Is Justice Alito complacent for his role in any laws that may have been broken by the Bush administration purging thousands of emails by being a Bush appointee?
No, but everyone on who was sitting on that damned court when they effectively appointed Bush President in the first place certainly ought to be considered responsible for enabling his crimes. Thanks again for that, assholes.
The only decent players will come from China, and will have lots of neat-o tricks to deactivate all the anti-consumer bullshit (forced downscaling on component, region coding on DVD and BR, good 'ol Macrovision), all while being priced to sell to Joe or Judy Sixpack. 'Till then it won't be able to replace my region-free DVD player, and therefore it's still not something I'm even considering.
The obvious irony here is that if I'd simply pirated my movie collection it'd be a non-issue (pirate releases aren't region coded), but sticking to legit releases has effectively locked me out of spending money on their shiny new format. Idiots.
Damn skippy you should. Once you take into account all the bullshit you have to deal with in the airports, Amtrak is barely any slower - and it's far, far less stressful. I simply refuse to fly these days. The airport security mega-scam is like global thermonuclear war - the only way to win is not to play.
Doesn't really help if you're going overseas or don't have several days to dedicate to getting from the east to the west coast. In those situations, unfortunately, air travel is your only reasonable option. Not that it's reasonable.
Nonsense. The 50s marked the introduction of the high resolution film formats such as the various 70mm formats and "sideways" 35mm VistaVision, and multichannel sound was part of CinemaScope from the beginning, though not all CinemaScope films took advantage of it. HD and surround sound are quite applicable to a large number of 60s and 70s productions, with real gains to be had over SD DVD quality. I'm also waiting on dual-format players to come down in price before I take that plunge. In the meantime, I have plenty of HD material to watch for free courtesy of ATSC over-the-air broadcasts.
I have some European MGM discs that lock out EVERY button except "eject" for the "You Wouldn't Steal A Car" bullshit. I ripped and gave away a half dozen copies of the DVDs strictly on principle thanks to being forcibly subjected to that. "The Boondocks" has pretty much the last word on that moronic ad -- http://www.zippyvideos.com/6682406957282436/boondocks_movie/.
People who use "gift" as a verb need to be force-fed their own warm, still-bleeding testicles and/or ovaries. It's not a verb. "Give" is the verb. This shit is just stupid.
Who gives a shit if Chinese people eat dogs or not? In every culture, people eat something that is offensive to someone from some other culture. If you get offended about Chinese people eating dogs, you damn well better be a vegetarian, because I guarantee that someone, somewhere finds something that you eat inherently offensive too.
My heart goes out to you this holiday season. As lousy as CompUSA is, or rather was, there were a handful of competent people who worked there. It's a pity that you guys suffer for management's failings. These days, brick and mortar has to be about customer service and speed, not what comes to mind when I think of CompUSA. If you don't make people actively dread coming to your store, more of them tend to do so. Your management utterly betrayed you by treating customers as the enemy and hiring too many people who had no clue what they're talking about, making you and the other four decent employees look bad by association... all the while fattening their own pockets. Gilded parachute time for those guys.
This certainly seems like a move directly from the Karl Rove playbook. I suspect whoever was responsible was a Republican, and I seriously doubt they were a Ron Paul supporter.
Not even the first time. They got busted violating DMCA when they made illegal copies of a DVD copy of THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, in total disregard of the director specifically denying them permission to copy it before giving them the copy to be screened for the ratings board. (It got an NC-17, of course.)
I can't think of how it would be any DIFFERENT if Cheney were President. He's pretty much running the show anyway, better that he's forced to operate under the increased scrutiny that comes with being CALLED Mr. President instead of doing the same job from the shadows.
If only they were all bad movies. They crossed the line fucking with Mario Bava's innovative DANGER: DIABOLIK... just to name the first example that springs to mind. Once a good movie's been given the MST3K treatment it's a difficult and unfair stigma to shake. But given that this is Slashdot and not Mobius Home Video Forum or some like-minded spot, I know that mine is a minority view and I'm likely just being a buzzkill about it.
DANGER: DIABOLIK remains one of the earliest comic book-based films to really understand the nature of both comics and film, and fuse them into a wholly satisfying new thing of its own. And Bava brought that sucker in way under budget and ahead of schedule. More filmmakers could follow his lead.
No, they're not. Corporate news media in America will overwhelmingly skew right, because it is profitable for the corporations that own the media outlets, because right-wingers tend to let corporations get away with (figurative and frequently literal) murder. Now, they might not march around wearing their political bias on their sleeves quite as obscenely as Fox News does, but that doesn't mean they don't lean strongly to the right. Liberal hosts like Keith Olbermann merely provide plausible deniability. Next time there's a big protest against the war(s), or the WTO, or whoever liberals are pissed off at this week, see how accurately the so-called "liberal media" covers it, if they even mention it at all - and most likely, they won't.
If you repeat a lie frequently enough it gains the weight of truth. America's fearsome "liberal media" is such a lie. It simply isn't real.
The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is slim. You could be a terrorist without being a freedom fighter, of course - but you'll never be a freedom fighter without being branded as a terrorist by your enemies.
Nobody asked me if I wanted to live in Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL - and yet here we are.
I hear a bit of Mandarin around NYC Chinatown, and the large Chinese community in Brooklyn, but mostly I hear Cantonese. I read an article somewhere about Mandarin being on the rise, slowly but surely, but for now, Cantonese seems to be the dominant tongue... if what I heard on the D train about an hour ago is any indication.
We cannot trust the people running the system. That's kind of the whole point of the way the United States was set up in the first place. Assuming that we cannot trust the people running the system, we must minimize the number and severity of attack vectors that could be used to undermine the electoral process. Like my man Scotty said, and this might not be the exact quote; the more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to clog the drain. Get computers all the way out of polling centers, because the risks greatly outweigh the benefits when the plumbing gets that complex... eventually you end up ankle deep in your own shit. Sure, analog voting is no guarantee of accuracy, but digital voting all but guarantees more devastating forms of corruption than would be worth attempting in the analog realm.
Election rigging should be considered and punished as the highest sort of treason. Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, Republicans, it doesn't matter - if you get caught stuffing or gutting the ballot box, you get life in prison... at best. Rigged elections are an attack on national security. What if it wasn't the Republicans or Democrats doing the rigging, but rather, the government of Russia or China? What would we call it then? And why should we treat it any differently when the attack comes from within?
The scary thing is that this, for the most part, makes a great deal of sense. The American people, on the whole, are semi-literate. Even the ones who can and do read often do so in the most shallow of ways. Clearly these semi-literates value a strong leader, such as Bush or, yes, the more notorious examples listed. Hitler may have been concentrated evil in a fleshy bottle, but he was indisputably a "strong leader", as were Stalin and Mao. The "choice" presented is real. I don't think we need leaders that the modern American people can "comprehend"; we need to raise the average American's level of comprehension instead, and proceed from there.
How will you top this, Mr. Thompson? Are you gonna shoot the Pope?
Sounds like a win-win situation to me, though the pope could easily deflect the bullets by using the immense power of the Dark Side of the Force and then it's just a crazy-ass lawyer who's out of bullets up against an incredibly powerful Emperor who could crush all of his internal organs into sandwich paste with sheer will power. We'd still have Pope Palpatine but at least we'd be rid of Thompson.
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No, but everyone on who was sitting on that damned court when they effectively appointed Bush President in the first place certainly ought to be considered responsible for enabling his crimes. Thanks again for that, assholes.
The only decent players will come from China, and will have lots of neat-o tricks to deactivate all the anti-consumer bullshit (forced downscaling on component, region coding on DVD and BR, good 'ol Macrovision), all while being priced to sell to Joe or Judy Sixpack. 'Till then it won't be able to replace my region-free DVD player, and therefore it's still not something I'm even considering.
The obvious irony here is that if I'd simply pirated my movie collection it'd be a non-issue (pirate releases aren't region coded), but sticking to legit releases has effectively locked me out of spending money on their shiny new format. Idiots.
I already have a rootkit in my pants.
Damn skippy you should. Once you take into account all the bullshit you have to deal with in the airports, Amtrak is barely any slower - and it's far, far less stressful. I simply refuse to fly these days. The airport security mega-scam is like global thermonuclear war - the only way to win is not to play.
Doesn't really help if you're going overseas or don't have several days to dedicate to getting from the east to the west coast. In those situations, unfortunately, air travel is your only reasonable option. Not that it's reasonable.
Footnote - yes, I know 70mm and multichannel sound both predate the 50s. I am referring to their widespread use.
Nonsense. The 50s marked the introduction of the high resolution film formats such as the various 70mm formats and "sideways" 35mm VistaVision, and multichannel sound was part of CinemaScope from the beginning, though not all CinemaScope films took advantage of it. HD and surround sound are quite applicable to a large number of 60s and 70s productions, with real gains to be had over SD DVD quality. I'm also waiting on dual-format players to come down in price before I take that plunge. In the meantime, I have plenty of HD material to watch for free courtesy of ATSC over-the-air broadcasts.
I have some European MGM discs that lock out EVERY button except "eject" for the "You Wouldn't Steal A Car" bullshit. I ripped and gave away a half dozen copies of the DVDs strictly on principle thanks to being forcibly subjected to that. "The Boondocks" has pretty much the last word on that moronic ad -- http://www.zippyvideos.com/6682406957282436/boondocks_movie/.
People who use "gift" as a verb need to be force-fed their own warm, still-bleeding testicles and/or ovaries. It's not a verb. "Give" is the verb. This shit is just stupid.
Who gives a shit if Chinese people eat dogs or not? In every culture, people eat something that is offensive to someone from some other culture. If you get offended about Chinese people eating dogs, you damn well better be a vegetarian, because I guarantee that someone, somewhere finds something that you eat inherently offensive too.
Now it is merely mocked as "crap"
You forgot the word "Ohio". At least the word "election" wasn't around as well. We all know how that story ends.
I suspect it's a reference to the 80s documentary THE COMPLEAT BEATLES.
My heart goes out to you this holiday season. As lousy as CompUSA is, or rather was, there were a handful of competent people who worked there. It's a pity that you guys suffer for management's failings. These days, brick and mortar has to be about customer service and speed, not what comes to mind when I think of CompUSA. If you don't make people actively dread coming to your store, more of them tend to do so. Your management utterly betrayed you by treating customers as the enemy and hiring too many people who had no clue what they're talking about, making you and the other four decent employees look bad by association... all the while fattening their own pockets. Gilded parachute time for those guys.
This certainly seems like a move directly from the Karl Rove playbook. I suspect whoever was responsible was a Republican, and I seriously doubt they were a Ron Paul supporter.
Not even the first time. They got busted violating DMCA when they made illegal copies of a DVD copy of THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, in total disregard of the director specifically denying them permission to copy it before giving them the copy to be screened for the ratings board. (It got an NC-17, of course.)
I can't think of how it would be any DIFFERENT if Cheney were President. He's pretty much running the show anyway, better that he's forced to operate under the increased scrutiny that comes with being CALLED Mr. President instead of doing the same job from the shadows.
Litigation WEBCAST? That's greasy. Available in RealPlayer format, how appropriate.
If only they were all bad movies. They crossed the line fucking with Mario Bava's innovative DANGER: DIABOLIK... just to name the first example that springs to mind. Once a good movie's been given the MST3K treatment it's a difficult and unfair stigma to shake. But given that this is Slashdot and not Mobius Home Video Forum or some like-minded spot, I know that mine is a minority view and I'm likely just being a buzzkill about it.
DANGER: DIABOLIK remains one of the earliest comic book-based films to really understand the nature of both comics and film, and fuse them into a wholly satisfying new thing of its own. And Bava brought that sucker in way under budget and ahead of schedule. More filmmakers could follow his lead.
No, they're not. Corporate news media in America will overwhelmingly skew right, because it is profitable for the corporations that own the media outlets, because right-wingers tend to let corporations get away with (figurative and frequently literal) murder. Now, they might not march around wearing their political bias on their sleeves quite as obscenely as Fox News does, but that doesn't mean they don't lean strongly to the right. Liberal hosts like Keith Olbermann merely provide plausible deniability. Next time there's a big protest against the war(s), or the WTO, or whoever liberals are pissed off at this week, see how accurately the so-called "liberal media" covers it, if they even mention it at all - and most likely, they won't.
If you repeat a lie frequently enough it gains the weight of truth. America's fearsome "liberal media" is such a lie. It simply isn't real.
The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is slim. You could be a terrorist without being a freedom fighter, of course - but you'll never be a freedom fighter without being branded as a terrorist by your enemies.
Nobody asked me if I wanted to live in Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL - and yet here we are.
I hear a bit of Mandarin around NYC Chinatown, and the large Chinese community in Brooklyn, but mostly I hear Cantonese. I read an article somewhere about Mandarin being on the rise, slowly but surely, but for now, Cantonese seems to be the dominant tongue... if what I heard on the D train about an hour ago is any indication.
Ought to go look at some phones myself.
Be patient.
We cannot trust the people running the system. That's kind of the whole point of the way the United States was set up in the first place. Assuming that we cannot trust the people running the system, we must minimize the number and severity of attack vectors that could be used to undermine the electoral process. Like my man Scotty said, and this might not be the exact quote; the more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to clog the drain. Get computers all the way out of polling centers, because the risks greatly outweigh the benefits when the plumbing gets that complex... eventually you end up ankle deep in your own shit. Sure, analog voting is no guarantee of accuracy, but digital voting all but guarantees more devastating forms of corruption than would be worth attempting in the analog realm.
Election rigging should be considered and punished as the highest sort of treason. Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, Republicans, it doesn't matter - if you get caught stuffing or gutting the ballot box, you get life in prison... at best. Rigged elections are an attack on national security. What if it wasn't the Republicans or Democrats doing the rigging, but rather, the government of Russia or China? What would we call it then? And why should we treat it any differently when the attack comes from within?
The scary thing is that this, for the most part, makes a great deal of sense. The American people, on the whole, are semi-literate. Even the ones who can and do read often do so in the most shallow of ways. Clearly these semi-literates value a strong leader, such as Bush or, yes, the more notorious examples listed. Hitler may have been concentrated evil in a fleshy bottle, but he was indisputably a "strong leader", as were Stalin and Mao. The "choice" presented is real. I don't think we need leaders that the modern American people can "comprehend"; we need to raise the average American's level of comprehension instead, and proceed from there.
Sounds like a win-win situation to me, though the pope could easily deflect the bullets by using the immense power of the Dark Side of the Force and then it's just a crazy-ass lawyer who's out of bullets up against an incredibly powerful Emperor who could crush all of his internal organs into sandwich paste with sheer will power. We'd still have Pope Palpatine but at least we'd be rid of Thompson.