Far better to pull a Circuit City... keep the lazy idiots, and fire the experienced, presumably (relatively) competent people. Of course at Suckit Shitty, competence is very much a relative term.
Never forget, this is the brain trust who gave us Divx, the DVD player that required a telephone connection with the movies you had to pay for every time you watched them. Can't imagine why that never caught on...
Older hip-hop fans may recall that any album released on Def Jam in the '80s and early '90s was pretty much a must-purchase. That all changed, of course, but for a time they were to hip-hop what Blue Note or Impulse! was to jazz, or Nonesuch was to classical.
Just because Bush the Second is a horrific ass-suck of a President who'll hopefully live long enough to WISH he was a historical footnote instead of a full, bleak chapter or three, doesn't mean that Clinton was any better than he seemed at the time. But when your successor makes people long for the relative sanity of Richard Nixon, your presidency inevitably takes on an unrealistic rosy glow it doesn't deserve. Just imagine what the DMCA would look like had it emerged in "post-9/11 America", say around 2002 or 2003. I'll take the DMCA we've got now over anything this bunch of assholes would have cooked up. Doesn't make it good, merely slightly less bad - I'd much rather take NO DMCA AT ALL over options A or B.
Friend of mine once told me that Bush and Clinton were pretty much equally likely to screw you in the ass, but at least Clinton would have the courtesy to give you a reach-around and thank you later. Bush would slap you in the face, spit on you and call you a bitch, cleaning out your wallet as he left you on the floor degraded, bloody and shamed after the deed was done, leaving you wondering why you were stupid enough to have invited him into your home in the first place, and why you didn't kick him out or call the cops once he TOLD you exactly what he was going to do to you.
Put out decent goddamn albums at a reasonable price and people might buy them. Sell older albums at a reasonable price for an older album and people might buy them. The rapidly-declining music retailers would probably appreciate such a move as well. But when a friend of mine has to shell out almost twenty bucks for a store-bought copy of an early '90s album (nothing obscure, mind you, this is a multi-platinum mainstream major-label BMG-owned album, no special edition, no remastering, just another copy of the same 'ol ones and zeros), something's way, way off with pretty much the whole system.
O'Reilly or FRIENDS? I don't even know what the lesser of those two particularly rancid evils would be, I think I'd rather just slit my wrists. It'd be more intelligent than anything I'd see on O'Reilly and funnier than any episode of FRIENDS.
If I was using Microsoft products in the third world I'd have a healthy chuckle at MS's expense as I dropped chump change on a never-gonna-expire copy of the same program they're trying to rent to me temporarily at a greater expense. It's like renting a car for a week - that you could buy for far less than the cost of a week's rental, probably with options thrown in that aren't available on the rental model. This idea is so doomed to failure that most of the people it's aimed at will never even know it exists. It is as if it was concieved exclusively to be mocked relentlessly on Slashdot.
Jobs needs to recalibrate the RDF, apparently. If Steve Jobs is such an anti-DRM crusader, I look forward to the elimination of the irritating, all-too-visible watermarking of Disney/Buena Vista 35mm theatrical prints, the elimination of CSS and region coding from all future Disney/Buena Vista-distributed DVDs, and a straight-faced pledge to not implement any encryption, region restriction, or forced downscaling on ANY releases from ANY Disney/Buena Vista-affiliated company. I mean, I hear you have some pull at Disney, Steve - get to work on those nasty DRM infestations post-haste... or at least mention them when you go off on a tear about the evils of DRM. It would make you sound considerably more sincere.
...the Scooter Libby trial, where "copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case". http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107Z.shtml
If there's one thing you can rely on, it's bad news for the Adminstration being accompanied by a hyped-up terror scare that turns out to be nothing.
A loathsome company even by teleco standards, they really and truly despise their customers and Microsoft could learn a thing or two about pure rancid evil from them. I've had multiple friends and relatives tell tales of $1000 deposits to get cell phone service from them. That is so far out of proportion to reality it boggles the mind. The ONLY thing they have going for them is that they have better coverage than their competition - but it's not worth it, not even close, and the competition is rapidly catching up to them. All their phones are hobbled with their awful, locked-down software - even if it WASN'T locked down, their software is pure crap. When my contract with them is up, I run far far away, and they never get another dime of my money for anything, ever.
And I can't help but think that I'm not the only person who feels this way. Their customer-hostile antics will eventually bite them in the ass, and I am going to enjoy watching that happen as much as I'd enjoy watching Microsoft implode - maybe more.
No more Bushes. No more Clintons, Rodham-Clintons, or whatever. Are we so totally brainwashed as to let two families pass control of the White House back and forth like a dirtweed joint without any thought as to the consequences of this? Bush the First & Clinton's feel-good Katrina relief circle-jerk didn't set off any warning buzzers? Fuck that shit, I'd even support amending the constitution to tighten the restrictions on becoming president so that there's a mandatory gap of at least one generation. You're president, then your kids can't be president. I don't want President Chelsea Clinton, I don't want any of the fucked-up Lil' Bush Kids becoming President, I don't want AMERICAN ROYAL FAMILIES, because it sort of defeats the whole purpose... but that's where we're headed, at a sprint. And yes, I'd include the Kennedys too. The only Kennedy I'd tolerate in the White House is Jello Biafra.
No replaceable battery? On a non-critical piece of equipment such as an iPod, it's merely lame. On my freaking phone, my $500 phone at that, it's a deal-breaker. I'm not trying to wait for Official Apple Service to replace my battery for $100 (or probably more) while I go phoneless - if the battery on my phone dies, I want to be able to replace it, immediately, on my own, and at reasonable cost. Now, add the additional deal-breaker of no non-Apple-endorsed third-party apps, and you end up with an expensive, fragile lump of plastic and glass that I couldn't give a fuck about. What a waste of a nice UI. Apple's layering on the bullshit pretty thick with this one - these are the sort of restrictions that have me counting the seconds until my Verizon contract runs out. I was really interested in this thing, but if Steve Jobs thinks I'm going to switch to a phone that gives me all the restrictions of Verizon combined with the signal coverage of Cingular, then Steve Jobs needs to stop smoking crack, 'cause it'll never fucking happen. I bought it, I own it, it's mine, fuck off.
I went to fire off a scathing verbal smackdown to the editors of Time for their cowardly, pathetic, and spineless non-choice for Person of the Year, and my email got bounced back because their mailbox was full. Somehow, I doubt it's clogged with messages of praise. Speaks volumes about Time's true comprehension of the vast digital "you" that they couldn't deal with the email their imbecilic choice provoked.
Next year I'm pulling for the Inanimate Carbon Rod to win.
"My pissed of Jabrowski turned three colors like Krzysztof Kieslowski."
That'd be "My pissed-off Jimbrowsky turned three colors like Krzysztof Kieslowski."
Seems grammar-Nazi-esque, but it's important to give due respect to the J, the I, the M, the M, the Y. He's easy to spot because he's always, according to KRS-One, wearing a hat so as to ensure his return at an undisclosed date in the future.
MC Paul Barman needs to hurry the fuck up and release another full-length album already. PAULLELUJAH! was a brilliant combination of social awareness and base vulgarity capable of referencing Noam Chomsky and PCU with equal levels of comfort (not entirely unlike/.), and it is many long years overdue for a follow-up. It's past time for another journey to the Vulture Shark Sculpture Park of Barman's mind.
No, seriously. Throw in the towel, Diebold. Don't let us stop you - we'll be OK.
How msny more "glitches" do we put up with before we say enough - we must have mandatory paper ballots. Fuck these electorial slot machines. Inherently insecure.
If cooler, less desperate heads prevail, impeachment hearings are a given following a proper and thorough investigation. If impeaching Clinton was "necessary", how can we not impeach Bush, whose alleged crimes actually have a direct bearing on the well-being of our nation? If that is the level of offense Republicans consider to be impeachment-worthy, then a Bush impeachment ought to be a no-brainer for them.
If John McCain is smart, he'll personally spearhead the impeachment move.
A: Payback for 2000, at long last, is a bitch.
B: It would be just the move to bolster his credibility as a "maverick" within his party.
C: It positions him nicely as the face of a "reformed", "accountable" Republican party.
D: A Bush-impeaching McCain automatically beats Hillary Clinton in a presidential race. It wouldn't even be close. Hillary's flirtations with the right end up costing her the loyalty of Democrats crossing party lines to vote for the Republican who took down the Bush cartel. People not pleased with McCain turning on Bush are still never, ever, ever going to vote for Hillary Clinton, a woman demonized by Republicans as being worse than the actual Anti-Christ itself... so Democrats get little-to-no Republican help in getting Hillary elected, while McCain walks away with truckloads of Democrats.
Impeachment is potentially a tricky proposition for Democrats, but it's a sure win for the Republican with balls large and dense enough to take the lead on the issue. And, as they say, McCain has plenty of motive, as he got taken out real, real dirty-style in 2000 by the Rove/Bush crew. An elephant never forgets. This is the golden opportunity for McCain's Big Payback.
Unfortunately, for me it's just excruciatingly slow and sluggish compared to The GIMP, which is installed and running fine and reasonably quickly on the same Kubuntu Edgy system. Too bad, as I liked pretty much everything about it except for the crippling slowness.
I agree, if by "secure voting machines" you mean the innovative new secure voting system that's just about outta beta - produced by a joint venture between Ticonderoga, Epson, International Paper, Master Lock, and US Steel. With multiple security precautions, excellent reliability and enhanced ease of use that Diebold and friends can only dream about, this exciting new election system promises to revolutionize the way elections are held. And if that wasn't enough, it does all of this at a VERY reasonable price point.
De-snarking now, but the voters of America must dig in their heels and say "Enough is enough. The very notion of a digital voting machine is a farce - doesn't matter if some countries like India have made it work - the inherent risks are too great. Until we have to deal with votes coming in from our lunar colony, there is no NEED for it. It solves no problems that can't be solved in other, better ways, and creates a host of new ones. Abolish it, now." People can say "B-b-but the Democrats did (fill in the blank)" or "B-b-but the Republicans did (fill in the blank)", and to that I simply reply "shut the fuck up".
This is the most non-partisan issue imaginable - do we or do we not want our votes to mean anything? That's not red or blue, that's American. Who stole what election when is an issue for investigators (journalists and otherwise) and the courts. Making sure it doesn't happen again is an issue for us all. The cheapest and simplest way is to take the computers out of the equation. Analog voting is not a guarantee of honest elections... and seatbelts aren't a guarantee of surviving a car crash. But in both cases it sure as shit helps your odds.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it's silly - the principal's home phone number should have been posted as well.
It used to be a smörgåsbord, now the stores look like the cutout bins of years past.
That comparison's an insult to the cutout bins of years past.
Archive.org has metric tons of old TV commercials for the taking.
Far better to pull a Circuit City... keep the lazy idiots, and fire the experienced, presumably (relatively) competent people. Of course at Suckit Shitty, competence is very much a relative term.
Never forget, this is the brain trust who gave us Divx, the DVD player that required a telephone connection with the movies you had to pay for every time you watched them. Can't imagine why that never caught on...
Older hip-hop fans may recall that any album released on Def Jam in the '80s and early '90s was pretty much a must-purchase. That all changed, of course, but for a time they were to hip-hop what Blue Note or Impulse! was to jazz, or Nonesuch was to classical.
Just because Bush the Second is a horrific ass-suck of a President who'll hopefully live long enough to WISH he was a historical footnote instead of a full, bleak chapter or three, doesn't mean that Clinton was any better than he seemed at the time. But when your successor makes people long for the relative sanity of Richard Nixon, your presidency inevitably takes on an unrealistic rosy glow it doesn't deserve. Just imagine what the DMCA would look like had it emerged in "post-9/11 America", say around 2002 or 2003. I'll take the DMCA we've got now over anything this bunch of assholes would have cooked up. Doesn't make it good, merely slightly less bad - I'd much rather take NO DMCA AT ALL over options A or B.
Friend of mine once told me that Bush and Clinton were pretty much equally likely to screw you in the ass, but at least Clinton would have the courtesy to give you a reach-around and thank you later. Bush would slap you in the face, spit on you and call you a bitch, cleaning out your wallet as he left you on the floor degraded, bloody and shamed after the deed was done, leaving you wondering why you were stupid enough to have invited him into your home in the first place, and why you didn't kick him out or call the cops once he TOLD you exactly what he was going to do to you.
Put out decent goddamn albums at a reasonable price and people might buy them. Sell older albums at a reasonable price for an older album and people might buy them. The rapidly-declining music retailers would probably appreciate such a move as well. But when a friend of mine has to shell out almost twenty bucks for a store-bought copy of an early '90s album (nothing obscure, mind you, this is a multi-platinum mainstream major-label BMG-owned album, no special edition, no remastering, just another copy of the same 'ol ones and zeros), something's way, way off with pretty much the whole system.
O'Reilly or FRIENDS? I don't even know what the lesser of those two particularly rancid evils would be, I think I'd rather just slit my wrists. It'd be more intelligent than anything I'd see on O'Reilly and funnier than any episode of FRIENDS.
If I was using Microsoft products in the third world I'd have a healthy chuckle at MS's expense as I dropped chump change on a never-gonna-expire copy of the same program they're trying to rent to me temporarily at a greater expense. It's like renting a car for a week - that you could buy for far less than the cost of a week's rental, probably with options thrown in that aren't available on the rental model. This idea is so doomed to failure that most of the people it's aimed at will never even know it exists. It is as if it was concieved exclusively to be mocked relentlessly on Slashdot.
If that was the guy responsible for allowing a bunch of live action crap on Cartoon Network, good riddance.
Jobs needs to recalibrate the RDF, apparently. If Steve Jobs is such an anti-DRM crusader, I look forward to the elimination of the irritating, all-too-visible watermarking of Disney/Buena Vista 35mm theatrical prints, the elimination of CSS and region coding from all future Disney/Buena Vista-distributed DVDs, and a straight-faced pledge to not implement any encryption, region restriction, or forced downscaling on ANY releases from ANY Disney/Buena Vista-affiliated company. I mean, I hear you have some pull at Disney, Steve - get to work on those nasty DRM infestations post-haste... or at least mention them when you go off on a tear about the evils of DRM. It would make you sound considerably more sincere.
...the Scooter Libby trial, where "copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case". http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107Z.shtml
If there's one thing you can rely on, it's bad news for the Adminstration being accompanied by a hyped-up terror scare that turns out to be nothing.
A loathsome company even by teleco standards, they really and truly despise their customers and Microsoft could learn a thing or two about pure rancid evil from them. I've had multiple friends and relatives tell tales of $1000 deposits to get cell phone service from them. That is so far out of proportion to reality it boggles the mind. The ONLY thing they have going for them is that they have better coverage than their competition - but it's not worth it, not even close, and the competition is rapidly catching up to them. All their phones are hobbled with their awful, locked-down software - even if it WASN'T locked down, their software is pure crap. When my contract with them is up, I run far far away, and they never get another dime of my money for anything, ever.
And I can't help but think that I'm not the only person who feels this way. Their customer-hostile antics will eventually bite them in the ass, and I am going to enjoy watching that happen as much as I'd enjoy watching Microsoft implode - maybe more.
No more Bushes.
No more Clintons, Rodham-Clintons, or whatever.
Are we so totally brainwashed as to let two families pass control of the White House back and forth like a dirtweed joint without any thought as to the consequences of this? Bush the First & Clinton's feel-good Katrina relief circle-jerk didn't set off any warning buzzers? Fuck that shit, I'd even support amending the constitution to tighten the restrictions on becoming president so that there's a mandatory gap of at least one generation. You're president, then your kids can't be president. I don't want President Chelsea Clinton, I don't want any of the fucked-up Lil' Bush Kids becoming President, I don't want AMERICAN ROYAL FAMILIES, because it sort of defeats the whole purpose... but that's where we're headed, at a sprint.
And yes, I'd include the Kennedys too. The only Kennedy I'd tolerate in the White House is Jello Biafra.
No replaceable battery? On a non-critical piece of equipment such as an iPod, it's merely lame. On my freaking phone, my $500 phone at that, it's a deal-breaker. I'm not trying to wait for Official Apple Service to replace my battery for $100 (or probably more) while I go phoneless - if the battery on my phone dies, I want to be able to replace it, immediately, on my own, and at reasonable cost. Now, add the additional deal-breaker of no non-Apple-endorsed third-party apps, and you end up with an expensive, fragile lump of plastic and glass that I couldn't give a fuck about. What a waste of a nice UI. Apple's layering on the bullshit pretty thick with this one - these are the sort of restrictions that have me counting the seconds until my Verizon contract runs out. I was really interested in this thing, but if Steve Jobs thinks I'm going to switch to a phone that gives me all the restrictions of Verizon combined with the signal coverage of Cingular, then Steve Jobs needs to stop smoking crack, 'cause it'll never fucking happen. I bought it, I own it, it's mine, fuck off.
I went to fire off a scathing verbal smackdown to the editors of Time for their cowardly, pathetic, and spineless non-choice for Person of the Year, and my email got bounced back because their mailbox was full. Somehow, I doubt it's clogged with messages of praise. Speaks volumes about Time's true comprehension of the vast digital "you" that they couldn't deal with the email their imbecilic choice provoked.
Next year I'm pulling for the Inanimate Carbon Rod to win.
"My pissed of Jabrowski turned three colors like Krzysztof Kieslowski." That'd be "My pissed-off Jimbrowsky turned three colors like Krzysztof Kieslowski." Seems grammar-Nazi-esque, but it's important to give due respect to the J, the I, the M, the M, the Y. He's easy to spot because he's always, according to KRS-One, wearing a hat so as to ensure his return at an undisclosed date in the future. MC Paul Barman needs to hurry the fuck up and release another full-length album already. PAULLELUJAH! was a brilliant combination of social awareness and base vulgarity capable of referencing Noam Chomsky and PCU with equal levels of comfort (not entirely unlike /.), and it is many long years overdue for a follow-up. It's past time for another journey to the Vulture Shark Sculpture Park of Barman's mind.
Funny, that's exactly how I feel about Yahoo!.
No, seriously. Throw in the towel, Diebold. Don't let us stop you - we'll be OK. How msny more "glitches" do we put up with before we say enough - we must have mandatory paper ballots. Fuck these electorial slot machines. Inherently insecure.
If cooler, less desperate heads prevail, impeachment hearings are a given following a proper and thorough investigation. If impeaching Clinton was "necessary", how can we not impeach Bush, whose alleged crimes actually have a direct bearing on the well-being of our nation? If that is the level of offense Republicans consider to be impeachment-worthy, then a Bush impeachment ought to be a no-brainer for them.
If John McCain is smart, he'll personally spearhead the impeachment move.
A: Payback for 2000, at long last, is a bitch.
B: It would be just the move to bolster his credibility as a "maverick" within his party.
C: It positions him nicely as the face of a "reformed", "accountable" Republican party.
D: A Bush-impeaching McCain automatically beats Hillary Clinton in a presidential race. It wouldn't even be close. Hillary's flirtations with the right end up costing her the loyalty of Democrats crossing party lines to vote for the Republican who took down the Bush cartel. People not pleased with McCain turning on Bush are still never, ever, ever going to vote for Hillary Clinton, a woman demonized by Republicans as being worse than the actual Anti-Christ itself... so Democrats get little-to-no Republican help in getting Hillary elected, while McCain walks away with truckloads of Democrats.
Impeachment is potentially a tricky proposition for Democrats, but it's a sure win for the Republican with balls large and dense enough to take the lead on the issue. And, as they say, McCain has plenty of motive, as he got taken out real, real dirty-style in 2000 by the Rove/Bush crew. An elephant never forgets. This is the golden opportunity for McCain's Big Payback.
Unfortunately, for me it's just excruciatingly slow and sluggish compared to The GIMP, which is installed and running fine and reasonably quickly on the same Kubuntu Edgy system. Too bad, as I liked pretty much everything about it except for the crippling slowness.
I agree, if by "secure voting machines" you mean the innovative new secure voting system that's just about outta beta - produced by a joint venture between Ticonderoga, Epson, International Paper, Master Lock, and US Steel. With multiple security precautions, excellent reliability and enhanced ease of use that Diebold and friends can only dream about, this exciting new election system promises to revolutionize the way elections are held. And if that wasn't enough, it does all of this at a VERY reasonable price point. De-snarking now, but the voters of America must dig in their heels and say "Enough is enough. The very notion of a digital voting machine is a farce - doesn't matter if some countries like India have made it work - the inherent risks are too great. Until we have to deal with votes coming in from our lunar colony, there is no NEED for it. It solves no problems that can't be solved in other, better ways, and creates a host of new ones. Abolish it, now." People can say "B-b-but the Democrats did (fill in the blank)" or "B-b-but the Republicans did (fill in the blank)", and to that I simply reply "shut the fuck up". This is the most non-partisan issue imaginable - do we or do we not want our votes to mean anything? That's not red or blue, that's American. Who stole what election when is an issue for investigators (journalists and otherwise) and the courts. Making sure it doesn't happen again is an issue for us all. The cheapest and simplest way is to take the computers out of the equation. Analog voting is not a guarantee of honest elections... and seatbelts aren't a guarantee of surviving a car crash. But in both cases it sure as shit helps your odds.