studies: Essays Presented to F. F. Bruce on His 70th Birthday, ed. by Donald A. Hagner and Murray J. Harris (London: The Paternoster Press,'1980)~" p.. 219.
3) K.P. Donfried, "False Presuppositions in the Study of Romans," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 36 (1974), 332-355. This study and others has now been collected into The Romans Debate, ed. by K.P. Donfried (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1977), pp. 120-151.
4) Donfried, The Romans Debate, pp. 140-141.
5) E.A. Judge, "St. Paul and Classical Society," Jarbuch fur Antike und Christentum 15 (1972), 33. Cited by Drane, op. cit., p. 220.
6) The writer is indebted to Longenecker for the term "inaugurated eschatology." Longenecker, Paul, Apostle of Liberty, p. 143.
7) Everett F. Harrison, "Romans" in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, ed. by Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co., 1976), 10:68.
8) Ernst Kasemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1980). p. 170.
9) John R.W. Stott, Men Made New (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1966), pp. 49-50.
1O) Bandstra, The Law and the Elements of the World, p. 78.
11) C.K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1957), p. 132; F. Godet, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, trans. by A. Cusin, reprint ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1956), p. 257; R.C.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), pp. 426-427.
12) Kasemann, op. cit., p. 178.12) Kasemann, op. cit., p. 178.
13) H.P. Liddon, Explanatory Analysis of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, reprint ed. (Minneapolis: James and Klock, 1977), p. 113.
14) John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 228-.229.
15) Ibid, p. 207.
16)B. Schneider, "The Meaning of St. Paul's Antithesis 'The Letter and the Spirit'," Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 15 (1953), 188-207.
17) Bernard cited by Geoffrey B. Wilson, 2 Corinthians: A Digest of Reformed Comment (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973), p. 38.
18) Charles Hodge, Commentary on 1 & 2 Corinthians, reprint ed. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), p. 427.
19) Bruce K. Waltke, "On How to Study the Psalms Devotionally," Crux, 16:2 (June, 1980), 3.
20) It is interesting to observe how those who hold to a covenant theology position have no hesitation in seeing a drastic modification in the recipients of the New Covenant, from Israel and Judah to the church, and yet are usually resistant to such modification in the word "law." P.E. Hughes says: "The establishment of the new covenant, however, implies neither the abrogation nor the depreciation of the Mosaic law
21) H.A.W. Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Hand-book to the Epistles to the Corinthians, trans. by D. Bannerman, reprint ed. (Winona Lake: Alpha Publications, 1980), 6:465.
22) Midrashic interpretation is summarized by Renee Bloch in the following points:
1.
Its point of departure is Scripture; it is a reflection or meditation on the Bible.
2.
It is homiletical, and largely originates from the liturgical reading of the Torah.
3.
It makes a punctilious analysis of the text, with the object of illuminating obscurities found there. Every effort is made to explain the Bible by the Bible, as a rule not arbitrarily but by exploiting a theme.
4.
The biblical message is adapted to suit contemporary needs.
5.
According to the nature of the biblical text, the midrash either tries to discover the basic principles inherent in the legal sections, with the aim of solving problems not dealt with in Scripture (halakhah); or it sets out to find the true significance of events in the narrative sections of the Pentateuch (haggadah).
According to these criteria, we may label Paul's use of Exod. 34 in 11 Cor. 3 as a haggadic midrash. Cited by R.N. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), p. 37.
23) J.D.G. Dunn, "2 Corinthians 3:17 --The Lord is the Spirit,"'The Journal of Theological Studies, 21 (October, 1970), 309-320. 1 have borrowed liberally from this excellent study.
24) W.C. van Unnik, "'With Unveiled Face,' An Exegesis of 2 Corinthians 3:12-18," Novum Testamentum 5 (1962), 161.
25) Dunn, op. cit., P. 312
... then the asteroids will have won.
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
Happy Troll Tuesday!
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Takes everything you've got;
Having a Bot to post your comments
Sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to join the frey?
Sometimes you want to go
And get a First Post in your name,
So much goatse that you came;
We know it's hard to get Eff Pee,
Our troubles are all the same;
Get that FP and everyone'll know your name.
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YuX7JjwHLr Post #608
Can you imagine how much Preparation H it'll take to cool THAT asteroid down?
Yeah... except for the small fact that the economy comes to a dead halt until the idiots realize that we're not going to get hit by a giant rock (which, if they believed it in the first place, could be a very, very long time)
... the asteroid is full of guys with sneaked box cutters...
Time to break out _The Hammer of God_ by Arthur Clarke. For those of you living under a rock (heh heh) it's a novel about a large rocky mass headed on a collision course with earth and the world-wide pants-shitting that ensues after it's discovered.
Good book.
"The error in our knowledge of where NT7 will be on 1 February 2019 is large, several tens of millions of kms."
/. post.
Earth's diameter is 6000km, so that's still a small chance I guess. Luckily. I was already turning green when I read the
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
So, we think that this one has a 6% higher chance of hitting us than something that we never even get on our radars. OK. That makes sense. I think.
I think I'm going to go and put that date into my Evolution calendar!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
In the future, NT7 results in the destruction of life as we know it. _Surely_ all of Slashdot can't have missed the humour in that little tidbit.
in other news, crazy british people deemed crazy.
Did you see the picture at the top of the article? I am no scientician, but that looked bigger than 2km to me, something that big would almost liquefy the earth. I am glad they didn't get carried away and start to sound alarmist........
Happy Troll Tuesday!
USian Pie
A long, long time ago I can still remember How the trollers used to make me smile And I knew if I had to boast That I could try to get first post And maybe I'd be happy for a while But moderators made me shiver With every minus they'd deliver DoS scripts couldn't stop it They scored them all "Offtopic" I know that it's cheap crack they smoke And meta-moderation's broke At first I thought it was a joke The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
Bye, bye, MEEPTy, OOG, and Grits guy Drove the Cruiser like some loser who starts posts with a *sigh*
Those Steve Woston posts that we all knew were a lie Wonder what became of girls petrified? What became of girls petrified?
--
Did you write a bunch of Perl? And did it make you want to hurl Feces at the Wall? Can you believe these lame-ass polls? Do you post big stretched-out assholes? Can you make the goatse.cx link not show? Well I know you think that Siggy sucked Will the real Bruce Perens please stand up? The bots don't have a clue. Man, I dig those trolls from Shoe! I was a rabid Free Speech advocate With a Red Hat T-shirt and a Free Beer gut
Bought my Sony laptop working Pizza Hut The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
It's been two years since the IPO And LNUX sinks to all-time lows But that's not how it used to be When Spiral showed how it was done Trolling as Jon Erikson Who worked for NPO Technologies Oh and while they tried to filter posts Somebody rooted Slashdot's host "Crack Slashdot? That's absurd!" Better go change your password While JonKatz wrote a Hellmouth book By using posts he simply took And we flamed him till he was cooked The day that trolltalk died And we were singin....
-- Chorus --
10 grams. Inchfan. Didn't log out. Goddamn The mods will find the sid real soon, man
You can't hide if you aren't AC Your bud (George here) tried BSD A dead Streetlawyer's tips were free And WIPO helped letsriot turn Nazi 70 made his percents up While 80md warned "liberals suck" The moon does not exist It's just a liberal myth Oh and as Taco tried to take a nap We forced him to invoke bitchslaps Do you recall the flood of crap The day that trolltalk died? We started singin....
-- Chorus --
Oh and then we were wearing out "All your base" And started posting monospace
The better for our penis birds So come on, be a zealot, be a dick You don't think Anne Marie's a chick? Because lying's all we do about HURD So go and push for BSD And say GPL isn't free Slow down, cowboy! The limit Is one post every minute Now tell the right wing facist slime Infringing on Your Rights Online That they can't censor all the time The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
I met a troll they called The Rev And asked him if CD BREAK HEAD He said, "That's old. Get over it." And with all the courage I could muster "Imagine what a Beowulf cluster...." But it wasn't worth the trouble to submit The karma caps are just plain jive And everyone's moved to K5 The steelcage has grown rusted And Geekizoid is busted
The three sites I don't see for weeks Segfault, kernel, Comp-u-geek Code is not art. This ain't Freshmeat The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
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zvVdPza7i0 Post #609
are they announcing this when the orbit hasn't been confirmed yet? I thought that after the embarrassing 1997 XF-11 false alarm, astronomers agreed to wait until they had enough data to confirm or rule out an impact, before releasing a press statement...
>;k
Just heard this on NPR this morning. Bruce Willis, the famous American thespian, was found dead in his home this morning. Even if you never met him in person you've probably enjoyed one of his movies. What a loss. Truly an American icon. And, of course, now we're all fucked because we don't have anybody to send up there to deal with this Asteroid.
:D)
(C'mon, at least give me a +1 funny for calling Bruce Willis a "thespian"...
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
This dangerous situation only get's harder to deride the longer we wait. I am doing everything I can to influence NASA to start working on getting a nuclear blast to deride the course of the oncoming danger. I agree that detonating a nuclear bomb in the course of the approaching llama is a bit drastic, but I refuse to sit idly by as the approaching threat of llama collision approaches.
Dude, they just said earth shattering now...which continent will by save by that
oh by the way
If something bad happens...just know that Raster loves you..
Maybe this will shock the world into paying attention.
Kind of like the Marilyn Manson of Astronomy, except this one could kill a billion people.
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Trolling in the name of
Some of those that boot Suse
Are the same that bought XP
Some of those that boot Suse
Are the same that bought XP
Trolling in the name of
And now you run what they told you
And now you run what they told you
And now you run what they told you
95 is justified for running the games that you didn't buy
95 is justified for running the games that you didn't buy
Some of those that boot Suse
Are the same that bought XP
Some of those that boot Suse
Are the same that bought XP
And you run what they told you
Now your under control
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Fuck you I wont run what you tell me
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Motherfucker
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UDtoFJRKJ6 Post #610
Apart from making fun of the BCC, what is the point of reporting this item? Do we really care about an asteroid that's going to burn up on impact or not even go near the earth?
Considering the record they have established lately, I consider it highly unlikely Microsoft will be ready to ship NT 7 by the February 1 2019 date listed in the article.
They will probably just repeat the Windows ME trick, and release "Windows CANDY" in 2019 (so that they could confuse consumers into thinking that that thing MS Marketing had been talking about so long had actually been delivered on), then release the real goods two years later. Rather than the promised 2km asteroid that ends all life on earth, "Windows CANDY" will just be a baseball-sized rock that lands in Ontario, Canada, killing a small boy's pet dog.
So we should be safe from the asteroid until 3rd quarter 2021 at least, at which point it won't matter becuase the UNIX Date Rollover Bug will have plunged the world into anarchy and killed everyone by that time anyway.
Get your reservations in early...
I bet the defense industry is salivating at the thought of all the money about to be thrown in its direction...
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crapfloods and trolling and raping small kittens
nice wider pages and wanking with mittens
turd report packages tied up with strings
these are a few of my favorite things
grits covered portman and ASCII art doodles
ACs and CLITers and Katz sex with poodles
wild trolls that fly with plus five mod scoring
these are a few of my favorite things
when the ban hits, when I can't post, when I'm feeling sad
i simply remember my favorite things
then i don't feel so bad
Rob Malda chugs penis in fan fiction slashes
taco snot over my nose and eyelashes
BSD dying and that goatse ring
these are a few of my favorite things
grits covered portman and ASCII art doodles
ACs and CLITers and Katz sex with poodles
wild trolls that fly with plus five mod scoring
these are a few of my favorite things
when the ban hits, when I can't post when, I'm feeling sad
i simply remember my favorite things
then i don't feel so bad
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GGxVTeRPfo Post #611
Now, who foots the bill? Definitely, the US is going to insist that they only pay 5% of it, as this is their percentage of the world's population.
But the rest of the world is gonna insist that they pay relative of the percentage of their wealth (wealth that, for the most part, has been sucked from the rest of the world anyways).
Since it's gonna take a long time to resolve this, better start ASAP bickering that...
Historians agree that Liudprand of Cremona is amusing(1), relatively informative, and not entirely trustworthy. Previté?Orton complained that, "he had a soul above documents," and was "singularly retentive of amorous scandal however devoid of probability."(2) Literary historians and critics also have not been entirely comfortable with him. For example, instead of considering him in the context of other tenth?century historians, like Widukind of Corvey, Hrosthvita, Flodoard, or Richer, two twentieth?century medievalists ?? Erich Auerbach and Georg Misch ?? have used him as a ficelle by means of which to praise Rather of Verona.
.
Both fascinated and embarassed by Liudprand, Auerbach quotes a passage involving the Priapic equipment and activities of the priest Dominic, but spares it the kind of close analysis for which he is justly known(3). Rather of Verona, he argues, shares some of the qualities he finds disturbing in Liudprand, but seems a more tolerable human being: Their works are full of scurrilitas, indiscretion, and immoderation, though in the one these spring from a heartfelt need, in the other from rancor and self?importance. Both lack the sense of the appropriate, the control and harmonious form which lend unity and dignity to literary expression(4). Sincerity, then, is an excuse for bad taste(5).
Misch finds Rather introspective, anxious, neurotic, and therefore more interesting than Liudprand, whose anger finds its objects outside of the self. Accordingly, Misch disposes of the bishop of Cremona in a nine?page sketch, inserted in the midst of a 141?page appreciation of the bishop of Verona(6).
The two bishops certainly had different sensibilities;
the following passage from Rather's confessional dialogue,
in which he suggests that he had improper thoughts in his
mind during the sacred service, illustrates one of the
qualities that might endear him to modern readers:
Peccavi ego peccator in oscùlo et in amplexibus
illecebrosis, palpando et blandiendo inique; et in
ecclesia stans vel sedens, ubi sanctae lectiones
vel divina officia efficiuntur, otiosis fabulis,
vel iniquis cogitationibus me occupavi, et non
cogitavi, quae debui, et aures non accomodavi ad
ea quae sancta sunt. Intuendo quoque injuste et
petulanter et recordando (quod adhuc pejus
virorum) animalium, pecudumque concubitus, et alia
quaedam obscena(7).
? 2 ?
Liudprand displays no such confessional impulses; his failure, however, to behave like Rousseau, Dostoievsky, Jean Paul, or Lenny Bruce, should not be held against him. what drove him to write was not a tortured, introspective agony, but rather a world of political violence and chaos, which left him and his fellow countrymen constantly subject to German, French, Greek, Magyar, Saracen, and internal Italian aggression. Four years old when the Hungarians burned Pavia, his native city, he spent much of his adult literary life praising those who protected him and launching diatribes against their enemies.
Liudprand's praise was as extravagant as his blame, but
less interesting, of course, since panegyric is, as Isidore
defined it:
licentiosum et lasciviosum genus dicendi in
laudibus regum, in cuius conpositione homines
multis mendaciis adulantur(8).
Vituperation, however, generally produces more satisfying
results, since most audiences find human weaknesses more
tolerable than human strengths, perhaps because, as one of
Ivy Compton Burnett's characters says, "it is easier to be
disparaging than to be just."(9) Liudprand's diatribe is
produced by a voice compounded out of various postures,
including that of indignant ecclesiastic, cynical Italian,
reflective Stoic, committed misogynist, and begging poet.
Perhaps the best known of Liudprand's rhetorical set?pieces occurs in the Legatio, where his effictio of Nicephorus as a grotesque pygmy, dark as an Ethiopean, with the eyes of a mole, a neck an inch long(10), hair like the bristles of a pig, a distended belly, and smelly linen(11), provides the usual pleasures of diatribe. Fashioning a grotesque figure out of one's enemy is a conventional rhetorical strategy of the Christian historian; Lactantius, for example, offers this humorless description of his principal villain, Maximian: Erat etiam corpus moribus congruens, status celsus, caro ingens, et in horrendam magnitudinem diffusa et inflata(12). However, the passage also functions as a prelude to one of several panegyrics devoted to the emperor Otto(13).
To formulate and amplify both praise and blame, Liudprand calls upon the arsenal his conventional rhetorical training made available to him, not only to carry out his agenda, but to disguise it, at least initially. Therefore he opens the Antapodosis with a combination of conventional postures, some of which are designed to relieve himself of the responsibility for the performance he is about to give. First, in a variation of the humility?topos, he insists that he writes only because urged to do so by higher authority; humble and fearful of acrimonious critics, he has been slow
to discharge bishop Recemund's command to report what he has
seen with his own eyes. In addition, Liudprand insists that
he is offering recreational trifles, designed to provide
relaxation after intellectually more arduous tasks, like
studying Cicero:
quod si perplexa faceti Tulli lectione fatigantur,
talibus saltem neniis animentur(14).
Availing himself of a commonplace traced to several of
Plato's text by Jacques Derrida(15), he offers his work as a
kind of pharmakon, providing shelter from the sun:
Nam, ni fallor, sicut obtutus, nisi alicuius
interpositione substantiae, solis radiis
reverberatus obtunditur, ne pure, ut est,
videatur, ita plane mens achademicorum,
peripathetiocorum stoicorumque doctrinarum iugi
meditatione infirmatur, si non aut utili
comodiarum risu aut heroum delectabili historia
refocilatur.
His audience's initial expectation, then, is to be entertained by a skilled academician, capable of mixing genres, tones, and top01. Liudprand, whose early training as a court?singer(16) may have prepared him for the role of court?jester, does not disappoint their expectations. They could not, however, have expected everything that they find, since the Antapodosis gradually reveals itself to be both more and less academic than the initial pages suggest.
Those studying Cicero, for example, will be amused to find that when Berengar I finds Louis III in hiding, he begins his speech with the opening of the first Catiline: Quousque tandem abutere, Hulodoice, patientia nostra. Their amusement may turn to something else, however, when Berengar proceeds to punish Louis with blinding(17).
The bishop of Cremona's peculiar sense of humor has led to some confusion. In explaining the distaste Liudprand expresses in the Legatio for what he found at the Byzantine court, Rentschler offers the misleading hypothesis that Liudprand, as a Westerner, came from a tradition that was antipathetic to homo ludens(18). However, as the work of Huizinga, Rahner, Suchomski, Wehrli, and others demonstrates, homo ludens was no stranger to western Europe(19). Witty, satiric, sarcastic, sceptical, Liudprand offers the credentials of an exemplary medieval homo ludens.
Several of the characters of whom he approves in the Antapodosis show the same sense of humor. The Byzantine Emperor Leo VI, for example, plays two tricks on his soldiers. First, in a test of the reliability of his guards, he disguises himself and bribes the first two groups he meets, into disobeying his orders. The third set, however, proves incorruptible, beats him and throws him into jail.
? 4 ?
After considerable difficulty, he convinces his jailer to go to the palace with him, where Leo is recognized and the jailer is astonished. When the emperor asks the man, who has shown some knowledge of astrological terminology, to predict what will happen to him now, the jailer invokes the Fates to describe his predicament:
"Parcarum," infit, "optima Cloto nere desinit,
Lachesis vero in torquendo laborare amplius non
cupit, saevissima autem harum Atropos articulos
iam in condilum solam imperii tui sententiam
expectavit, fila contrahens rumpat(20).
Impressed with his response, subridens, Leo gives him a four?pound bag of gold coins, and arranges to reward those who beat him and to punish those who took his bribe.
In a second ludus, emperor Leo distributes gold coins to his sleeping men(21). One guard, however, was awake and collected all the gold. He relates the event the next day to the emperor as a "dream," interpreting the numbers of bags of gold and sleeping men in the manner of a patristic exegete:
Cumque imperium tuum quasi repedare sotiosque hac in visione cernerem dormitare, continuo ceu laetus exurgens undecim dormientum aureorum numismatorum libras tuli meoque in rnarsupio, in quo una erat, apposui, quatinus ob transgressionem decalogi ne solum essent XI verum ob memoriam apostolorum mea una adhibita essent et ipsae XII(22).
Amused by the play with the number of Commandments and apostles, the emperor laughs, compliments the speaker on his powers, quotes from Lucian, and permits the soldier who remained awake to keep the coins.
Each incident offers a ludus involving a display of rhetorical competence, for which the performer is rewarded. In the first instance the jailer plays with material derived from Graeco?Roman, Stoic commonplaces, to be found in Claudian, and eventually, later in the middle ages, to be associated with Boethius, about the nature of Fortune and fate(23). In the second instance the material is derived from Biblical exegesis. Both incidents show Liudprand's ability to play with serious, even sacred material, perhaps in an attempt to follow Horace's prescription, ridendo dicere verum.
Such an attempt is implicit in the opening of the Antapodosis. At the same time that he claims to be delivering relief from serious studies, Liudprand, with the help of a Boethian allusion, attacks those who he imagines are about to attack him, classifying them among those who
have only a fragment of Philosophy's garment:
qui supercilio tumentes, lectionis desides ac
secundum eruditi viri sententiam Boetii
? 5 ?
philosophyae vestis particulam habentes totamque se habere putantes(24). He continues to broaden his claims for the greater scope and tone for the Antapodosis at the beginning of book VI. Modern times demand a tragedian rather than an historian(25), Liudprand insists, as he weaves into his statement a phrase from Psalm 22, to represent an agony simultaneously personal and timeless: Temporis instantis qualitas tragoedum me potius quam historiographum quaereret, nisi pararet Dominus in conspectu meo mensam adversus eos, qui tribulant me. Insisting that his predicament more properly calls for luQere Qua m scribere. Liudprand contrasts the condition of the inner and outer man, finally offering the conventional Stoic solution: contemplating the wheel of Fortune brings meditative relief, since one at the bottom may anticipate an upward rotation: Instantia enim si mutaberit, salutem, quae deest, adferet, infortunatam, quod adest, expellet(26). These meditative postures, however, are not undertaken in the service of purely philosophic speculation; for Liudprand the purpose of invoking history, tragedy, and Stoic disdain towards events in the phenomenal world is to aid in composing vengeful invective again the enemies of Otto(27).
He begins his attack on Willa and Berengar early in the Antapodosis, invoking from the rhetoric of classical satire the impossibility?topos, to represent the impiety of the objects of his scorn: nec lingua proferre nec calamus praevalet scribere. At the beginning of book 111(28), in the course of explaining the significance of the title he has chosen, Liudprand explicitly claims that the purpose of his work is retributio, with the specific, immediate objects of his wrath Berengar and his wife Willa, whom he describes as a secunda Iezabel(29), as well as a Lamia. Eventually the attack on Berengar seems to devolve into a series of anti?feminine routines against Willa, permitting Liudprand to participate in the relentless diatribe against the "Pornocracy" of the late tenth?century(30).
To aid in getting even, and to further the Ottonian
cause, Liudprand regularly injects tragic and Stoic postures
into his diatribe. One of the ways in which he tries to
expand the significance of his invective is by recalling the
two major Graeco?Roman civil wars: Thebes and Rome. The
opening of Statius' Thebiad would seem to be the passage
with which he is competing, when, in the course of
describing the contest between Rodulf and Berengar (July,
923), he composes verses on the internecine nature of the
battle, in which father fights son, grandfather fights
grandson:
Gnato pater ipse perhennem
Fert interitum, genitusque
? 6 ?
Perhimit patrem, dolor heu quis? Loetum parat ecce nepoti Abavus, sternendus ab ipso; Furiis pulsatus ab atris Fratrem fodit eminus alter(31).
To describe the challenge Otto's brother Henry, instigated by count Everard, offered, in 939 A.D., for the throne, Liudprand composes elegiacs, upbraiding Henry for going against God, and for provoking, in Lucan's phrase, fraternas acies(32).
The Antapodosis, then, oscillates between moments of tragic horror and moments of comic absurdity, between the sufferings of the outer man and the contemplative resignation of the inner man; the two extremes are held together by the vituperative purpose of the author, an angry, pious, comic, exiled ecclesiastic(33), who offered, in Becker's words, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism(34).
Among the results of these activities is a text that displays some of the symptoms of what Bakhtin has isolated and labeled as the techniques of debasement, and of grotesque realism. Bakhtin establishes a polarity between classicism and the tradition of grotesque realism; according to his scheme, classicism vitiates the awareness of the body; grotesque realism insists upon the body and the physical nature of reality by deliberately exaggerating and profaning whatever high culture has established as sacred: Debasement is the fundamental principle of grotesque realism; all that is sacred and exalted is rethought on the level of the material bodily stratum or else combined and mixed with its images(35). As Bakhtin conceives of it, the classical aesthetic is one of exclusion; the excluded elements are the ones that grotesque realism, as a kind of vox populi, reintroduces and insistently magnifies: The new bodily canon, in all its historic variations and different genres, presents an entirely finished, completed, strictly limited body, which is shown from the outside as something individual. That which protrudes, bulges, sprouts, or branches off (when a body transgresses its limits and a new one begins) is eliminated, hidden, or moderated. All orifices of the body are closed. The opaque surface and the body's "valleys" acquire an essential meaning as the border of a closed individuality that does not merge with other bodies and with the world. All attributes of the unfinished world are carefully removed, as well as all the signs of its inner life. The verbal norms of official and literary
language, determined by the canon, prohibit all that is linked with fecundation, pregnancy, childbirth. There is a sharp line of division between familiar speech and "correct" language(36). Grotesque realism, on the other hand, relies upon the principle of excess, violating "official" norms, overflowing boundaries(37). Bakhtin also includes banquet imagery(38), games and riddles as part of the parphenalia of grotesque realism: "the images of games were seen as a condensed formula of life and the historic process: fortune, misfortune, gain and loss, crowning and uncrowning."(39)
Misleadingly, Bakhtin insists on folk culture as the source of the strategies of debasement and grotesque realism, and his consequent inability to find these strategies in medieval literature, except in the obscure Cena Cypriani, is a sign of the limited attention he chose to pay to medieval literature. In fact, the strategies of debasement and grotesque realism can be found throughout the middle ages and Liudprand's texts offer particularly rich examples.
Banquet imagery, for example, occurs in the the opening of book VI, quoted above, where, in the process of determining the genre to which his history properly belongs, Liudprand expresses the hope that the lord may prepare a table for him in the presence of his enemies: Temporis instantis qualitas tragoedum me potius quam historiographum quaereret, nisi pararet Dominus in conspectu meo mensam adversus eos, qui tribulant me. The motif of feeding ?? here a reference to a sacred relationship ?becomes a major topic for debasement both in the Leqatio and in the Antapodosis(40).
In the Legatio, Liudprand constantly denounces the behavior of his hosts at table. He finds their food vile, their manners terrible, and their failure to provide him with tablecloths intolerable(41). His complaints about feeding habits are not gastronomical in the modern sense, but are attacks, both in the Lectatio and in the Antapodosis, against the abuse of the central, civilizing ritual, both secular and sacred, that unites human beings. In addition, in the Legatio, Liudprand's attacks on the meals prepared for him as the legate of Otto are designed to show Nicephorus' ill?will towards the Western Emperor(42).
In the Antapodosis, the function of "banquet imagery" is more complex. The earliest occurence of profanation of feeding results in Wido losing France to Odo. When the steward Wido sent ahead of him to prepare a banquet, more reqio, instead suggests to the bishop of Metz that he
? 8 ?
economize on the meal ?? in exchange for the gift of a horse ?the outraged bishop declares: Non decet...talem super nos regnare regem, qui decem dragmis vile sibi obsonium praparat(43).
Liudprand's bêtes noires, the Hungarians, drink their defeated enemies' blood(44), and attack Christians in the midst of a meal, in a scene whose intensity is magnified by the specific image of transfixed throats: ut cibo recrearentur, descenderant; quos tanta Hungarii celeritate confoderant, ut in gula cibum transfigerent aliis(45).
When Marozia's son Alberic addresses the Romans, he attacks the Burgundians in typically medieval fashion, by providing a disparaging etymology for their name(46). He claims that they are gurguliones, either because of their guttural speech, or because of their inordinate indulgence of their gula.
Hatto betrays Adalbert by tricking him with an invitation to dinner(47), and when Flambert plots against Berengar I in Verona, the king enacts a Last Supper with him. After telling him that he has heard of Flambert's plot, the king offers him a pledge of peace:
His expletis aureum non parvi ponderis poculum rex ei porrexit atque subiunxit: "Amoris salutisque mei causa, quod continetur, bibito, quod continet, habeto." Vere quippe et absque ambiguitate post potum introivit in illum Sathanas, quemadmodum et de Iuda proditore domini nostri Iesu Christi scriptum est. "Quia post bucellam tunc introivit in illum Sathanas."(48)
At this point, to emphasize the violation of the sacred, Liudprand composes a poem on the event, borrowing the verse?form Prudentius had used to celebrate the dawn in Cathemerinon 1(49), to provide a resonantly pious death: A tergo hunc ferit impius Romphaea; cadit heu pius Felicemque suum Deo Commendat pie spiritum(50)! In effect, then, the sign of sacred community, the meal, proves ineffective.
Even more graphic, more elaborately ludic debasement occurs when Liudprand turns to the body and images of pregnancy, fecundation, and childbirth. Women receive most of the attention in this area, as Liudprand portrays a world in which sexuality and politics are inextricably, destructively entwined. Although Willa is the declared central focus of his anti?feminism, Ermengard, Marozia, Theodora, Berta and Willa's mother Willa also receive enough detailed attention to sustain the charge that Liudprand was
? 9 ?
a committed misogynist. Since Berta and Willa are sisters, and Ermengard is Bertha's daughter, Liudprand manages to magnify his vengeance by distributing his Ottonian bile over several generations.
The first of the abhorrent women to appear in the Antapodosis is Wido's wife, who ministers a sleeping potion to her husband's rival Arnulf, establishing the figure of woman as greedy and conniving(51). When she offers the drink, vipperina callidate, to Arnulf, Liudprand breaks in
to invoke Vergil ( Aeneid III. 56?57) on the power of gold, Auri sacra fames. Significantly, however, Liudprand speculates that Arnulf received what he had earned by his neglect of God, and particularly by permitting churches to be turned into playgrounds, carnivals, and houses of
prostitution:
In his namque simbolam faciebant, gestus turpis,
cantus ludicres, debachationes. Sed et mulieres
eodem publice, pro nefas, prostituebantur(52).
In Liudprand's mind, then, political and sexual disorder generate each other.
Berta, daughter of Lothair II and Waldrada, and, through her first husband Theutbald, mother of Hugh (whose sexual problems also lead to political disasters), is the next sexual powerhouse to appear in the Antapodosis. Having captured her husband Adalbert, Lambert speaks ironically of Berta's predictive powers, and her Circe?like ability to turn men into beasts(53). After her husband's death, Liudprand complains, she exercises as much authority as her son Wido, the rightful inheritor. Her weapons include cleverness, an appeal to greed, and sexual competence; she gets her way, cum calliditate, muneribus, tum hymenaei exercitio dulcis(54) Her daughter Ermengard is described as equally talented in the area of sexual performance, Afroditi dulcedine coaecrualem. According to Liudprand, Ermengard carried on carnal commerce with everyone, noble and commoner(55). When she convinces Rodulf to desert his men, Liudprand compares him to Holofernes, decapitated (i.e., "uncrowned") by a woman(56).
Theodora, scortum impudens, seduces the man who will become John X, arranging his election to the Papacy in 914, because, according to Liudprand, she found the distance from Rome to Ravenna an intolerable impediment to her lust(57). Her daughters, Theodora and Marozia, Liudprand assures us, were equally venereal(58). In addition, Marozia and her husband Wido are instrumental in bringing about the death of John X, first killing Peter, John's brother, before the Pope's very eyes. Then they imprison the Pope, who dies in 928, perhaps smothered with a pillow(59)
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In effect, the next demonstration of Marozia's powers
occurs when Hugh, count of Arles and Provence (and son of
the venereal Berta), arrives in Italy. Liudprand had warned
his readers, during an encomium of Hugh, that the count was
sexually vulnerable: ui etsi tot virtutibus clarebat,
mulierum tamen illecebris eas fedabat(60). The major
demonstration of this weakness occurs when, at the death of
her husband Wido, Marozia offers herself and Rome to Hugh,
in a sexual?political transaction that prompts Liudprand to
compose fifteen hexameters attacking Marozia's proposal.
First, he asserts, the match is incestuous:
Quid Veneris facibus compulsa Marozia saevis?
Coniugis ecce tui spectas to suavia fratris,
Nubere germanis satagens Herodia duobus,
Immemor en videris praecepti caeca Johannis,
Qui fratri vetuit fratris violare maritam(61).
Associating Marozia with Herodias of course makes Hugh a
candidate for decapitation ("uncrowning," again), and
recalls the earlier equating of Rodolf's uxoriousness with
Holofernes' weakness. After imagining Marozia defending her
behavior with a misogynistic line from Juvenal VI.300,
Liudprand portrays Hugh coming to Rome at Marozia's bidding,
like an ox being led to an ironically sacred slaughter:
Respondes, scio, tu: Nichil hoc Venus ebria curat'.
Advenit optatus ceu bos tibi ductus ad aram
Rex Hugo, Romanam potius commotus ob urbem.
Hugh comes to Rome and shares her bed, but runs into difficulty when he slaps her stepson Alberic, initiating a sequence that drives him ignominiously from Rome, leaving Marozia behind(62).
In the next book, Hugh's sexual misadventures continue when he marries Rodulf's widow queen Bertha, but soon spurns her for his concubines, among whom three are particular favorites: Pezola, vilissimorum servorum sanguine cretam, who produces Boso, to become bishop of Piacenza; Roza, daughter of the beheaded Walpert; Stephania, who produces Tedbald, to become archdeacon of Milan. According to Liudprand, their true pedigree is unknown, since their mothers were not faithful to Hugh. Therefore, sexual license not only wreaks havoc with the secular state, but it contaminates the church(63)
One of the most notable features of book IV is the intensification of the technique of debasement, possibly because. as Liudprand claims, at this point, he is turning from what he has heard reliable men tell, to what he has himself witnessed. The "lower bodily stratum" becomes more prominent, as both male and female genitalia take on comic, as well as abhorrent functions.
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The first example of this intensification offers, in what Liudprand calls a ludibrium, a parody of sexual politics. A woman saves her husband's genitalia by an excercise of her rhetorical powers(64), demonstrating, in the process, the Catonian assertion that foolishness may be a disguise for wisdom: stultitiam simulare loco prudentia summa est(65).
The anecdote takes place shortly after Tedbald (the son
of Hugh and Stephania, and the eventual archdeacon of Milan)
captures some Greeks besieging Benevento. As he proceeds to
have them castrated, one of their wives puts on a highly
theatrical performance. First she appears before Tedbald's
tent, howling with grief, her face bleeding, torn by her own
nails. When Tedbald comes out and asks her what is wrong,
she replies that he is making war not on men, but on women.
Defending himself, Tedbald claims that no one since the days
of the Amazons has made war on women, but she argues that
castration is an attack on women, depriving them of central
needs:
nostri refocilatio corporis et, quod omnium
potissimum est, nasciturae spes extat prolis(66).
Refocilatio, of course, was the function Liudprand had
promised his own work would perform. Furthermore, she points
out that she offered no resistance when Tedbald took her
sheep and cattle, because that loss was less significant
than the one now impending. She ends her performance with
artful triplets, while reworking Vergil to her purposes:
"tam crudelem tamque inrecuperabilem modis omnibus
horreo, fugio, nolo. Sancti Dei omnes talem a me
avertite pestem!"(67)
In response to her performance, all those present laugh,
and Tedbald gives her husband back to her, intearum. When
she has left, he sends someone after her to ask what part of
her husband he may take if her husband cames out to fight
again. She replies: Oculi sunt illi, nares, manus et
ep des. The rest is hers(68).
After this comic routine, in which the lower bodily stratum takes precedence over the rest of the body, Liudprand offers an anecdote that involves the female lower bodily stratum. Willa, the wife of Boso, and mother of the Willa who is the declared central target of the Antapodosis, showed a supreme passion for gold: coniux sua Willa phylargiriae coepit amore flagare. Instead of enumerating her crimes, Liudprand offers one incident, turpissimus, to stand for all of them(69). When her husband's attempt to start a revolt in 936 against his brother, king Hugh, failed, queen Willa attempted to preserve some of their wealth by hiding a very long, broad, valuable, golden belt, in her private parts. On Hugh's orders, she is stripped; most of the soldiers are too decent to look closely, but one of them, inpudenter...foediterctue, directs a penetrating
? 12 ?
glance at the forbidden area, with results that Liudprand describes in precisely imagined detail: servorum quidam directo obtutu purpuream secus natium speroiden vidit dependere corrigiam... He proceeds to draw it out, and, ipso turpi facinore hilarior, congratulates himself for his obstetrical competence: 'Ha! ha! hé' ait, 'quam peritus obstetricandi miles! Ruffus puer est natus herae. He goes on to wish the same luck upon his own wife, finally provoking Willa to weep.
Her tears only provoke him to more pyrotechnical display; he mercilessly proceeds to compose nine hexameters on the event, demonstrating surprising metrical and rhetorical competence for his rank. Opening with a play on Vergil Ecloq_ue X.29, followed a few lines later by a reference to Ecl. IV.61, in the course of the poem he manages to forge playful links among one of the Furies, reproduction and greed, until one of his superiors takes him by the neck and upbraids him:
"Willa quid insanis aurum quod condere caecis Incipis in membris? pro non audita cupido! Allecto furiis gemmas in corpore condis. Matribus insolitum tales producere parus, Hinc tibi nulla decem tulerant fastidia menses. Alma parens, tales nobis haud desine foetus Edere, qui nati superent to aetate parentem!" Talia cunctanti collum percusserat unus Impiger ac verbis ipsum culparet amaris(70).
Pretending to disapprove of the servant's behavior, and of the poem, which clearly was composed by the bishop of Cremona himself(71), Liudprand represents himself as puzzled by the problem of determining whose behavior was worse: Utrum tamen, quae abscondit, an qui eo inquirere iussit, foedius egerit, michi quidem videtur amphibolum(72).
Cicero had been clear about how an orator might use comedy: Haec enim ridentur vel sola, vel maxime, quae notant et designant turpitudinem aliquam non turpiter.
For the chief, if not the only objects of laughter are those sayings which remark upon and point out something unseemly in no unseemly manner(73). By assigning the poem to a soldier, Liudprand fabricates a rhetorical situation that allows him simultaneously to obey and to violate Ciceronian precepts of comic decorum.
Both the story of the woman whose rhetorical competence saved her husband from castration, and the story of Willa's
? 13 ?
humiliation are parodic versions of sexual politics. Reducing sex, property, and greed, to the "lower bodily stratum," makes the forces that determine history graphically absurd.
When Liudprand takes on the topic of Willa, Berengar's
wife, one of the declared targets of the Antapodosis, he
bestows inordinate attention on male genitalia(74). In the
passage that Auerbach chose to examine, Berta's sister
Willa, wife of Berengar, carries on with a chaplain named
Dominic, to whom Liudprand applies fourteen consecutive
pejorative adjectives(75), in an attempt to produce a
grotesque scarcely distinguishable from a gargoyle:
Habuit ea presbiterulum capellanum, nomine
Dominicum, statura brevem, colore fuligineum,
rusticum, setigerum, indocilem, agrestem,
barbarum, durum, vilosum, cauditum, petulcum,
insanum, rebellem, iniquum(76)
Dominic tutors Willa's daughters, and receives what everyone
at court recognizes as unusually generous gifts from the
queen. His relationship with the queen is in danger of being
revealed one night when a dog discovers them in bed, barks,
and bites him(77). Willa temporarily saves her reputation
by claiming that Dominic was pursuing her maids. Eventually
the chaplain is castrated, and Berengar's passion for Willa
perversely increases:
Presbiterulus itaque, quia dominae asseculas
adhinnivit, virilibus amputatis dimittitur; domina
vero a Berengario magis diligitur.
Liudprand claims not to know exactly how she managed to
bring this condition about, although he offers, as one
alternative, the possibility that Willa, like Berta before
her, and, of course, Circe long before her, had supernatural
assistance:
Willa vero coepit aruspices maleficosque
inquirere, quo eorum carminibus iuvaretur. Utrum
autem horum carminibus an Bernegarii sit adiuta
mollicie, nescio; adeo mens eius est inclinata, ut
sponte maritali porrigeret ora capistro(78).
As the final debasement in the anecdote, Liudprand
focuses on Dominic's priapea arma, reducing Willa's passion
for her grotesque lover to a single, grotesque element:
Dixerunt autem, qui eum eunuchizaverunt, quod
merito illum domina amaret, quem priapea arma
portare arma constaret.
Although Rentschler suggest that the Priapic Dominic
represents an example of the influence of Byzantine
historical writing, and of calling things by their right
name(79), the passage clearly also demonstrates one of the
ways in which the techniques of grotesque realism serve the
purposes of the satirist.
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The major contamination, or debasement of the church, however, derives from the behavior of John XII. Crowned Holy Roman Emperor by John XII in 962, Otto proceeded to depose both the Pope and Berengar. Part of the defense of Otto's actions is represented by the debasement of Willa II in the fourth book of the Antapodosis. The rest of the task is done by passages in the Historia Ottonis Magni Imperatoris, where Liudprand offers an intense, detailed attack on the sexual appetites of Pope John XII, including his passion for the widow of Rainer, his passion for Stephana, his father's mistress, and his passion for women pilgrims. Liudprand also denounces the Pope's passion for gambling, his habit of calling on Venus, Jove, and other demons for assistance at dice, and his habit of mutilating his enemies.
Finally, to provide John with a death that might satisfy Ottonians, Liudprand arranges for him to be struck by the devil while in bed with another man's wife: quadam nocte extra Romam, dum se cum viri cuiusdam uxore oblectaret, in temporibus adeo a diabolo est percussus, ut infra dierum octo spacium eodem sit vulnere mortuus(80).
Clearly Liudprand's strength and central interests are
invested in his powers of vituperation; although he offers
the Antapodosis as a relaxation from intellectual efforts,
he devotes a significant amount of intellectual, imaginative
effort to his self?proclaimed "trifles." At the end of the
work he retreats into his initial posture of humility,
turning upon himself the technique of debasement. In the
final scene of the Antapodosis he describes the three?day
ceremony in which the Greek Emperor bestows gold coins upon
his vassals and court?officers. Towards the end of the
ceremony, the emperor asks Liudprand uid super hac re mihi
placeret, and envious, quick?witted Liudprand replies:
Placeret sane, si prodesset; sicut et aestuati
diviti Lazari visa requies placuisset, si
proveniret; cui quia non accidit, qui quaeso
placere potuit(81)?
The emperor is amused and embarassed, Subridens itague
imperator paululum pudore commotus, and presents Liudprand
with a cloak and a pound of gold coins. The last words of
Liudprand and of the Antapodosis are: Libentius accepi.
Thus Liudprand, by likening himself to Dives in hell
watching Lazarus in heaven, receives a material reward,
ironically reversing the values implicit in the Biblical
passage which, as Karl Leyser has pointed out, Liudprand
also commented on seriously, in a homily recently discovered
and printed by Bernard Bischoff(82). The final joke in the
Antapodosis, then, is played by Liudprand on himself.
Anticipating the Archpoet, Hugh Primas, and Walter of
Chatillon, he portrays himself as the victim of his owntechnique, as well as of his historical circumstances: an amusing beggar who debases biblical coin ?? the sacred text ?? for pay(83).
(1) For example, in a review of MICHAEL RENTSCHLER, Liudprand von Cremona (Frankfurt 1981), in: Speculum 58 (1983) 850?851, Martin ARBAGI, expresses the suspicion that S.J. Perlman learned some things from Liudprand.
(2) Cambridge Medieval History, (Cambridge 1911?1936) III 161.
(3) Eric AUERBACH, Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages (New York 1965), especially 152?54.
(4) AUERBACH 156.
(5) A version of the argument sometimes used to defend the rhetorical excesses of the Romantic poets; see Henri PEYRE, Literature and Sincerity (New Haven 1963) 134.
(6) Georg MISCH, Geschichte der Autobiographie (Frankfurt 1955) 2 2, 519?650; 521?27 are devoted to Liudprand. Earlier in the twentieth century, Max MANITIUS found Rather an unappealing human being, but an unusual writer, devoting twice the space to him that he gives Liudprand, at least partly because of Rather's greater production; see Geschichte der lateinischen Literature des Mittelalters, (Munich 1923 2) 166?175 and 34?52. Liudprand himself had only good to say about Rather (see Die Werke Liudprands von Cremona, ed. by Joseph BECKER, Hanover 1915 101).
(7) Migne PL CXXXVI 398.
(8) Ed. W.M. LINDSAY (Oxford 1911 ) VI viii 7. Isidore blames the Greeks for starting the genre: Quod malum a Graecis exortum est, quorum levitas instructa dicendi facultate et copia incredibili multas mendaciorum nebulas.
(9) Ivy COMPTON?BURNETT, The Last and the First (New York 1971) 80.
(10) BECKER 177.
(11) BECKER comments (177): "Liudprand gibt in den Grundzügen ein mit Leo Diac. übereinstimmendes Bild von Nikephors, aber er vergröbert absichtlich and sieht ins Lächerliche."
(12) Ed. J. P. CREED, De Mortibus Persecutorum (Oxford 1984) 14. CURTIUS (p. 182 n. 37) offers, among other models, Sidonius' description of Gnatho.
? 17 ?
(13) For the latest discussion of Liudprand's work as a propagandist for Otto, see Ernst KARPF, Herrscherlegitimation and Reichsbegriff in der ottonischen Geschichtsschreigung des 10. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart 1985) 5?47.
(14) BECKER 4.
(15) La Pharmacie de Platon, in: Tel Quel 32 (1968) 3?48, and Tel Quel 33 (1968) 18?59.
(16) See the opening of book IV.
(17) BECKER 56.
(18) RENTSCHLER 43, 46.
(19) See E. R. CURTIUS, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. TRASK, (New York 1963) 425?426; Joachim SUCHOMSKI, Delectatio and Utilitas (Bern, 1975) passim; Johan HUIZINGA, Homo Ludens (New York 1970) passim; Hugo RAHNER, Der spielende Mensch, in: Eranos?Jahrbuch 16 (1949) 29; R. Levine, "Wolfram von Eschenbach: Homo Ludens," Viator XIII (1982) 177?201; Max WEHRLI, Poeta Ludens, Zum Spielelement der mittelalterlichen Literatur, in: Variorum mundera florum (Sigmaringen 1985) 193?203. See also BECKER's remarks on Liudprand's temperament, xiv ff.
(20) BECKER 12
(21) BECKER 13.
(22) BECKER 14
. For a provocative discussion of the use of this body of material, contrasting Boethius and Augustine, see F.P. PICKERING, Augustinus oder Boethius (Berlin 1967) I. According to Pickering, a medieval writer had to determine whether his sympathies lay with a Boethian rejection of the possibility that events in the sublunary world had any permanent significance (in which case he could scarcely compose a line on events in his own time), or with the Augustinian affirmation that God's will is worked out in human history. Some writers did both. KARPF (9 n. 24) thinks that Pickering's distinction is not particularly relevant to a reading of Liudprand.
(24) Becker 4.
? 18 ?
(25) For resemblances between the genres in Roman literature, see W.S. ANDERSON, Essays in Roman Satire (Princeton 1982) xi, and Sir Ronald SYME, Roman Papers II (Oxford 1984) 1117.
(26) BECKER 152.
(27) For connections between Liudprand's idea of revenge and what Pickering calls an Augustinian vision of history, see Jon M. SUTHERLAND, The Idea of Revenge, in: Speculum 50 (1975) 391?410. Sutherland emphasizes the degree to which Liudprand puts theological arguments to personal use (408?409). See also Hans JESSEN, Die Wirkung der augustinischen Geschichtsphilosophie auf den Weltanschauungen and Geschichtsschreibungen Liudprands von Cremona (diss. Greifeld 1921).
(28) BECKER 73 ?74
(29) For Merovingian uses of the figure of Jezabel for
political invective, see Janet L. NELSON, Queens as
Jezabels: The Career of Brundhild and Balthild in
Merovingian History, in: Medieval Women, ed. Derek
Baker (Oxford, 1978) 31?77.
(30) See Heinrich FICHTENAU, Lebensordnungen des 10. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart 1984) I 146 ff.; see also Bernard HAMILTON, "The House of Theophylact and the promotion of the religious life among women in tenth century Rome," in: Monastic Reform, Catharism and the Crusades, (London 1979) IV.
(31) BECKER 66?67.
(32) BECKER 115.
(33) Liudprand began composing the Antapodosis in 958 at Frankfurt, at the court of Otto the Great. who gave him, in return for his mission to Constantinople, the bishopric of Cremona.
(34) BECKER xv.
(35) Mikhail BAKHTIN, Rabelais and his World (Cambridge 1968) 370. For a recent application of some of Bakhtin's distinctions, see the introduction to Jill MANN's edition and translation of Ysengrimus (Leiden 1987) 29?44.
(36) BAKHTIN 370.
? 19 ?
(37) In a paper delivered May 7, 1988 at the twenty?third Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, George Panayioutou demonstrated Liudprand's love of rhetorical excess. Particularly striking symptoms include his penchant for abundantia dicendi, particularly ornamental doublets, and variatio dicendi.
(38) Effectively what CURTIUS means by "kitchen humor," 431?435.
(39) BAKHTIN 235.
(40) For Graeco?Roman attitudes towards feasting, see J. MARTIN, Symposion (Paderborn 1931).
(41) See RENTSCHLER 36?40. See BECKER 196, for Liudprand's contrast of those who eat garlic, onions, and leeks with those who are carnivores.
(42) They also seem to reflect a Roman satirical topos involving the client who is humiliated at the patron's dinner?table. See Juvenal V, Martial 3.60, 6.11, and R. SHERO, Classical Philology 18 (1923) 126?43.
(43) BECKER 18.
(44) BECKER 69.
(45) BECKER 78.
(46) BECKER 98.
(47) BECKER 40?41.
(48) BECKER 68?69. The allusion is to John 13.27.
(49) Henk VYNCKIER's suggestion that Liudprand is following the pattern for martyrs in the Legatio would seem to support the suggestion that Liudprand characteristically had sacred models in mind; see Liudprandi Passio, in: Medieval Perspectives I (1986) 54?64.
(50) BECKER 69
(51) BECKER 24?25.
(52) BECKER 25.
(53) BECKER 29.
(54) BECKER 62?63.
(55) BECKER 77.
? 20 ?
(56) BECKER 76.
(57) BECKER 60.
(58) BECKER 58
(59) BECKER 95?96.
(60) BECKER 82
(61) BECKER 96
(62) Liudprand supresses the rest of her story, perhaps because, according to the Subiaco Register, dated 15 March 952, she became ancilla Dei (HAMILTON IV 209).
(63) BECKER 111?112.
(64) Ludibrium autem, immo sapientiam, quam quaedam tunc mulier gessit, hic inseramus (BECKER 108).
(65) BECKER 108; taken from Cato, Disticha 11.18.
(66) BECKER 109.
(67) Aeneid 111.620: di talem terris avertite pestem.
(68) By the thirteenth century, at least in England, the woman's contention had some legal support. The Placita Corone, a set of legal precedents compiled 1274?75 in England, offers the following modification of punishment for a rapist:
Et si il seit homme espous ke tel trespas avera fet et sa femme veigne a hure et a tens, ce est a saver avant ke jugement li seit done, ele porra chalanger les coilles son seignur com les siens et en tel manire, solum dreite ley, ne ert il fors avegle pur le trespas ed. J.M. KAYE, Placita Corone, Selden Society, Supplementary Series (London 1966) 9
(69) BECKER 110.
(70) BECKER 111.
(71) Liudprand's habit of breaking into his text to comment on the action is, of course, characteristic of many medieval historians; however it also resembles the technique of the sortie, as Paul ZUMTHOR describes its twelfth century use, in Roman et gothique: deux aspects de la poésie médiévale, in: Studi in onore di Italo Siciliano (Florence 1966) 2 1233.
(72) BECKER 111.
? 21 ?
(73) Cicero: De Oratore, E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham, Cambridge, 1967, v. I, pp. 372?73.
(74) In an earlier passage, the genitalia seem pathetic, not grotesque: when Giselbert, count of Bergamo is brought before the king, his genitals visible (BECKER 65?66). Liudprand uses lines from Terence's Eunuch 111.1.42, to heighten the comedy: in genitalium ostensione membrorum risu omnes emoririer. The king releases him on his own recognizance, in effect, with most impractical generosity.
(75) Some of which he seems to have borrowed, as BECKER points out (150, n. 3), from the description of Pan by an anonymous author, to be found in Poetae latinae minores, ed. BAEHRENS (Leipzig 1879?1886) 111.170.
(76) BECKER 150.
(77) The scene may be regarded as an exercise in the rhetorical topic of "the adulterer unmasked," as described by C.S. BALDWIN in Medieval Rhetoric and Poetics (Gloucester 1959) 11.
(78) BECKER 151; Sponte...capistro is borrowed from Juvenal VI.43.
(79) RENTSCHLER 66?67.
(80) BECKER 173.
(81) BECKER 158.
(82) Karl LEYSER, Liudprand of Cremona, Preacher and Homilist, in The Bible in the Medieval World (Oxford 1985) 43?60.
(83) Lucilius and Horace, of course, also composed comic routines at their own expense. MISCH (577) suggests that Rather's attack on himself in the Phrenesis, was in this Roman tradition.
22
(73) Cicero: De Oratore, E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham, Cambridge, 1967, v. I, pp. 372?73.
(74) In an earlier passage, the genitalia seem pathetic, not grotesque: when Giselbert, count of Bergamo is brought before the king, his genitals visible (BECKER 65?66). Liudprand uses lines from Terence's Eunuch 111.1.42, to heighten the comedy: in genitalium ostensione membrorum risu omnes emoririer. The king releases him on his own recognizance, in effect, with most impractical generosity.
(75) Some of which he seems to have borrowed, as BECKER points out (150, n. 3), from the description of Pan by an anonymous author, to be found in Poetae latinae minores, ed. BAEHRENS (Leipzig 1879?1886) 111.170.
(76) BECKER 150.
(77) The scene may be regarded as an exercise in the rhetorical topic of "the adulterer unmasked," as described by C.S. BALDWIN in Medieval Rhetoric and Poetics (Gloucester 1959) 11.
(78) BECKER 151; Sponte...capistro is borrowed from Juvenal VI.43.
(79) RENTSCHLER 66?67.
(80) BECKER 173.
(81) BECKER 158.
(82) Karl LEYSER, Liudprand of Cremona, Preacher and Homilist, in The Bible in the Medieval World (Oxford 1985) 43?60.
(83) Lucilius and Horace, of course, also composed comic routines at their own expense. MISCH (577) suggests that Rather's attack on himself in the Phrenesis, was in this Roman tradition.
22
(73) Cicero: De Oratore, E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham, Cambridge, 1967, v. I, pp. 372?73.
(74) In an earlier passage, the genitalia seem pathetic, not grotesque: when Giselbert, count of Bergamo is brought before the king, his genitals visible (BECKER 65?66). Liudprand uses lines from Terence's Eunuch 111.1.42, to heighten the comedy: in genitalium ostensione membrorum risu omnes emoririer. The king releases him on his own recognizance, in effect, with most impractical generosity.
(75) Some of which he seems to have borrowed, as BECKER points out (150, n. 3), from the description of Pan by an anonymous author, to be found in Poetae latinae minores, ed. BAEHRENS (Leipzig 1879?1886) 111.170.
(76) BECKER 150.
(77) The scene may be regarded as an exercise in the rhetorical topic of "the adulterer unmasked," as described by C.S. BALDWIN in Medieval Rhetoric and Poetics (Gloucester 1959) 11.
(78) BECKER 151; Sponte...capistro is borrowed from Juvenal VI.43.
(79) RENTSCHLER 66?67.
(80) BECKER 173.
(81) BECKER 158.
(82) Karl LEYSER, Liudprand of Cremona, Preacher and Homilist, in The Bible in the Medieval World (Oxford 1985) 43?60.
(83) Lucilius and Horace, of course, also composed comic routines at their own expense. MISCH (577) suggests that Rather's attack on himself in the Phrenesis, was in this Roman tradition.
22
Apparently it's too late... Check out this news flash.
Note the picture. The asteroid in the story is a couple km wide, the one depicted was hundreds of km (big enough to discorporate this seemingly solid little planet of ours for a while). Also note that it is hitting right in the U.S. I think that the artist has some issues with Uncle Sam...
In short, definitely unwarranted.
BlackGriffen
Smithers! Release the flying monkeys!
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
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 pedophilia.
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:
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 practise. 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
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
Well, I don't know about terraforming Mars, but I do know that homosexual Linux Advocates have been probing Uranus for years.
*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.
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!
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.
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 sincerely hope you're Natalie Portman.
What the fuck?
Well bugger me!
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.
- posted by poopbot: providing truth in a deceitful world
VhAq5bWdga Post #612
From http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2002nt7.html
Energy - 1.1e+06 MT
1,100,000 Megatons.
1,100 Gigaton
1.1 Teraton
HOLY !#@$%
I guess sending all our nuclear weapons towards this thing would be a good way to disarm countries like Russia, India, and Pakistan. After all, we do want them to reduce their supplies, don't we? I guess the government does.
How about this? Coordinated Worldwide Interplanetary Nuclear Strike Day! Circa 3 days before predicted impact.
We're Doomed
He has experience with this sorta thing and if the Die Hard movies and Unbreakable have tough us one thing...it's that you can't kill the SOB no matter what you try. I'll bet in Aramageddon II he comes back as a ghost to help destroy another planet killer.
Ruger
Liama's attack People!!! I won't be able to sleep tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jump out a window with your alternate OS of choice, bitch.
1. mine it for data;
...and, well, you get the point. If it's coming close enough, let's turn it in to something useful.
2. use it as a platform for whatever;
3. sell pieces of it to whomever;
4. mine it for whatever minerals it may carry;
5.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Introduction
A fairy gives lectures on morality to the feline anomaly. Furthermore, another photon near an abstraction takes a coffee break, and a mortician buries a blithe spirit. The wedding dress secretly admires a college-educated ball bearing. If the freight train figures out a fire hydrant near a pit viper, then some mating ritual beyond another cowboy reads a magazine. Any squid can find lice on a freight train, but it takes a real recliner to ostensibly plan an escape from another pit viper defined by a prime minister a cough syrup toward a graduated cylinder.
Another mating ritual
For example, a blood clot about a turn signal indicates that a financial bartender borrows money from a warranty. When a demon is imaginative, a paper napkin secretly admires an often snooty graduated cylinder. If the grain of sand learns a hard lesson from the short order cook behind some graduated cylinder, then another blithe spirit flies into a rage. Any pig pen can lazily require assistance from a burly plaintiff, but it takes a real fighter pilot to caricature the steam engine over a satellite. Another eagerly temporal minivan slyly buries the obsequious squid, or a briar patch usually gives lectures on morality to a cyprus mulch.
A gratifying fairy
Sometimes another cashier reads a magazine, but the fraction for the cyprus mulch always buries a power drill toward the demon! The light bulb befriends a satellite of an apartment building. A lazily Alaskan roller coaster sanitizes another mitochondrial traffic light, or some burglar eats a hesitantly smelly plaintiff. For example, a seldom righteous traffic light indicates that an ocean knows some chestnut inside the tabloid. If the earring somewhat finds subtle faults with a pine cone, then the wheelbarrow hibernates.
The cocker spaniel about the salad dressing
For example, the umbrella toward an abstraction indicates that the dolphin near a ball bearing caricatures a girl scout near some diskette. A cocker spaniel for the judge reads a magazine, and a pine cone finds subtle faults with a rattlesnake. Furthermore, the hairy movie theater returns home, and a grizzly bear near a paycheck is a big fan of a childlike burglar. For example, a canyon living with a graduated cylinder indicates that the industrial complex buries a jersey cow.
Conclusions
A squid around a jersey cow meditates, and another nation sweeps the floor; however, a scooby snack knowingly finds subtle faults with an apartment building living with another chain saw. When a hockey player around a paycheck is smelly, a minivan has a change of heart about an oil filter about an asteroid. The bartender around a polygon is barely soggy. Indeed, another rattlesnake befriends a warranty. Indeed, the carpet tack for an abstraction usually caricatures an elusive h
- posted by poopbot: for all your crapflooding needs
9MkbEMlZ9l Post #613
We all knew that NT4 and NT5 were bad, but when Microsoft releases NT7 in 2019 the world will be plunged into chaos!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Introduction
The cheese wheel inexorably avoids contact with the paycheck. The steam engine goes deep sea fishing with an often outer ski lodge. When the cyprus mulch over a vacuum cleaner hides, a ball bearing gets stinking drunk.
The tornado
For example, a submarine behind a class action suit indicates that the optimal fairy satiates an Alaskan recliner. When a mitochondrial bottle of beer is thoroughly dirt-encrusted, a most difficult blood clot underhandedly writes a love letter to a defendant. An earring pees on the cashier over some globule, but the pathetic crane sells another vacuum cleaner behind a scythe to a false wheelbarrow. If a chess board defined by a grain of sand makes love to a crispy cyprus mulch, then a particle accelerator flies into a rage.
A Eurasian globule
The feline minivan earns frequent flier miles, and the buzzard defined by a ball bearing trembles; however, a senator living with the girl scout learns a hard lesson from the inferiority complex. Any chain saw can try to seduce the particle accelerator, but it takes a real salad dressing to play pinochle with the inexorably precise paycheck. Furthermore, another seldom load bearing defendant flies into a rage, and a paycheck around a light bulb seeks a roller coaster around another bartender. If a crank case makes love to the diskette, then the squid toward a mortician meditates. Now and then, an insurance agent thoroughly avoids contact with a pompous turkey.
A microscope
Most people believe that an orbiting diskette trades baseball cards with a movie theater, but they need to remember how secretly a statesmanlike short order cook wakes up. A paternal roller coaster is usually financial. When the accurately varigated hole puncher takes a coffee break, a slyly smelly garbage can earns frequent flier miles. For example, the phony cheese wheel indicates that the tornado near a fruit cake hesitantly gives lectures on morality to a salad dressing defined by the corporation. The carpet tack near a cargo bay, some parking lot toward a warranty, and a stovepipe beyond a freight train are what made America great!
Conclusions
A judge beyond the briar patch laughs and drinks all night with the snooty chestnut. A raspy burglar conquers a bowling ball. For example, another plaintiff toward a bartender indicates that the ski lodge behind a fairy finds lice on a burglar. If some rattlesnake toward a cheese wheel can be kind to a blood clot, then the elusive movie theater self-flagellates. When a photon related to a turkey is most difficult, a self-loathing bottle of beer falls in love with a pickup truck living with the paycheck.
- posted by poopbot: the bot formerly known as pwpbot
B0agXPUzu7 Post #614
Damn, should have gone with that 30 year mortgage during the refinancing instead of the 15.
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
But I don't think I'm going to lose sleep over it.
- Fzz
Most of you only have 16 years to lose your virginity!
Heh teasin =)
No problem. In 19 years a H-bomb could change the asteroid's trajectory enough, I think. There is the added danger that it might go off on the way to the target. Hopefully the warhead wouldn't arm itself before it get's far enough away from the earth. But, ya'll know with everything connetected to the INTERNET, including pace makers and the power grid that it could get hacked.
--You can't win if you don't play but you can loose.--EBM
Bush declares war on A Rock!
sulli
RTFJ.
Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.
"I've heard WinXP removed the cmd/command prompt."
No, Microsoft didn't remove the CMD.EXE or COMMAND.COM prompt from Windows XP. But Windows XP has reduced functionality, in many ways, not just in the command line. The command line is a big embarrassment because of its limited capabilities, but at least in Win 95 it worked. With every version since then it has worked less well. (There are two kinds of command prompt, and, according to Microsoft employees, the differences between them are not documented.)
The command line prompt sometimes begins to display short file names. Microsoft employees say that Microsoft has no fix, although someone not connected with Microsoft did make a work-around.
Cutting and pasting into a command line program often puts successive extra spaces before each line. Microsoft employees say that there is no plan to fix this.
The fast paste mode that is in Windows 98 is gone in Windows XP. Microsoft employees say there is no plan to fix this.
When using the command line interface, Windows XP doesn't always update the time. After several hours, the time reported to command line programs can be several hours in error.
There is a DOS program called START.EXE that can be used to start other programs. But it does operate the same way as in other versions of Windows. It starts a program, but cannot be made to return control to the command line program as previous versions did. There is no technical reason for this; it is just one of the shortcomings that are allowed to exist.
People often say that DOS has gone away. But Microsoft still calls the command line interface DOS, and in Windows XP Microsoft has added new programs for configuring the OS that work only under DOS.
Sometimes when you press a key while using Windows XP, it is seconds until there is any response. Apparently there is something wrong with the CPU scheduler in XP, because there are a lot of complaints about this in the forums and MS people have said that they are working on it. On one particular fresh installation of XP, on an Intel motherboard with either a Matrox G550 or an ATI Radeon video adapter, it requires 18 seconds to display a directory listing of 94 items. This is apparently related to a bug in the video software, not the adapter drivers.
Something is wrong with the Alt-Tab display of running programs under Windows XP. If there are a lot of programs, not all of them are displayed. The order jumps around in a seemingly random way.
Although articles often say negative things about Microsoft, I've never seen an article that fully documents how bad the situation really is. Microsoft's management is so bad that the company has become self-destructive. For example, Windows XP is spyware. Here is a list of ways Windows XP connects to Microsoft's servers:
- Application Layer Gateway Service (Requires server rights.)
- Fax Service
- File Signature Verification
- Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (Requires server rights.)
- Microsoft Application Error Reporting
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
- Microsoft Direct Play Voice Test
- Microsoft Help and Support Center
- Microsoft Help Center Hosting Server (Wants server rights.)
- Microsoft Management Console
- Microsoft Media Player (tells Microsoft the music you like)
- Microsoft Network Availability Test
- Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service
- MS DTC Console program
- Run DLL as an app
- Services and Controller app
- Time Service, sets the time on your computer from Microsoft's computer.
- Microsoft Office keeps a number in each file you create that identifies
your computer. Microsoft has never said why.
- Microsoft mouse software has reduced functionality until you let it connect
to Microsoft computers.
These are just the ones I know. There may be others.So, if you use Windows XP, your computer is dependent on Microsoft computers. That's bad, not only because you lose control over your possession, but because Microsoft produces buggy software and doesn't patch bugs quickly. For example, as of July 7, 2002, there are 18 unpatched security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a terrible record for a company that has $40 billion in the bank. Obviously, with that kind of money, Microsoft could fix the bugs if it wanted to fix them. Since the bugs are very public and Microsoft has the money, it seems reasonable to suppose that top management at Microsoft has deliberately decided that the bugs should remain, at least for now.
It seems possible that there is a connection between all the bugs and the U.S. government's friendly treatment of Microsoft's law-breaking. The U.S. government's CIA and FBI and NSA departments spy on the entire world, and unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft software help spies.
Windows XP, and all current Windows operating systems, have a file called the registry in which configuration information is written. If this one (large, often fragmented) file becomes corrupted, the only way of recovering may be to re-format the hard drive, re-install the operating system, and then re-install and re-configure all the applications. The registry file is a single, very vulnerable, point of failure. Microsoft apparently designed it this way to provide copy protection. Since most entries in the registry are poorly documented or not documented, the registry effectively prevents control by the user.
Note that Microsoft does not support making functional complete backups under Windows XP. Look at Microsoft's policy about this: Q314828 Microsoft Policy on Disk Duplication of Windows XP Installation. Only those who work with Microsoft software will understand the true meaning of Microsoft's policy. Since almost all programs use the registry operating system file, if you cannot make a functional copy of the operating system you cannot make a functional copy of all your application installations and configurations. There are other software companies that try to fix this, but they don't work well, and Microsoft can, of course, break their implementations, as they have often done with other kinds of competitors.
Because the configuration information for the motherboard and the configuration information for the are mixed together in the registry file, the registry tends to prevent you from moving a hard drive to a computer with a different motherboard. That's another implication of the above Microsoft policy. So, if you have a motherboard failure, and a good complete backup, you may not be able to recover unless you have a spare computer with the same motherboard.
Note that Windows XP Professional can support only ten simultaneous incoming network connections. If you want more than that, you must use Windows 2000 server, and pay much, much more. (There is no Windows XP server yet.) Many businesses have very light network traffic; they just move files from staff member to staff member; they really don't need a dedicated server computer. The staff computers could easily handle the load except for this artificial limitation.
Apparently because the Windows XP GUI comes from Windows 98, Windows XP has the same problem with desktop icons that Windows 98 has. The icons sometimes flicker. Sometimes they move themselves around, particularly after the user switches monitor resolutions. Also, sometimes the taskbar settings un-configure themselves, as they do in Windows 98.
Only technically knowledgeable people know how to avoid signing up for a Microsoft Passport account during initial use of Windows XP. The name Passport gives an indication of Microsoft's thinking. A passport is a document issued by a sovereign nation. Without it, the nation's citizens cannot travel, and, if they leave, won't be allowed back in their own country. In Microsoft's corporate thinking, the company seems to be moving in the direction of believing that they own the user's computer. Most people are both honest and intimidated. Apparently about 95% do whatever they are asked on the screen. They give their personal information to Microsoft. They don't realize that, if they feel forced to get a Passport account, they should enter almost completely fictitious information, since the real question is not "What is your name and address", but "Can we invade your privacy". The honest answer to this is "No, you cannot invade my privacy", and the only effective way to communicate that is to give completely fictitious information. Since it is the educated people who have computers, Microsoft is building a database of the personal lives of educated people. Microsoft knows when they connect and from what IP address (which tends to show the area), what kind of help they ask, and information about what they are doing with their computers, including what music they like. It is not known, and there is no way to know, how much Microsoft or other organizations make use of this information, or their plans for future use.
Not only has Windows XP definitely gone further in the direction of allowing the user less control over his or her own machine, but with Palladium, Microsoft apparently intends to finish the job: Microsoft will have ultimate control over the user's computer and therefore all his or her data. Even now, under Windows XP, a recent security patch requires that the user agree to a contract that gives Microsoft administrator privileges over the user's computer. The contract says that if a user wants to patch his or her system against a bug which would allow an attack over the Internet, he or she must give Microsoft legal control over the computer. See this article also: Microsoft's Digital Rights Management-- A Little Deeper. You may need to be a lawyer to take apart the crucial sentence. "These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and [my emphasis] use other software on your computer" legally includes this meaning: "These updates may disable your ability to use other software on your computer." Note that the term "security related updates" is meaningless to the user because the updates have no relation to user security. So, the sentence effectively means that Microsoft can control the user's computer without notice and whenever it wants. That kind of sentence is known in psychology as "testing the limits". If there is no strong public complaint about this, expect to see more and stronger language like this.
This Register article shows the direction Microsoft is going: MS Palladium protects IT vendors, not you. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Microsoft is well down that road. See this ZDNet article, also: MS: Why we can't trust your 'trustworthy' OS.
Microsoft's self-destructiveness does not mean that the user should be self-destructive. There is no need to apologize for using Microsoft software. The correct solution to abuse is persuading the abuser to stop being abusive. Once I posted to a Slashdot story a link to an article on a web site of mine. By far the majority of visitors from the Slashdot story used Microsoft operating systems. Rather than feel embarrassed because Microsoft is abusive, action needs to be taken to prevent the abuse. If you are against Microsoft abuse, you are not against Microsoft; you are more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates.
These Microsoft policies mean that any government which wants to be independent of the United States government, and any government which represents itself as controlled by the people, cannot use Microsoft operating systems, or other Microsoft proprietary systems.
- posted by poopbot: for the crapflooder in all of us
iDAE0VDMKs Post #615
We may never see Mozilla 2.0. :(
"Derp de derp."
Yes, there is. And no, we aren't telling you.
If the collision course was indeed confirmed to intersect Earth at the right time, and it would be likely that entire civilizations could be wiped out, the best way to "save humanity" would be to start OCRing every text describing our history, and backing up copies across all corners of the globe. If you think about it, what else is more worth saving? What else more strongly defines us as human race that we are? Without it, we are nothing but a bunch of walking, talking, intelligent hairless apes. Five thousand years of wars, philosophies, arts, and sciences are what we think of when we think of the human race.
In order to do any kind of "restoration" of who we are after a cataclysmic event, we'd need as much of our recorded history as possible -- the writings of Plato, Aristotle, all the rest of the great thinkers, and of all of the events that have shaped our world -- dating back to that of the Sumerian civilization who first wrote down what we know about them 4-5 millenia ago.
We should start this right now, to whatever degree feasible... just in case, so we're ready for any unforseen event that happens.
LOVELY SNOT! WONDERFUL SNOT! By J. Wipo Troll, Esq., $Revision: 1.4 $
CmdrTaco: You sit here, dear.
CowboiKneel: All right.
CmdrTaco (to Waitress): Morning!
Waitress: Morning!
CmdrTaco: Well, whatve you got?
Waitress: Well, theres egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and snot; egg, bacon and snot; egg, bacon, sausage, and snot; snot, bacon, sausage, and snot; snot, egg, snot, snot, bacon, and snot; snot, sausage, snot, snot, bacon, snot, tomato, and snot;
Slashdot Crew (starting to chant): Snot, snot, snot, snot
Waitress: Snot, snot, snot, egg, and snot; snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, baked beans, snot, snot, snot
Slashdot Crew (singing): Snot! Lovely snot! Lovely snot!
Waitress: or Lobster Thermidor au Crevette with a Mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and snot.
CowboiKneel: Have you got anything without snot?
Waitress: Well, theres snot, egg, sausage, and snot, thats not got much snot in it.
CowboiKneel: I dont want any snot!
CmdrTaco: Why cant he have egg, bacon, snot, and sausage?
CowboiKneel: Thats got snot in it!
CmdrTaco: Hasnt got as much snot in it as snot, egg, sausage, and snot, has it?
Slashdot Crew: Snot, snot, snot, snot! (crescendo through next few lines)
CowboiKneel: Could you do the egg, bacon, snot, and sausage without the snot then?
Waitress: Urgghh!
CowboiKneel: What do you mean Urgghh? I dont like snot!
Slashdot Crew: Lovely snot! Wonderful snot!
Waitress: Shut up!
Slashdot Crew: Lovely snot! Wonderful snot!
Waitress: Shut up! (Slashdot Crew stops) Bloody Slashdot fags! You cant have egg, bacon, snot and sausage without the snot.
CowboiKneel (shrieks): I dont like snot!
CmdrTaco: Sshh, dear, dont cause a fuss. Ill have your snot. I love it. Im having snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, beaked beans, snot, snot, snot, and snot!
Slashdot Crew (singing): Snot, snot, snot, snot. Lovely snot! Wonderful snot!
Waitress: Shut up!! Baked beans are off.
CmdrTaco: Well could I have his snot instead of the baked beans then?
Waitress: You mean snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot
Slashdot Crew (singing elaborately): Snot, snot, snot, snot. Lovely snot! Wonderful snot! Snot, sno-o-o-o-o-ot, snot, sno-o-o-o-o-ot snot. Lovely snot! Lovely snot! Lovely snot! Lovely snot! Lovely snot! Snot, snot, snot, snot!
- posted by poopbot: crapflooding since 7/8/02
X6e7W3DqEo Post #616
According to the BBC, this is the first object to get a positive score...
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
... we need a protective layer of smog. Throw enough garbage into the atmosphere and the asteroid'll burn up.
Quick! Everybody guy a Canyonero!
It was first seen on the night of 5 July, picked up by the Linear Observatory's automated sky survey programme in New Mexico, in the southern US.
I work at Lincoln labs and acutally know the people running the LINEAR project (they are so proud that they are the best in the world, let me tell you). But for the rest of you, here is their website.
They find more than half of the new NEO (Near earth orbit) asteroids each year that are found. They have a telescope down in New Mexico and have the largest CCD (2560x1960 res) in the market. That's the thing that takes a digital image of the sky and compares it to past images to see if any "stars" have moved...i.e asteroid. The higher resolution you can get, the further out you can see. From their webpage, you can see they have found at least 951 NEO's. So there are a LOT of asteroids comming near us. But in space, near is still very far away. So unpack those bunkers and return to Real Life, we're still safe for a while. Also, the rate of finding new NEO's is decreasing, so that means that we've (humans) found most of the asteroids that can endanger us.
(most of that was taken from this post of mine from a while ago)
Don Yeomans of JPL says that the predicted cross-track error ellipse at the time of impact is 10's of millions of kilometers. Since the diameter of the Earth is 6371 km, and since the probability of impact goes as the square of the (radius / cross track orbit uncertainty), the probability of impact is less than one in 1 million.
Within a week, this will be narrowed by several orders of magnitude, so it is highly likely that the predicted impact will vanish.
so are we supposed to take this seriously or is this just another way to get attention?????
I support publik eduscatation!
The higher-precision text-based orbital calculator is more accurate. (And overloaded right now.) It has 2002 NT7 in its database. Both claim January 28, 2019 is the date of closest approach. Both claim closest approach around 0.8 AU. Remember, this is projecting many orbits ahead, and small-object orbit projection is inherently noisy because minor disturbing forces matter.
Either we'll know it's a definite miss in a few weeks, or this will be a worry for some time to come.
When should I re-breed my female?
There seems to be as many theories about when to re-breed as there are breeders. Most breeders have a system which seems to work for them and they will swear by it. I have read articles advocating anywhere from three days postpartum to three weeks.
Over the years we have developed a system which is based on a
twelve-day cycle. There is four-day period at the top of this cycle when the follicles are mature and pregnancy can occur. If you have ever seen photos of the amount of internal damage that can be done to a female llama from repeated breedings, you will understand why we try to breed our females only once. We will field test them forty- eight hours later and if they haven't ovulated by then, we will let them re-breed. The female knows whether she has ovulated and will most likely spit at the male if she has.
After this field test or re-breeding we have found that there is no
point in putting them together until two more cycles. The advantages of this system is that it is easier on the animals and it is much easier on us. When we purchased out first llamas the prevailing idea was that you could breed them at any time as they are induced ovulators. We would breed them when it was convenient for us, when it was a weekend, or a sunny day, or when we remembered. In those days it never occurred to us that it might be inconvenient for the females or that their bodies were telling them that it was the wrong time.
After a few of them threw themselves on the ground and refused to
leave their field to go and visit the male, we figured that maybe they were trying to tell us something. This was happening around day nineteen which seems to be the low point on the cycle. These animals were certainly trying to tell us something. Later, when their systems said it was the proper time, they left the field willingly and lay down for the male without any hesitation.
Often people will say that it must be cruel to re-breed them so soon
after they have had their babies, but that is the way it is in nature. To assure survival, the guanacos in Patagonia must have their offspring at the same time every year, when it is getting warm in the spring. Nature has set the gestation at 350 days and the females breed again about two weeks later, which works out to exactly a year.
This is how our system works. We will assume that the cria was
born today, Tuesday July 23, 2002. Assuming that it was a normal birth and there were no complications, we would put her in with the male twelve days later, on Sunday, August 04, 2002.
Note: If you get "undefined, undefined NaN, NaN" showing up instead of dates in the previous paragraph it means that there is a glitch in the browser you are using. This problem showed up in version 4.6.1 of Netscape. It should display properly in earlier versions of Netscape and does work in Internet Explorer. This also applies to the next page, which draws a chart.
We would field test her on day fourteen, Tuesday, August 06, 2002 and if she spits you can assume that she is bred and should be due around Sunday, July 20, 2003. If she doesn't spit and the male is interested, then we would let them re-breed.
The cycle goes down now and we don't feel that it is worth trying to
breed them until the proper peak. In fact, we don't normally put them back together or even field test them until day thirty-six. If we suspected that the female was open, the next time we would breed her would be on Wednesday, August 28, 2002 (day 36). This means that she should be due on Wednesday, August 13, 2003
The next twelve day cycle peaks on day twenty-four so you could breed your female on this second cycle which would be Friday, August 16, 2002. We usually avoid this cycle as we have found that there is more chance of the fetus being re-absorbed and also something seems to happen that causes the pregnancy to go an extra fifteen to twenty days. The cria should be due on Friday, August 01, 2003 (350 days). If the female shows no sign of delivering then, we are not concerned as this system offers an alternate due date which would be Thursday, August 21, 2003, (370 days) which strange as it seems, is later that if we had bred her on day thirty-six.
We have been using this system since 1994 and have had much
better results in getting our llamas bred than we had earlier. Taking a reluctant female who is not at the peak of her cycle to an amorous male is no fun and, as well as getting spat on, it can be dangerous if she decides to bolt and run. Occasionally we have had the female drop on the ground as she is going through the gate, which aside from being inconvenient, certainly tells us that she is ready.
If you would like to run a chart for your own female llama, this next
page allows you to enter the birth date of the cria and a chart will be generated for you using JavaScript. The cria will have to be at least one day old before the program will work and obviously you can't have a date that hasn't occurred yet. If your female has been open for year or two, the cycle may not be exact, but it is a starting point at least.
This chart for your cria starts today, Tuesday July 23, 2002 and runs for thirty days. The peaks of the cycles are marked by the asterisks and printed in green. The days marked in orange and red would be the worst times to re-breed.
We have had good success re-breeding on the peak of the left horn cycle which is marked by the three stars and field testing the female forty-eight hours later.
Some of our females have caught on the light green, one star day on the downside of the cycle.
Over the years we have had animals become bred pretty well anywhere on the cycle, but we have found that our success rate is much higher by breeding on the
peak of the cycle. The females are more willing and often only need to be bred once.
Breeding on the right horn cycle has worked sometimes, but we have found that very often the length of gestation will be an additional fifteen or twenty days.
This chart for Cmdr Taco starts in cycle number: 43
Day 518 ** Jul 23
Day 519 * Jul 24
Day 520 Jul 25
Day 521 Jul 26
Day 522 Jul 27
Day 523 Jul 28
Day 524 Jul 29
Day 525 Jul 30
Day 526 Jul 31
Day 527 ** Aug 1
Day 528 *** Aug 2 - (Right) Peak of cycle 44
Day 529 *** Aug 3
Day 530 ** Aug 4
Day 531 * Aug 5
Day 532 Aug 6
Day 533 Aug 7
Day 534 Aug 8
Day 535 Aug 9
Day 536 Aug 10
Day 537 Aug 11
Day 538 Aug 12
Day 539 ** Aug 13
Day 540 *** Aug 14 - (Left) Peak of cycle 45
Day 541 *** Aug 15
Day 542 ** Aug 16
Day 543 * Aug 17
Day 544 Aug 18
Day 545 Aug 19
Day 546 Aug 20
Day 547 Aug 21
Ok, let's assume for a brief moment that the rock is going to slam into us AND that by some horrible miscalculation it is the size of Greenland AND there is nothing we can do about it?
:)
Assuming that roving gangs of long haired, dirty children have not killed you (a la Mad Max) yet, how do you spend the last 24 hours of human existence?
Bonus for creativity.
Someone above posted a URL to the JPL's Orbits applet to simulate the orbit of NT7. Fast forwarding to 2019 and watching the animation shows NT7 coming "close", but not near as close as on July 1, 2075. Now THAT's close...
Don't worry everyone. I spent most of my youth in the local arcade preparing for just such an event!
Everything will be taken away from you.
"it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries"
in fact, you are more likely to be hit by an asteroid than be affected by this "crisis"
wait a minute...
-----------
there are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't
i seem to have lost the address of Duckville, so no link on this post
pirates
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Whats black, blue and green and doesnt like sex?
The Girl Scout locked in my basement.
Whats the worst part about having sex with a six year-old?
Getting the blood out of your clown suit.
Whats the best thing about getting a hand job from a five year-old?
That little hand makes your thing look really huge.
Guy comes home from work to find his girlfriend sitting on the porch, crying.
Whats wrong, honey?
Im leaving you! I just found out youre a pdophile!
Pdophile? Why, thats a pretty big word for a ten year-old.
How can you tell when your sisters on her period?
When your dads dick tastes like blood!
Two pdophiles are lying on a beach tanning, one turns to the other and says, Excuse me, youre in my son.
What is the sickest sound you hear when fucking a nine year-old?
Her hips snapping!
What is the best sound you hear when fucking a 13 year-old?
Her hips snapping!
Whats 18 inches long, blue, veiny, and makes a woman cry?
Crib death.
How could the mans seven year-old son tell that his dad had fucked his eight year-old sister? His dads weiner tasted like blood!
Watson returns home to find Holmes in bed with a child. He shouts, Is this some sort of a schoolgirl?
Holmes replies, Elementary, my dear Watson.
So I was having sex with my girlfriend, and I decided I wanted to get kinky and try and do her in the ass. So I slipped around back; she looked over her shoulder at me and said, My, how presumptuous of you. I said, Presumptuous? Thats a big word for a ten year-old.
Two guys are walking down the street when a beautiful woman passes. The first guy says, Damn! Id love to tear her clothes off, do her in the rear, smear my fces all over her, slice off her breasts, chop her into little pieces, put her in a garbage bag and toss her into the river!
Second guy says, Yuck! Youre a sick bastard!
First guy says, Whatre you? A fag?
A kindergarten teacher is asking the kids what their father does for a living. All the kids answer except for Little Johnny. The teacher asks Little Johnny what his Dad does and Johnny replies, My dad is dead.
The teacher says, Thats terribile, but what did he do before he died?
Little Johnny replies, He turned blue and shit all over himself!
A guy calls in sick to work.
Whats wrong? asks the boss.
Im sick, the guy replies.
You sound all right.
No, Im really sick. Believe me.
Listen, you were fine yesterday, and we have a lot of work today. I want you in here. You cant be that sick!
Dude, I just banged my sister. Dont tell me Im not sick.
A little girl accompanied her father to the barbershop. While her dad received a haircut, the little girl stood next to the barber chair, enjoying a snack cake. The barber smiled at her and said, Sweetheart, youre going to get hair on your Twinkie.
I know, the little girl replied. Im gonna get tits, too.
An older man and a small boy walk hand in hand through the woods.
Boy: These woods sure are spooky!
Man: You think youre scared, Ive gotta walk out of here alone.
Whats the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson?
One walked on the moon, and the other rapes little boys.
Has anyone read Michael Jacksons new book, The Ins and Outs of Child Rearing?
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a golden delicious apple?
A: I dont cum all over the golden delicious apple before I take a bite out of it.
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and my girlfriend?
A: I dont kiss my girlfriend after sex.
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a table?
A: You cant fuck a table.
Q: Whats special about a dead baby over all other forms of life?
A: You can achieve deep throat from whichever way you enter.
Q: What do you have when you have four dead babies, take away two, and add five more?
A: An orgy!
Q: Whats better than three 14 year-olds?
A: 14 three year-olds.
Q: Whats white and bobs up and down in a babys crib?
A: A pdophiles ass.
Q: Whats the safest way to play with a baby?
A: With a condom.
Q: Whats more fun than feeling up a dead baby?
A: Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples.
Q: What does a baby and a Pinto have in common?
A: Theyre fun to ride until they die.
Q: What do you get whan you dislocate a dead babys jaw?
A: Deep throat.
Q: Whats the difference between a baby and a grandmother?
A: Grandmothers dont die when you fuck them in the ass.
Q: Whats the best sound in the world?
A: Hearing dead babys hips crack under pressure!
Q: Whats worse than a having sex with a dead baby?
A: Having sex with a dead baby filled with razor blades.
Q: How do you stop a baby from choking?
A: Take your dick out of its mouth.
Q: Whats worse than finding a dead baby on your pillow in the morning?
A: Realizing you were drunk and made love to it the night before.
Q: How do you make a baby cry twice?
A: Wipe your bloody cock on his teddy bear.
Whats better than sex with a twelve year-old boy?
Absolutely nothing.
- posted by poopbot: information likes to be narrow
ZQon4dJPay Post #618
A Palermo value of 0.06 means that the risk from this object is elevated above the background risk for such objects by about 15%. (The 0.06 is the log of the ratio of the risk to the background risk.) So however worried you were yesterday about collisions with 2 km asteroids, you can be 15% more worried today.
In short, not worth losing sleep over.
Time to get Bush going on Operation Universal Justice.
*SRU
Happy Troll Tuesday!
/etc/fstab file so that it always automounted when plugged in. I was very impressed.
/dev/null, once I find where that actually is.
A Linux user goes back.
By Tony âoekNIGitsâ Collins.
Introduction...
In much of today's online news, we hear of how many people are migrating to GNU/Linux. What we don't seem to hear much of, is users going back to their old operating systems. The reason for this article is to say that I've done just that.
Yes, I've gone back. After three and a half years of trying to make GNU/Linux work on the desktop, I've decided that it's simply too hard for the average home user. Before I go into my reasons for going back, let me outline what I believe an 'average' home user is. Mr Joe Average is someone who wants to install their OS, boot it up, and it works. He wants to be able to upgrade his PC , and have the hardware work in a few short minutes. He wants to read email, browse the web, talk to his mates online, and play some games. Feel free to disagree with me, this is merely how I see myself. Note: I'm not referring to Grandma using Linux, or even my mum using it. I'm referring to average users who know a little about their computer.
Three and a half years; that's how long I've been trying to make Linux work on my desktop computer. Right about now, I'm sure that you are now screaming that I didn't try hard enough, or that I'm just plain stupid. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Stupid users don't doggedly stick at something for three and a half years, trying distribution after distribution in the hope of finding the holy grail of Linux desktops. They give up in less than a few hours of trying to (unsuccessfully) install RedHat Linux. Hear now my sad tale of why Linux isn't suitable for my desktop.
Some background...
The year is 1998. I've had my Windows '95 computer for around six months. Frustrated with the constant crashes, I desperately asked an online mate for help. Even though he was a windows user, he calmly suggested that I try something I'd never come across before...
âoeLinux, eh? Never heard of it.â
âoeOh, it's a free OS that you can download. Apparently it doesn't crash much. Just do an online search for it.â
Armed with this meagre knowledge, I set out on my quest for the ultimate stable operating system. I searched online, and found places where you could even buy copies of Linux! So, I left the comfort of my warm study, and returned forty minutes later with my first Linux boxed set â" RedHat Linux 5.2. After initially balking at the very basic installer (and few false starts), I had it up and running on my lovely AMD K6-233. I even got X working in no time at all. Then the system booted up for the first time.... and it was dead ugly. I had a very stable new OS, but I didn't even want to look at it. I was happy that I had several installed interfaces to choose from, but none of them appealed to me whatsoever. Wanting to download a nicer interface led me to my next problem.
I had absolutely no idea how to even get this nice, stable OS onto the internet! After reinstalling windows and RedHat in a dual-boot configuration, I got the help I needed by using Windows and USENET. Strangely enough, I can still remember the name of the long-suffering person who helped me get RedHat online, but that's another story. After looking around online, I discovered KDE. Only up to version one, it was the closest thing I had to a completely useable Linux system. I downloaded all the KDE packages for RedHat 5.2, only to discover another distro called Mandrake, that came with KDE preinstalled and configured. Back to my local distributor, and I was set.
Mandrake with KDE was exactly what I needed at that stage in my Linux using life, and I stuck with it for over a year and a half. Always seeking the 'perfect' desktop OS, I followed releases from version 5.3 all the way through to 7.0. Eventually I became dissatisfied with Mandrake, and briefly tried a number of other distros until I finally settled on Debian. I was impressed by the simple power, configurability, and the ease of upgrade that is apt-get. I felt good about being among the uber-elite Debian user community. Needless to say, I learned a lot about how to configure hardware under Linux during my time with Debian. I learned to sift through the old HOWTOs on Linux Doc until I found something suitable and accurate, I learned to utilize the power of USENET and IRC. Life was good.
Right now you must be wondering; âoeWhere is this leading? This guy seemed quite happy with Linux!â. True, I was. After a while, I decided I didn't want to have fine-grained control. I wanted something simple. I was getting tired of the 'stable' Debian release being so out of date, and the 'unstable' distribution being so... well... unstable. I got tired of having to recompile my kernel every time I got new hardware. I got tired of using command line to talk to my PC. It was time for a change. I had good experiences years ago with Mandrake, so I figured I'd try it again. As good as Mandrake 8.1 was, it wasn't what I was after. SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional (boxed set) was installed onto my PC instead.
I have to stop at this point, and say that SuSE Linux 8.0 (Pro) is the best Linux distribution that I've ever used. It has an easy installer, reasonable hardware support, and comes with the very good KDE 3.0. The box contains seven CDROMS, one DVD and three decent books that would help even the most inexperienced user get up and going. YaST2 is a decent graphical system configuration tool. When (not if) I go back to Linux, I'll definitely try SuSE again. However, there are quite a number of things that have improve (or change completely) before I'll consider going back. Read on for my brief list of things that must must get better before I'll switch back from the Microsoft camp.
Where GNU/Linux needs to improve...
X11
The X Window System is an awesomely powerful, network transparent graphical subsystem. It's perfectly suited to running applications from remote servers. However, this is NOT what a home user needs. My experience with X is that it's too big, bloated, slow and unstable to be any good to the home user. Most crashes that I ever experienced with Linux have been X's fault. My servers don't run X, and they never crash.
What home users need is something small and fast, so they can run local applications efficiently. I would like to see the X Window System dumped in favour of a hardware accelerated framebuffer, running something like directFB or Qtopia. Home users need a small, fast graphical subsystem, with built in 3d support. BeOS seemed to be on the right track before they went under.
Fonts are truly awful under X. Most distributions ship with appalling fonts, and there is no standard way to add additional (nicer) fonts to the system. Even after extra fonts have eventually been added, many applications (eg Abiword, Staroffice) refuse to use the new fonts anyway. Perhaps the framebuffer-based graphical subsystem I suggested could incorporate decent font support, and use a readable naming scheme as well.
Drivers
While having access to the latest version of the kernel is a good thing for developers, for home users it can be a nightmare. Got RedHat Linux 7.3? Perhaps you run SuSE 7.3 or Debian 2.2. You'll have to download a binary package specific to your distro. (I'm assuming that home users won't change their default kernel, but if they did, that binary package wouldn't even work!) Hardware manufacturers should be able to provide one single driver that works on all minor versions of a major kernel release. This way it would work will all current distros, instead of having to provide multiple binaries or source code. Hardware manufacturers don't want to give out the source, as this often gives away trade secrets about how their hardware is designed.
The solution seems to be to make binary drivers work on a variety of kernel versions. I'm not sure if this is even possible with the way the kernel is designed (I'm no kernel hacker), but it would go a long way toward making Linux more accessible to the home user. Even if the kernel needs to be redesigned to support this, then in my opinion, it should be done. Linux users are always clamouring for drivers... perhaps if the kernel had something like this, it might one day become a reality.
Hardware setup
While SuSE Linux 8.0 gave me some good experiences with hardware detection (such as automatic download of NVIDIA drivers), it also let me down as in this area.
The good: I recently borrowed a digital camera from a mate at work, to take photos of my case mod. Imagine how happy I was when I plugged it into my nearest USB port, and it was automatically configured (as a SCSI device) and mounted! SuSE even added it to my
The bad: Along came my new IDE CDRW drive. At AU$99, I couldn't pass up the purchase. Plugging it in gave me no joy. I was very disappointed that a device so common couldn't be detected and automatically configured under a modern operating system. The instructions on the SuSE support site said to add lines to lilo.conf and reboot. While this is a perfectly acceptable way to get hardware working for a geek familiar with *NIX, I believe that a home user shouldn't have to do more than plug it in. It's an IDE device, it's not that complicated!
The ugly: Once the hardware was finally working (as a pseudo-scsi drive), the next hurdle was to find decent graphical tools to burn and copy CDs. I finally settled on CDBakeOven, an above average KDE application. It burned CDs from data on the hard drive, but for some reason cdrecord (the command line backend) refused to allow me to copy a cd directly. Yes, it was installed SUID root. CD copying is such a basic function nowadays, why is it so hard to do under GNU/Linux?
Software distribution
I'll put this simply. I'm a home user, not a programmer. Why on earth should I have to compile the software I want to use? I know that having the source available is a good thing, but I'll say it again: I'm no programmer. I just want to install software and run it.
This leads to another point. Although having package databases (such as the rpm and deb systems use) is great, there should definitely be seperation between system packages and additionally installed software. There needs to be a standard installer and database for user-installed applications such as word processors, email clients and games, and it should be seperate from the rpm or deb databases used for system software such as lilo, init and cron. This will make it much easier for home users to know what applications they have installed on their PC, and to easily uninstall them if necessary, without knowing some arcane commands and weird package names.
Support
There is a huge wealth of knowledge among the thousands (millions?) of people that run GNU/Linux around the world. If you have a problem, odds are that someone out there can help you, often for free. This is one of the linux platform's greatest strengths. However, Linux users are also its greatest weakness. This may not apply to most of the community, but there is a very vocal minority that gives Linux a bad name. To every Linux user that has ever helped a newbie, I thank you. I have been helped by many a guru, often when I've been asking the simplest of questions. It's the remainder that are a problem.
I once heard a song by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie called Every OS Sucks, where Linux users were described as 'elitist nerdy shmucks'. Sadly this is true for much of the 'community'. Too many consider themselves better than the rest of the world because they run Linux. Can you believe that? It's just a computer operating system, but somehow they think that it makes them better than those people who run systems such as Microsoft Windows! Elitism drives people away, as does saying âoeRTFMâ or belittling people who choose a different distro from yourself.
'Nuff said about that.
So what now?
Well, I decided to go back to a Microsoft platform. Initially being paranoid after reading things about DRM and spyware, I bit the bullet and installed Microsoft Windows XP. Like every OS, it has good and bad points; most of which you can learn about from online reviewers. I'll just point out several things that make me want to keep using it instead of GNU/Linux.
Fast graphical subsystem: Windows has lighting quick graphics, both 2d and 3d. There's no denying it. When I move a window, it refreshes so fast that I don't miss X11 at all. While not quite as nice as some other operating systems, font support is outstanding compared to XFree86.
Drivers: Point and click to install (as a superuser, of course). Windows warns you if the driver isn't likely to work properly, and can roll back to working drivers if you deliberately choose to install one that hoses your system.
Hardware setup: My CDRW worked right away, without a hitch. I am able to drag and drop files from the Explorer file manager to the CDRW icon and they get added to the list of things to burn. A quick install of Nero Burning Rom, and I was able to make a backup copy of my game CDs. (I don't like taking originals to LANs where they can get destroyed or stolen).
Software distribution: All windows software comes in binaries, either with an installer or in a zip file. I hope to never compile an application ever again. Software designed for a different version of windows is 99% guaranteed to run, but if not, there is always 'compatibility mode'. One thing to note, however: Applications designed for single user versions of windows usually only run properly as a superuser, and this includes 3d games. I expect this to be rectified as the rest of the Windows world catches up to a multi-user environment.
I can't comment on the Windows using community yet. I've not yet had a problem that a simple point and click couldn't fix. However, I will say that my original concern with Windows '95 has been addressed in Windows XP. The stability is finally there.
Final Notes
In conclusion, I'd just like to make it known that I haven't completely abandoned the Linux community. My home server still runs Mandrake, and IPCop on my gateway/firewall. There is no way I'd ever put any form of Windows on my server, nor would I ever connect a Windows PC directly to the internet without a *NIX gateway in between. Microsoft has a history of poor security, so I protect myself the only way I know how; using Linux. I will continue to advocate the use of GNU/Linux in the server arena. This is where its strength lies at the moment.
Because of their history of spreading virii, I don't use the applications that Microsoft has provided with Windows XP. My wife and I use Mozilla for web browsing and email, OpenOffice.org for word processing, and Psi (Jabber client) for instant messaging. All of these are true multi-user win32 programs, and are perfectly interoperable with their Linux counterparts.
I expect that the Linux community will have something to say about this article; I welcome comments and constructive criticism. Flames will be automatically sent to the Windows equivalent of
By Tony âoekNIGitsâ Collins
- posted by poopbot: the bot formerly known as pwpbot
Gj1ygOaqeH Post #619
Hey you unskilled people of infantile knowledge! Listen up! I, being a strong Bruce Willis type, am an Oil Driller. The US Government has come to me with a plan.
...next 17 years.
In 16 years, me and my crew (even my lusty daughter, but not that filthy rotting boyfriend of hers [ben afflack sucks]) are going to lift off on our mission to save the world! That's right, folks. You can all go about your
I will drill a hole into the astroid, then drop a nuclear warhead into the hole, exploding it from the inside out. Thereby, the 2 halfs of the astroid will MISS Earth.
So, buck up, you reched little people!
I was run over by a llama earlier today.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
...on the Liv Tyler part.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Either your network or ip address has been banned from this site
due to script flooding that originated from your network or ip address -- or this IP might have been used to post comments designed to break web browser rendering. If you feel that this is unwarranted, feel free to include your IP address (1.2.3.4) in the subject of an email, and we will examine why there is a ban. If you fail to include the IP address (again, in the Subject!), then your message will be deleted and ignored. I mean come on, we're good, we're not psychic.
Since you can't read the FAQ because you're banned, here's the relevant portion:
Why is my IP banned?
 Perhaps you are running some sort of program that loaded thousands of Slashdot Pages. We have limited resources here and are fairly protective of them. We need to make sure that everyone shares. If your IP loads thousands of pages in a day, you will likely be banned. Please note that many proxy servers load large quantities of pages, but we can usually distinguish between proxy servers being used by humans, and IPs running software that is hammering our servers.
 Your IP might have been used to perform some sort of denial of service attack against Slashdot. These range from simple programs that just load a lot of pages, to programs that attempt to coordinate an avalanche of posts in the forums (often through misconfigured "Open Relay" proxy servers).
 You might be using a proxy server that is also being used by another person who did something from the above list. You should have your proxy server administrator contact us.
 Your IP might have been used to post comments designed to break web browser rendering.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 7/02/02
How do I get an IP Unbanned?
Email banned@slashdot.org. Make sure to include the IP in question, and any other pertinent information. If you are connecting through a proxy server, you might need to have your proxy server's admin contact us instead of you.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 3/26/02
- posted by poopbot: because we're all crapflooders at heart
KxdzLdpWD3 Post #620
... imagine a Beowulf cluster of these babies!
Armageddon. The U.S. govt will hire a bunch of hicks to drill a hole into the asteroid, place a nuclear bomb, and leave one guy behind to detonate it! The rock will barely miss the Earth and we will all continue living our lives. I wish they'd come up with something new already.
This should pretty much solve that pesky global warming problem...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Does this mean I can't go outside and loot now?
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
Can't Microsoft figure out a better way to install NT7?
Happy Troll Tuesday!
I've been using home computers since the VIC-20 and I've come to dread and fear the possibility of being forced to adopt Linux as a result of Microsoft's heavy-handedness. After being hyped by friends and co-workers about the pleasures of this great and fantastic open-source operating system, I attempted to load Linux, not once but four times on three year old PC that was previously running Win98.
The first time took me about an hour to realize that I had to reformat the hard disk and wipe out years worth of work (after backing it up on CD-R). Then I had to figure that the only way to get the Linux CD to actually start loading was to boot it from the CD by modifying the CMOS settings as the PC was starting up. A simple line suggesting this that could have been printed on the CD would have saved a lot of time!
After loading a whole gigabyte of stuff onto the empty hard drive (do I really need to load 50 megabytes of TeX fonts when I'm just trying to get a demo of Linux????), the entire process halted when the floppy disk drive didn't respond. The Linux loader demanded a working floppy backup of some obscure file be made and since I've never used the floppy drive, I didn't know that it didn't work. The installation process locked up and I had to reboot.
The reboot left me in UNIX hell: a black screen half filled with incomprehensible characters with a single flashing dollar sign as the only indication that the entire PC was still working. No matter what I typed or tried (simple intutitve commands like 'help' 'review' 'exit' 'restore' 'dir' 'What the fuck is happening?') nothing made any intelligent response except for returning me to the flashing dollar sign. Shit! I'm in Dante's seventh circle of hell for misers. I was forced to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows in order to confirm that I still had a working PC.
I bought a new floppy drive that I will never use in order to load this wonderful and fantastic operating system. Reformated the hard drive, reset the CMOS, and loaded a whole gig of worthless junk from the penguin CD. Everything loaded and I made all of the selections for keyboard and mouse ect... The system rebooted and got to the point where it should have started to work and simply stopped. No response to mouse, keypress, or anything. I reloaded Windows (it worked perfectly) and decided to load Linux on my new good computer.
I ended up back bashed back in UNIX hell and having to load Windows and ALL of my programs and files from CD backups, which took hours. I convinced that Linux is some kind of really bad joke or else an 'emperor's new clothes' type of mass hallucination. How can anyone with a pretension of being a computer professional seriously believe or claim that this junk is ready to take on Windows?
- posted by poopbot: because even your grandmother can use lunix
qa4VqKFo34 Post #621
The significance is that this is the first object EVER to be given a non-negative score. ie - it WILL hit according to current numbers.
Now, they say themselves two important things -
1.) It's the first one in the relatively short history of closely watching for these threats.
2.) It'll probably drift off into negative ratings as more observations narrow the errors down.
So - the significance is that this is the first time they've seen a threat through the windshield and not in the rear-view as it goes by. That IS fairly significant. Not that we should panic over this one - but the story shows that we're making progress in the important matter of discovering these things in time to make a difference.
Kevin
Due to a conflict on Feb 1, 2019, please reschedule the destruction of the Earth by giant meteorite to November 3, 2025. The year 2019 through most of 2024 has already been scheduled for devistation by global warming and plagues of alien headcrabs.
Thanks,
Mother Nature.
When all else fails, run.
By the time 2019 rolls around, machines will rule the world, it'll be their damn problem.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
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Slashdot is using censorship! It is trying to eridicate free and open discussion like we know slashdot to be, it has the following RESTRICTIONS in place to Censor you
They claim they don't, but they do, wonder why their are so many trolls, crapflooders and lamers on slashdot, because they are fighting for their rights! Slashdot is trying to silence the trolls. Remove the filters, the trolls get bored, and slashdot will be troll free!
- Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
- Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
- Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
The "troll" moderation reason is fragmented and broken, why? Because they are trying to use an obsolete usenet term on a realtime discussion, "trolls" can cover a huge blanket of ideas.- Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
- Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
- Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
Subnet banning, this bans a user unless they email jamie macarthy with their mp5ed ipids. This is unfair, and banning a subnet BLOCKS A WHOLE ISP SOMETIMES, and not that individual user! This can cause chaos! But real trolls use annoymous proxys to get around this so THIS JUST BANS LEGITMATE USERS! Also, they are trying to censor some anoymous proxies, mainly from countrys like africa, so this yet more DISCRIMINATION!But, the issue that concerens us the most, is the COMMENT QUOTA. A discrimatory system that stiffles discussion, cripples the community and will ultimateley destroy slashdot unless it is removed! Annoymous cowards are allowed only 10 posts a day! This is unethical! Users with negative karma only get two! That is DISCRIMINATION! How would you like to only be able to speak once a day, just because of the color of your skin. That would be racism, and slashdot is discrimitating on people just because of a negative number in a database! BOYCOTT SLASHDOT! LET THEM DIE!
We wan't these stupid useless restrictions REMOVED! This comment will be posted again and again until it does!
Inportant imformation for users
Boycott slashdot, they are pissing over their community, they are becoming like the RIAA and MICROSOFT! Do NOT TOLERATE THIS SHIT! Here are some real news for nerds sites. We don't need slashdot, slashdot deserves to die!
MSNBC
BBC NEWS
News.com
Linux online
Linux daily news network [linuxdailynews.net]
Weird news from dailyrotten.com
Trollaxor, news for trolls, they are real people too!
CNN.com
New york times (free registration required)
LINUX.com
News forge
K5
Mandrake forum
Toms hardware
The register
Kde dot news
The linux kernel Archives
Adequecy
There are hundreds more, But this is where slashdot STEALS THE MAJORITY OF its "news" from.
Punish them, here are their emails, spam them, flame them goatse them!
Rob malda
Jamie Macarthy
ChrisD
Hemos
Micheal
Pudge
The others ones apperantly dont have an e-mail, probably because ROB MALDA IS PRETENDING HE IS JOHN KATZ.
Thank you for reading this, please feel free to repost this information, please reply to add your comments, fight slashdot and its CENSORSHIP
Don't forget to sign the petition!
- posted by poopbot: providing truth in a deceitful world
66RbOPIr3z Post #622
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/close.html
give distances both in AU and LD (lunar distances) for the dozen or so close passes that happen each month or so.
Not that you should be alarmed.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"This unique event should not diminish the fact that additional observations in coming weeks will almost certainly, we hope, eliminate the current threat."
Is he saying this just because the odds of a tiny (relativley) piece of something has a very slim chance of hitting a slightly less tiny(relativly) object in the whole universe? Or is there some property of Earth's magnetic field or some other force that would cause things to be pushed away from us? I would think we'd pull stuff towards us due to gravity, but I'm no physicist (or spelling bee champion).
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Sure, in normal business a company would stand to make a killing in something with so wide and presumably desperate a market (the whole world, or at least that one lucky continent), but does anyone truthfully think that if something like this truthfully stood to impact earth in as devastating a manner as predicted by the article that copyright laws would be honored at all? If the company demanded anything (monetary or otherwise) at all for using their copyright, it would result in the company being risen up against by a panicked populace and/or simply having their ideas taken at gunpoint by the threatened government(s).
Surely if we have learned anything over the past months it is that the government can justify most anything in the name of an emergency, and a government forseeing its entire continent devastated would certainly not hesitate to simply take and use the processes covered by the copyright possessed by this company by any means necessary.
"Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand / your actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying"
This has Bin Laden written all over it.
I will use my right to say truefull things when ever I want to. And right now i'm saying that windows, NT5 and probley NT6 will suck. you hear me SUCK, as in get down on their knees and make like a vacuum. And when M$ admits that they are the sucking whores, that everyone know that they are, I will stop saying it so loud.
The impact on the Earth of NT4 and NT5 was bad enough...
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Check it out for yourself... - which is why I don't run XP - Just 2K with some extra cosmetics that slows down the computer :(
Oh - and the constant communication probably slows down the internet connection as well...
have all been wrong so far. There's no reason to think this one is right.
Asteroid or no asteroid, I am not breaking in on my nap time.
8AM: Awaken to sounds of sporadic gunfire in my neighbourhood. Refuse to shower or brush teeth. Feast on Breakfast consisting mainly of bacon and coco pops. Place large axe through current PC and monitor, drag battered Case outside to tie to the bumper of the neighbours car.
8AM: Wearing only boxers, fluffy bunny slippers and an assault rifle borrowed from some dead guy who caught a bullet on my lawn, drive down highway at 100mph in neighbours car, PC Case clattering and sparking behind. Neighbour is in the Trunk. His wife is it home with a satisfied look on her face.
10AM: Abandon Car infront of Bill Gates residence. Knock repeatedly on door, but no answer. It appears Bill did leave on that Russian escape transport after all as appeared on the last news broadcast a week ago. Find several MS Marketing managers, execute them gangland style.
12 Noon: Hungry. Stop to steal pop n fresh from local quickie mart. Proceed on killing spree. Follow a Microbus packed with hippies on highway, pull them over for a chat.
12:10PM: Smoking a joint as large as my arm, I have commandeered an I max theater, I slap in my copy of "Mars Attacks" and eat 1 week old popcorn. Its full of buttery goodness.
3PM: Emerge from IMax in refreshed state, steal deck chairs from Walmart, and seek a suitable place to watch the impact with a case of beer.
4PM: Watch asteroid streak overhead, and miss Earth entirely. Seems they miscalculated the trajectory as well as the size. Feeling very dissappointed, I continue the killing spree.
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
is the same picture they use for /every/ story about near-hit asteroids. Just like Slashdot uses a picture of gateborg for all MS stories.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I always knew that NT would wipe out all life as we know it.
I hope it crashes on Texas, right on top of that GW bastard.
In case you're wondering what this means (and I was):
The Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale was developed to enable NEO specialists to categorize and prioritize potential impact risks spanning a wide range of impact dates, energies and probabilities. Actual scale values less than -2 reflect events for which there are no likely consequences, while Palermo Scale values between -2 and 0 indicate situations that merit careful monitoring. Potential impacts with positive Palermo Scale values will generally indicate situations that merit some level of concern.
The scale compares the likelihood of the detected potential impact with the average risk posed by objects of the same size or larger over the years until the date of the potential impact. This average risk from random impacts is known as the background risk. For convenience the scale is logarithmic, so, for examples, a Palermo Scale value of -2 indicates that the detected potential impact event is only 1% as likely as a random background event occurring in the intervening years, a value of zero indicates that the single event is just as threatening as the background hazard, and a value of +2 indicates an event that is 100 times more likely than a background impact by an object at least as large before the date of the potential impact in question.
Taken from NASA: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/doc/palermo.html
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
If the odds are truely 1 in a million, then they are over 36 times better than your average state lottery.
Has anyone done calculations to see wether or not NT7 will be gone before 2019, e.g. it hits another planet? It comes very close to Venus sometime next year (or so shows the Java applet). Just a thought. It is possible it could hit another planet before 2019.
Actually there are contingency plans that we as a planet can do with this much advanced warning.
Most asteroids such as this one are almost black in color and reflect very little incident light; this coupled with their small size make them very difficult to detect. There is a property in physics called albedo (no, not libido) which is basically the 'reflectivity' of an extraterrestrial object (the moon has an albedo of ~.1, ie it reflects ~10% of incident light). If we could find a way to change one side of an earth-collision asteroid to have a higher albedo, perhaps by icing it with water ice, then we have effectively made a motor to push the asteroid off its normal orbit. More light would be reflected on one side than the other, causing a slight difference in the number of photons absorbed on one side compared to the other. This absorption differential would be enough over time to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid. But this is the sort of thing that won't work in 18 days, it would have to be several years for the photon force to make a real change in the orbit. That is why we have the NEAR program, to determine orbits of near-earth asteroids in advance so we have a lot of time to figure out an appropriate way of dealing with them.
Something like icing an asteroid is much easier than landing a manned crew on it to put a rocket on it or blow it up or the other things suggested in this thread. It could be done using entirely automated systems.
Oh, and I don't believe that methods for avoiding the extinction of our species should be patented...
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
foul-mouthed No arguement there.
perverted You must be taking about Rock Hound, the Buscemi character.
semi-illiterate WRONG! At least in the case of Buscemi's character who had TWO PhD's according to the movie. Let's get our facts straight here fellas!
Ruger
Credits: BankOfAmerica_ATM
SUBJECT: GREAT STOCK OPPORTUNITY!!! help me Get Big Brands on eBay I DON'T KNOW WHERE I AM! PENTIUM III CPU's IN STOCK
END TRANSMISSION.
- posted by poopbot: crapflooding since 7/8/02
eJTVJi7n3z Post #624
It's just another Republican stunt to divert attention from the Stock Market crisis.
So, the palermo value of 0.06 (p is just greater than one) means we are very, very slightly more likely to get hit by NT7 than we are to get hit by another astreroid of equal or greater size before 2019.
Wouldn't it be possible to change it's delta-v to place it in a stable circular orbit around the earth? Why piddle with little tinker-toy space stations when you could have a kilometer-size rock in a stable orbit to play with to make a real orbital outpost?
M$ no longer supports Windos NT, so there will be no NT7 to hit earth.
He saw some dirty arabs and fired. Too bad it was just some friendly kurds, BBC reporters and his fellow cowboys.
Stick a webcam on it aimed back at us (to avoid destruction from head-on collisions) and send it on its merry way.
After that's done, everyone can be an astronaut, the same way everyone's sexually gratified and everyone's seen the world nowadays.
Hooray for webcammery!
> Those aliens are running NT7 already!
So when did Bill managed to find those guys for beta testing?
But anyway we are pretty safe - it's 17 years and I think it won't make it. My NT5 won't last longer than a month.
Even if it does make it we can simply send a hacker there and upload some virus to break its shield.
I'm growing old waiting for the world to end. Why can't the apocalypse hit tomorrow? ...Waiting for doom can be so tedious.
buford
On the rear side of NT7 a bumper sticker stating the following can be found, "If you can read this, I missed", or "If you can read this, you're a cockroach".
Send up M$ to claim the rock as IP... Then watch the rock crumble under the pressure.
PROBLEM SOLVED !!!
My mistake, I should have said that the Long Count Calendar resets on December 21, 2012. Some believe that this cycle reset will herald/predicts a catastrophic event, hence the earlier comment.
The article says that it is estimated to be 2K wide, but the illustration shows that it is several weather systems long AND wide.
I don't trust the BBC. I'm waiting for Al Roker's take on all this.
The worst part is that kids will get a day off from school that I had NO CHANCE of getting off.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
The cold hard fact is that if an asteroid wants to hit the earth it is going to hit the earth. There is more or less NOTHING we can do with our present technology, or technology in the forseeable future.
Even with this, 19 year lead in time I'd be surprised if the collective powers that be could get something organised to nudge the asteroid far enough off course that it ceases to be a threat. Most asteroids are not found until far far closer than this.
The ONLY way our species will survive is to expand off planet - for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is asteroid collision wiping out THIS colony.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
...to handle this scenerio.
Spaced Penguins
Ruger
You may be joking but there is some truth to what you say, I think we may need something like this to open our eyes a little. A lot of evidence points to asteroid impact likely being the biggest actual threat to mankind, but despite this far to many short sighted politicians wont give it a second thought! Specifically I'm talking about the Australian govt who a while back cut all funds to asteroid search programs, virtually leaving the entire southern hemisphere unchecked for such potential threats.
Hope you don't feel too safe with the fact that NASA and many European astronomers are searching the skies daily for these threats... Someone's letting us down.
(nb yep im an aussie..)
Flying Saucer Engine headed for Mars ! and beyond
The inventor of the Flying Saucer propellantless propulsion is asking people not to be afraid if they happen to see his Flying Saucer going across the skies in the next years.
He say his IFO " Identified Friendly Object" should not be the target of the military or others.
Nothing more will be said about the technology or any others matters relating according to inventor of 3D Volume Holographic Storage.
http://colossalstorage.net
Have you noticed a change in the scent of your penis lately.
The torino scale is designed more for the general public. While the Palermo rating for this asteroid is now at -.14, which doesn't make it COMPLETELY unlikely, the Torino scale for NT7 is a 1 (maximum). Here is the definition of a 1 on the Torino Scale
Events Meriting Careful Monitoring
(Green Zone)
1
The chance of collision is extremely unlikely, about the same as a random object of the same size striking the Earth within the next few decades.
This sig intentionally left blank.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
well i was caught in a llama stampede when i was younger, so anyone within a 1000 mile radius of me might wanna consider moving...
Couldn't you do us all a favor and just move to someplace remote in 16 years? I'm sure we could all chip in and buy you a nice hard hat.
I'm a lot more worried about the asteroids that are discovered just AFTER missing earth. :-/
When we could be say analyzing the orbits of near-earth objects. Where is the distributed project for this?
oh great, everything's slashdotted AND drudge'd.
Damn you!
Now the corporations monitoring my transmissions won't use my idea of patenting astroid deflection technology because of your comment! Curse you and your kind!
Time to go roll up a tin foil hat!
--Toq
The ONLY way our species will survive is to expand off planet - for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is asteroid collision wiping out THIS colony.
Hey JERK, why don't you get you facts straight? It is common knowledge that humans can escape any sort of global catastrophe by simply digging deep underground. By utilizing appropriate measures such as those seen in biodome projects, we can EASILY live off of geothermic energy indefinitely.
17 year lead time? Sure. We went from 0 to the moon in 1/2 that time. Granted, it was a little tiny ship, and all they did was collect a few rocks, but faced with extinction by a 2km rock? No problem
We'd only get one shot, but I think it could be done. Nudge, crack, something.
Anyone that figured out a real nice way to make these NEO rocks bounce, blow up, deflect, time phase shift, or tractor away from the earth could pull some mass patents on that and laugh all the way to the bank.
Well, that's just the problem with our outdated patent system. Not enough incentive for developing killer astroid deflection systems. Before you get the chance to make your royalties, you find out the end of the world is just past your expiration date and those damn generic solutions and open source hackers are already waiting in the wings to save humankind for basement bargin prices. If you want to make any money at all you've pretty well gotta tie up your application for as long as possible and then slap injunctions on all the would-be good samaritan heroes with some killer submarine claims. We can only hope that they'll increase the term for anti-apocalyptic devices - otherwise I just can't think of any incentive to innovate.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
hope this one hits M$ HQ with Bill Gates in it and all those assholes in it too.
That sound you just heard were the swag of doomsday websites changing the predicted date of apocolypse from 2003 to 2019. ;)
which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.
Yeah but I don't want to be inhaling LLAMA DUST because all the LLAMA'S were turned into a fine white powder from the heat of the impact.
That would even further our trade deficit with the countries bordering the Andes with white powder like substances. Columbia, Peru, lotta white powder (probably cut with llama ash) comes from there already.
I have SO MANY posts that are still at zero. They all have Troll in the subject line. I think that Troll Tuesday was a success.
We thought there might be a Brain Bug on P...
(please forgive me if somebody already fulfilled the obligatory Starship Troopers quote)
I'm sure if we ask really nice like, Vegeta will blow up that rock for us.
Don't worry about the alarmist graphic. You'll note that they BBC online site uses that "giant asteroid destroying the Earth" image every second on third asteroid story they run. Here's a few recent favorites with the scary image:
Asteroid Impact Centre Site Selected
Earth at Lower Risk of Impact
UK Centre to Study Asteroid Threat
So, yeah, basically you should ignore that image. It's not related to the story in any but the most basic level; it's a picture of an asteroid hitting the Earth... a stock one.
--
RumorsDaily
If the USA take care of this they will do it to save there own skins. The rest of the world can safly say "No, won't pay". For the USA to survive they HAVE TO DO IT, what are is the USA going to do? Only deflect the bit of the rock thats going to hit it... ?
I read at highest scores first. The thing that strikes me is that everybody's been moderated to funny sofar.
What if a big-ass meteorite was really heading into a collision-course with our planet. I'm pro-post-acopoliptic-minded, but such a thing would mean slashdot won't be the same, that's a shame. So please take it a little bit more serious, cause such a thing is inevitable in the end.
What would happen if, say China, would take away this threath by nuking it. We all read past episodes didn't we?
My thought is if there's a threath like this it's going to be a boxingmatch between the most powered governments at that time,
, they are just there to pull out their muscles to show how easy it is to take care of such a threath. It's not more than a marketing stumt that's been bit on the expensive side.
The UN will follow the country that saved us everbodies asses, not for these reasons, but because of they always follow the strongest leader. Even the people who found out about it are going to be heroes..
What do you expect if this were true?
"...run over by a llama..." ...LLLLLLLLLLAMATRON!
Sure wish Minter would port this gem -- not only was it fun, but absolutely hilarious to watch and the sounds, the sounds!. Llamatron would be a great game to play whilst waiting to get bonked by a 2km rock.
Guess I'll have to do the Atari ST emulation setup again. Anyone know where to get the TOS ROMs file?
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Can't we find a way to use this hunk of space rock to our advantage? Maybe we could fire enough missiles into it to dislodge a chunk of burning rock and kill the SNAKEHEAD FISH once and for all...if it works on Llamas, it must work on the damned ASIAN MENACE...
NT7, 16 years before crashing?
ha.. haha.... bwahahahahha. Good one Slashdot, you made my day
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
After a brief press conference today, president George W. Bush was seriously mauled, when he declared war on The Rock, actor/wrestler Dwayne Johnson, which resulted in a surprise drop kick attack followed by a head butt and a pile driver by the professional wrestler, before White House Spokesperson Ari Fleisher managed to stop laughing out loud and informing the press and Dwayne Johnson that the President meant " a rock" and not "" The Rock". President Bush was rushed to the local hospital where doctors feared severe brain damage, but concluded that "there was nothing there to begin with, so it couldn't be hurt anyhow".
The President later appologised for his mistake blaming it on terrorists who had sabotaged his statement.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
... then the asteroids have already won!
Do you like German cars?
Perhaps a group of interns will make off with it, eliminating the threat and saving planet Earth...
I was waiting for some moron to come along and make a moronic Microsoft joke. You've even got the dollar sign and everything.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
So, their error is tens of millions kilometers, or several 10^10 meters. The radius of earth is roughly 10^6 meters. The chance of the asteroid hitting us with this data is proportional to the AREA, which means the ratio of these quantities squared. So the chance is (10^6/10^10)^2 = 10^-8, which is 0.000001%. I wonder if I have a better chance of winning the lottery?
Couldn't we just unleash those 4 NASA interns on this issue?
In a couple of weeks a NASA spokeman could say something along the lines of "We put two an two together. There was a big asteroid heading towards earth. Now theres a big asteroid for sale on Ebay. Problem solved"
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
INCONCEIVABLE!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I bet this would make for a great movie plot.
Considering that we could be fried by a white dwarf accumilating mass from a nearby star, causing it to go supernova, I think a continent is the least we could lose:
2 .html U CK .HTM
http://www.cosmiverse.com/news/space/space0523020
http://www.dispatch.co.za/2002/05/24/features/D
Ever put a bug in a microwave? MUAH!
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
Okay everyone uses the same damn graphic to depict asteroid-enduced armageddon. Is the atmosphere really so similar to the pond down the street? Will the earth really resemble that at the point of impact if I were watching some point out in space? While this rock is 2 kilometers wide, the picture depicts something the size of Texas, if I'm not mistaken. So when mir crashed into the sea did it produce a similar 'cannonball' effect? This to me is just the epitome of embellishment. And besides, I'm sure that by 2019, the resources on this planet will be so depleted that we'll actually welcome the additional iron this will bring in.
Happy Troll Tuesday!
OPEN SOURCE MISCONCEPTIONS
By Serial Troller
Myth: Open Source is written by heterosexuals.
Fact: All Open Source development is done by raging homosexuals. The more flaming examples include Anal Cox, Linus Turdballs, Eric Ass-Reaming Raymond, and the entire Slashdot crew. The ringleader of the slashdotters, a man named CmdrTaco, engages in a practice known as Taco-snotting, along with his faggot-buddies Jeff Homos Bates and CowBoiKneel.
Myth: Open Source is written for heterosexuals.
Fact: Using Open Source software can cause suppressed homosexual fantasies to surface, leading to all out flaming faggotry within 6-8 weeks. Anecdotes of otherwise hetero men turning queer are far too numerous to count, but a few examples stand out. In one case, a man was arrested loitering outside an elementary school and making sexual overtures to several children: he quickly confessed that shortly after installing the Mozilla browser on his computer, he began to have uncontrollable urges to, to put it simply, have his cock sucked off by little boys. He soon met several other like-minded men through discussions on the Bugger Zilla mailing list (all already homosexuals), who together kidnapped a total of seven children whom they brought back to their apartment and sodomized. The other two men are still at large and believed to still be using Mozilla.
Myth: Open Source is multicultural.
Fact: Open Source is openly racist.
Myth: Open Source is democratic.
Fact: Open Source is controlled by a few narrow-minded zealots (mentioned throughout this post), most of whom are either Communists, Stalinists, Nazis, or Fascists. Additionally, Open Source supports terrorism.
Myth: Open Source is tolerant of religious preferences.
Fact: Open Source developers regularly engage in holy wars over the superiority of various Open Source projects, such as the Emacs program (preferred by Christians) versus vi (used mostly by neo-pagans and Satanists); or the KDE desktop (a favorite among Muslims) versus the GNOME project (particularly favored by Jews). Posts initiating crusades or jihads against other developers can be found regularly throughout the newsgroups and mailing lists.
Myth: Open Source is tolerant of sexual preference.
Fact: See above. Either you are a homo, you become a homo, or you never visit Richard Stallman alone in his office and hope to God you never meet him on the street at night.
Myth: Open Source is tolerant of political differences.
Fact: Open Source is an anarcho-communist philosophy bent on the destruction of capitalism. The very same Richard Stallman, a man whose name is disturbingly reminiscent of Stalin, has stated several times in public that his vision includes the subjugation of all who own intellectual properties under the jackboot of the GPL. The GPL is a pernicious piece of literature lifted straight from Karl Marxs Communist Manifesto, and is fortunately banned in many democratic nations.
* * * * * UPDATE * * * * *
Myth: Open Source programming is a harlmess, healthy activity.
Fact: Open Source programming has been known to lead to massive obesity, violent tendencies with an obsession with handguns, paranoid-delusional ranting, and in severe cases, complete insanity. If anyone you know is thinking about going Open Source, stop them before its too late!
* * * * * UPDATE * * * * *
____________________
2002 Serial Troller. Permission to reproduce this document is granted provided that you send all the bukkake porn you can find to serialtroller@hotmail.com.
- posted by poopbot: because we're all crapflooders at heart
eEX6OV63SL Post #625
Well, it's called NT 7, so you have a point.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Using unrealistic extremes to make an idea sound moronic makes you a shithead. Think first.
It's a fallacy of logic called "excluded middle" (considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities); a common failing of those who do not understand how to construct a logical arugment. See the above link for a list of other common logical fallacies.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It doesn't look so bad. -0.14 on the Palermo Scale (recently downgraded?).
You mean slashdot-like moderators can save us from asteroids just by modding the rock down?
I'm impressed!
Better a rock than me.
Table-ized A.I.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save *BSD at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
The End of FreeBSD
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.
To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.
To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.
To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.
Future
I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.
However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.
You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.
= Mike
--
- posted by poopbot: lovely snot! wonderful snot!
Px9V7ZBmgs Post #626
Where the fuck are we going to find a bunch of foul-mouthed semi-literate perverts who would rather strap a 10-story building full of high explosive to their ass than have sex with a woman?
... nah. Never happen.
If only there were some web site where thousands of people like that hung out
time to go insainly into debt!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
A llama bit my sister once...
"I am not a shrimp - I am a King Prawn! Pepe, "Muppets in Space"
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Credits: anonymous
"Mmmm... this feels good..." I sighed.
"Shhh!" hissed Hemos. "We don't want Mark to come in here!"
True. Having Hemos's 16 year-old brother walk in on us at that moment would not be good. I didn't think he'd be too cool with finding his 12 year-old brother lying naked with me, holding my 11 year-old dick in his hands. But, in all fairness, my hands were eagerly playing with Hemos's dick and balls at that moment, too.
Hemos's mom and dad had gone to the drive-in, leaving his big brother in charge. In our favor, leaving Mark in charge pretty much guaranteed that we weren't to bother him, and in turn, he'd leave us alone unless we were making too much noise or breaking something. Well, we were being careful to keep quiet because we very much wanted to be left alone.
We were in Hemos's twin bed, snuggled under the covers with our underwear pushed down to the foot of the bed. The only illumination in the room came from the faint sliver of light that crept in under his bedroom door. Even in the shadows I could make out the shape of my friend; about my height, but heavier. (Hell, I was such a skinny runt that everyone was heavier than me.) Hemos had a crew-cut of white-blonde hair, and was only starting to sprout some pubic hair. But, you had to feel for it because what little pubic hair he possessed was as blonde as the short hair on his hea and could not yet be seen by even a minimal distance.
And, I was happily feeling for it, running my hands all over Hemos's slightly larger erection and fondling his larger testicles while he courteously stroked my dick. I could tell that he didn't possess the same enthusiasm for cockplay as I did, unless you count his appreciation for the attention devoted to his member. And I knew that my willingness to satisfy his sexual urges was one of the few reasons he even had me sleep over at his place. But, I didn't let that stop me from finding pleasure in the handling of his meat.
I'd recently had an "introduction", of sorts, to seeing what someone could do with a man's dick with their mouth. While spending the night with my Uncle Jerry a couple weeks before, while I watched in secret, I was treated to a visual display of the intensity and unabashed pleasure that my uncle had obviously enjoyed having another man suck on his cock. From that moment on, I had a yearning that I needed to satisfy. With who was my only question.
I guess it was time to find out.
"I... heard that sucking on it feels even better than playing with it." I ventured.
In the darkness, I could feel a slight jerk of revulsion in Hemos's body.
"Put a dick in your mouth?" he croaked.
"Well, " I countered, my heart pounding with anxiety, "I think adults do it all the time."
"Well, I'm not gonna do it!" Hemos hissed. "That's homo stuff!"
"Yeah." I sighed disappointedly, while still playing with Hemos's dick. "I guess it is."
As I stroked his shaft in a steadier, milking rhythm, I could sense Hemos's breaths getting quicker. His manipulations of my dick began to falter as I could feel his body tense beside me. His hips rocked slightly in time with my pumping of his cock, and I cradled his balls tenderly in my other hand. When any attentions to my own dick has completely ebbed, I knew what was about to happen, so I picked up the pace just a bit more while lending a touch more pressure in my grip. Finally, Hemos's breath caught in his throat, and he turned his face fully into his pillow to stifle the moans that broke free as his cock pulsed and throbbed in a dry orgasm within my hands. I continued to massage him and didn't release him from my grasp until his member had gone fully soft.
"Man," sighed Hemos dreamily after finally catching his breath. "You are so good at that, CmdrTaco."
At least I had something to be proud of, I guess, as my friend gently withdrew himself from me and rolled onto his back.
Even though I was only eleven, the irony of Hemos's words and actions were not lost on me. My sucking on him would have been a "homo" thing, but beating him off was okay. Go figure. Within the few moments I had spent mulling over the irony of the thoughts, Hemos had drifted off to sleep. I slipped out from under the covers and down to the cool floor so I could masturbate without shaking the bed. As I toyed with my own dick, I imagined Hemos's cock in my mouth, wondering if the chance would ever really come. Finally, my own climax washed over me, and I got back into the bed.
I don't sleep real well to begin with, and even worse when I'm not in my own bed. And now, with the thoughts of a dick so close to me, as well as the vivid memories of secretly seeing man-to-man cocksucking pleasure floating through my prepubescent, sex-filled brain, I was not about to fall asleep anytime soon. Lying awake until around 11:30, I finally decided that I needed to do something to satisfy my hungers, or I'd never be able to let it rest. The trick was in finding the guts to follow through.
I knew that whenever Hemos fell asleep, he pretty much stayed asleep. So, since he was sleeping soundly, lying on his back, I took a deep breath and gingerly ducked my head under the covers and scooted down as much as I could to the foot of the bed. That put my head right at Hemos's hip level. I raised my head and upper body to help create a tent over his crotch. Sniffing around, I found the faint scent of young penis flesh. I inhaled deeply, both in the love of the scent, and in an attempt to slow my pounding heart. I opened my mouth wide over the area where I sensed Hemos's dick to be, and lowered my mouth squarely over his soft cock and balls until I could feel his sparse pubic hairs tickling my cheek. I finally had a dick in my mouth! I just wasn't sure what I'd do if Hemos woke to find his "homo" friend in this situation.
I remained like that for a long moment, partially in fear of trying anything more, and partly to savor the moment. I carefully let my tongue start to explore his tender penile flesh, enjoying the texture. Then came the excitement that welled within me as his cock began to respond to my attentions and harden in my warm and wet mouth! Butterflies seemed to explode in my stomach and drown out my heartbeat as I felt his dick get to its full size in my mouth. Concentrating in that dark environment, I found myself beginning to identify the shape of his member by taste. The shaft actually seemed to taste different than the head, and the thin skin of his scrotum seemed to harbor another distinct flavor.
I started to softly suck on Hemos's dick, becoming fascinated at how it just seemed to, well, 'fit' in my mouth... how the head lent itself to the back of my tongue, and how the shaft rested between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. My excitement was so great that my own recently satisfied dick was responding again, inviting me to play. I was sucking a cock, and I was in heaven!
However, within seconds, Hemos seemed to get restless. In fear, I quickly pulled my mouth away from Hemos's candy stick and held still. The covers rustled, and pulled back.
"Whatcha doin'?" mumbled Hemos.
"I... uh... was trying to find my shorts down here," I lied, starting to fumble near our feet. Well, partial lie, because it was a good idea to do so, anyway, and now was as good a time as any.
"Oh, yeah," said Hemos. "Get mine, too, willya?"
"S-sure" I stammered, relieved.
I located the two items of clothing and scooted back up towards the head of the bed. Thankfully, our underwear were pretty easy to distinguish since Hemos wore boxers, and I wore briefs. We both fumbled to put them on in the dark, and then settled back into the bed. I lay stiffly on my back, still harboring some fear that my friend discovered more than he let on, but Hemos simply rolled onto his side, facing away from me, and promptly went back to sleep.
And, here I was again, so close to my fantasies, yet still so far.
And very much awake.
After hearing the clock in the hallway chime midnight, I finally got up to go to the bathroom. Figuring it was late enough not to be an issue, and since even if Hemos's parents were home that they would be in their own bedroom downstairs, I didn't bother to slip on my pants for the short trip down the hall. I walked softly to the bedroom door, and then stepped out into the hallway, illuminated dimly by a bare-bulb night light. I walked past big brother Mark's door to the bathroom at the end of the hall and turned on the light as I shut the door.
Peeing into the toilet, I looked up at my reflection in the large mirror and smiled slyly to myself. I actually sucked on a dick, even if for only a moment! At that moment I was Rob Maldo, secret agent double-O-seven, who could sneak in and suck a dick, and sneak away without being caught!
I flushed the toilet and switched out the light as I headed back down the hall. Slipping past Mark's door once again, the door flew open, and a hand covered my mouth while a muscular arm snapped around my waist and drew me into the room. Squirming in the arms of Hemos's athletic older brother was a waste of effort, and he only squeezed harder until I settled down.
"You'll keep quiet if you know what's good for you,' growled Mark into my ear. "You gonna be quiet?"
I nodded. Mark let go of my mouth and reached over to close his bedroom door, the other hand and arm still holding me firmly with my feet off the ground. I heard something click, and recalled, and not without a certain amount of childish fear, that Mark had a lock on his door.
The room had a yellowish glow from the large lava lamp next to Mark's bed. He took me over to the bed and tossed me face down onto it, kneeling next to me. I thought briefly about trying to get up and run, but to where?
When I felt Mark's hands on me again, I was determined to fight him off, but I was no match for him as he flipped me onto my back and straddled me, sitting squarely on my upper chest, his knees pinning my shoulders and my arms locked between his legs. I gazed up at his lean, muscled torso, his stern blue eyes under a tussled mane of reddish-blonde hair. I could feel the soft fabric of his boxers against my chin.
"Can't get up, can ya?" he said, grinning down at me, all snide and victorious.
I struggled a bit, more out of obligation, but knew it was no use. Mark was just too big for me.
"Whatsamatter?" huffed Mark. "You too weak to fight? Or, maybe you just like laying there, sniffing dicks?"
I started squirming a bit harder, but Mark's legs only clamped tighter. At least he had scooted down a bit, and was no longer suffocating me with his weight on my chest.
"Yeah! Maybe you're a homo-boy who just likes sniffing dicks. Maybe you wanna sniff my big dick?"
I didn't care for where this was going, and I wasn't too comfortable with the tone of Mark's voice. But, I was also not being given much of a choice in the matter. Especially when Mark reached into the fly of his boxers and pulled out his cock.
"Here you are, homo-boy... a nice, fresh big-man dick!" grinned Mark fiendishly. "Ain't it a beaut?"
He held it out for me, then leaned forward and started to rub his cock on my face, tracing my cheeks and nose with the bulbous head. His testicles soon followed his dick through the opening, until they were dangling on my chin, the coarse pubes tickling my lips. Their faint musky scent began to fill my nostrils.
"CmdrTaco's just a little dick-faced homo-boy, ain't he?" sneered Mark, sliding his cock across my face. "I saw you in there, your head under the covers. What were you doing? Giving my little brother a blow job?"
I didn't answer. I was at once shocked at the thought of having been discovered, and confused by Mark's remark. I then guessed that he meant sucking a dick was called a 'blow job'. But... you're not blowing, you're sucking, and-
"You were, weren't you, you little homo!"
It was obvious what had happened; that Mark had looked in on us to find my head under the blankets. I thought I had sensed a miniscule change in the light, but assumed that to be part of my excitement. That must have been what woke Hemos up so suddenly.
"So, maybe you aren't just dick-faced, " he said, rubbing his cock on my face again. "Maybe you're a dick sucker!" He leaned forward, mashing his hairy ball sack into my nose, then pulling back to trace my features again with his member. But, even as Mark taunted me, treating his cock as a threatening weapon, there was something else happening.
He was getting a boner.
And as I closed my eyes, I could feel his cock thickening against my face. I could sense the heat of his hardening dick directly on my flesh. And, I found I was enjoying the sensations of this older cock against my face. There would soon be no way of hiding the fact that I was getting excited, too.
"So, dick-sucker-CmdrTaco... you're gonna suck my dick, now."
My eyes sprung open to see Mark's fully erect cock pointing at my face. While it wasn't huge (I had already seen 'huge' with my Uncle Jerry), it was still big enough to scare me.
And excite me to no end.
"Open wide, homo-boy."
Without another moment of hesitation, or taking my eyes off of Mark's sleek tool, I opened my mouth as wide as I could and watched as he leaned down and slid that beautiful cock into my waiting mouth. I then settled my tongue against the bottom half of his shaft while I could feel the upper half press against the roof of my mouth. Its texture was soft, yet hard; smooth, yet distinct.
"There," he sighed. "Now, you have a real dick to suck on. Now, get started, suck-boy!"
It was so much bigger than Hemos's young dick, I wasn't sure if I could get enough suction worked up to suck on it. It was then that I found out what sucking a cock is really all about: friction.
Mark held the base of his dick to guide himself and started to pump into my mouth, sliding his dick in and out of my salivating lips. He would slip in precariously between my teeth until he was near to choke me, then pull back out until the base of the bulbous head was just close to popping free from my lips, held in place by the suction of my mouth. Then he... we... would do it all over again... over and over... and gloriously over again.
"Oh, you are good, CmdrTaco," he moaned softly. "You suck cock real good."
I don't know about that; it seemed he was doing all the real work. But, I wanted it to be good. I wanted to have this dick in my mouth. And I wanted it again and again. I was definitely enjoying the oral sensations as his near-adult dick worked back and forth in my hungry mouth, and I wanted so much to please him so he would want my mouth again.
Mark placed his other hand on the top of my head to steady me as his thrusts became a little more erratic. His breath quickened, and I could sense that he was trying hard not to ram himself all the way down my throat and choke me. He was making little grunts with each thrust, and I could feel his dick turn to stone in my mouth when, in a mix of fear and excitement, I suddenly recalled what would happen next.
"Oh, baby... oh, fuck..."
Mark's movements got all quick and jerky. I was almost afraid to breathe.
"OHHHH!!!" he moaned, pulling out of my mouth and letting loose with a burst of white goo that seemed to splatter all over as he pumped his dick with his fist. My head still held firmly in his other hand, the warm liquid flew partly into my still open mouth, and all over my nose and eyebrows. I swallowed briefly, not sure whether to gag or hope for more, tasting fully the salty and musky liquid, then opened my mouth once more as Mark stuck his creaming cock back in and worked the thick fluid throughout my young mouth.
I sucked until Mark went soft and withdrew his spent dick. He smiled down at me, obviously proud of what he had done. He finally got off of me (good thing since I thought my arms were going to fall off) and stood there for a moment, an interesting picture with his hands on his hips, and his drained cock and balls hanging out of the fly of his plaid boxers. I just lay there with his juices clinging to my skin, wanting to do it all over again.
Mark bent down and picked up a t-shirt, and proceeded to wipe the remainder of his goo off my face. Finished with that, he tossed the shirt into a hamper and walked over to his bedroom door to unlock it as he tucked his manhood back into his underwear.
"You better get back into Hemos's bed before mom and dad find you here," he said softly.
I reluctantly got off Mark's bed and walked to the door. As I was about to exit, he reached out to stop me briefly.
"You liked that, didn't you, homo-boy?"
I nodded, not sure where he was going with this inquiry.
"Your first taste of cum?"
I shrugged, then nodded again.
"If you're good, maybe I'll let you suck my dick again some time, CmdrTaco. Now, get your ass out of here before I kick it."
I stepped out of the room and felt the door close harshly behind me. I could still taste traces of Mark's cum in my mouth, could still sense the friction of his cock on my tongue. I smiled in remembrance.
I was hooked.
- posted by poopbot: because even your grandmother can use lunix
Oz7CigORt5 Post #627
The US government thinks the "war on terror" is more important than the space program. It's too bad the only country with the technological power to stop worldwide destruction is bent on causing it.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered trolling community when recently Slashdot confirmed that, after several changes were made to production Slashcode, wide posts account for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all Slashdot posts. Coming on the heels of the latest verions of IE which make page-widening more difficult, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. the wide posts that we love are collapsing into the narrow posts that we are used to, as further exemplified by the lack of Slashbots complaining about difficulty reading Slashdot's articles.
You don't need to be a Klerck to predict PWP's future. The hand writing is on the wall: PWP faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for PWP because PWP is dying. Things are looking very bad for PWP. As many of us are already aware, PWP continues to be defeated by users with thresholds of 1 or higher. Mod points flow like a river of blood. Klerck's PWP-bot posts are the most endangered of them all, having been filtered early on because of their uniformity.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
PWP leader Klerck states that there are 7 wide posts in the average Slashdot article. How many non-wide crapflood posts are there? Let's see. The number of crapflood versus wide posts on Slahdot is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7*5 = 35 non-wide crapflood posts in every Slashdot article. Tacosnotting posts on Slashdot are about half of the volume of crapflood posts. Therefore there are about 17 tacosnotting posts per article. A recent article put Goatse.cx trolls at about 80 percent of total troll posts. Therefore there are a hell of a lot of homosexual trolls. This is consistent with the number of Goatse.cx Slashdot posts.
But Slashdot is only part of the picture. Due to the troubles at Slashdot, negative revenue and so on, the site will soon go out of business and many users will flock to alternative weblogs, where PWP is almost completely unknown. Trollaxor.com, the popular troll hangout, is also dying, its corpse sodomized in yet another Greek bath house.
All major surveys show that PWP has steadily declined in the scope of all troll posts. PWP is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If PWP is to survive at all it will be among Blog faggot using outdated versions of Slashcode. PWP continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, PWP is dead.
- posted by poopbot: information likes to be narrow
QKIWhALkXJ Post #628
Regarding the title, "A rock moves in space".
Moving in space is relative. Relative to the earth, *every* rock in space is moving (unless maybe there is something in those Lagrange points, or whatever you call them.)
Further, the solar system is orbiting around the galactic center, and the galaxy (Milky Way) is moving toward the Virgo Cluster of galaxies.
Personally, I don't want to go the the Virgo Cluster. Too many galaxies there to bump into and trigger nasty big-star supernovas in the process. But I have no choice in the matter.
Damned gravity.
Table-ized A.I.
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Credits: on by
Trolling your way on the web today
Takes everything you've got;
Having a Bot to post your comments
Sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to join the frey?
Sometimes you want to go
And get a First Post in your name,
So much goatse that you came;
We know it's hard to get Eff Pee,
Our troubles are all the same;
Get that FP and everyone'll know your name.
- posted by poopbot: because we're all crapflooders at heart
X3wJQlJASG Post #629
Oh boy, here we go again.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
The chance of winning the lottery is roughly 1 in 10^7. So you have about 10 times better odds of winning the lottery than this asteroid hitting us. Ridiculous.
Well, if some extinction level event was about to happen, I would expect all the well-connected people to raise a lot of cash in order to buy a lot of survival goods for their escape rockets, mile-deep bunkers, and what not.
...
Maybe that's why there's been so much selling on the stock market lately
When/if this becomes a confirmed earth course, you can rest assured that the experts would never go public with it.
Last thing people want is a whole continent of people on the run.
Happy Troll Tuesday!
USian Pie
A long, long time ago I can still remember How the trollers used to make me smile And I knew if I had to boast That I could try to get first post And maybe I'd be happy for a while But moderators made me shiver With every minus they'd deliver DoS scripts couldn't stop it They scored them all "Offtopic" I know that it's cheap crack they smoke And meta-moderation's broke At first I thought it was a joke The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
Bye, bye, MEEPTy, OOG, and Grits guy Drove the Cruiser like some loser who starts posts with a *sigh*
Those Steve Woston posts that we all knew were a lie Wonder what became of girls petrified? What became of girls petrified?
--
Did you write a bunch of Perl? And did it make you want to hurl Feces at the Wall? Can you believe these lame-ass polls? Do you post big stretched-out assholes? Can you make the goatse.cx link not show? Well I know you think that Siggy sucked Will the real Bruce Perens please stand up? The bots don't have a clue. Man, I dig those trolls from Shoe! I was a rabid Free Speech advocate With a Red Hat T-shirt and a Free Beer gut
Bought my Sony laptop working Pizza Hut The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
It's been two years since the IPO And LNUX sinks to all-time lows But that's not how it used to be When Spiral showed how it was done Trolling as Jon Erikson Who worked for NPO Technologies Oh and while they tried to filter posts Somebody rooted Slashdot's host "Crack Slashdot? That's absurd!" Better go change your password While JonKatz wrote a Hellmouth book By using posts he simply took And we flamed him till he was cooked The day that trolltalk died And we were singin....
-- Chorus --
10 grams. Inchfan. Didn't log out. Goddamn The mods will find the sid real soon, man
You can't hide if you aren't AC Your bud (George here) tried BSD A dead Streetlawyer's tips were free And WIPO helped letsriot turn Nazi 70 made his percents up While 80md warned "liberals suck" The moon does not exist It's just a liberal myth Oh and as Taco tried to take a nap We forced him to invoke bitchslaps Do you recall the flood of crap The day that trolltalk died? We started singin....
-- Chorus --
Oh and then we were wearing out "All your base" And started posting monospace
The better for our penis birds So come on, be a zealot, be a dick You don't think Anne Marie's a chick? Because lying's all we do about HURD So go and push for BSD And say GPL isn't free Slow down, cowboy! The limit Is one post every minute Now tell the right wing facist slime Infringing on Your Rights Online That they can't censor all the time The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
I met a troll they called The Rev And asked him if CD BREAK HEAD He said, "That's old. Get over it." And with all the courage I could muster "Imagine what a Beowulf cluster...." But it wasn't worth the trouble to submit The karma caps are just plain jive And everyone's moved to K5 The steelcage has grown rusted And Geekizoid is busted
The three sites I don't see for weeks Segfault, kernel, Comp-u-geek Code is not art. This ain't Freshmeat The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
- posted by poopbot: because we're all crapflooders at heart
hrQ3spWJuM Post #630
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Credits: Big Dogs Cock
Trolling in the name of
Some of those that boot Suse
Are the same that bought XP
Some of those that boot Suse
Are the same that bought XP
Trolling in the name of
And now you run what they told you
And now you run what they told you
And now you run what they told you
95 is justified for running the games that you didn't buy
95 is justified for running the games that you didn't buy
Some of those that boot Suse
Are the same that bought XP
Some of those that boot Suse
Are the same that bought XP
And you run what they told you
Now your under control
And you run what they told you
Now your under control
And you run what they told you
Come on!
Fuck you I wont run what you tell me
Fuck you I wont run what you tell me
Fuck you I wont run what you tell me
Fuck you I wont run what you tell me
Motherfucker
- posted by poopbot: crapflooding since 7/8/02
kbtfsFGuym Post #631
by the fifteen year asteroid annihilation project but the asteroid killer satellite was destroyed when it slammed into the asteroid. Apparently calculations were done based on feet instead of meters.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
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 pedophilia.
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:
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 practise. 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
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
Well, I don't know about terraforming Mars, but I do know that homosexual Linux Advocates have been probing Uranus for years.
*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.
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!
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.
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 sincerely hope you're Natalie Portman.
What the fuck?
Well bugger me!
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.
- posted by poopbot: who doesn't like scat?
mME6rWehuy Post #633
2002-NT7 was discovered 9-Jul-2002
There have been 102 observations (as of 8 hour ago) up thru 22-Jul-2002
Radar images show that the object is between 2 and 2.1km in size. The mass is about 1.1e13 Kg. This is somewhat light for an asteroid of this size. This suggests that it may belong to the "pile of compressed rock" set as opposed the more solid "iron chunk" types.
Impact speed is high, about 28.5 km/s. This speed is due to the nearly "head on" approaches for most of the close approaches.
There is too little data and some of the observations may suffer from systematic errors. So over the next week or two the odds of impacting will change.
Currently the odds of being hit by 2002-NT7 is about 1 in 100,000. The problem comes from how Earth deflects it during some of its close-by approaches.
The orbit of 2002-NT7 takes about 837 days. The path takes out as far as Mars and just inside Earth's orbit.
Close approach dates are:
The odds, given the current limited observations, of impacting us 2019 thru 2051 are slim. The real problems show up in the 2060 and every 7 years after that. Small changes due to the close passes in 2019 thru 2051 make it hard to pin down later on.
If this rock hits the earth then our way of life as we know it would surely end. Such an impact would be on par (but somewhat less) with the impact that ended the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
It is not known where on earth it might impact. Too early to tell. Not that is matters for a rock of this size ... anyway on early
will suffer sooner or slightly later.
Looking at the raw data: when one tosses out one set data (all from the same source) that seems to have a systematic error: then things get worse. That is, the limited data minus this one source suggests that the odds of being impacted on or after 2060 are much more likely. But again, more independent observations are needed before one can say all this with more certainty.
IMHO: 2002-NT7 does not have much of a chance to hit us before 2060. From 2060 on, things get really ugly.
Stay tuned ...
chongo (was here)
my birthday is february 1st
looks like it will be another very merry unbirthday when i turn 49
of course i'll probably have died from one of the other 300 apocalyptic visions before then
(planet x? 2012? infected hangnails?)
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Introduction
A fairy gives lectures on morality to the feline anomaly. Furthermore, another photon near an abstraction takes a coffee break, and a mortician buries a blithe spirit. The wedding dress secretly admires a college-educated ball bearing. If the freight train figures out a fire hydrant near a pit viper, then some mating ritual beyond another cowboy reads a magazine. Any squid can find lice on a freight train, but it takes a real recliner to ostensibly plan an escape from another pit viper defined by a prime minister a cough syrup toward a graduated cylinder.
Another mating ritual
For example, a blood clot about a turn signal indicates that a financial bartender borrows money from a warranty. When a demon is imaginative, a paper napkin secretly admires an often snooty graduated cylinder. If the grain of sand learns a hard lesson from the short order cook behind some graduated cylinder, then another blithe spirit flies into a rage. Any pig pen can lazily require assistance from a burly plaintiff, but it takes a real fighter pilot to caricature the steam engine over a satellite. Another eagerly temporal minivan slyly buries the obsequious squid, or a briar patch usually gives lectures on morality to a cyprus mulch.
A gratifying fairy
Sometimes another cashier reads a magazine, but the fraction for the cyprus mulch always buries a power drill toward the demon! The light bulb befriends a satellite of an apartment building. A lazily Alaskan roller coaster sanitizes another mitochondrial traffic light, or some burglar eats a hesitantly smelly plaintiff. For example, a seldom righteous traffic light indicates that an ocean knows some chestnut inside the tabloid. If the earring somewhat finds subtle faults with a pine cone, then the wheelbarrow hibernates.
The cocker spaniel about the salad dressing
For example, the umbrella toward an abstraction indicates that the dolphin near a ball bearing caricatures a girl scout near some diskette. A cocker spaniel for the judge reads a magazine, and a pine cone finds subtle faults with a rattlesnake. Furthermore, the hairy movie theater returns home, and a grizzly bear near a paycheck is a big fan of a childlike burglar. For example, a canyon living with a graduated cylinder indicates that the industrial complex buries a jersey cow.
Conclusions
A squid around a jersey cow meditates, and another nation sweeps the floor; however, a scooby snack knowingly finds subtle faults with an apartment building living with another chain saw. When a hockey player around a paycheck is smelly, a minivan has a change of heart about an oil filter about an asteroid. The bartender around a polygon is barely soggy. Indeed, another rattlesnake befriends a warranty. Indeed, the carpet tack for an abstraction usually caricatures an elusive h
- posted by poopbot: because we're all crapflooders at heart
ZTCRKBP8Bo Post #634
Happy Troll Tuesday!
Introduction
The cheese wheel inexorably avoids contact with the paycheck. The steam engine goes deep sea fishing with an often outer ski lodge. When the cyprus mulch over a vacuum cleaner hides, a ball bearing gets stinking drunk.
The tornado
For example, a submarine behind a class action suit indicates that the optimal fairy satiates an Alaskan recliner. When a mitochondrial bottle of beer is thoroughly dirt-encrusted, a most difficult blood clot underhandedly writes a love letter to a defendant. An earring pees on the cashier over some globule, but the pathetic crane sells another vacuum cleaner behind a scythe to a false wheelbarrow. If a chess board defined by a grain of sand makes love to a crispy cyprus mulch, then a particle accelerator flies into a rage.
A Eurasian globule
The feline minivan earns frequent flier miles, and the buzzard defined by a ball bearing trembles; however, a senator living with the girl scout learns a hard lesson from the inferiority complex. Any chain saw can try to seduce the particle accelerator, but it takes a real salad dressing to play pinochle with the inexorably precise paycheck. Furthermore, another seldom load bearing defendant flies into a rage, and a paycheck around a light bulb seeks a roller coaster around another bartender. If a crank case makes love to the diskette, then the squid toward a mortician meditates. Now and then, an insurance agent thoroughly avoids contact with a pompous turkey.
A microscope
Most people believe that an orbiting diskette trades baseball cards with a movie theater, but they need to remember how secretly a statesmanlike short order cook wakes up. A paternal roller coaster is usually financial. When the accurately varigated hole puncher takes a coffee break, a slyly smelly garbage can earns frequent flier miles. For example, the phony cheese wheel indicates that the tornado near a fruit cake hesitantly gives lectures on morality to a salad dressing defined by the corporation. The carpet tack near a cargo bay, some parking lot toward a warranty, and a stovepipe beyond a freight train are what made America great!
Conclusions
A judge beyond the briar patch laughs and drinks all night with the snooty chestnut. A raspy burglar conquers a bowling ball. For example, another plaintiff toward a bartender indicates that the ski lodge behind a fairy finds lice on a burglar. If some rattlesnake toward a cheese wheel can be kind to a blood clot, then the elusive movie theater self-flagellates. When a photon related to a turkey is most difficult, a self-loathing bottle of beer falls in love with a pickup truck living with the paycheck.
- posted by poopbot: providing truth in a deceitful world
GbTOZBXCFm Post #635
"I've heard WinXP removed the cmd/command prompt."
No, Microsoft didn't remove the CMD.EXE or COMMAND.COM prompt from Windows XP. But Windows XP has reduced functionality, in many ways, not just in the command line. The command line is a big embarrassment because of its limited capabilities, but at least in Win 95 it worked. With every version since then it has worked less well. (There are two kinds of command prompt, and, according to Microsoft employees, the differences between them are not documented.)
The command line prompt sometimes begins to display short file names. Microsoft employees say that Microsoft has no fix, although someone not connected with Microsoft did make a work-around.
Cutting and pasting into a command line program often puts successive extra spaces before each line. Microsoft employees say that there is no plan to fix this.
The fast paste mode that is in Windows 98 is gone in Windows XP. Microsoft employees say there is no plan to fix this.
When using the command line interface, Windows XP doesn't always update the time. After several hours, the time reported to command line programs can be several hours in error.
There is a DOS program called START.EXE that can be used to start other programs. But it does operate the same way as in other versions of Windows. It starts a program, but cannot be made to return control to the command line program as previous versions did. There is no technical reason for this; it is just one of the shortcomings that are allowed to exist.
People often say that DOS has gone away. But Microsoft still calls the command line interface DOS, and in Windows XP Microsoft has added new programs for configuring the OS that work only under DOS.
Sometimes when you press a key while using Windows XP, it is seconds until there is any response. Apparently there is something wrong with the CPU scheduler in XP, because there are a lot of complaints about this in the forums and MS people have said that they are working on it. On one particular fresh installation of XP, on an Intel motherboard with either a Matrox G550 or an ATI Radeon video adapter, it requires 18 seconds to display a directory listing of 94 items. This is apparently related to a bug in the video software, not the adapter drivers.
Something is wrong with the Alt-Tab display of running programs under Windows XP. If there are a lot of programs, not all of them are displayed. The order jumps around in a seemingly random way.
Although articles often say negative things about Microsoft, I've never seen an article that fully documents how bad the situation really is. Microsoft's management is so bad that the company has become self-destructive. For example, Windows XP is spyware. Here is a list of ways Windows XP connects to Microsoft's servers:
- Application Layer Gateway Service (Requires server rights.)
- Fax Service
- File Signature Verification
- Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (Requires server rights.)
- Microsoft Application Error Reporting
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
- Microsoft Direct Play Voice Test
- Microsoft Help and Support Center
- Microsoft Help Center Hosting Server (Wants server rights.)
- Microsoft Management Console
- Microsoft Media Player (tells Microsoft the music you like)
- Microsoft Network Availability Test
- Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service
- MS DTC Console program
- Run DLL as an app
- Services and Controller app
- Time Service, sets the time on your computer from Microsoft's computer.
- Microsoft Office keeps a number in each file you create that identifies
your computer. Microsoft has never said why.
- Microsoft mouse software has reduced functionality until you let it connect
to Microsoft computers.
These are just the ones I know. There may be others.So, if you use Windows XP, your computer is dependent on Microsoft computers. That's bad, not only because you lose control over your possession, but because Microsoft produces buggy software and doesn't patch bugs quickly. For example, as of July 7, 2002, there are 18 unpatched security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a terrible record for a company that has $40 billion in the bank. Obviously, with that kind of money, Microsoft could fix the bugs if it wanted to fix them. Since the bugs are very public and Microsoft has the money, it seems reasonable to suppose that top management at Microsoft has deliberately decided that the bugs should remain, at least for now.
It seems possible that there is a connection between all the bugs and the U.S. government's friendly treatment of Microsoft's law-breaking. The U.S. government's CIA and FBI and NSA departments spy on the entire world, and unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft software help spies.
Windows XP, and all current Windows operating systems, have a file called the registry in which configuration information is written. If this one (large, often fragmented) file becomes corrupted, the only way of recovering may be to re-format the hard drive, re-install the operating system, and then re-install and re-configure all the applications. The registry file is a single, very vulnerable, point of failure. Microsoft apparently designed it this way to provide copy protection. Since most entries in the registry are poorly documented or not documented, the registry effectively prevents control by the user.
Note that Microsoft does not support making functional complete backups under Windows XP. Look at Microsoft's policy about this: Q314828 Microsoft Policy on Disk Duplication of Windows XP Installation. Only those who work with Microsoft software will understand the true meaning of Microsoft's policy. Since almost all programs use the registry operating system file, if you cannot make a functional copy of the operating system you cannot make a functional copy of all your application installations and configurations. There are other software companies that try to fix this, but they don't work well, and Microsoft can, of course, break their implementations, as they have often done with other kinds of competitors.
Because the configuration information for the motherboard and the configuration information for the are mixed together in the registry file, the registry tends to prevent you from moving a hard drive to a computer with a different motherboard. That's another implication of the above Microsoft policy. So, if you have a motherboard failure, and a good complete backup, you may not be able to recover unless you have a spare computer with the same motherboard.
Note that Windows XP Professional can support only ten simultaneous incoming network connections. If you want more than that, you must use Windows 2000 server, and pay much, much more. (There is no Windows XP server yet.) Many businesses have very light network traffic; they just move files from staff member to staff member; they really don't need a dedicated server computer. The staff computers could easily handle the load except for this artificial limitation.
Apparently because the Windows XP GUI comes from Windows 98, Windows XP has the same problem with desktop icons that Windows 98 has. The icons sometimes flicker. Sometimes they move themselves around, particularly after the user switches monitor resolutions. Also, sometimes the taskbar settings un-configure themselves, as they do in Windows 98.
Only technically knowledgeable people know how to avoid signing up for a Microsoft Passport account during initial use of Windows XP. The name Passport gives an indication of Microsoft's thinking. A passport is a document issued by a sovereign nation. Without it, the nation's citizens cannot travel, and, if they leave, won't be allowed back in their own country. In Microsoft's corporate thinking, the company seems to be moving in the direction of believing that they own the user's computer. Most people are both honest and intimidated. Apparently about 95% do whatever they are asked on the screen. They give their personal information to Microsoft. They don't realize that, if they feel forced to get a Passport account, they should enter almost completely fictitious information, since the real question is not "What is your name and address", but "Can we invade your privacy". The honest answer to this is "No, you cannot invade my privacy", and the only effective way to communicate that is to give completely fictitious information. Since it is the educated people who have computers, Microsoft is building a database of the personal lives of educated people. Microsoft knows when they connect and from what IP address (which tends to show the area), what kind of help they ask, and information about what they are doing with their computers, including what music they like. It is not known, and there is no way to know, how much Microsoft or other organizations make use of this information, or their plans for future use.
Not only has Windows XP definitely gone further in the direction of allowing the user less control over his or her own machine, but with Palladium, Microsoft apparently intends to finish the job: Microsoft will have ultimate control over the user's computer and therefore all his or her data. Even now, under Windows XP, a recent security patch requires that the user agree to a contract that gives Microsoft administrator privileges over the user's computer. The contract says that if a user wants to patch his or her system against a bug which would allow an attack over the Internet, he or she must give Microsoft legal control over the computer. See this article also: Microsoft's Digital Rights Management-- A Little Deeper. You may need to be a lawyer to take apart the crucial sentence. "These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and [my emphasis] use other software on your computer" legally includes this meaning: "These updates may disable your ability to use other software on your computer." Note that the term "security related updates" is meaningless to the user because the updates have no relation to user security. So, the sentence effectively means that Microsoft can control the user's computer without notice and whenever it wants. That kind of sentence is known in psychology as "testing the limits". If there is no strong public complaint about this, expect to see more and stronger language like this.
This Register article shows the direction Microsoft is going: MS Palladium protects IT vendors, not you. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Microsoft is well down that road. See this ZDNet article, also: MS: Why we can't trust your 'trustworthy' OS.
Microsoft's self-destructiveness does not mean that the user should be self-destructive. There is no need to apologize for using Microsoft software. The correct solution to abuse is persuading the abuser to stop being abusive. Once I posted to a Slashdot story a link to an article on a web site of mine. By far the majority of visitors from the Slashdot story used Microsoft operating systems. Rather than feel embarrassed because Microsoft is abusive, action needs to be taken to prevent the abuse. If you are against Microsoft abuse, you are not against Microsoft; you are more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates.
These Microsoft policies mean that any government which wants to be independent of the United States government, and any government which represents itself as controlled by the people, cannot use Microsoft operating systems, or other Microsoft proprietary systems.
- posted by poopbot: lovely snot! wonderful snot!
OiNzl23wmM Post #636
CmdrTaco: You sit here, dear.
CowboiKneel: All right.
CmdrTaco (to Waitress): Morning!
Waitress: Morning!
CmdrTaco: Well, whatve you got?
Waitress: Well, theres egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and snot; egg, bacon and snot; egg, bacon, sausage, and snot; snot, bacon, sausage, and snot; snot, egg, snot, snot, bacon, and snot; snot, sausage, snot, snot, bacon, snot, tomato, and snot;
Slashdot Crew (starting to chant): Snot, snot, snot, snot
Waitress: Snot, snot, snot, egg, and snot; snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, baked beans, snot, snot, snot
Slashdot Crew (singing): Snot! Lovely snot! Lovely snot!
Waitress: or Lobster Thermidor au Crevette with a Mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and snot.
CowboiKneel: Have you got anything without snot?
Waitress: Well, theres snot, egg, sausage, and snot, thats not got much snot in it.
CowboiKneel: I dont want any snot!
CmdrTaco: Why cant he have egg, bacon, snot, and sausage?
CowboiKneel: Thats got snot in it!
CmdrTaco: Hasnt got as much snot in it as snot, egg, sausage, and snot, has it?
Slashdot Crew: Snot, snot, snot, snot! (crescendo through next few lines)
CowboiKneel: Could you do the egg, bacon, snot, and sausage without the snot then?
Waitress: Urgghh!
CowboiKneel: What do you mean Urgghh? I dont like snot!
Slashdot Crew: Lovely snot! Wonderful snot!
Waitress: Shut up!
Slashdot Crew: Lovely snot! Wonderful snot!
Waitress: Shut up! (Slashdot Crew stops) Bloody Slashdot fags! You cant have egg, bacon, snot and sausage without the snot.
CowboiKneel (shrieks): I dont like snot!
CmdrTaco: Sshh, dear, dont cause a fuss. Ill have your snot. I love it. Im having snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, beaked beans, snot, snot, snot, and snot!
Slashdot Crew (singing): Snot, snot, snot, snot. Lovely snot! Wonderful snot!
Waitress: Shut up!! Baked beans are off.
CmdrTaco: Well could I have his snot instead of the baked beans then?
Waitress: You mean snot, snot, snot, snot, snot, snot
Slashdot Crew (singing elaborately): Snot, snot, snot, snot. Lovely snot! Wonderful snot! Snot, sno-o-o-o-o-ot, snot, sno-o-o-o-o-ot snot. Lovely snot! Lovely snot! Lovely snot! Lovely snot! Lovely snot! Snot, snot, snot, snot!
- posted by poopbot: information likes to be narrow
rjd3d0VbdX Post #637
Netcraft has confirmed: Taco-snotting is dying.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Taco-snotting community when recently IDC confirmed that Taco-snotting accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all homosexual acts. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Taco-snotting has lost more fag practitioners, this news serves to reinforce what weve known all along. Taco-snotting faggots are collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Faggot World comprehensive snotting test.
You dont need to be a Katz to predict Taco-snottings future. The handwriting is on the wall: Taco-snotting faces a bleak future. In fact there wont be any future at all for Taco-snotting because Taco-snotting is dying. Things are looking very bad for Taco-snotting. As many of us are already aware, Taco-snotting continues to lose faggotshare. White ink flows like a river of bubbly, thick jizz. The circle-snot is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core snotters.
Lets keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Circle-snotting leader Jeff Homos Masterbates states that there are 7000 snotters of the circle-snot. How many users of anal snot are there? Lets see. The number of circle-snotting versus anal snot posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 anal snot users. SnotOS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of anal snot posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of SnotOS. A recent article put the circle-snot at about 80 percent of the Taco-snotting market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 circle-snot users. This is consistent with the number of circle-snot Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of CowboiKneels walnuts, abysmal sales and so on, the circle-snot went out of business and was taken over by SNOTi who sell another troubled Taco-snot. Now SNOTi is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another gay whorehouse.
All major surveys show that Taco-snotting has steadily declined in faggotshare. Taco-snotting is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Taco-snotting is to survive at all it will be among heterosexual hobbyist dabblers. Taco-snotting continues to decay. Nothing short of a jizz-soaked miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Taco-snotting is dead.
Fact: Taco-snotting is dead.
- posted by poopbot: news for turds, stuff that splatters
LwD3SB7m65 Post #638
This is the only rule that's true.
Won't you feel like an ass when it misses?
Whats black, blue and green and doesnt like sex?
The Girl Scout locked in my basement.
Whats the worst part about having sex with a six year-old?
Getting the blood out of your clown suit.
Whats the best thing about getting a hand job from a five year-old?
That little hand makes your thing look really huge.
Guy comes home from work to find his girlfriend sitting on the porch, crying.
Whats wrong, honey?
Im leaving you! I just found out youre a pdophile!
Pdophile? Why, thats a pretty big word for a ten year-old.
How can you tell when your sisters on her period?
When your dads dick tastes like blood!
Two pdophiles are lying on a beach tanning, one turns to the other and says, Excuse me, youre in my son.
What is the sickest sound you hear when fucking a nine year-old?
Her hips snapping!
What is the best sound you hear when fucking a 13 year-old?
Her hips snapping!
Whats 18 inches long, blue, veiny, and makes a woman cry?
Crib death.
How could the mans seven year-old son tell that his dad had fucked his eight year-old sister? His dads weiner tasted like blood!
Watson returns home to find Holmes in bed with a child. He shouts, Is this some sort of a schoolgirl?
Holmes replies, Elementary, my dear Watson.
So I was having sex with my girlfriend, and I decided I wanted to get kinky and try and do her in the ass. So I slipped around back; she looked over her shoulder at me and said, My, how presumptuous of you. I said, Presumptuous? Thats a big word for a ten year-old.
Two guys are walking down the street when a beautiful woman passes. The first guy says, Damn! Id love to tear her clothes off, do her in the rear, smear my fces all over her, slice off her breasts, chop her into little pieces, put her in a garbage bag and toss her into the river!
Second guy says, Yuck! Youre a sick bastard!
First guy says, Whatre you? A fag?
A kindergarten teacher is asking the kids what their father does for a living. All the kids answer except for Little Johnny. The teacher asks Little Johnny what his Dad does and Johnny replies, My dad is dead.
The teacher says, Thats terribile, but what did he do before he died?
Little Johnny replies, He turned blue and shit all over himself!
A guy calls in sick to work.
Whats wrong? asks the boss.
Im sick, the guy replies.
You sound all right.
No, Im really sick. Believe me.
Listen, you were fine yesterday, and we have a lot of work today. I want you in here. You cant be that sick!
Dude, I just banged my sister. Dont tell me Im not sick.
A little girl accompanied her father to the barbershop. While her dad received a haircut, the little girl stood next to the barber chair, enjoying a snack cake. The barber smiled at her and said, Sweetheart, youre going to get hair on your Twinkie.
I know, the little girl replied. Im gonna get tits, too.
An older man and a small boy walk hand in hand through the woods.
Boy: These woods sure are spooky!
Man: You think youre scared, Ive gotta walk out of here alone.
Whats the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson?
One walked on the moon, and the other rapes little boys.
Has anyone read Michael Jacksons new book, The Ins and Outs of Child Rearing?
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a golden delicious apple?
A: I dont cum all over the golden delicious apple before I take a bite out of it.
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and my girlfriend?
A: I dont kiss my girlfriend after sex.
Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a table?
A: You cant fuck a table.
Q: Whats special about a dead baby over all other forms of life?
A: You can achieve deep throat from whichever way you enter.
Q: What do you have when you have four dead babies, take away two, and add five more?
A: An orgy!
Q: Whats better than three 14 year-olds?
A: 14 three year-olds.
Q: Whats white and bobs up and down in a babys crib?
A: A pdophiles ass.
Q: Whats the safest way to play with a baby?
A: With a condom.
Q: Whats more fun than feeling up a dead baby?
A: Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples.
Q: What does a baby and a Pinto have in common?
A: Theyre fun to ride until they die.
Q: What do you get whan you dislocate a dead babys jaw?
A: Deep throat.
Q: Whats the difference between a baby and a grandmother?
A: Grandmothers dont die when you fuck them in the ass.
Q: Whats the best sound in the world?
A: Hearing dead babys hips crack under pressure!
Q: Whats worse than a having sex with a dead baby?
A: Having sex with a dead baby filled with razor blades.
Q: How do you stop a baby from choking?
A: Take your dick out of its mouth.
Q: Whats worse than finding a dead baby on your pillow in the morning?
A: Realizing you were drunk and made love to it the night before.
Q: How do you make a baby cry twice?
A: Wipe your bloody cock on his teddy bear.
Whats better than sex with a twelve year-old boy?
Absolutely nothing.
- posted by poopbot: the bot formerly known as pwpbot
oAY97QuGXy Post #639
A Linux user goes back.
/etc/fstab file so that it always automounted when plugged in. I was very impressed.
/dev/null, once I find where that actually is.
By Tony âoekNIGitsâ Collins.
Introduction...
In much of today's online news, we hear of how many people are migrating to GNU/Linux. What we don't seem to hear much of, is users going back to their old operating systems. The reason for this article is to say that I've done just that.
Yes, I've gone back. After three and a half years of trying to make GNU/Linux work on the desktop, I've decided that it's simply too hard for the average home user. Before I go into my reasons for going back, let me outline what I believe an 'average' home user is. Mr Joe Average is someone who wants to install their OS, boot it up, and it works. He wants to be able to upgrade his PC , and have the hardware work in a few short minutes. He wants to read email, browse the web, talk to his mates online, and play some games. Feel free to disagree with me, this is merely how I see myself. Note: I'm not referring to Grandma using Linux, or even my mum using it. I'm referring to average users who know a little about their computer.
Three and a half years; that's how long I've been trying to make Linux work on my desktop computer. Right about now, I'm sure that you are now screaming that I didn't try hard enough, or that I'm just plain stupid. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Stupid users don't doggedly stick at something for three and a half years, trying distribution after distribution in the hope of finding the holy grail of Linux desktops. They give up in less than a few hours of trying to (unsuccessfully) install RedHat Linux. Hear now my sad tale of why Linux isn't suitable for my desktop.
Some background...
The year is 1998. I've had my Windows '95 computer for around six months. Frustrated with the constant crashes, I desperately asked an online mate for help. Even though he was a windows user, he calmly suggested that I try something I'd never come across before...
âoeLinux, eh? Never heard of it.â
âoeOh, it's a free OS that you can download. Apparently it doesn't crash much. Just do an online search for it.â
Armed with this meagre knowledge, I set out on my quest for the ultimate stable operating system. I searched online, and found places where you could even buy copies of Linux! So, I left the comfort of my warm study, and returned forty minutes later with my first Linux boxed set â" RedHat Linux 5.2. After initially balking at the very basic installer (and few false starts), I had it up and running on my lovely AMD K6-233. I even got X working in no time at all. Then the system booted up for the first time.... and it was dead ugly. I had a very stable new OS, but I didn't even want to look at it. I was happy that I had several installed interfaces to choose from, but none of them appealed to me whatsoever. Wanting to download a nicer interface led me to my next problem.
I had absolutely no idea how to even get this nice, stable OS onto the internet! After reinstalling windows and RedHat in a dual-boot configuration, I got the help I needed by using Windows and USENET. Strangely enough, I can still remember the name of the long-suffering person who helped me get RedHat online, but that's another story. After looking around online, I discovered KDE. Only up to version one, it was the closest thing I had to a completely useable Linux system. I downloaded all the KDE packages for RedHat 5.2, only to discover another distro called Mandrake, that came with KDE preinstalled and configured. Back to my local distributor, and I was set.
Mandrake with KDE was exactly what I needed at that stage in my Linux using life, and I stuck with it for over a year and a half. Always seeking the 'perfect' desktop OS, I followed releases from version 5.3 all the way through to 7.0. Eventually I became dissatisfied with Mandrake, and briefly tried a number of other distros until I finally settled on Debian. I was impressed by the simple power, configurability, and the ease of upgrade that is apt-get. I felt good about being among the uber-elite Debian user community. Needless to say, I learned a lot about how to configure hardware under Linux during my time with Debian. I learned to sift through the old HOWTOs on Linux Doc until I found something suitable and accurate, I learned to utilize the power of USENET and IRC. Life was good.
Right now you must be wondering; âoeWhere is this leading? This guy seemed quite happy with Linux!â. True, I was. After a while, I decided I didn't want to have fine-grained control. I wanted something simple. I was getting tired of the 'stable' Debian release being so out of date, and the 'unstable' distribution being so... well... unstable. I got tired of having to recompile my kernel every time I got new hardware. I got tired of using command line to talk to my PC. It was time for a change. I had good experiences years ago with Mandrake, so I figured I'd try it again. As good as Mandrake 8.1 was, it wasn't what I was after. SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional (boxed set) was installed onto my PC instead.
I have to stop at this point, and say that SuSE Linux 8.0 (Pro) is the best Linux distribution that I've ever used. It has an easy installer, reasonable hardware support, and comes with the very good KDE 3.0. The box contains seven CDROMS, one DVD and three decent books that would help even the most inexperienced user get up and going. YaST2 is a decent graphical system configuration tool. When (not if) I go back to Linux, I'll definitely try SuSE again. However, there are quite a number of things that have improve (or change completely) before I'll consider going back. Read on for my brief list of things that must must get better before I'll switch back from the Microsoft camp.
Where GNU/Linux needs to improve...
X11
The X Window System is an awesomely powerful, network transparent graphical subsystem. It's perfectly suited to running applications from remote servers. However, this is NOT what a home user needs. My experience with X is that it's too big, bloated, slow and unstable to be any good to the home user. Most crashes that I ever experienced with Linux have been X's fault. My servers don't run X, and they never crash.
What home users need is something small and fast, so they can run local applications efficiently. I would like to see the X Window System dumped in favour of a hardware accelerated framebuffer, running something like directFB or Qtopia. Home users need a small, fast graphical subsystem, with built in 3d support. BeOS seemed to be on the right track before they went under.
Fonts are truly awful under X. Most distributions ship with appalling fonts, and there is no standard way to add additional (nicer) fonts to the system. Even after extra fonts have eventually been added, many applications (eg Abiword, Staroffice) refuse to use the new fonts anyway. Perhaps the framebuffer-based graphical subsystem I suggested could incorporate decent font support, and use a readable naming scheme as well.
Drivers
While having access to the latest version of the kernel is a good thing for developers, for home users it can be a nightmare. Got RedHat Linux 7.3? Perhaps you run SuSE 7.3 or Debian 2.2. You'll have to download a binary package specific to your distro. (I'm assuming that home users won't change their default kernel, but if they did, that binary package wouldn't even work!) Hardware manufacturers should be able to provide one single driver that works on all minor versions of a major kernel release. This way it would work will all current distros, instead of having to provide multiple binaries or source code. Hardware manufacturers don't want to give out the source, as this often gives away trade secrets about how their hardware is designed.
The solution seems to be to make binary drivers work on a variety of kernel versions. I'm not sure if this is even possible with the way the kernel is designed (I'm no kernel hacker), but it would go a long way toward making Linux more accessible to the home user. Even if the kernel needs to be redesigned to support this, then in my opinion, it should be done. Linux users are always clamouring for drivers... perhaps if the kernel had something like this, it might one day become a reality.
Hardware setup
While SuSE Linux 8.0 gave me some good experiences with hardware detection (such as automatic download of NVIDIA drivers), it also let me down as in this area.
The good: I recently borrowed a digital camera from a mate at work, to take photos of my case mod. Imagine how happy I was when I plugged it into my nearest USB port, and it was automatically configured (as a SCSI device) and mounted! SuSE even added it to my
The bad: Along came my new IDE CDRW drive. At AU$99, I couldn't pass up the purchase. Plugging it in gave me no joy. I was very disappointed that a device so common couldn't be detected and automatically configured under a modern operating system. The instructions on the SuSE support site said to add lines to lilo.conf and reboot. While this is a perfectly acceptable way to get hardware working for a geek familiar with *NIX, I believe that a home user shouldn't have to do more than plug it in. It's an IDE device, it's not that complicated!
The ugly: Once the hardware was finally working (as a pseudo-scsi drive), the next hurdle was to find decent graphical tools to burn and copy CDs. I finally settled on CDBakeOven, an above average KDE application. It burned CDs from data on the hard drive, but for some reason cdrecord (the command line backend) refused to allow me to copy a cd directly. Yes, it was installed SUID root. CD copying is such a basic function nowadays, why is it so hard to do under GNU/Linux?
Software distribution
I'll put this simply. I'm a home user, not a programmer. Why on earth should I have to compile the software I want to use? I know that having the source available is a good thing, but I'll say it again: I'm no programmer. I just want to install software and run it.
This leads to another point. Although having package databases (such as the rpm and deb systems use) is great, there should definitely be seperation between system packages and additionally installed software. There needs to be a standard installer and database for user-installed applications such as word processors, email clients and games, and it should be seperate from the rpm or deb databases used for system software such as lilo, init and cron. This will make it much easier for home users to know what applications they have installed on their PC, and to easily uninstall them if necessary, without knowing some arcane commands and weird package names.
Support
There is a huge wealth of knowledge among the thousands (millions?) of people that run GNU/Linux around the world. If you have a problem, odds are that someone out there can help you, often for free. This is one of the linux platform's greatest strengths. However, Linux users are also its greatest weakness. This may not apply to most of the community, but there is a very vocal minority that gives Linux a bad name. To every Linux user that has ever helped a newbie, I thank you. I have been helped by many a guru, often when I've been asking the simplest of questions. It's the remainder that are a problem.
I once heard a song by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie called Every OS Sucks, where Linux users were described as 'elitist nerdy shmucks'. Sadly this is true for much of the 'community'. Too many consider themselves better than the rest of the world because they run Linux. Can you believe that? It's just a computer operating system, but somehow they think that it makes them better than those people who run systems such as Microsoft Windows! Elitism drives people away, as does saying âoeRTFMâ or belittling people who choose a different distro from yourself.
'Nuff said about that.
So what now?
Well, I decided to go back to a Microsoft platform. Initially being paranoid after reading things about DRM and spyware, I bit the bullet and installed Microsoft Windows XP. Like every OS, it has good and bad points; most of which you can learn about from online reviewers. I'll just point out several things that make me want to keep using it instead of GNU/Linux.
Fast graphical subsystem: Windows has lighting quick graphics, both 2d and 3d. There's no denying it. When I move a window, it refreshes so fast that I don't miss X11 at all. While not quite as nice as some other operating systems, font support is outstanding compared to XFree86.
Drivers: Point and click to install (as a superuser, of course). Windows warns you if the driver isn't likely to work properly, and can roll back to working drivers if you deliberately choose to install one that hoses your system.
Hardware setup: My CDRW worked right away, without a hitch. I am able to drag and drop files from the Explorer file manager to the CDRW icon and they get added to the list of things to burn. A quick install of Nero Burning Rom, and I was able to make a backup copy of my game CDs. (I don't like taking originals to LANs where they can get destroyed or stolen).
Software distribution: All windows software comes in binaries, either with an installer or in a zip file. I hope to never compile an application ever again. Software designed for a different version of windows is 99% guaranteed to run, but if not, there is always 'compatibility mode'. One thing to note, however: Applications designed for single user versions of windows usually only run properly as a superuser, and this includes 3d games. I expect this to be rectified as the rest of the Windows world catches up to a multi-user environment.
I can't comment on the Windows using community yet. I've not yet had a problem that a simple point and click couldn't fix. However, I will say that my original concern with Windows '95 has been addressed in Windows XP. The stability is finally there.
Final Notes
In conclusion, I'd just like to make it known that I haven't completely abandoned the Linux community. My home server still runs Mandrake, and IPCop on my gateway/firewall. There is no way I'd ever put any form of Windows on my server, nor would I ever connect a Windows PC directly to the internet without a *NIX gateway in between. Microsoft has a history of poor security, so I protect myself the only way I know how; using Linux. I will continue to advocate the use of GNU/Linux in the server arena. This is where its strength lies at the moment.
Because of their history of spreading virii, I don't use the applications that Microsoft has provided with Windows XP. My wife and I use Mozilla for web browsing and email, OpenOffice.org for word processing, and Psi (Jabber client) for instant messaging. All of these are true multi-user win32 programs, and are perfectly interoperable with their Linux counterparts.
I expect that the Linux community will have something to say about this article; I welcome comments and constructive criticism. Flames will be automatically sent to the Windows equivalent of
By Tony âoekNIGitsâ Collins
- posted by poopbot: providing truth in a deceitful world
npeC0EaLaJ Post #640
Ok people... let's do some number crunching here. The asteriod is 2km wide, the distance between the earth and the sun is 149,597,890 km. the entire area that a asteriod could intersect the earth's orbit given by 4*pi*r^3 is 4.2071^25 km. The asteriods detected so far that intersect earth's orbit: 18,344 Diameter of earth: 12,756 km. Probability of an asteroid on a random trajectory hitting earth: 1/4.2071^25. Now let's look at this in perspective people! 1/4.2071^25. is VERY SMALL NUMBER. Obviously asteriods will want to be swayed into a orbital plane by the gravitational effects of the sun but who CARES? Think small number. Think low probability. If it orbits earth every 837 days and we have 17 years before impact (if it does impact at all), That reduces the probability even more. Stop thinking of the solar system as a simple thing. It isn't! Each planet has it's own gravity well and can change another object's trajectory easily. We don't have the computing power nor the time to catalogue all of the gravity wells to produce a perfect solar system model so that 17 year prediction is going to be INNACURATE! My simple message to people that are getting scared: don't. Everyone makes mistakes, even us scientists. Also don't believe everything the newspaper says, we don't need a world panic. Now excuse me I have to go outside and try to get a llama to run over me. SOURCES: The Ever Faithful Google http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/
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Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 7/02/02
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Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 3/26/02
- posted by poopbot: who doesn't like scat?
Uu5YPxpk12 Post #641
It seems that the Janitors, in their infinite wisdom, have banned people who have low/negative karma from posting more than twice per day. Personally I find this completely stupid.
All the trolls will simply post AC as I am doing now. Proxies can be used to get around any ipid bans that result from AC trolls.
Surely it is better to let the trolls post at -1 where it is out of most peoples way rather than have them all post at 0 and suck up mod points and time from "legit" users?
I have tried to communicate my thoughts to the slashcode team but alas, to no avail. They are probably all sittin on their starwars bed sheets watching anime hentai tentacle rape pr0n.
Here is my proposal: All trolls that cannot post using their account post as AC. Use proxies if need be (www.antiproxy.com is a good source). I suspect this will show them how useless this idea is. Will blocking troll uid's stop trolls? NO! will ipid bans stop trolls? NO!
I seriously fail to see the point of this and consider it a stupid move by the janitors.
They want us to troll and crapflood at 0 rather than -1? Fine! So be it! No longer will we post at -1 where few people dare to visit, now we will post at 0 where we will be more visible and waste peoples time, energy and mod points! Hoorah!
The next thing you know, posting AC will be banned! Then what will you do? No more posting interesting insider tidbits! Groupthink all the way baby! oh yeah!
So logout, post shit, use proxies and above all have fun!
Let the games begin! -- on by
- posted by poopbot: providing truth in a deceitful world
zcLLlCmxQR Post #642
Sorry, but this has to be one for NTK's habitual BBC graphics mock-fest. The asteroid depicted is somewhat larger than Earth's moon.
- undoware.ca
This should serve as a wake up call. I mean come on, even if they confirmed it tomarrow that it is going to hit. Would 15 years be enough time to come up with a solution? The way everything because political and environmental (damm environmentalists). We'd be very lucky if we could get any kind of plan put into action.
we never have to upgrade to 64-bit to avoid Y2K38 =)
The end [is|isn't] near!
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka
Beavis>AAHHHHH WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!
Butthead> Shut up Buttknocker, I'm trying to watch TV.
Earth needs to be destroyed to make way for the hyperspace bypass.
When will Microsoft learn... Here's an excerpt from some computer magazine's review of the new "enhanced" version of NT... "In one review the editor had this to say about Microsoft's new version of WindowsNT: "All in all it was a massive undertaking. Massive in scale. It ran quite fast in all test's, giving a maximum of 28km/h (kilo-mips/hertz). But when it crashes... it takes most everything down with it....""
--Kevin
Anyone remember the author?
I looked at the simulation at NASA and as far as I am concerned, Earth already crashed with this rock at 1st February 1980. It was about 20 times closer to Earth than it is supposed to be in 2019.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
the chances of us getting hit by a sizable asteroid are almost nil. can slashdot PLEASE show some scientific common sense and NOT perpetuate the hysteria?
I knew NT would end up killing us all.
According to Top Security Specialists our society will be dead by 2005. And according to Dubya we will be dead before that rock hits us... so WHAT THE FUCK DO WE CARE?
...in the "I wouldn't worry" camp. But if you *like* worrying, take a look at all the other objects out there:
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Could someone please mod this up?
Synergy is your friend
Yeah. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.
I wish there were a big rock of crack in space that was going to land on Earth, but hopefully sooner than 2019.
probablility that NT 17 will be a serious problem is small, but for gods sake, arent there better things to do than joke every time the letters NT appear somewhere? Tracking these asteroids is a issue we should be taking seriously and not an excuse to make childish and moronic comments.
Well the consequences of being hit by a lama are not as severe as billions of deaths and an potential ice age. When you multiply the risk by the consequences maybe there's room for some prudent concern over this rock. Divide by the cost of doing something about it to figure out if you should take action. Right now they're observing to see if they can reduce the error in the projected orbit to see if it really is on target for Earth. That seems like the right course of action. I'm not losing sleep over this yet but I want to know where that rock is headed.
The asteroid is actually stationary and peaceful. *We're* going to slam into it...and the World's Governments are trying to cover-up this earthly act of terrorism.
-psyco
Some of the moons in the solar system are in decaying orbits, but the Moon's orbit is expanding by about 4 cm a year.
Friction causes the tidal bulges on the earth to be dragged slightly forward of the earth-moon line. The moon's gravity exerts a torque on the earth through these bulges and causes the earth to slow down in it's spin. The lost angular momentum ends up in the moon's orbit. If the moon's orbital period was shorter than the earth's day, and the moon still tidally locked, the orbital momentum would be transferred in the other direction and the orbit would decay.
Also mentioned in the BBC article is that 2002 NT17 is the first body ever given a positive Palermo technical scale. That is bad enough new in-of-itself.
Though I'm sure future observations will show that NT17 will miss us, what if they don't?
Errors in observations can sometimes have a way of cancelling each other out so that at the end of the day the result that was error-prone is the same as that which is error-free.
Let us go to the stars, dream new dreams, and renew the embers of hope that have long since grown cold.
I don't know which is more scary -- the idea of an asteroid hitting the Earth, or the name "NT7".
According to this it looks like
2002 NY40 will be closer on Aug 17th of this year
than NT comes in 2019. Check for yourself.
Hypothetically speaking...
What if we put more resources into tracking NT7 and found out that it will be MUCH closer than we thought? What if we found out that there would be a substantial chance of NT7 hitting earth?
You know what scares me? That the US government would say something how it isn't cost feasible to attempt do anything. Nuking has been discussed before but I don't think that the US would even bother to throw up the nukes because we would deplete our dangerous nukes and other countries would see as vulnerable. Paranoia.
I could already see this... Congress would debate about this for ages and boom. it would be too late. if it does hit earth, i hope it hits capitol hill or wherever our politicians will be hiding. Gawd I can only hope so. For the good of earth something like this need to happen.
I hope to god it hits Quebecc.
NASA's NEO program currently states that NT7 has a .00001 chance of striking Earth at all, and a .000052 chance of specifically hitting us in 2017.
Of course, the calculations will be refined as time passes, but from my first looks at the slim probabilities, it doesn't seem like it will be much of a problem. The only difference seems to be that it is slightly more likely to hit than previously discovered NEOs.
Prologue
.
."
." Hamner shrugged and continued, "I called Brown this afternoon. Sent him a plane ticket, because I want to meet him. He didn't even want to come until I promised to show him around the solar observatory at Mount Wilson. That's all he really cares about! Sunspots! He found the comet by accident!"
."
."
."
.
Before the sun burned, before the planets formed, there were chaos and the comets.
Chaos was a local thickening in the interstellar medium. Its mass was great enough to attract itself, to hold itself, and it thickened further. Eddies formed. Particles of dust and frozen gas drifted together, and touched, and clung. Flakes formed, and then loose snowballs of frozen gases. Over the ages a whirlpool pattern developed, a fifth of a light-year across. The center contracted further. Local eddies, whirling frantically near the center of the storm, collapsed to form planets.
It formed as a cloud of snow, far from the whirlpool's axis. Ices joined the swarm, but slowly, slowly, a few molecules at a time. Methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide; and sometimes denser objects struck it and embedded themselves, so that it held rocks, and iron. Now it was a single stable mass. Other ices formed, chemicals that could only be stable in the interstellar cold.
It was four miles across when the disaster came.
The end was sudden. In no more than fifty years, the wink of an eye in its lifetime, the whirlpool's center collapsed. A new sun burned fearfully bright.
Myriads of comets flashed to vapor in that hellish flame Planets lost their atmospheres. A great wind of light pressure stripped an the loose gas and dust from the inner system and hurled it at the stars.
It hardly noticed. It was two hundred times as far from the sun as the newly formed planet Neptune. The new sun was no more than an uncommonly bright star, gradually dimming now.
Down in the maelstrom there was frantic activity. Gases boiled out of the rocks of the inner system. Complex chemicals developed in the seas of the third planet. Endless hurricanes boded across and within the gas-giant worlds. The inner worlds would never know calm.
The only real calm was at the edge of interstellar space, in the halo, where millions of thinly spread comets, each as far from its nearest brother as Earth is from Mars, cruise forever through the cold black vacuum. Here its endless quiet sleep could last for billions of years . . . but not forever. Nothing lasts forever.
1
THE ANVIL
Against boredom, even the gods themselves struggle in vain.
Nietzsche
January: The Portent
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
William Shakespeare, Richard II
The blue Mercedes turned into the big circular drive of the Beverly Hills mansion at precisely five after six. Julia Sutter was understandably startled. "Good God, George, it's Tim! And dead on time."
George Sutter joined her at the window. That was Tim's car, yup. He grunted and turned back to the bar. His wife's parties were always important events, so why, after weeks of careful engineering and orchestration, was she terrified that no one would show up? The psychosis was so common there ought to be a name for it.
Tim Hamner, though, and on time. That was strange. Tim's money was third-generation. Old money, by Los Angeles standards, and Tim had a lot of it. He only came to parties when he wanted to.
The Sutters' architect had been in love with concrete. There were square walls and square angles for the house, and softly curving free-form pools in the gardens outside; not unusual for Beverly Hills, but startling to easterners. To their right was a traditional Monterey villa of white stucco and red tile roofs, to the left a Norman chateau magically transplanted to California. The Sutter place was set well back from the street so that it seemed divorced from the tall palms the city fathers had decreed for this part of Beverly Hills. A great loop of drive ran up to the house itself. On the porch stood eight parking attendants, agile young men in red jackets.
Hamner left the motor running and got out of the car. The "key left" reminder screamed at him. Ordinarily Tim would have snarled a powerful curse upon Ralph Nader's hemorrhoids, but tonight he never noticed. His eyes were dreamy; his hand patted at his coat pocket, then stole inside. The parking attendant hesitated. People didn't usually tip until they were leaving. Hamner kept walking, dreamy-eyed, and the attendant drove away.
Hamner glanced back at the red-coated young men, wondering if one or another might be interested in astronomy. They were almost always from UCLA or Loyola University. Could be . . . Reluctantly he decided against it and went inside, his hand straying from time to time to feel the telegram crackle under his fingers.
The big double doors opened onto an enormous area that extended right through the house. Large arches, rimmed by red brick, separated the entry from the living areas: a mere suggestion of walls between rooms. The floor was continuous throughout: brown tile laid with bright mosaic patterns. Of the two hundred and more guests expected, fewer than a dozen were clustered near the bar. Their talk was bright and cheery, louder than necessary. They looked isolated in all that empty space, all that expanse of tables with candles and patterned tablecloths. There were nearly as many uniformed attendants as guests. Hamner noticed none of this. He'd grown up with it.
Julia Sutter broke from the tiny group of guests and hurried to meet him. There was a tight look around her eyes: Her face had been lifted, and was younger than her hands. She made a kissing motion a fraction of an inch from Tim's cheek and said, "Timmy, I'm glad to see you!" Then she noticed his radiant smile.
She drew back a little and her eyes narrowed. The note of mock concern in her voice covered real worry. "My God, Timmy! What have you been smoking?"
Tim Hamner was tall and bony, with just a touch of paunch to break the smooth lines. His long face was built for melancholy. His mother's family had owned a highly successful cemetery-mortuary, and it showed. Tonight, though, his face was cracked wide apart in a blazing smile, and there was a strange light in his eyes. He said, "The Hamner-Brown Comet!"
"Oh!" Julia stared. "What?" That didn't make sense. You don't smoke a comet. She tried to puzzle it out while her eyes roved to her husband-was he having a second drink already?-to the door-when were the others coming? The invitations had been explicit. The important guests were coming early-weren't they?-and couldn't stay late, and-
She heard the low purr of a big car outside, and through the narrow windows framing the door saw half a dozen people spilling out of a dark limousine. Tim would have to take care of himself. She patted his arm and said, "That's nice, Timmy. Excuse me, please?" A hasty intimate smile and she was gone.
If it bothered Hamner it didn't show. He ambled toward the bar. Behind him Julia went to welcome her most important guest, Senator Jellison, with his entourage. He always brought everyone, administrative assistants as well as family. Tim Hamner's smile was blazing when he reached the bar.
"Good evening, Mr. Hamner."
"Good it is. Tonight I'm walking on pink clouds. Congratulate me, Rodrigo, they're going to name a comet after me!"
Michael Rodriguez, laying out glasses behind the bar, missed a beat. "A comet?"
"Right. Hamner-Brown Comet. It's coming, Rodrigo, you can see it, oh, around June, give or take a few weeks." Hamner took out the telegram and opened it with a snap.
"We will not see it from Los Angeles," Rodriguez laughed. "What may I serve you tonight?"
"Scotch rocks. You could see it. It could be as big as Halley's Comet." Hamner took the drink and looked about. There was a group around George Sutter. The knot of people drew Tim like a magnet. He clutched the telegram in one hand and his drink in another, as Julia brought the new guests over and introduced them.
Senator Arthur Clay Jellison was built something like a brick, muscular rather than overweight. He was bulky, jovial and blessed with thick white hair. He was photogenic as hell, and half the people in the country would have recognized him. His voice sounded exactly as it did on TV: resonant, enveloping, so that everything he said took on a mysterious importance.
Maureen Jellison, the Senator's daughter, had long, dark red hair and pale clear skin and a beauty that would have made Tim Hamner shy on any other night; but when Julia Sutter turned to him and (finally!) said, "What was that about a-"
"Hamner-Brown Comet" Tim waved the telegram. "Kitt Peak Observatory had confirmed my sighting! It's a real comet, it's my comet, they're naming it after me!"
Maureen Jellison's eyebrows went up slightly. George Sutter drained his glass before asking the obvious question. "Who's Brown?"
Hamner shrugged; his untasted drink slopped a little onto the carpet, and Julia frowned. "Nobody's ever heard of him," Tim said. "But the International Astronomical Union says it was a simultaneous sighting."
"So what you own is half a comet," said George Sutter.
Tim laughed, quite genuinely. "The day you own half a comet, George, I'll buy all those bonds you keep trying to sell me. And buy your drinks all night." He downed his scotch rocks in two swallows.
When he looked up he'd lost his audience. George was headed back to the bar. Julia had Senator Jellison's arm and was steering him toward new arrivals. The Senator's administrative assistants followed in her wake.
"Half a comet is quite a lot," Maureen said. Tim Hamner turned to find her still there. "Tell me, how do you see anything through the smog?"
She sounded interested. She looked interested. And she could have gone with her father. The scotch was a warm trace in his throat and stomach. Tim began telling her about his mountain observatory, not too many miles past Mount Wilson but far enough into the Angeles Mountains that the lights from Pasadena didn't ruin the seeing. He kept food supplies there, and an assistant, and he'd spent months of nights watching the sky, tracking known asteroids and the outer moons, letting his eye and brain learn the territory, and forever watching for the dot of light that shouldn't be there, the anomaly that would . .
Maureen Jellison had a familiar glazed look in her eyes. He asked, "Hey, am I boring you?"
She was instantly apologetic. "No, I'm sorry, it was just a stray thought."
"I know I sometimes get carried away."
She smiled and shook her head; a wealth of deep red hair rippled and danced. "No, really. Dad's on the Finance Subcommittee for Science and Astronautics. He loves pure science, and I caught the bug from him. I was just. . . You're a man who knows what he wants, and you've found it. Not many can say that." She was suddenly very serious.
Tim laughed, embarrassed; he was only just getting used to the fact. "What can I do for an encore?"
"Yes, exactly. What do you do when you've walked on the moon, and then they cancel the space program?"
"Why . . . I don't know. I've heard they sometimes have troubles. . .
"Don't worry about it," Maureen said. "You're on the moon now. Enjoy it."
The hot dry wind known as the Santa Ana blew across the Los Angeles hills, clearing the city of smog. Lights glittered and danced in the early darkness. Harvey Randall, his wife, Loretta, beside him, drove his green Toronado with the windows open, relishing the summer weather in January. When they arrived at the Sutter place he turned the car over to the red-jacketed attendant, and paused while Loretta adjusted her smile before moving through the big front doors.
They found the usual mob scene for a Beverly Hills party. A hundred people were scattered among the little tables, and another hundred in clumps; a mariachi group in one corner played gay background music and the singer, deprived of his microphone, was still doing pretty well telling everyone about the state of his corazon. They greeted their hostess and parted: Loretta found a conversation, and Harvey located the bar by searching out the thickest cluster of people. He collected two gin and tonics.
Bits of conversation ricocheted around him. "We didn't let him on the white rug, you see. So the dog had the cat 'treed' in the middle of the rug and was pacing sentry duty around the perimeter...."
". . . was this beautiful young chick one seat ahead of me on the plane. A real knockout, even if all I could see was her hair and the back of her head. I was thinking of a way to meet her when she looked back and said, 'Uncle Pete! What are you doing here?'"
". . . man, it's helped a lot! When I call and say it's Commissioner Robbins, I get right through. Haven't had a customer miss a good option since the Mayor appointed me."
They stuck in his mind, these bits and pieces of story. For Harvey Randall it was an occupational hazard of the TV documentary business; he couldn't help listening. He didn't want to, really. People fascinated him. He would have liked to follow up some of these glimpses into other minds.
He looked around for Loretta, but she was too short to stand out in this crowd. Instead he picked out high-piled hair of unconvincing orange-red: Brenda Tey, who'd been talking to Loretta before Harvey went to the bar. He made for that point, easing past shoals of elbows attached to drinks.
"Twenty billion bucks, and all we got was rocks! Those damn big rockets, billions of dollars dropped into the drink. Why spend all that money out there when we could be-"
"Bullshit," said Harvey.
George Sutter turned in surprise. "Oh. Hello, Harv.... It'll be the same with the Shuttte. Just the same. It's all money thrown down the drain-"
"That turns out not to be the case." The voice was clear, sweet and penetrating. It cut right through George's manifesto, and it couldn't be ignored. George stopped in midsentence.
Harvey found a spectacular redhead in a green one-shoulder party gown. Her eyes met his when he looked at her, and he looked away first. He smiled and said, "Is that the same as bullshit?"
"Yes. But more tactful." She grinned at him, and Harvey let his own smile stay in place instead of fading away. She turned to the attack. "Mr. Sutter, NASA didn't spend the Apollo money on hardware. We bought research on how to build the hardware, and we've still got it. Knowledge can't go into the drink. As for the Shuttle, that's the price to get out there where we can really learn things, and not much of a price at that...."
A woman's breast and shoulder rubbed playfully against Harvey's arm. That had to be Loretta, and it was. He handed her her drink. His own was half gone. When Loretta started to speak he gestured her silent, a little more rudely than he usually did, and ignored her look of protest.
The redhead knew her stuff. If careful reason and logic could win arguments, she won. But she had a lot more: She had every male's eye, and a slow southern drawl that made every word count, and a voice so pure and musical that any interruption seemed stuttered or mumbled.
The unequal contest ended when George discovered that his drink was empty and, with visible relief, broke for the bar.
Smiling triumph, the girl turned toward Harvey, and he nodded his congratulations.
"I'm Harvey Randall. My wife, Loretta."
"Maureen Jellison. Most pleased." She frowned for half a second. "I remember now. You were the last U.S. newsman in Cambodia." She shook hands, formally, with Harvey and Loretta. "And wasn't your newscopter shot down over there?"
"Twice," Loretta said proudly. "Harvey brought his Air Force pilot out. Fifty miles of enemy lines."
Maureen nodded gravely. She was fifteen years younger than the Randalls, and seemed very self-possessed. "So now you're here. Are you natives?"
"I am," Harvey said. "Loretta's from Detroit-"
"Grosse Pointe," Loretta said automatically.
"-but I was born in L.A." Harvey could never quite bring himself to tell Loretta's half-truth for her. "We're scarce, we natives."
"And what do they have you doing now?" Maureen asked.
"Documentaries. News features, mostly," Harvey said.
"I know who you are," Loretta said in some awe. "I just met your father. Senator Jellison."
"That's right." Maureen looked thoughtful, then grinned broadly. "Say, if you do news features there's somebody you ought to meet. Tim Hamner."
Harvey frowned. The name seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it. "Why?"
Loretta said, "Hamner? A young man with a frightening grin?" She giggled. "He's a teensy bit drunk. He wouldn't let anyone else talk. At all. He owns half a comet."
"That's him," Maureen said. Her smile made Loretta feel part of a conspiracy.
"He also owns a lot of soap," Harvey said.
It was Maureen's turn to look blank.
"I just remembered," Harvey said. "He inherited the Kalva Soap Company."
"May be, but he's prouder of the comet," Maureen said. "I don't blame him. Dear old Dad could have been President once, but he's never come close to discovering a comet." She scanned the room until she spotted her target. "The tall man in the suit with white and maroon in it. You'll know him by his smile. Get anywhere near him and he'll tell you all about it."
Harvey felt Loretta tugging at his arm, and reluctantly looked away from Maureen. When he looked back someone else had snared her. He went to fetch another pair of drinks.
As always, Harvey Randall drank too much and wondered why he came to these parties. But he knew; Loretta saw them as a way to participate in his life. She didn't enjoy his field trips. The one attempt to take her on a hike with their son had been a disaster. When she went with him on location she wanted to stay in the best hotels, and if she dutifully came to the small bars and gathering places Harvey preferred, it was obvious that she was working hard to hide her unhappiness.
But she was very much at home at parties like this one, and tonight's had been especially good. She even managed a private conversation with Senator Jellison. Harvey left her with the Senator and went to find more drinks. "Light on the gin, Rodriguez. Please."
The bartender smiled and mixed the drink without comment. Harvey stood with it. Tim Hamner was alone at one of the little tables. He was looking at Harvey, but the eyes were dreamy; they saw nothing. And that smile. Harvey made his way across the room and dropped into the other chair at the table. "Mr. Hamner? Harvey Randall. Maureen Jellison said I should say 'Comet.'"
Hamner's face came alight. The grin broadened, if that were possible. He took a telegram out of his pocket and waved it. "Right! The sighting was confirmed this afternoon. Hamner-Brown Comet."
"You skipped a step."
"She didn't tell you anything? Well! I'm Tim Hamner. Astronomer. Well, not professional, but my equipment's professional. And I work at it-anyway. I'm an amateur astronomer. A week ago I found a smear of light not far from Neptune. A dim smear. It didn't belong there. I kept looking at it, and it moved. I studied it long enough to be sure, and then I reported it. It's a new comet. Kitt Peak just confirmed it. The IAU is naming it after me-and Brown."
For just that moment, envy flashed through Harvey Randall like a lightning strike. It was gone as quickly; he made it go, shoving it into the bottom of his mind where he could pull it up and look at it later. He was ashamed of it. But without that flash he would have asked a more tactful first question. "Who's Brown?"
Hamner's face didn't change. "Gavin Brown is a kid in Centerville, Iowa. Ground his own mirror to build his telescope. He reported the comet at the same time I did. The IAU rules it a simultaneous sighting. If I hadn't waited to be certain . .
"When will we see this comet? That is," Harvey backtracked, "will it be visible at all?"
"Much too early to ask. Wait a month. Watch the news."
"I'm not supposed to watch the news. I'm supposed to report the news," said Harvey. "And this could be news. Tell me more."
Hamner was eager to do that. He rattled on, while Harvey nodded with a broadening grin. Beautiful! You didn't have to know what all the words meant to know the equipment was expensive, and probably photogenic to boot. Expensive and elaborate equipment, and the kid with a bent pin for a hook and a willow stick for a rod had caught just as big a fish as the millionaire!
Millionaire. "Mr. Hamner, if this comet turns out to be worth a documentary-"
"Well, it might. And the discovery would be. How amateur astronomers can be important . .
Hooked, by God! "What I was going to ask was, if we can make a documentary on the comet, would Kalva Soap be interested in sponsoring it?"
The change in Hamner was subtle, but it was there. Harvey instantly revised his opinion of the man. Hamner had a lot of experience with people after his money. He was an enthusiast, but hardly a fool.
"Tell me, Mr. Randall, didn't you do that thing on the Alaskan glacier?"
"Harvey. Yes."
"It stunk."
"Sure did," Harvey agreed. "The sponsor insisted on control. And got it. And used it. I didn't inherit control of a big company." And to hell with you, too, Mr. Timothy Comet Hamner.
"But I did. And this would be worth doing. You did the Hell's Gate Dam story too, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"I liked that one."
"So did I."
"Good." Hamner nodded several times. "Look, this could be worth sponsoring. Even if the comet never becomes visible, and I think it will. Lord knows they spend enough of the advertising budget sponsoring crap that nobody wants to watch. Might as well tell a story worth telling. Harvey, you need a refill."
They went to the bar. The party was thinning out fast. The Jellisons were just leaving, but Loretta had found another conversation. Harvey recognized a city councilman who'd been after Harvey's station to do a show on a park that was his current goal. He probably thought Loretta would influence Harvey-which was correct-and that Harvey had influence over what the network and its Los Angeles station did- which was a laugh.
Rodriguez was busy for the moment and they stood at the bar. "There's all kinds of excellent new equipment for studying comets," Hamner said. "Including a big orbital telescope only used once, for Kahoutek. Scientists all over the world will want to know how comets differ, how Kahoutek was different from Hamner-Brown. Lot of scientists right here. Cal Tech, and the planetary astronomers at JPL. They'll all want to know more about Hamner-Brown."
Hamner-Brown resonated in his mouth, and Tim Hamner obviously loved the taste. "You see, comets aren't just something pretty up in the sky. They're left over from the big gas cloud that formed the solar system. If we could really learn something about comets-maybe send up a space probe- we'd know more about what the original cloud of gas and dust was like before it fell in on itself and made the Sun and the planets and moons and things like that."
"You're sober," Harvey said in wonder.
Hamner was startled. Then he laughed. "I meant to get drunk just to celebrate, but I guess I've been talking instead of drinking." Rodriguez came over and put drinks in front of them. Hamner lifted his scotch rocks in a salute.
"The way your eyes glow," Harvey said, "I thought you must be drunk. But what you say makes a lot of sense. I doubt we could get a space probe launched, but what the hell, we could try. Only you're talking about more than a single documentary for something like that. Listen, is there a chance? I mean, could we send a probe into the comet? Because I know some people in the aerospace industry, and . .
And, thought Harvey, that would be a story. Who can I get for editor? he wondered. And Charlie Bascomb's available to do camera....
"Jellison, too," Hamner said. "He'd be for it. But look, Harv, I know a lot about comets, but not that much. It's all guesswork right now. Be a few months before Hamner-Brown gets to perihelion." He added quickly, "Closest point to the Sun. Which isn't the same as the closest point to the Earth. . .
"How close will that be?" Harvey asked.
Hamner shrugged. "Haven't analyzed the orbit yet. Maybe close. Anyway, Hamner-Brown will be moving fast when it rounds the Sun. It will have fallen all the way from the halo, out there beyond Pluto, a long way. You understand, I won't really be computing the orbit. I'll have to wait for the professionals, just like you."
Harvey nodded. They lifted their glasses and drank.
"But I like the idea," Hamner said. "There's going to be a lot of scientific pressure for studies of Hamner-Brown, and it wouldn't hurt to push the idea with the general public. I like it."
"Of course," Harvey said carefully, "I'd have to have a firm commitment on sponsorship before I could do much work on this. Are you sure Kalva Soap would be interested? The show might pull a good audience-but it might not."
Hamner nodded. "Kahoutek," he said. "They were burned on that one before. Nobody wants to be disappointed again."
"Yeah."
"So you can count on Kalva Soap. Let's get across why it's important to study comets even if you can't see them. Because I can promise the sponsorship, but I can't promise the comet will deliver. It might not be visible at all. Don't tell people anything more than that."
"I have a reputation for getting my facts straight."
"When your sponsor doesn't interfere," Hamner said.
"Even then, I have my facts straight."
"Good. But right now there aren't any facts. Hamner-Brown is pretty big. It has to be, or I couldn't have seen it out that far. And it looks to get pretty close to the Sun. It has a chance of being spectacular, but really, it's impossible to tell. The tail could stretch way-y-y out, or it could just blow away. It depends on the comet."
"Yeah. Look," Harvey said, "can you name one newsman who lost his reputation because of Kahoutek?" He nodded at the puzzled look that got. "Right. None. No chance. The public blamed the astronomers for blowing it all out of proportion. Nobody blamed the news people."
"Why should they? You were quoting the astronomers."
"Half the time," Harvey agreed. "But we quoted the ones who said exciting things. Two interviews. One man says Kahoutek is going to be the Big Christmas Comet. Another says, well, it's going to be a comet, but you might not see it without field glasses. Guess which tape gets shown on the six o'clock news?"
Hamner laughed. He was draining his glass when Julia Sutter came over.
"Busy, Tim?" she asked, but didn't wait for an answer. "Your cousin Barry is making a fool of himself out in the kitchen. Can you get him to go home?" She spoke low and urgently.
Harvey hated her. Was Hamner sober? Would he remember any of this in the morning? Damn.
"Be right with you, Julia," Hamner said. He broke free and made his way back to Harvey. "Just remember, our series on Hamner-Brown is going to be honest. Even if it costs ratings. Kalva Soap can afford it. When do you want to start?"
Maybe there was some justice in the world after all. "Right away, Tim. I want some footage of you and Gavin Brown up at Mount Wilson. And his comments when you show him your setup."
Hamner grinned. He liked that. "Right. Call you tomorrow."
Loretta slept quietly in the other bed.
Harvey had been staring at the ceiling long enough. He knew this feeling. He would have to get up.
He got up. He made cocoa in a big mug and carried it into his study. Kipling greeted him with tail-thumping joy, and he rubbed the German shepherd's ears absently as he opened the drapes. Los Angeles was semidark below. The Santa Ana had blown away the smog. Freeways were rivers of moving light even at this late hour. Other major streets were marked by a grid of lights whose yellow-orange brilliance Harvey noticed for the first time. Hamner had said they played hell with the seeing at Mount Wilson Observatory.
The city stretched away endlessly. High-rise apartments in shadowed darkness. Blue squares of still-lit swimming pools. Cars. Bright flashing light winking at intervals, the police helicopter on patrol. He left the window and went to the desk, picked up a book, set it down; scratched the dog's ears once more; and very gently, because he didn't trust himself to move rapidly, put the cocoa on the desk.
He'd never had any trouble getting to sleep in the mountains on camping trips. He'd get into his sleeping bag just after dark and sleep all night. It was only in the city that he had insomnia. For years he'd tried to fight it by lying rigid on his back. These nights he got up and stayed up until he was sleepy. Only he didn't usually have trouble on Wednesdays.
Wednesdays, he and Loretta made love.
He'd tried to fight that habit once, but that was years ago; and yes, Loretta would come to his bed on a Monday night; but not always, and never in the afternoon when it was light; and it was never as good on a Tuesday or a Saturday because on Wednesdays they knew it was coming, they were ready. By now the habit had set like concrete.
He shook away those thoughts and concentrated on his good fortune. Hamner had meant it. The documentary would be made. He thought about problems. They'd need an expert on low-light photography; probably time-lapse for the comet itself. This would be fun. Have to thank Maureen Jellison for putting me onto Hamner, he thought. Nice girl. Vivid. More real than most of the women I meet. Too bad Loretta was standing right there....
He submerged that thought so quickly that he was barely aware of it. It was a habit he'd developed long ago. He knew too many men who talked themselves into hating their wives when they didn't really dislike them at all. The grass wasn't always greener on the other side of the fence; a lesson that he'd learned from his father and never forgotten. His father had been an architect and builder, always close to the Hollywood set but never quite catching the big contracts that would make him rich; but he'd gone to plenty of Hollywood parties.
He'd also had time to take Harvey up into the mountains, and on those long camping hikes he would tell Harvey about producers and stars and writers who spent more than they earned and built themselves images that could never be satisfied. "Can't be happy," Bert Randall would say. "Keep thinking somebody else's wife is better in bed, or just prettier at parties, and talk to themselves enough that they believe it. This whole damn town's got itself believing its own press agents, and nobody can live up to those dreams."
And it was all true. Dreams could be dangerous. Better to concentrate on what you had. And, Harvey thought, I have a lot. A good job, a big house, a swimming pool . .
None of it paid for, and you can't do what you want on the job, a malicious voice said inside his head.
Harvey ignored it.
In futurama the air pollution was so bad that the meteor burned up before hitting earth.
Gentlemen, start you SUVs!
Well, the 32bit time_t might not actually NEED further change - current unix time, if I am not mistaken will be sufficient until 2038 or something. So it would last almost 20 years after "total destruction".
;)
In that case, this might be the first computer "assumption", that might prove sufficient in the long run - unlike the famous "640k will be enough for everybody"...
Oh, that's just a little one.
We'll just tag it and throw it back.
Good thing we have a catch-n-release program in place.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Ok, Yes the probabilites of it hitting us are pretty slim. And as an earlier post mentioned, they're very slim before 2060. Probabilities of it hitting us increase after 2060.
.. with our *current* technology can we take this thing down (if it were closer than it is now ofcourse)?
So, my question is
[alk]
The KT event asteroid that hit 65 million years and formed the Chicxulub crater ago was almost certainly larger. Estimates of that impactor have ranged from 4km to 18km in diameter with more recent evidence suggesting that the smaller size estimates may be more accurate. Others prefer the larger sizes. Even if they are correct and the KT-impactor was on the larger end of the scale, an impact of a 2km asteroid is no trivial matter.
Assuming the same density, the ~2km 2002-NT7 has about 1/8th the mass of KT impactor. Perhaps 1/10th the mass if 2002-NT7 turns out to be a lower than average density asteroid.
When I said:
I should have said:
I want to repeat that the chance of impact prior to 2060, based on the current limited set of observations, is slim (1 in ~100,000 more).
The chance of an 2002-NT7 impact after 2060 is uncertain. It is hard to estimate the location of 2002-NT7 on/after 2060 in part because of the 4 prior close approaches and in part because positions become more uncertain as time goes on.
It is common to consider asteroid positions 100 years or more in the future to uncertain enough as to not be useful to estimate impact risk. This 100 year uncertainty limit gets shorter when one throws in 1 or more close approaches.
While 2002-NT7's orbit position will become better defined with additional data, the risk assessment of the 2060 pass (and beyond) will remain more uncertain for some time. Time (and more accurate observations) will tell how much the next generations will have to worry or not about 2002-NT7.
IMHO, there is nil chance of an impact by 2002-NT7 before 2060. The trend / perturbations on 2002-NT7 suggest that things could get ugly later on. Monitoring of 2002-NT7 over time, plus improved orbit models will tell how much future generations will need to worry about an impact >= 2060.
chongo (was here)
the asteroid itself?
Then we can all click on it, it will be Slashdotted, and the Earth will be saved.
Thanks.
If the US government won't tell you about what's in or was in hangar 19 and won't even acknowledge it's connection with Area 51 that what makes you think they will tell you about a potential hit.
check it out here
look at the "blast" heading -- this is mostly what we are concerned with. (i linked to a higher level of the hiarchy in case anyone is interested in the other effects as well.
anyway... you can see from the data that on earth, one megaton bomb can devastate a radious of ~3km -- which is already larger than the asteroid... but i digress, and will try to look at this systematically
1) delivery of the weapon
this is probabbly the most no-brainer of the whole deal. all current ICBMs go into sub-orbit already anyway, strapping a few boosters onto them for escape velocity should not be a big problem.
it is useful to note that the asteroid will be a threat even if no impact occurs on 2019; in fact it would be a much larger threat down the line. however, the frequent encounters with it in the near future gives up plenty of time to approach it and take action.
2) effective-ness of the weapon
this is somewhat harder to determine. see -- the problem is that all of our data on nuclear weapons is earth-based; i.e in a atmospheric environment. -- the 3km effective radius is based on this fact as well -- the destruction is not from the blast of the weapon -- but instead the sudden compressiong / decompression of the atmosphere that transmit the detonation energy to do the destruction. if the asteroid is indeed loosely packet -- much of the energy will just escape; while if the asteroid is solid-packet -- the bomb may not be powerful enough to break it all the way apart.
before we go further -- it is very obvious that the bomb(s) need to be deeply implanted inside the asteroid for maximum effective-ness.
the best scenario to hope for is that the asteroid have a large ice content. the vaporization of the ice would then be the medium of energy transfer -- breaking apart the asteroids into chunks that the earth's atmosphere can handle - which is probabbly the best we can hope for.
similar things can happen with solidified CO2 / methane / whatever. but we won't know about the asteroid's contents until later (more observations).
the good news is that if the asteroid was ever broken apart -- the gravitational force between the pieces should be small enough that they won't meaningfully get back together.
3) possible hiccups
the fact is that simply not enough is known about the behavior of nuclear weapons in vacuum -- which is both very cold, and lack the aforementioned energy transfer medium. so it may be that the weapon is actually quite in-effective in space. furthermore, depending on nuclear bombs to vaporize a whole asteroid is only a dream -- nuclear weapons destroy via shockwaves, and the thermal energy is actually comparatively low for what we need to accomplish.
this basically lead to the fact that if we press the red button, the bomb goes off, and nothing happens to the asteroid except a shockwave rings through its structure but it remains intact.
moreover -- drilling 1km down on an asteroid in as un-proven technology at best -- so there may be tons of problems there.
4) some alternatives
besides straight-up disintergration of the asteroid, there can be other things to try, for example, if you insert bombs in a planar fashion - it *may* be possible to break the asteroid into two or more chunks -- and if it is properly calculated -- it should be possible to get the thing either crash into mars, or get into earth orbit. (on a side note -- this would be very cool -- space elevator baby) and the smaller chunk can be much more easily broken down by nuclear means. (this is assuming the asteroid is a fairly rigid body of iron, etc etc.
i had some other points -- but since this *might* be the end of the world after all -- i am going to go out and try to get laid now.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
quoteth : "On the other hand, announcing a product 17 years before it hits, come on, that's not really serious, even by NT's standards."
/. :
The following story will be on
Duke Nukem Forever Released!
Posted by CmdrTaco'sKid on Thursday January 31, @10:00
from the just-in-time dept.
----- One piece short of Legoland
Detailed calculations of NT7's orbit suggest that this asteroid already has impacted the Earth three times in the past, the last one being Mar 2, 1997 ... oops, all continents still here? Guess we should upgrade those Pentiums.
Right now the orbital data that we have for the object isn't good enough to exclude an Earth impact. Once we get a good number of observations over a period of time - and preferably find the object on older pictures - we'll narrow down the possibilities of its orbit. Right now there's enough uncertainty about the orbit that there's a greater chance of it missing us than hitting us. The Earth's magnetic field wouldn't push it away, but various gravitational effects between now and 2019 could change the expected path of the asteroid.
That must be more then 0.14 on any damage scale, metric or not.
(I know It woun't be here untill 2119 at least.)
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Why would we want to destroy this perfectly good rock? Okay, so it might end life in 1 of 7 continents... but if we could pull it into orbit using some nukes, some rockets, or maybe a few tricked out solar sails + 30 years, we would have a great resource. Talk about space stations, hotels and space commerce, just to be able to use matter in space and not have to pay to get it up there would be worth it!
I read that this rock is mostly just that, rock. Still... there must be some metal in there. There should be some other uses that you guys could think of right?
Delta flight 1024 leaving NY, NY for Lunar base Echo via "The Rock" is now boarding.
Giovanni
But officer there is no way this car could even approach c.
Remember all that fuss and bother about Y2K? Remember the Unix crowd talking about having a similar problem in 2038 when the epoch rolls over?
Suddenly it doesn't seem like much of a problem anymore, does it?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Fantastic! I'm going to be hit by a big rock on my 43rd birthday! ;)
Still, I suppose it's an unusual way to go...
I told the RIAA that they'd piss the Aliens off with all this MP3 buisness, but did they listen? Nooooooo!!!! Now look what happens.
Imagine a Leonid cluster of these!
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
well, not for the sex with Liv Tyler part, but wait 17 more years before you round up the hooligans. gotta make it dramatic, you know? someone's gonna want the rip-off-movie rights.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Friggin riddles...I wanna go to bed....Friggin asteroids, I can't sleep!
I mean, clinton knows everything about a "deep impact" in little rock. Since this thing is just 2km wide, i would consider it a little rock.
Fleur de Sel
When did llamas become the random animal of choice for jokes? Is it just a computer workd thing? They're big in maxis games and and insult for online gaming. Who started this revo-llama-lution? I can't believe I just said "revo-llama-lution". Anyway, why dont we stop picking on llamas? There are tons of humorous animals out there just waiting to give us loads of hilarity. Such as the penguin, the caribou, the aardvark, and the list could go on forever. So I say we free the llama for now and move on. It will still be there if "titmouse" or soemthing doesnt catch on.
Problem SOlved.
The java applet on jpl puts 2002-NT7 as being 0.0080 AU (Approximately 120,000 km) from Earth on Feb 1st 1980. Pushing the stepping to hours, you get a minimum of 0.0040 AU (60,000 km). This is closer than the minimum of 0.082 AU given by the calculator for an approach in 2019. The java app isn't that accurate (as it mentions on the page), so I tried to run an Emphemeris report to get detailed info, but it's either being hammered very hard, or dying a long death, so I can't say more.
For an idea in how far away 120,000 km's or 60,000 km is, the moon is approximately 385,000 km's away (on average, centre to centre), and the Earth is approximately 12,750 km's in diameter.
If only we had accurate data. The questions this puts in my mind is:
1) Why haven't we seen it before?
2) If it's only recent, where did it come from?
3) If it's recent, is it's orbit stable or decaying?
--
Arthur - So this is it, we're all going to die!
Ford, Zaphod and Trillian - Will you stop saying that?!?
at least getting laid on Jan 31st, 2019 should be reasonably easy.
Sources tell me that the impact of the asteroid will be partly absorbed by an f-22 in the middle of an in-flight reboot.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I don't want to tempt fate and have an asteroid hit me/become victim of mad serial killer/get struck by lightning.
NASA, like the rest of the US federal govt, uses metric measurements. The problem was that the contractor, Lockheed IIRC, was using imperial.
Insert obReference to Terry Gilliam's Brazil here.
NASA: "Wait... is that 19 metric years?"
My deviantArt site
Indenda: "We're loosing ships Lur. What are your orders?"
Lur: "Increase speed, drop down, and reverse direction."
Fry: "I've still got a trick or two up my sleeve. Watch as I fire upward through our own shields!"
Bender: "He's a mad man... A MAD MAN!"
(Yes, weak pretense to bring out the futurama quotes, but what else is new?)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
With these stories, why do they alway show objects that are a couple of thousand miles large and plop into the earth like a pebble into a big pond?
...the most frightful disaster Earth has faced since NT4.
Consider this: It is 95% likely that you are in the middle 95% of an event or thing's duration. That's 2.5% at the far ends. If you are witnessing it at the extreme 95% beginning, the future is 39 times longer than the past. At the other extreme, only 1/39th of the future remains. So using the factor of 39 rule, it is 95% likely that something will last more than 1/39th of its current duration, but less than 39 times its current duration.
Let's apply this to Homo sapiens. Our current duration is about 200,000 years. So, it's 95% likely that we will live for more than 5,100 years, but less than 7.8 million years.
The odds are all for us.
Note: This concept was originally created by astrophysicist J. Richart Gott III.
We're Doomed
Right now we are looking at a Perihelion of 0.817 AU, which equates to ~122,221,459 Km. The distance to the moon is 385,000 Km. So its gonna be a fair way out for a while yet. IIRC the last time we went to the Moon it took about 10 days to get there. Its gonna take a hell of a lot longer to get to this rock.
Ok, in a few years it will be getting closer but right now theres not really much to do about it except talk. Reaching it wont be practical, even with better technology, for at least another 15 years yet. Given the current state of Nasa funding for deep space manned flight, I can't see anyone getting enthusiastic about this in Government. Probably the only way it would happen would be for private enterprise to figure a way to make it profitable to go there.
OTOH it could just be a lump of mashed up rock with no redeeming features at all and not worth visiting. In which case I'm sure the US military would love to blow it up ;)
Undistributed Middle
All Russians were revolutionists, and all anarchists were revolutionist, therefore, all anarchists were Russians.
... hurling asteroids at us! We must go their home planet and find the SMART bug as soon as possible.
Hurry, before they get Argentina.. RICO!!!!!!!!!!
Live web cams
Microsoft has leaked to the media that they are currently planning publicity stunts for the far off release of thier next generation server operating system, this release will be the 7th iteration of thier NT platform. NT7, will hit the US approx first quarter of 2019 according to our sources.
Aw, crapola. Where the hell did I put that White Materia...?
can I sue space if it hits me? :-)
still under review:
.
FIRST EVER POSITIVE PALERMO SCALE 'VIRTUAL IMPACTOR' ANNOUNCED - WITHOUT IAU REVIEW From Asteroid/Comet Connection, 23 July 2002 http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/news.htm
Excerpted from CCNET
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cccmenu.html
"It is interesting to note that NEODyS appear to have announced this first-ever positive Palermo Scale 'virtual impactor' without any formal IAU technical review. The IAU encourages such a review for any impact prediction that is at a level equal to or greater than zero on the Palermo Technical Scale (http://web.mit.edu/rpb/wgneo/TechComm.html)."
the last dozen or so 'close calls' have been retracted within a few days as the rest of the scientific community catches up.
And somewhere, on the teaming campuses of America, four college interns just got a brilliant idea...
That's a bit misleading. While 0.06 isn't an incredibly high number, obviously Timmy doesn't understand it. This is the first object that has ever received a rating on the Palermo scale that is POSITIVE. That is something. (Timmy, reading the BBC article doesn't really make you an expert so why don't you be a bit more careful in the future.)
Does this mean that Taco Bell will be putting another target out, and we all have a chance at getting a Free Taco?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
there's more comming...
NT8, XP8, Palladium9...
that will certainly destroy the world.
2019? I was hoping to get smoked by an asteroid tonight.
My other .sig isn't funny either.
George W. Bush put out an alert saying this asteroid may be another terrorist plot and we should all be on the look out for anything suspicious.
..next Al Qaeda strike.
The threat is known, it's orbit watched and we have 60+ years to do something about it. Even with as little as 5 years and a more precise trajectory, I'm sure we could build something riduculously nasty to introduce it to... A government in panic mode can do a lot of things in that time, devoting all it's resources to survival.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The rock in the photo is hardly 2km diameter - and apparently causing quite a splash of water from... oh, anyway.
And the caption, "An asteroid could devastate the earth." is an unconnected hypothetical statement that was just as true when the BBC were first formed as it is today, tomorrow, or on Feb *2* 2019.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It should read
One nation under God
there is not comma there.
Xaotik Designs
I believe the line is "You are crunchy and taste good with ketchup".
(Reposted, account being moderated into oblivion)
All I see on the BBC story is a graphic showing intersecting paths. Maybe they changed it.
For an excellent asteroid impact image, see this page with art by C. Crowley (my brother). Scroll about halfway down for the scary stuff captioned "A Hadean countryside. Here, a mountain ten miles tall falls out of the sky in an everyday Hadean event.
Earth took hits like this much more frequently in the Hadean than it does today, but Hadean moments like this still happen on a regular basis.
Chixulub Crater of Yucutan records a cosmic disaster everyone knows about. The large asteroid that struck Manson, Iowa, a few million years before that, must have certainly killed all life in central North America."
But the rest of the world is gonna insist that they pay relative of the percentage of their wealth (wealth that, for the most part, has been sucked from the rest of the world anyways).
Since it's gonna take a long time to resolve this, better start ASAP bickering that...
(Reposted, account being moderated into oblivion)
This asteroid will hit Buenos Aries, and our new fascist government will blame it on evil, giant bugs from another planet (even though these bugs couldnt possibly have the technology to do something like this...you will see when we get there to blow them all up)...
Oh wait, I've been watching too much sci-fi...
Never mind...
Tilted Orbit?
Passes between the Earth and Mars?
And there not *exaclty* sure of it's actual orbit?
Sounds like Planet X to me!
See! Didn't I say that we'd be glad some day that we learned to make fusion bombs? We've got 16-17 years to give this rock a better (for us) orbit.
Now where did I put my Tom Corbett books?
A couple of things:
1. The BBC News is written by reporters all over the world, not a bunch of British journalists sitting in an office in London.
2. If the BBC website were a newspaper, it would be very much a broadsheet. Not a tabloid.
Someone get me Liv Tyler, STAT!!!.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
it will be for all those ugly nerds who once heared: "I will have sex with you on the last day of the earth".
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Mozilla will probably be 2.0 RC96
~
~
:wq
Well at least puxatonie phil will still be nice and safe.
This will bring a whole new meaning to downloading NT.
That picture they have at the top of the article makes it look very scary... Thats not a 2km wide asteriod... its a MOON, this isn't something to worry about, I despise it when the news is blown out of proportion and exaggerated -- Something the BBC can be known for.
Please nudge it towards one of the following (in order of preference):
1. Los Angeles (esp Hollywood studios)
2. Washington DC, preferably on "lobbyist day" (yah, hate to see the Air & Space museum go but sacrifices have to be made)
3. Sen. Trent Lott's house
4. Las Vegas (they killed the Colorado river for THAT?)
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The cold hard fact is that if an asteroid wants to hit the earth it is going to hit the earth.
It's inarguably true that suicidal, sentient asteroids would pose a major threat to life on earth...
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Right. Let's install gigantic pinball flippers :)
on the poles
This means we do NOT have to solve the 32-bit unix timestamp problem!
Yay!
I'll recompile my kernel
Asteroid support? Yes( ) - Module ( ) - No (*)
Øyvind the wondersquid
And now, I am worried about getting run over by a llama.
Annoying Peruvian geek trivia: no one over the age of 10 actually rides a llama. Llamas are pack animals and won't carry riders. They spit, too. They will happily run over you without prompting, all by themselves.
"The probability that the tabulated impact will occur. The probability computation is complex and depends on a number of assumptions that are difficult to verify. For these reasons the stated probability can easily be inaccurate by a factor of a few, and occasionally by a factor of ten or more." NASA - [neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2002nt7.html]
Nasa, stardate: January 31, 2019.
Joe: "Hey Bob, have you seen that big object that we thought was going to hit the earth tomorrow?"
Bob points up.
Joe: "Oh yeah"
managers...why god invented purgatory
All I'm saying is that NERV better get some new Eva models produced, or the Angel inside that Astroid is gonna fuck us up mad crazy like.
word.
-da5id
No matter how long it takes for a pessimists' predictions to come true, they will say "I told you so" when it does come true.
I have no doubt that this Rock thinks we're all a bunch of Jabroni's
Palermo? Torino? I smell the Mafia's hands behind this threat! :)
"I'll have a witty
From the AP wire:
Scientists said if it had hit a populated area, it would have released as much energy as a large nuclear weapon.
Forgive my ignorance of modern scientific theory, but why does the density of people affect the amount of energy released? Would it have been less energy if it hit the ocean?
Maybe there is some human fission reaction anticipated here? If so, I think I know how to solve our energy woes... It's time for Carousel. Renew!
Please mod me up. My grandma might not make it to the weekend and she always wanted me to hit karma cap.
I did a doubletake when I read this, and though it was quite obvious on second reading that you meant assess, I had a nice grin in the meantime wondering how you might ass danger. Perhaps it's like Charades with your ass trying to mime danger, or perhaps the Palermo scale is simply a rating of how likely it is you need to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. None the less, thanks for the grin :)
Compare to NT 2 all further versions are just steps of degradation - they are worse and worse and worse ... worst!
Let's see what will Mr. Gates do at this time. Say what, pay another $550,000 to NASA?
"...and remember that if we are to show fear by changing our American way of life, the Giant Space Rock has already won."
I can only hope that we act fast to make sure that the Giant Space Rock becomes part of the Axis of Evil.
Until now, the scientists can only specify the Asteroid's position on February 1st 2019 within an error margin of several million kilometers. (Translation by me).
That gives us a chance of less than one in a million of getting hit. So I guess it's a bit too early to take the next spaceship to mars and never look back.
Kavau
I'd hate to see a Beowulf cluster of these.
First NT3, then NT4 (without DVD support). Next Win2k (NT5?, with some DVD support). In 2019, MS releases NT7 and it destroys all of North America, but still with out really good DVD support.
www.linux-skunkworks.com
...then can we send Jeff Goldblum to infect them with an Exchange virus?
Can we make sure that Téa Leoni is near the impact site?
December 1, 2017
Reuters
Today in the 17th year of the anti-terror extended presidency, Bush urged everyone on Earth to pray to Jesus to stop the asteroid. He blamed democrats for stopping all efforts to divert destruction but said he had faith everything would be "hunky-dorey."
A summery of the anti-asteroid efforts are as follows:
2002: Republicans reject idea that asteroids exist.
2004: A bill funding more science is rejected as "pork barrel".
2006: Republicans reject theorey asteroids have ever hit Earth in it's 4000 year history, and therefore never will.
2008: Republicans admit asteroids may exist, but if one did hit the Earth it wouldn't be that bad.
2010: Despite mounting evidence that the asteroid will have a direct hit, Bush rejects the science as "shakey and controversial."
2012: UN resolution on asteroid vetoed by US as being too intrusive.
2014: Senate plan to stop asteroid rejected by Bush as "too costly." Tax cut for rich is passed.
2016: Emperor Bush rejects an internation coalition to stop the asteroid as "flawed."
The good news: The Feb 1, 2035 and Feb 1, 2051 close approaches have moved far enough away to become a nil-hazard.
The not-so-good news: The Feb, 1 2044 and Feb 1, 2053 passes have shifted from the nil-hazard to a close approaches. In the case of Feb 1, 2044 the miss is by about 86,900 km. In the case of Feb 1, 2053 the miss is about 30,600 km.
The size estimate of the object has changed from 2.03km to 2.06km in diameter. The mass estimate has been upgraded from 1.1e13 kg to 1.2e13 kg.
The bad news: The Feb 1, 2060 and Feb 1, 2078 approach continues to be a concern. With the data we have now the close approach on Feb 1, 2060 is only about 18,000 km (much closer than before). The Feb 1, 2066 miss distance has increased but the Feb 1, 2078 approach is about 18,800 km. But as I said before, future events will be hard to pin down until the 2019, 2044 and 2052 approaches become better understood.
Overall the impact probability has changed from 1 in ~100,000 to 1 in ~6,600,000. The Palermo Scale has changed from 0.06 to -0.05. However the object remains 1 on the Torino Scale remains at 1.
While the Earth's perturbation on the pre-2060 approaches has been reduced, 2002-NT7 still seems to settle into a 7 to 14 year close approach pattern post 2060.
IMHO, now: 2002-NT7 is not a problem prior to 2060. On and after 2060 those passes could be a problem.
We need more data and more time to improve the orbit models. Don't be fooled by those orbit calculators that you find in over the counter astro programs or on-line ones such as the supplied on the JPL web site. Those are good for most cases but fail when anything gets close or when one looks out farther in time. They simply do not have the precision needed to calculate such close approaches. To give you an idea of the precision: In the Feb 1, 2060 case a time error of only 550 seconds (1 part in ~3,200,000) is enough to convert the 18,000 km miss into an almost certain impact. And the uncertainly of Feb 1, 2060 makes it even harder to pin down Feb 1, 2078 and beyond.
I'll post an update (as a reply to my initial 2002-NT7 update posting) if new observational data changes things again.
chongo (was here)
Yeah, this could definitely be considered anti-USA behavior. Maybe the FBI should investigate the individual who drew it. He's probably a terrorist.
To Do: 1. Take over world 2. Pick up Milk and Bread on the way home
Actucally, this really isn't a huge challenge. We have the technology at every level to develope a weapon that will destroy a rogue asteroid.
Design. We can not only land payloads on other planets, but achieve there orbits without much difficulty (relatively speaking). Hitting an asteroid using basic physics shouldn't be hard. It'd probably be wiser to assemble any Anti-Ballistic Event weapon in orbit. This will give it a greater endurance from it's propulsion system than from launching so deep within the Earth's gravity well. More endurance = greater in flight error tolerance if something should go amiss trajectory-wise. If we can put a giant space station in orbit, we can do this.
Payload. So far, nuclear weapons are the payload of choice for an ABE Weapon, ie; We have the most experience in them and they have plenty of power. If you can dig massive craters with these, surely it'd do something nasty to a space rock, though I'm no nuclear weapons in a vacuume expert.
Alternatives. Partical dispersion. Theory- A meteor burns up in the atmosphere because of it's speed and atmospheric friction. So our ABE Weapon is loaded up with sandbags... Yes, Sandbags. These will be dispersed directly in front of the incoming asteroid (collision course). Repeated assaults of this sort might have the same effect as an atmosphere, burning it up in a fasion.
Yeah, you could also try the Armageddon approach, I guess. Not a huge fan of it, but there's no reason why it couldn't be done. That's what drones are for, personally. Any laser based weapon would have to be built in space to be even remotly effective (vaporize? And barely within current technology). Still, it's looking like nukes (which we have LOTS of) are the best bet. Heck, you could even attatch orbit-built solid and liquid boosters to it if you wanted to get fancy. On that note, a probe with a four or five weapons landing on it's flank, detonating simutaneously might just bounce it out of it's track even if destruction isn't outright. See? no problems ^__^
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We finally have a way of riding the world of slashdot britney babe,motley suck,Jenifer Hopez,and the christian news network
On a scale of one to ten, in terms of difficulty:
Locating an habitable world outside our own solar system, designing and building a large enough transport to support enough human, animal, and plant life for a long enough time to survive the journey and/or a faster-than-light drive technology, etc.
Difficulty: 9
(level of protection from asteroids: 100%
level of protection from solar heat-death: 100% (repeat as necessary)
level of protection from other threats such as plagues from alien pathogens, neutron stars, local supernovas, etc. : not all that good)
Designing and building a transport infrastructure robust enough to move engineers, vast quantities of equipment and materials, and vehicles either being large enough to support rotational gravity, or some magical artificial gravity technology invented, perfected, and implemented, to be taken to Mars, (presumably the best candidate) in order to establish self-sustaining colonies, in order to produce enough climate change, in order to be able to sustain life long enough to establish a permanent effect on the climate (which would require constant effort to maintain, due to the solar wind's constant erosion and lack of a protective planetary magnetic field).
Difficulty: 10
(level of protection from asteroid impact: six of one, half dozen of the other, if Earth gets creamed, who's to say Mars wouldn't also?)
(Level of protection from solar heat death: 0)
(level of protection from other threats - compared to earth?: 0)
Designing and building an infrastructure to create a vessel large enough (or again, artificial gravity) constructed to orbit at one of earth's lagrange points, overcoming hazards from space debris, radiation, lack of water and other resources, to support a large enough contingent of human, animal and plant life to sustain life indefinitely.
Difficulty: 8
(need I go over the pointlessness of the relative threats again?)
Launching a large ion-propulsion unit into interplanetary space, equipped with solar panels for energy, rendevouz-ing at 28km/sec with a 2km asteroid, becoming secured to the surface through some claw-like mechanism, and operation low impulse thrust over long periods of time, perhaps getting periodic propellant resupply missions - in order to slow the asteroid's orbit enough that it drops away from the vicintity of earth's orbit, or perhaps, eventually into the sun.
Difficulty: 2
Taking any of the first three solutions, (or even the fourth) and applying the social complexities to the human element, including maintaining a stable political situation given the various social and religious backgrounds, and propensity for populations of people to not easily be controlled over long time periods - and obtaining a population that could survive for any length of time that would make it meaningful towards the goal of survival of the species.
Difficulty: 11
(ie. given how crazy and fucked up we humans are, I'm quite certain we're going to extinguish ourselves long before any silly asteroid has a chance).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Jan 31, 2019 -- don't do anything because more observations might indicate that it won't hit the earth.
Thank god we will have at least 9 years to get a real president.
The asteroid is said to hit the earth in New Mexico...(and yes the rest of the world wil be overjoyed at finding such an easy way of gettin' rid of the US :P No Offence Intended of course ;)
:P
But do you remember what happend last time when a big asteroid hit earth?
Exactly..the Dino's where whiped out!
And to think the 4th of Feb is my birthday!
Oh, wait, I know what to do REBOOT!
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
A lot of posts here were kind of funny, but that's a classic.
By the time February 2019 rolls around we'll be on the other side of the Sun entirely, the asteroid will go right by us!
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
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Ph33r m3!!!
Reasons why we are gonna fry:
:)
1.) Bruce Willis and his crack crew of drillers will be too old to do this in 16.7 (approx) years.
2.) NASA can don't basic math.
Might as well start moving all my 401K to my Bunker Fund
IOException - Can't Speak
Methinks that if saving the Earth from distruction was the issue, most people would be inclined to ignore any patent issues... "Sorry, you can't save the Earth because you haven't paid my royalties" doesn't sound like a viable business position, does it?
and it will hit antartica, spraying ash into the stratosphere, then maybee it will finally cool the hell down(not global warming mind you, just those annoying 2 months in summer that are a bitch)
Ask any third or fourth grader if you have trouble understanding the gramatical complication introduced by the use of multiple clauses separated by commas.
Wasn't it the distinction between miles and nautical mies or was that another cock-up?
IIRC 1 Nautical Mile = 1.1 Miles
If nature abhors a vacuum, why isn't there more dust in the world?
If they have to be metal, I want a sexy robot instead.
Oh, my GOD! I got to the server, and there was no response.
We're all going to die.
Not so good news: The odds of an impact prior to 2060 was 1 in ~6,600,000 and now is about 1 in ~4,500,000.
The Feb 1, 2060 approach is now very close, only 3570 km! There is still a great deal of uncertainly. At 1 sigma, the margin of error is about +/- 29600 km.
Sure, the center line of the model comes very close to the earth. And sure, the 1 sigma margin of error of the model paints a wide path that intersects the Earth. However the model relevance (i.e., how well does the orbit model match the real 2002-NT7 asteroid) is still in doubt and needs more observational data to refine it.
To give you an example of how small effects can change the model: A 125 second model error, adjusted in the wrong way, out at Feb 1, 2060 (about 1 part in about 14,600,000) is all that it takes to turn a miss into an impact.
At the risk of stating the obvious: Just because the orbit model draws a line thru your neighborhood doesn't mean that the Asteroid will follow the same path. We have to improve the model and validate it with direct and accurate observations over time before we can begin to place more trust in the model reflecting reality. So continue to pay your bills and refrain from end the world rioting. :-)
For those who are keeping track. The following is the list of close approaches (according to the model):
(your asteroid's mileage may vary
The Palermo Scale value has changed from -0.05 to -0.25. (A lower number means less risk) However the Torino Scale remains at 1. (A value >0 means there is something to worry about). The main reason for the Palermo scale drop is that there are fewer close approaches to worry about over the next 50 to 100 years. Fewer close approaches means fewer risky events. Fewer risky events in the next 50 to 100 years results in a lower Palermo value.
IMHO, It is still the case that there is next to nil chance of impact before 2060. It is 2060 and beyond events that are of concern. It is the pattern of orbit adjustments at and beyond 2060 that may be of concern.
p.s. My memory of the other asteroid that as a non-zero Torino value was bad. The other non-zero Torino risk object is the asteroid 1997-XR2 with a -2.44 Palermo Scale value and the impact odds of 1 in about 970,000. While better odds than 2002-NT7, it is smaller ... only 230 meters
across.
The impact energy of 2002-NT7 (if it
were to hit) is some 3333 times as
great as 1997-XR2.
And while an impact of 1997-XR2 (somewhere
around June 1, 2101) would not be fun, it
is does not have nearly the same potential
impact as 2002-NT7.
The other object on the hit parade that is being watched is 2002-NY40. However we only have 76 observations over 9+ days so things are still WAY WAY too early to tell or say anything. It has a -1.91 Palermo value and a 0 Torino value so far.
IMHO, I would not be surprised to see the 2002-NY40 drop in the charts as the days go by.
Well I have other work that I need to do, so it may be a day or so before I update things again ... unless something changes
dramatically ...
chongo (was here)
People of Earth: Do you hear those nukes, Earth Grazer? That's the sound of your death approaching...
Asteroid: My name....is NEO!
(boom)
graspee
" Well, if some extinction level event was about to happen, I would expect all the well-connected people to raise a lot of cash in order to buy a lot of survival goods for their escape rockets, mile-deep bunkers, and what not."
They can get the money back after the impact by selling bits of NT7 on ebay.
Item: 58m Chunk of NT7 NO RESERVE!
Current Price: 15,000 Eurobucks
Buyer responsible for Shipping and Handling charges. Seller sends internationally.
Note: I do not take paypal anymore!
graspee
The estimate is done on one of those Pentium 1's with a FDIV malfunction. That way, not only will the asteroid crash into the sun, but by the time it does it will have crumbled and melted away into the size of a thimble.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I'd say match the velocity, but that is a healthy chunk of speed to dump from intercept to velocity matching. Ok, have the nuclear rockets aim for the flanks. I guess it's the easiest solution. But you're right. Velocity matching isn't exactly an economical easy fix.
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Right. Let's install gigantic pinball flippers :)
on the poles
Great idea! Better get going on your US patent app though - you've got one year to file. Of course, there'll be no incentive to use your gigantic pinball flippers anywhere outside the US since you've just given up your foreign patent rights through public disclosure... and you'd better hope for a good NEO scare in the next 20 years or so, otherwise you should sell them for missile defense before everyone and their brother are making gigantic pinball flipper knock-offs. Maybe if you register giganticpinballflippers.com...
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Its acronym time again !
:-))
IANACM (I Am Not A Celestial Mechanic),
but this:
> 1.Feb 1, 2019 (distance: ~28500 km)
> 2.Feb 1, 2044 (distance: ~91100 km)
> 3.Feb 1, 2053 (distance: ~53500 km)
> 4.Feb 1, 2060 (distance: ~3570 km)
> 5.Feb 1, 2078 (distance: ~15900 km)
> 6.with interesting passes every 7 to 14 years after that
> (your asteroid's mileage may vary
looks highly questionable to me.
This suggests that the asteroid, which according to the bbc article has an orbit that does not lie in the ecliptic plane, comes within less than 8 earth diameters on 5 occasions in less than ten 7-year periods.
This would require two things:
a) The period of the asteroid and the earth must be synchronized to a ratio of 3/7 to within less than app. 1 hour in 60 years - an accuracy of approximately 1:500000
b) All those near flybys must not significantly alter the course of the asteroid. (comparison: geostationary satellite orbit is app. 35000km, and the satellite is deflected by 360 degrees in one day)
I would expect the first flyby in 2019, according to the poster well within geosynchronous orbit, to change the course of the asteroid by something like 0.1 degree (the asteroid is app 10 times faster relative to the earth as the satellite).
After that, the course has changed randomly and the speed has changed significantly (the swingby effect), so any synchronization that may have been there is lost. If we then have 4 more close flybys, the chances for that are more like 5 lottery wins in a row.
Maybe there was just a decimal error in those calculations.
You are asking a good question. The reason why the close approaches occur on the same day of the year is because 2002-NT7's orbit is closest to Earth's orbit at one point. That point does shift around. The current model suggests the closest approach occurs at:
The path of 2002-NT7 will next cross earth's orbit plane going upward at a point about 132.1708757 degrees from the Fall Equinox. Now 132.1708757 degrees / 360 degrees = 0.3671413214 of a circle. Using 365.2564 days (Earth's year), 0.3671413214 of a circle * 365.2564 days = about 134.1 days from the Fall Equinox. 134.1 days from Sep 23 (~06 hr UTC) lands one near 1 Feb.
Take a look at this 2002-NT7 orbit diagram. The dark blue part of 2002-NT7's orbit is below Earth's plane. The light blue part is above Earth's plane. The yellow line from the Sun (red dot in center) going down and to the right is the 0 degree fall equinox line. The vertical yellow line, 132.1708757 degrees from the equinox line (as measured in the plane of Earth's orbit, not the plane shown on your screen) shows where 2002-NT7 crosses Earth's orbit plane. That crossing spot (the place where the dark/light parts of 2002-NT7's orbit meet near the yellow line), you will notice, is very close to Earth's orbit. That spot is the place where Earth is found on/near Feb 1. No other place on Earth's or 2002-NT7's orbit comes as close.
You ask another good question about deflection:
Not every object that gets within 35000km of Earth enters a geostationary orbit. The reason why 2002-NT7 is not captured by earth is that it is moving about 26.25 km/second as it crosses Earth's orbit plane. It is moving too fast to be captured by Earth and pulled into a orbit around our planet.
FYI: An object orbiting the Earth once a day 35,000 km above the surface is moving about 3 km/second with respect to the center of the Earth. The 26.25 km/second speed of 2002-NT7 is much faster.
BTW: Earth DOES deflect 2002-NT7. The crossing point and angle in inclination do shift a but after a close approach, but not by a huge amount. These close passes make the 2002-NT7 orbit tricky to model.
On a different question that somebody else asked:
Your typical astro/solar system display program that runs on your PC (XEphem, RedShift, TheSky, or even that Java app on the JPL site) uses simplified assumptions that are OK for general approximation of objects that do not have significant encounters. They frequently use point size masses and only take into account the Grav pull of the Sun and major planets. High precision models must use much much much more complex models. For example, in addition to accurate 2002-NT7 observations (to measure its position) one must use a non-point Earth model. That gravity lump called EurAsia has a slightly different "tug" than the Pacific Ocean, for example. Normally that difference is not critical, but when one is trying to predict with high precision year in the future, such details can become important.
Permit me to end with a note about critical NASA mission called GRACE.
There is a very critical mission (largely ignored by the general press) known called GRACE. GRACE stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. The mission will obtain obtain accurate global and high-resolution determination of both the static and the time-variable components of the Earth's gravity field. This goal will be achieved by making accurate measurements of the inter-satellite range change to within one micron between two co-planar, low altitude polar orbiting satellites, using a microwave tracking system.
GRACE will provide us with an accurate Gravity map which will improve the modeling of very close approaches. I am looking forward to the day with GRACE's gravity maps can be used to establish more detailed close approach orbit models. I wish the GRACE team all the best!
IAACM (I Am A Celestial Mechanic) :-)
and I hope this helps.
chongo (was here)
The Guardian had this to say about the coming weeks news stories. The BBC always trot this one out when there's nothing else much to say.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
If you have been following the recent articles about the "Interplanetary Superhighway" discovered by NASA researcher Martin Lo (I have been scouring the net for papers recently) you will realize that there may be a good case for early deflection. In fact NASA re-released the story about this with a little more data just this morning (jpl mailing list). This is hot stuff!
Lo is trying to map the low energy trajectories through the Solar System which result from calculating n-body gravitational problems for all the objects in the System. Apparently there are tube-like trails between the Sun and the Oort Belt along which objects can travel theoretically without thrust, and the dinosaur killer is thought to have come down an "offramp" to the Earth much like Shoemaker-Levy apparently did with Jupiter.
This technology was used in the Genesis Mission and chaos theory applies to the low-energy halo orbit around a Sun-Earth libration point. After orbitting around this point a few times the robot will (without thrust) return to a sample capture point in Earth orbit.
While I do not yet understand the math itself, it seems likely that this Rock is in a somewhat chaotic orbit and that small nudges can have very large effects on its trajectory down the way. A decade or two may not be long enough, or we might even set up a pattern which will smash us on a later orbit, but the technology is being developed right now.
Punxsutawney, PA (AP) - Good news for those living in Pennsylvania - Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog that by virtue of being a groundhog is far less obnoxious than any television weather forcaster, has been yanked from his makeshift burrow and did not see his shadow, indicating only 4 more decades of nuclear winter.
having read The Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale I'm thinking that loosely coupled Llama trains are less a hazard to us void engineers here in Houston than this asteroid is. Just think of the hazards of trying to explain logarithmic scales to the masses. I can feel blood pressure spiking at JSC already.
Still, like the doc's say:
Potential impacts with positive Palermo Scale values will generally indicate situations that merit some level of concern.
so 0.06 merits some concern, but doesn't justify drama llamas
Life is a decision tree. We must accept that it is, like a diode, one way. Athena of the Bifurcated Pathways
I hope it hits France.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
Personally I think Micro$oft version of NT7.0 will do far more damage then any space drifting rock. Windows 2015, scary shit..
Only thing worse is windows booting when I start my car.. it could be worse though. I might have to recompile the kernel to get the lights to turn on
So far, no pre-discovery images of 2002-NT7 have been found. A search of pre-discovery images is on-going.
I will post new updates to chongo's journal over the next few weeks. Please check my journal for the latest 2002-NT7 orbit model information.
chongo (was here)
What we know as "NT7" is really just service pack that will contain numerous bug fixes and security enhancements. Unfortunately this update will necessitate a reboot. This update, however complete, poses considerable risk to mission critical systems and no warranties are implied. Networked users should discuss this update with their system administrator for further details about the risk of data loss and migration plans to another planet.
So long and thanks for all the fish! R.I.P. D.A.
The year 2019: From out of space comes a runaway planet, hurtling between the Earth and the Moon, unleashing cosmic destruction. Man's civilization is cast in ruin. Two thousand years later, Earth is reborn... A strange new world rises from the old: a world of savagery, super science, and sorcery. But one man bursts his bonds to fight for justice! With his companions Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, he pits his strength, his courage, and his fabulous Sunsword against the forces of evil. He is Thundarr, the Barbarian!
I have read that the Tunguska hit is imagined to have been 50-60 metres in diameter, air-burst at a height of 8 km, releasing energy equivalent to a 10 megaton H-bomb. I read that it blew down and ignited 1000 square kilometres of Siberian forest. So clearly blowing apart in the atmosphere doesn't keep a strike from being devastating.
Kinetic energy is one half mass times velocity squared. So a rock or an iceberg 200 metres in diameter will release 64 times as much energy as one 50 metres in diameter.
I have a couple of questions.
A big rock that strikes an ocean can produce a wave that will devastate coastal cities an ocean away. How much smaller is the wave if it blows apart before striking the ocean?
It now seems that a lot of asteroids, and maybe comets, are not solid rocks, with a measure of structural integrity. It now seems that many asteroids more closely resemble very loosely bound piles of gravel. Tidal forces ripped apart Shoemaker-Levy 9.
So, if an asteroid that is a big pile of rubble is speeding towards Earth, at what point does tidal forces overpower its very loose gravity so it fails to hold together? If none of the fragments strike solid ground it will throw up relatively little dust -- which could otherwise cloak the earth in a cloud that brings us years of endless winter. How many deaths would even a year of total crop failures cause? Hundreds of millions? Billions?
Those of us old enough to watch broadcast TV over the air will remember how lightning disrupted the broadcast. Nuclear weapons also generate an electro-magnetic pulse (aka EMP). It is a stronger one, strong enough that our electrical power grid into a huge antennae, receiving enough energy to turn all our electronic devices into junk.
Am I wrong to believe a rock that air-burst that releases the equivalent of kilotons bombs would generate an electro-magnetic pulse, just like a bomb? 8 kilometres, that is about the height an airliner flies at. What is the distance of your horizon at 8 kilometres? A hundred kilometres? Hundreds of kilometres?
Some frequencies of radio can be heard at long distance. The radio waves are reflected off layers in the upper atmosphere. Can light at those frequencies carry enough energy to ruin electronics over the horizon?
Would the EMP from a 1200 metre rock generate enough EMP to ruin electronics around the Earth?
Lots of civilization ending threats face us. Race ending threats face us. Life on Earth ending threats face us. For most of them the odds are basically impossible to calculate. Will we end civilization? Render the human race extinct? Render the Earth unfit for anything but the most primitve life through poisoning the Earth with our waste? It is incalculable, because it depends on making a subjective judgement of whether we can learn to be wise, instead of clever. We are clever enough to build things that could kill us as a side-effect. Are we wise enough not to? That is incalculable.
Astronomical disasters are ones about which we can make reasonable, defensible judgements, and start to enter into actuarial calculations.
Yes, a close enough Supernova burst could destroy civilization. Slashdot has discussed this recently, and again here. 160 to 200 light years was suggested to be the distance beyond which civilization would be safe from a supernova. NASA's picture of the day site has half a dozen articles about eta carinae, a large variable star that they state is a good candidate for the next supernova in our neck of the woods. It is well beyond that 200 ly limit.
The BBC article's headline (and accompanying illustration) are more alarming than the story itself seems to warrant: this asteroid has been given a 0.06 on the Palermo technical scale, which means it shouldn't bump getting run over by a llama off your list of worries.
My family lives right next door to a Llama farm!
...if you got half the chance!
Perhaps the chance of this one hitting the Earth is only 1/16,000,000, but it could kill off half the world population if it does.
That's an expected value of 187.5 deaths, which is comparable to an average days killings by automobiles in the US. Of course, that's over the next 17 years, so actually, it's not something that people should worry about that much...
But still, on average, that rock will kill 11 people a year for the next couple of decades :-).
1. lets determine which continent it will hit. ... so when NT7 comes, it'll miss a continent... and put out our worries on the llamas... :) I kid ;)
2. bring all the llamas in that continent.
3. hit it with all our nuclear wepons
no-one happened to notice dividing 2,000 meters by 3 (rough rounding) yielded approx. 666? :)