Slashdot Mirror
2005 Foot In Mouth Awards
jollyroger1210 writes "Wired is running a story on the 2005 Foot In Mouth Awards." From the article: "Tech execs say the darndest things. And so do shuffling presidents, and disgraced scientists, and Wikipedia fakers. It's time to relive 2005's biggest spoken gaffes."
"I know what I don't know, and to this day I don't know technology and I don't know accounting and finance."
-- Bernie Ebbers, ex-CEO of WorldCom
I'm going to sacrafice some karma for this, but I truly don't care.
First of all, who cares if Slashdot posts it a little late?
Honestly, Some of us do not visit 'digg' or any of that crap. Why? Becasue it's full of little children who have no idea what they're talking about.
So if it was posted there first, who cares? No one, except for you and the other 'anti-slashdot' kids. If you're so enthralled in the fact that 'digg' posts it first then, guess what? Go there and read digg.
I, personally, am going to stay here at slashdot. Why? Because I can actually get smarter by reading some posts. I just got more ignorant trying to decrypt the aol-leet-speek-kid posts at Digg.
Slashdot may have it's share of problems, but it also has some great minds that read it and contribute.
"Screw the nano." -- Motorola CEO Ed Zander
Well, considering the Mororola RAZR phone is one of the hottest-selling out there, and the Apple iTunes phone is a flop, I'd say I believe the guy from Motorola.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
You should also realise that digg posts links to slashdot stories as stories too.
Why does yahoo do this
And I bet the get those on faster too!
oh wait.
I actually hate digg (and relative to the usual /. crowd, you might call me a "kid")
I went to the site a few times, and I almost never found something that would interest me that I haven't already read here.
so what if they post it a few minutes/hours earlier (sometimes)? like you said, it's about the quality of the comments...
as technology improves, the number of FIM quotes too increase! Compare this with the classic quotes like "640K ought to be enough for anybody".
they don't make funny quotes like that any more.
Manojar - pronounced like Manager
Err, I didn't mean 'kid' as in a younger person. Because, as you said, relative to the slashdot crowd, I took am a kid. 21.
I meant kid as in the mental competence of a kid (you know, those people who haven't hit teenage years yet.)
And no, i'm not calling anyone old either. I just know some of the bigger geeks of us (The ones I look up to, actually) are in their 30's or higher, so we're 'kids' in terms of age.
I don't consider myself anti-slashdot, but must say that now with reddit I just skim slashdot as most of the interesting headlines already appeared on reddit long before slashdot.
Sony's only on there once.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
This is actually rather funny. I only hope that the people who made the comments realize how silly/offbase/nuts they sounded.
Keep the faith, share the code
Screwing it would scratch the screen. Don't screw it.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
this guy http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/23/15 13203&tid=141&tid=158&tid=3&tid=106
We're talking about the biggest spoken gaffes in 2005, not 2004. Both of your links are dated in 2004.
Nice! Also bring it up next year too for the end of 2006 foot-in-mouth awards. And the year after that.
Since this story was 2004 and you brought it up, (as I'm guessing to beat this very dead, rotting horse one more time) you seem to be wanting to make this an annual tradition!
Check the link you provided btw. Thursday, September 16, 2004.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Quite right, this is old. My mistake. Seemed like yesterday. Shot from the hip. What can I say.
Moderators, mod the parent down. Really.
Again, my sincere appologies.
wut he 5ed! ya!
You're quite right, it was a 2004 story. My bad. Really. Shouldn't have posted it.
So why did I think it was still current? Maybe it was Mary Mapes' idiotic book.
So I made one (admittedly erronious) Slashdot post, and she wrote a whole friggin book about some alternate reality in which the memos weren't forged.
I do hope you give her the same beat down.
I read digg for the same reason I read the Drudge Report: To see what is fueling all the idiots out there.
Well said! Regular readers all know that Slashdot, editorially, is fairly mediocre. Awful editing and spelling, frequent duplicate posts, and so on. But it's the moderation system and comments that make it shine. Where else can you read astrophysicists discuss the latest astronomy finding, or professional engineers dissecting the latest technology invention? Thanks to moderation, the best posts rise to the top.
The one time I visited Digg, I found the comments worthless.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Chair-to-the-wall has won Number Two!
"'I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google.'"
-Steve Ballmer
Excellent.
I have mod points, but there's no option for +3 Guilt Trip. Really - it's fine. The World forgives you.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Of all teh dumb things Bush has said this year alone... a comment about an iPod is the best they could get??? I guess they are right the internet and print media is a vast left wing haven that preys on the right.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
"Walk this way, talk this wa-ay."
-- Intel chairman Craig Barrett
The most embarrassing executive antics of the year came early in 2005, as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show and joined Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler in a duet.
Watching the video, I was amused trying to determine who was actually the older white guy...
The whole demo with the crazy kids is pretty awkward too. Tyler gives a little speech to the audience... *shudder*
Digg comment: Huh huh. Cool, dude. /. comment: This is a really interesting device. Pity it doesn't run Linux.
-- Cheers!
Oh how I wish I was in my thirties again!
I might not be a wit, but at least I am more than half way there.
Man, get over it. Like the Swift Boat Vets, the Dan Rather story is more a case of corruption and blog bullying than anything else, it's definitely not "a return to truth in journalism", or whatever you may think it is. They decided what they wanted to say, shoved their fingers in their ears and screamed "it's fake" until someone noticed.
It was more about PR cleanup than fact checking. The question is not "is this legit?", but "how can we manipulate belief"? They had people discussing how to tear it down within 10 or 15 minutes of its first airing. The qualifications of the people discussing the matter? Well, it's a memo. You could ask people in print manufacturing, or forensics. You could ask an army desk jockey. You could even ask any secretary old enough to have used one of those typewriters. Instead, it was freepers, marketing people, PR, politicians, newscasters, paid political operatives(bloggers!), and the like. Oh, and a few computer guys. Most weren't even born yet in the era of that typewriter or Bush's service.
Me? I work in printing. The family business is printing, and my father was in computer repair for decades. My childhood was spent with inky fingers, learning programming or fixing hardware. So, I know both areas pretty well, and I didn't buy it. The really clever thing is that the real point of the matter was "did Bush fulfill obligations?" not the placement of a fucking letter or apostrophe. Kudos on making sure the voting public avoided that question and discussed decades old typewriters instead.
It's an exercise in the efficiency of the conservative political machine. You're not even discussing the topic at hand. You're discussing 2004 in a "let's remember 2005" comments section. We should both be modded for being offtopic. And you should learn that you can't reuse calenders.
I recall reading how the CEO of Quark Express had slipped so far into desperation due to Adobe's onslaught with its CS Suite that he posted some unprofessional and offensive comments, hoping to show that newest Quark offering was more "hip." Something to do with orgies.
Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
Asa Dotzler, who deserves a prize for "Play nice or face extinction. Seriously.", aimed at websites who have the audacity to block people thwarting their advertising revenue model.
0 7/no_respect_for.html
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2005/
Man.
I thought that racking your brain trying to decrypt l33t-m3nz speech would stimulate brain growth. Like chess, you know?
I love the last one, in which the guy conveniently forgets that customers do actually pay for the telecom connections, usually in monthly line fees (well, here in Australia my fees well outweigh my call costs) and call costs.
Sure! Let's pay for the same stuff twice! Because we're stupid!
"Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop -- I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget.'"
-- Intel chairman Craig Barrett
Who is getting the foot in the mouth here? Mr. Negroponte?
The human race is artificial intelligence created using object orientated programming.
Oh, don't bother. For every article, there is an idiot who thinks that foobar website had it 3.247 minutes before Slashdot.
Who the hell bloody cares? Slashdot is one place where it will eventually show up, and one place where the discussions aren't full of crap.
Seriously, a message to the posters like the OP - get the hell off Slashdot. If you don't like this place, then what the hell are you doing here? At least, let those of us who like this place hang out and actually discuss stuff, rather than whining like a 13 year old about his zit.
I've seen a lot of these "alternative" to Slashdot websites. They're all full of crap. Slashdot is what it is not just because of the articles, but also because of its readers and posters. Now, take your whining elsewhere and let those of us who like the place discuss things related to the article.
Freakin' idiots.
"The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand", or so I have read.
From the article:
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google."
I have a hard time beliving that anyone would get offended by the real use of the word fuck:
"I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."
So, please, prove me wrong and come forward if you would get offended if Wired prited "fuck" instead of "f***".
Seriously, why is printing "fuck" so difficult? I'm from Europe and I really can't understand you Americans.
you actually RTFA?
Not only will everything eventually show up here, but it will appear two or three times!
Often successively, so that one does not accidentally scroll past a juicy morsel!
Seriously. I'm here for the comments. Screw the editors.
Digg for the headlines. Slashdot for the commentary.
Yeah, Digg's comments are pretty worthless, but I think it has to do more with how it's commenting system is set up more than the reader base. Slashcode, for all its flaws, has a really nice system to sort, write, and moderate comments. Meanwhile, Digg doesn't even have threads, making each comment more of an island than part of a discussion. And anyone who knows who the koolaidguy is knows that Digg's moderation needs some work.
In any case, its nice to see Slashdot finally have some competition.
vi ~/.emacs
And how does this differ from Slashdot? Yeah, there's a couple of smart, literate people here, but the vast majority of us still act like little children and have no idea what we're talking about.
LOL, awwwww...THANK YOU!
Ah, it's not just me then. Good. Most of them seemed to be "Cool! I love this! Digg!!"
Slashdot comments are not by any stretch of the imagination uniformly good, but I have picked up an awful lot of information (or some combination of those words, at least) from comments over the years.
(Plus, I'm still not entirely sure how Digg's revolutionary system for readers voting on stories is different/better to kuro5hin's.)
(I'm not asking.)
So I am wondering if there is anything along the line of the "Sony Rootkit" incident in the awards... Any ideas?
w00t
The list is obviously US-centric. As if you had expected anything else...
Karma: none (due to not believing in reincarnation)
When Mary Mapes posts here and tries to be clever, I'm sure she'll be greeted in the same fashion.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Once upon a time a student writing a paper on Communism for a class on fascism and totalitarianism told his professor that he had been visited by agents of Homeland Security because he had placed a request for Chairman Mao's Little Red Book through the inter-library loan program.
y /12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm
y /12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm
Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/dail
There's just one little thing the student didn't count on...
Sometimes professors do not take things at face value, sometimes they actually do some research and they check things, they ask questions, and sometimes they notice inconsistencies.
They're smart like that. They really are. That's why professors are professors and why students are students, and why small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. But I digress...
Anyhow, to make a long story short, this student's professor asked some questions. This student's professor noticed some inconsistencies in the student's story. This student's professor asked the student's parents some questions. This student's professor found more inconsistencies in the student's story. This student's professor did even more checking.
In the end this student's professor found that not a single thing that the student had told him could be verified. The professor confronted his student who tearfully admitted that the story of being visited by agents of Homeland Security was a complete fabrication.
Federal agent's visit was a hoax
http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/dail
This student's cobbled up story which had caused news articles and editorials to be written, which had caused much heated discussion on the Internet, in the end was unravelled and shot to pieces because the student's professor had not taken it at face value and had asked questions until he got at the truth of the matter.
Now, you may ask, who put their foot in their mouth in this story? Well, I'll tell you. Many people on the discussion board where you now read this very post put their feet in their mouths by spewing intemperate comments as a result of uncritically accepting the statements of a liar as the truth. I'd say that's a pretty good foot in the mouth story and a pretty good cautionary tale as well.
Slashdot is populated by Old Mammals, and I'm one of them.
Just instantly identifying that lyric caused more hair to turn grey. Goddamnit....
And here I thought the President had a monopoly on shooting the messenger.
Look, there was a story there. A valid story, about Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. A story that we won't get to hear or see now, because it's all been tarred with the fake-memo brush. Because Mapes and Rather thought the story wasn't quite good enough, they sexed it up... with faked evidence. How responsible were they? Well, they clearly didn't show the diligence that they were paid for.
And somehow you're saying it's the fault of Little Green Footballs that the memos were fakes? If I were a left-wing partisan hack, I'd be furious at Mapes and Rather for killing the TANG story. A six year old could have showed that they were fake. You're only embarrassing yourself by claiming otherwise.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
-- Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business division
sounds like:
"Most people don't even know what AIDS is, so why should they care about it?"
I helped developing a operating system kernel back in my university years and we also had this limit and that's because of the 386 memory management. We had to remap all the memory twice, one half to be accessed by programs and the other half to be accessed by the operating system in a root level (sorry, it was over 10 years ago, I don't really remember the details of why it was really needed). Since the 386 can address up to 4Gb of memory, half of this is 2Gb. Don't blame Bill Gates this time, blame Intel. (By the way, is there anyone there who knows Linux well enough to tell us if it also has this limit or something like that?)
So say we all
No..no.. It cannot be considered for this award. ......
It was actually not 'foot' in the mouth, you see
I don't actually know anything :-), but as far as I can remember, there's been an option for "Large memory support (>4GB)" in the kernel config.
"The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand", or so I have read.
"(Telecoms) and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts!" -- SBC Communications CEO Ed Whitacre LOL! smell that fear, the desperation!
Send your spendthrift head of state this
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." George W Bush
"But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." George W Bush
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." George W Bush
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney
"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." Donald Rumsfeld
or this one... "Brownie You're doing a heck of a job."
"I'm a uniter, not a divider", "yellow cake uranium", "we will catch bin laden dead or alive", "weapons of mass destruction", "I will appoint a moderate to the supreme court", etc. Or my personal favorite, although not quite as quotable to those with low attention spans, is this new one; "To say `unchecked power' basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject...".
Grow the fuck up, you loser. I couldn't give two shits where the President sticks his dick. Even if it's a fat girl. Unless he wants to put it in one of my orifices, it's none of my business. Like the OJ trials, I was one of the very few that never watched nor cared to waste my time watching something so stupid.
Also, it was four years ago, so you might as well be talking about Carter being afraid of a bunny rabbit, Nixon being a crook, JFK cheating on his wife, or George Washington and his wooden teeth. It's ancient history. But I guess talking about someone's sex life and their genitals is going to be the defining cultural event for your entire life. Maybe all of American History!
I know we're not talking about things you can giggle over anymore, but it's because they're fucking important!
The two are mutually exclusive, so which is it?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Some just don't get it. USA, where sex with one person is more important than war with another country.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
What surprises me is that the very same people who post "Glass Parking lot!!~!@#" to any Mid-East based thread (even on the ones about tall buildings in Dubai!) are able to form semi-coherent statements in other threads.
Perhaps the Web 2.0 will have an IQ requirement...
/Whaddya mean *I* can't get on?!!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I bet he had enough materials at least to produce 500 tons of mustard. And another 800 tons of mayonaise.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
"So I went to the fuckin' shop for some fuckin' fags[1], an' I saw they 'ad the latest fuckin' [car|bike|console gaming] magazine, so I fuckin' 'ad that..." is a fairly typical example. These people seem to become completely lost, however, when something worthy of a decent curse happens. They've used up their vocabulary and are reduced to standing open-mouthed and helpless (or screaming, in the case of accidental self-injury).
Far better to save the (formerly) impressive curses for suitably momentous events, thus preserving your linguistic headroom.
[1]Cigarettes. With apologies to bash.org, it is illegal to traffic in homosexuals in the UK.
...this one?
Without a DOUBT was, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Please read the FAQ...http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.shtml#ed85 0
...but I have picked up an awful lot of information (or some combination of those words, at least) from comments over the years.
Yup. Agreed. I've definitely picked up a lot of awful information from the comments over the years, too. : p
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
My favorite gaffe of 2005 had to be the non-story about Google and Sun "teaming up on OpenOffice." Remember how Slashdot reported that Sun and Google were "planning Web Office" and how hundreds of posts celebrated the "fact" that a buggy office suite would be rewritten in JavaScript? In the end all that came of that deal is that Google would bundle its toolbar with the wholly-unrelated JRE download -- an asinine bundling that if it involved any other two companies (cough) would have led to mass denouncement among the alpha geeks.
For more information, click here.
We should put the media up for an award for their Katrina coverage. The Cat 4 huricane that was really a cat 3, the higher percentage of white people (over general population) who died versus black, the lack of mass murders in the shelters.... I could go on and on.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
"Screw the nano."
-- Motorola CEO Ed Zander
He should have said it like Lewis Black, with his fingers all crooked out of rage:
"FUCK the nano!"
Everyone on the planet already knew W. served without distinction. Kinda like everyone knew Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary.
His "I'm there with you" speech to workers who were lucky to take a single thousand a month didn't exactly have the intended affect, and he resigned a month later.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
This seems to be the only guy in the thread that gets it and isn't getting all het up protecting their favourite news portal.
/. and digg.com are both just there to make reading and commenting on the "news" easier. I read both and I can't see a blind bit of difference in the quality of content or comments. But /. has a moderation system you say? Shame most of the mods are worse than the fanboy posters out there.
Seriously, grow up guys,
The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.
One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.
Everyone one of those is from Bill Clinton.
We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.
Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.
Those are from Al Gore.
[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.
I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.
The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation.
(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. ...And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War.
That's from John Kerry.
So put a fucking sock in the "Bush lied" crap.
I'm not sure how the list could skip over the antics of Overstock.com president Patrick "My Bad" Byrne. I hope that someday I can start a company where I can claim bad news is the result of a conspiracy lead by a Sith Lord. Like him or not Patrick is entertaining. The company's recent customer service problem can also make for entertaining (if not unnerving) reading.
Quis custodiet custodes ipsos?
What mod decided a random cut and paste of the article text is "informative"? There's no actual comment here!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
How about this one "There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq".
They didn't include the "2 standards are better than 1" comment from the Microsoft guy in the Massachusetts case. That was my my favorite.
However, you're still limited to 4GB of addressable memory per process. If you need more than that, you have to go 64-bit.
I probably could dig up the manual to my first Apple III, which stated in print, that 128K was more than anyone would ever need or something approximate to that.
We read this as we were trying to figure out why the System Utility software was crashing with a stack overflow...it was because it required 256K to run.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The most embarrassing executive antics of the year came early in 2005, as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show and joined Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler in a duet.
What the hell does the man's skin color have to do with his lack of musical ability? Especially considering that ALL the members of Aerosmith are white?
This with its irony was the funniest of all, with the Wired author putting his foot farther in his mouth than any of the tech gaffes he was reporting.
(MRC ="critics")
If they were alive, they would likely be offended. Most old folks are.
It doesn't bother me when someone says "fuck" but it bothers me when they say it in front my mother, who IS offended.
If you're a troll, then your mission is to piss off and offend everyone you can. Use the word "fuck" lots and lots in posts to the AARP web site while you're dissing Social Security. While you're at it, discuss bestiality in a graphic manner at Disney's forums, you may actually cause someone to have a coronary.
Saying "fuck" at slashdot is no problem; if you have a problem with the word "fuck" you probably shouldn't be here.
Wired, otoh, is more "everybody" oriented. Face it, they may WANT to be a nerd site but they aren't.
(Posting AC in case Mom's reading this;)
Clinton sure said stupid things, didn't he.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I'd be more interested in an article detailing the Foot-In-Mouth awards from 2006. As well as a few football scores from next season.
Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, in his emotional Hurrican Katrina tirade on NBC's Meet the Press:
"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called him and said, `Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, `And yeah, Momma, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday' - and she drowned Friday night. She drowned on Friday night," Broussard said.
"Nobody's coming to get her, nobody's coming to get her. The secretary's promise, everybody's promise. They've had press conferences - I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody."
Of course, it turned out the above story was a complete lie.
Bruce
Let's be nice, some of us like Steven Tyler...
let's see - one commited a mortal sin and broke the ten commandments, and the other tried to bring freedom to an opressed people
i love how bringing freedom to an opprressed people is somehow worse than breaking the rules that God set out for us
maybe that's why clinton is going to go to hell and bush will be remembered as one of the best presidents the us has ever seen
Honestly - why should it matter if another web site posts a story first? If something happens and a 24 hour cable news network covers it at 4pm, should the nightly news NOT talk about it, since it's been covered already? That's absurd!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
or there's always the happy medium of going to slashdot, finding an interesting article and reading the comments, while looking at digg in another tab on Firefox. I RARELY read the comments on digg. I will usually read at least the first page of comments here on slashdot. Really, there is such a thing as the middle road.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
"I knew."
"I didn't know."
"I can't remember."
Frightening thing was not that people ate up his explanation (he had always had a certain charm to his character,) but that this was the guy with his finger on the nuke button.
Acts like Hitler with his absolutism and vyings for complete control... thinks like a baboon with his lack of understanding and unintelligent arguements/commentary.
The interesting thing was not that the FBI "visited a student" but that they COULD visit a student.
Yeah, they could. Assuming, of course, the student was being investigated for terrorism or other national security offenses.
The idea that random students will be monitored for their reading habits is purest fear mongering.
Clear, Dark Skies
The most insightful comment I've seen on digg: "I'D HIT IT!"
It's a hand twinkler, you dumbass! And I got a bag of whoopass for you!
There were only three people (and their staffs) proclaiming that, without a doubt, Saddam had WMD
... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998
What a lie. What a downright despicable, arrogant, so-WRONG-it-couldn't-be-wronger-if-it-claimed-2-pl us-2-equals-five fucking lie. And you have either the balls or the stupidity to say Bush lied? What damned planet have you been on, anyway? What color is the sky? It sure as shit can't be blue. What kind of mind-blowing drugs do they have? You've been partaking of them too much.
Like I said. Revisionism. Right out of some idiot's asshole. Instead of pulling that crap out of your ass, you need to pull your completely useless HEAD out first.
Page one of documented quotes proving you are one totally brainless, utter waste of protoplasm.
Page two of documented quotes that demonstrate beyond any doubt that you have less intelligence than a loose, runny beer shit.
Page fucking THREE of even *more* documented quotes that put to bed for all eternity the question of whether you have any functionality left in the utter vacuum between your ears.
Something is wrong all fucking right. Your claim to be sentient is farcical. Calling you a dumbshit would be an insult to all the dung beetles in the world. Hell, it would be an insult to all the DEAD dung beetles in the world.
Al Gore > September 23, 2002
"We know that he has stored nuclear supplies, secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
"Saddam's goal
"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983" -- National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998
"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002
"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." -- Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002
"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." -- Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002
"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow i
I happen to know that I am not, nor have I ever been, a feces. And, unless I'm consumed by cannibals, I never will be!
Isn't it about time Bush got a lifetime achievement award? A golden foot in mouth would look great on the mantel in the oval office.
However, you're still limited to 4GB of addressable memory per process.
I wonder if that is enough to run MS Office.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Get a clue yourself. It was never about sex. It was about committing perjury (a felony) and getting others to also committ perjury (another felony). Trying to make it *only* about sex is the red herring losers like you throw up as a smoke screen to hide behind.
Well said. I, like most others here, read Slashdot for the commentary, but digg defiantly has something going for it. It proves that user moderation of stories can make for better headlines.
The point is, people come to Slashdot for the commentary, but they ALSO come for the stories. If Slashdot had some system for modding stories up and down, it could be even better then it is now. Overall, Slashdot is a much better site then digg, but it could still learn something from it. Like you said, its nice to see some competition.
Search me
Tim
But, they aren't listening. They are all out protesting something now and telling each other how smart and right (left actually) they are.
And guaranteed, one of them will mod the post down to troll so no one sees it...can't have the truth out there ya know.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Clinton allegedly (he was impeached, but neither convicted, nor was the case taken up by another court) purgered himself under oath in a civil sexual harassment case about a detail that did not even directly relate to the case in question---Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681.
Moreover, the only way he was "trapped" was that Linda Tripp violated Maryland's wiretapping laws, and just happened to give the tapes to the independent council.
It now seems beyond reason that this at any other time was of any consequence, as we are expected to look away as the executor of our consitutional document has made himself the law.
Ad hominem. And partially misrepresentative of my actual post, specifically
The part about your post being wrong is in no way an ad hominem attack. It is a simple statement of fact, albeit strongly worded. Your statement that only Bush, Blair, and a few others were making statements about Saddam having WMDs is stunningly and demonstrably false. And that was the entire gist of your post: that only those few people were saying that. And that is pure bullshit. Obviously, demonstrably so.
And I can't believe you'd rely on the statements of UN-employee Hans Blix. Saddam bought that entire useless organization.
You particularly avoided commenting on this quote:
Al Gore > September 23, 2002
"We know that he has stored nuclear supplies, secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
And this one:
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, October 2002
Of note, one of those "intelligence reports" Senator Byrd is referring to might very well be the one from the left-wing darling Joe Wilson. You know, the one that actually confirmed that Saddam tried to buy yellowcake in Niger.
And I note you picked out, what, 10 or so of the hundreds of quotes I offered. And OF FUCKING COURSE THEY ALL PREDATE THE WAR YOU STINKING LOAD OF NON-SENTIENT FECAL MATTER!!!! That's the entire point I was making: prewar, everyone with any brains just plain knew Saddam had WMDs. And Saddam was making absolutely no effort to change anyone's perception on that point.
In fact, he was doing his damndest to make sure we all thought he had WMDs. So, the only possible conclusions are either Saddam actually did have WMDs and managed to get rid of them (quite possible given our "rush to war" took damn near a year and the Russians and Germans and whoever else sold him his goodies had a hell of an incentive to help him get rid of it...), or he didn't actually have them but was in truth merely maintaining an infrastructure to create them (all documented) while bluffing that he actually did have them.
So Saddam either had them, and that was one of the many reasons he was taken down, or he was playing a game trying to get everyone to think he had them. So everyone did think so, and that was one of the reasons he was taken down.
And given the haven he was sheltering Al Qaeda by giving Zarqawi a place to hide after he was chased out of Afghanistan, Iraq was a prime target. You didn't really think those "Iraqi insurgents" sprang to lie spontaneously after the invasion, did you? I'd bet a lot that Zarqawi had been there since late 2001, cooperating with Saddam and organizing what today's whackos call "Iraqi freedom fighters".
Given that the laws passed after 9/11 gave Bush the power to go after Al Qaeda and those that shelter them, Saddam was playing his pre-9/11 game after the rules had changed while sheltering Al Qaeda. In the immortal words of Uday Hussein as quoted in the Telegraph: "This time I think the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton. I think this is the end."
After 9/11, I'm damn glad Bush at least is serious, and he's not one bit like Bill Clinton. And unless you want your and your kids to grow up as dhimmis, you'd best be glad too.
you don't remember back very far.
Linux was 1 GB ram 3 swap IIRC , then 2/2 split with a patch , then once people started actually making machines with 4GB - linux supported it soon after.
was a big song and dance because linux supported >2 gb before win NT/2k
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
Flame me if you want, but this guy is correct.
Playing a CD is such a new event and is so low on the list of human priorities that it has the markings of a priveledge, not a right. While in rare cases people may live or die based on the playing of CDs, the situations are so complex that one must assume that they were contrived at some point by somebody. ( As an analogy, the lady on the bus on "speed" was allowed to drive recklessly because of a contrived situation, however, she had no inherent right to do so)
On the other hand, the right to speak freely, the right to eat, the right to work a fair day for a fair wage, the right to avoid intrusive, unwarranted harassment by the State or by vigilante / cosa nostra groups, and other rights are so often denied, abridged, or freely given away due to idiocy, that CD playing isn't really all that important to me.
My favorite:
;-)
"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?"
(Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon)
What an idiot. For that reason alone, I'll never sign up with Verizon while he's in charge. Hey Ivan, can you hear me now?
(Link to the originating article)
PS: If this pops up on the Wired page, it's cause I posted there. I ain't no plagiarist.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Re: Compare this with the classic quotes like "640K ought to be enough for anybody".
Well, that was then, and this is now:
Anything that doesn't have zillions of gigs is now dissed away as a 'mere gadget' (see Craig Barrett on the 100 dollar laptop). Clearly, there has been a 180 degree phase shift since the original '640K' gaffe ...
Please mod parent up. best comment yet
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
The 9/11 commission noted longstanding support by Saddam for AlQaeda.
Yes, America is At War, as declared by Congress:
The Cold War has been termed WW III, so this is now WW IV. Get over it.
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
I agree. Modding of stories would add a nice aspect to slashdot. The other thing I would love to see is some user profile questions where you rate yourself on spectrums like liberal/conservative, evolutionism/creationism, microsoft/linux and so on, so we can add or subtract mod points like the current system for new users, short posts, long posts, etc. Although reading at +3 usually yields good results for me, sometimes an ultra-conservative creationist like myself can feel pretty alone on slashdot.
This space intentionally left blank.
"Digg for the headlines. Slashdot for the commentary."
:)
It's a dupe!
Firstly, I was talking about the list in TFA from Wired, not /. itself.
Secondly, the OP referred to a story about something a Finnish IFPI rep said to the Finnish media. Did you really expect Wired to pick up this story? Wired is mainstream media, as opposed to /. and Ars Technica, where the referenced article points to.
Karma: none (due to not believing in reincarnation)
I'm especially impressed by how you don't know the difference between the FBI and the NSA and the difference in the laws that govern those two different agencies.
And I'm most impressed by how you link to an editorial as if it were fact - an editorial that doesn't recognize that the 4th amendment only applies to US citizens, not to foreigners; or that the FISA law doesn't apply to the recording and monitoring of public events.
Here's a hint: If TV news crews can make tapes of your protest, and to do research into the backgrounds of the protestors, so can the government - and it doesn't need a warrant any more than the TV news crews do.
Clear, Dark Skies
Hey, you can forgive me for getting them confused, can't you? They both are doing domestic spying, as well as the CIA -- so you tell me what is supposed to be the difference? Your making a nonsense argument without discussing the issue.
Really. Please provide evidence that the CIA is engaged in domestic spying - since they are expressly forbidden from doing so.
The "issue" here is that you seem quite happy to believe whatever conspiracy theory comes your way, if it matches your pre-conceived notions. Personally, I prefer to deal in facts.
Clear, Dark Skies