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Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race
YetAnotherName writes "Both Wired Magazine and Tom Jones have coverage of the East Coast Championship Kinetic Sculpture Race 2003. Contestants plant tongue firmly into cheek, construct, and race bizarre human-powered vehicles across a variety of terrains. Notable vehicles included a 13-foot high pink poodle and a giant eyeball. Special rules this year required contestants to carry a sock-puppet on board. The winner this year? RTFA."
Word to your mothership!
And I thought pumpkin launching was a waste of time. At least their kinetic launchers can kill people; Fifi doesn't exactly strike awe or terror into the onlookers.
For those of you who actually pay for Slashdot, I thought that I'd tell you about the banner ad that I'm currently viewing:
EXPLORE * INVENT * CONNECT
O'Reilly EMERGING TECHNOLOGY Conference
April 22-25, Santa Clara, CA
I liken the recent rebirth, revelations, and renaissance of trolling on Slashdot to the soon-to-be-classic epic battle between Neo (played by actor Keanu Reeves) and the rogue virus Agent Smith (portrayed by the esteemed actor Hugo Weaving).
In this climactic and feverishly pitched battle, a rejuvenated Agent Smith confronts Neo. Neo (cmdr taco) has increased his power (anti troll filters) exponentially. Agent Smith (troll) has since developed the ability to infect the "shells" of others, a process which he uses to effectively multiply. At the outset of the battle, Agent Smith attempts to first infect Neo and spread into his "system". The troll filters prove amiable, and Neo easily repels this clever initial attack. Undaunted, the troll (Agent Smith) seeks to gain assistance from those in his surrounding environment. With the most excellent and well placed of trollings, Agent Smith captures the hearts and minds of many others, effectively creating an army in his own image (Trollkore, CLIT, You Fail It, IN SOVIET RUSSIA, etc).
This new army of Agent Smiths pour down upon Neo in a glorious wave of absurdity, brutal character attacks, vulgar ASCII imagery, and unprecedented and unusual tales of sexual escapades. The ensuing melee is a remarkable epic of good vs. evil, as the many trolls continue to pour down upon cmdr taco, seeking to defeat him with an avalanche of numbers. The outcome to this bitter rivalry has yet to be seen.
Which is where we find ourselves tonight gentlemen.
This is a war, and we are soldiers.
bz should never have responded to the silly question about quetion marks.
What's new pussyca^H^Hrat?
OLPC Australia
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to make this post and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without troll filters and non-alphabet character limits, or repetitious character filters, a world where any form of trolling is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
Blah blah blah blah blah
cause there ain't no doubt I love this laaaaaand
God bless the (bang!)
splat
Music Industry Sends Warning to Song Swappers
...When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a 'file-sharing' system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified."
By Sue Zeidler
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030429/3/3akqc.html
ADVERTISEMENT Ringtone Operator Logo Picture Message
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The record industry opened a new front in its war against online piracy on Tuesday by surprising hundreds of thousands of Internet song swappers with an instant message warning that they could be "easily" identified and face "legal penalties" for their actions.
About 200,000 users of the Grokster and Kazaa file-sharing services received the warning notice on Tuesday and millions more will get notices in coming weeks, said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the music companies.
The message said in part: "It appears that you are offering copyrighted music to others from your computer.
The mass messaging came after a federal judge on Friday delivered a setback to the music industry's efforts to shut down song-swapping services, and a day after Apple Computer Inc. unveiled an online music store aimed at wooing users from the free networks.
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson on Friday ruled the Grokster and Morpheus services should not be shut down because they cannot control what is traded over their systems.
Trade groups for the movie studios and record labels said they would appeal the ruling, the first significant legal setback for the entertainment industry in its battle against the popular "peer-to-peer" services that allow users to download files for free.
The RIAA's Sherman said that while the messaging effort was planned long ago, the timing was fortunate since some song swappers might misinterpret Friday's ruling to mean that copyright infringement was legal.
The move immediately angered some Internet users.
"Way to go, RIAA. Sue and threaten the public, your customers. I think I'll go and download," one posting on Yahoo said.
Sharman Networks Ltd, the Australian firm that owns Kazaa, said in a statement, said that rather than cooperating with the file-sharing network "the RIAA continues to choose to attack some of its most loyal customers."
Sharman said it objected to any effort to enforce copyrights that violated the law, its own user agreements or that would "indiscriminately spam, mislead or confuse."
Meanwhile, Verizon Communications, embroiled in a separate copyright infringement suit with the recording industry, said the move undermined the RIAA's argument in that case.
Last week, Verizon suffered a setback when a U.S. court said the phone company must reveal the names of customers suspected of downloading copyrighted songs from the Internet without permission.
The RIAA argued that Verizon is obligated under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to help the music industry protect its copyrights. Verizon says it is willing to help, but argued that the law only applies to Web pages stored on its computers, not traffic on the "peer-to-peer" networks that merely travel across its wires.
Sarah Deutsch, an attorney for Verizon on Tuesday, said that the RIAA has said they could not contact users on their own.
"I think this undermines their case because now they are acknowledging they can contact the users on a massive scale," she said.
Its not the first time the recording industry has targeted individual users. In April, the RIAA sued four students who were operating networks on three college campuses where it claims the networks were being used to illegally trade copies of music files.
The warning on Tuesday was sent by the RIAA on behalf of the world's big record labels owned by AOL T
[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'
whats with the ask slashdot? aren't we supposed to be able to post replies?
YOU SUCK BALLS!
My exact thoughts. I would pay to see Linus and Bruce Perens pedaling a giant penguin built on a bicycle for two.
I began to question why I was doing the postings. I have had a growing sense of futility: people on the net can't possibly find the postings useful, because most of the advice in them is completely ignored.
People don't seem to think before posting, they are purposely rude, they blatantly violate copyrights, they crosspost everywhere, use 20 line signature files, and do basically every other thing the postings (and common sense and common courtesy) advise not to. Regularly, there are postings of questions that can be answered by the newusers articles, clearly indicating that they aren't being read. "Sendsys" bombs and forgeries abound.
People rail about their "rights" without understanding that every right carries responsibilities that need to be observed too, not least of which is to respect others' rights as you would have them respect your own. Reason, etiquette, accountability, and compromise are strangers in far too many newsgroups these days.
You fat fucking smelly Greek whore! Do you even wash on the rare occasions when your husband wants to fuck you? I bet your arse smells like a pig farm after eating all of the fucking pork and potatoes you cook-- you do nothing but sit all day, sweating and farting. It must smell like a swamp where criminals dump bodies in the sweltering heat.
Do you even shave? You sound like a lazy fucking wart of a housewife who wouldn't even bother. I bet the place is a mess too: dishes needing done, a layer of dust over everything, and stains and spills here and there. What a fucking pig-- a hairy fucking Greek bitch-pig.
Oh yeah, and your "skills" are laughable. You can't code for shit-- there's more holes in your PHP site than in a Greek brothel. Your English is terrible, which is pathetic for an editor-in-chief of a news site that reports in the language. Your obvious biases and slants make you look even more silly and unprofessional, as well as your multi-paragraph rants and fits of rage you write in your own forums. It's no wonder no one takes you seriously.
In short, ELQ, FUCK YOU. You are a loser, a no-lifer, a wanna-be, and a fecal smear in the world of technology. You are a detriment to the community you claim you serve. I challenge you to refute one thing I have said. You can't; it's all true.
And you know it.