Re:You really didn't understand the article
on
No Americans Need Apply
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I was thinking along similar lines.
Like, for example, if several major members of OPEC were to begin pricing their oil for export in Euros rather than dollars. Most of the substantial national USD reserves around the world (procured mainly for the purpose of buying oil) would then find themselves being sold off to buy Euros.
One analysis I saw said the US treasury has continued to print dollars in order to buy imports as if there were no tomorrow, with the result that these foreign reserves now account for half the US dollars in existence. But this is just storing up big trouble for tomorrow.
Figure it out for yourselves. If half the world's dollars, previously locked up, were to start leaking out onto the money markets following an OPEC move towards the Euro, the value of the dollar would quickly go to nothing.
Actually it's a matter of record that this process has already begun. North Korea has already switched exports of its oil over to the Euro. By last spring, Saddaam Hussein had almost completed a three-year long process of switching Iraq's oil exports over to the Euro (presumably this was mainly intended to take a swipe at the US). Venezuela has been considering such a move for some time, to reduce dependence on the dollar. Who's next?
Many people think that this was the real reason President Bush's government sought to remove Hussein, to deter other OPEC leaders from attempting to follow suit. Just as, in fact, it had supported Venezuala's failed military coup in 2002.
Heh. This puts the ball squarely back in SCO's court. Darl McBride's whinging "open letter" demanded that the Open Source community had to fix their development process in order to monitor for, and prevent, leaks of "intellectual property". Well, this tool seems to do just that...
It's obvious that Darl was no doubt expecting his challenge about "fixing the process" to throw the Open Source community into a panic of bickering about what to do next which would last for weeks, triggering discussions about potential liability (which the press would no doubt interpret as an admission of guilt), generally make us look bad and thereby strengthen his case in the sadly all-too-relevant court of public opinion.
So he clearly he wasn't expecting Eric to solve his problem later THE VERY SAME DAY!
Jeez, you couldn't make this stuff up. Ha ha bloody ha... in your face, McBride!
Gore admitted as much, and stated his support for those rules in his concession speech.
Ahem. You may need to re-read that speech. I quote (emphasis mine):
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while
I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity of the people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.
Gore supported the Supreme Court decision only in order to bring an end to the country's uncertainty, misery and embarrassment. He didn't agree with it though. How ironic that the electors should be deprived of a man noble enough to make such a sacrifice, only to be left with a President who was apparently willing to bring the country to its knees rather than relinquish his ill-gotten gains.
I think the answer's a bit more complicated than that, in that the shift toward fantasy in the mass market was part of a broader fragmentation of the genre as a whole in response to evolving audience expectations.
The science fiction of the "golden age" - principally the John W Campbell era so I'm referring to Asimov, Heinlein, E. E. "Doc" Smith and other writers of their generation - had become very dated by the late 1960's. Not just because history diverged so rapidly from the predictions made in the stories, but because social attitudes had changed so much by then.
That golden age stuff is great if you're a kid, or if you just read to pass the time - and I loved it as a kid myself - but by the time you're getting to your late teens a lot of that pre-war and immediately post-war writing seems to lack a little depth. It generally wasn't very strong on character development, or philosophy of any kind. It was rip-roaring, page-turning gee-whiz space opera, and robot mysteries, and utopian visions of a humanity in charge of the universe and it was all generally very dewy-eyed about technology.
But by the late 1960's/early 1970's people were getting a little cynical about technology. Many people of the hippy generation, scared out of their wits by the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, oil shortages etc. had reached the conclusion that technology was only a means for The Man to exploit and control.
As the old pulp titles' readership dwindled and publishers became desperate to stay relevant, a younger generation of postmodern "speculative fiction" writers were now given the stage. SF took a more dystopian turn. And these new writers, seeking to divorce themselves from the cheesy cliches of the previous twenty five years were eager to experiment with different story forms and styles.
Thus began the New Wave of the 1970's, dominated by the output of prominent authors like Ellison, Delany, Zelazny, Moorcock to name a few.
The result, for the average Science Fiction fan, was a new diet of arty-farty experimental writing consisting of "stories" with no beginning, middle or end, whose point was usually entirely obscure and whose characters' motivation one couldn't even begin to guess. Just like most postmodern art it often seemed to be much more about style than substance. So imagine how this would have looked to people entirely unfamiliar with the SF genre: hardly welcoming to new readers.
Some people obviousy liked it but it just didn't have the mass appeal the golden age writers had enjoyed.
My personal theory is that those New Wave authors were all so heavily into drugs they didn't even know what they were were writing. They were literally living on another planet. If you read that stuff now - and the lavish praise they heaped upon each other - it doesn't just seem dated, it even seems terribly pompous and self-referential.
People will point to exceptions - after all a good writer is a good writer - and I suppose you would have to include Philip K Dick. But even in his case, it was sometimes hard to figure out exactly what the point was. Like >i>The Man in the High Castle, for instance. Maybe it's a purely personal thing, but when I finish reading a story the one thing I don't want to be left with is a bunch of questions. Little questions like: "What actually just happened?" and "What the f*** was that all about?"
I think it was at this point that more fantasy-oriented material became more popular. It was probably the only SF genre that people could actually understand and therefore relate to. By the late 1970's, the thing every nerdish college freshman "had to read" was Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. A straightforward tale dealing with Campbellian themes but in a suitably twisted way: utopia meets dystopia. The mainstream focus had shifted away from technological futures, that's for sure.
It took a while for fantasy titles to begin to dominate the Sci-Fi shelves in the book store, but in the meantime somthing happened tha
LOL! That control room is way cool - those guys were actually *living* in a cheesy 1970's Sci-Fi TV show! I bet they wore spandex jumpsuits! I wonder if the security arrangements were backed up by high powered "lasers";o)
Only state secrecy and state funding could produce something like that (or an evil mastermind).
It's worrisome because although most Britons consider themselves to live in a pretty benign regime, the fact is that this is purely incidental and can change suddenly at any time.
There is this legal entity, you see, known as "The Crown". It used to refer to the monarch but the power of the Crown was transferred to HM Government back when the monarch was relegated to a purely "constitutional" role.
You would surely be made to feel much more uneasy about your position were you only to consider a comprehensive list of the immense legal powers the Crown has over you and every British subject. You must remember that Britain, crucially, has no written constitution as such and, perhaps even more importantly, no written Bill of Rights. Indeed it's very telling that we must properly refer to ourselves as "subjects" and not "citizens".
We forget this easily because our own government keeps quiet about it and because most other developed nations are all republics where people are essentially (in theory anyway) free citizens rather than subjects.
Our entry into the European Union has been a positive thing in this regard because under Europea Law, if we suffer mistreatment in the hands of our own government, and are unable to obtain relief from the House of Lords, we can, in theory, still appeal to the European Court in Strasbourg. However, the European Court's remit is limited (national governments still retain final authority in many domestic matters) and anyway the British government will only play this game as long as it is convenient for them to do so. They could withdraw from that part of the treaty any time they feel like doing so, so long as they have a good Parliamentary majority to pass the required Act of Parliament. And the British electoral system is built in such a way that our government of the day, whoever they may be, almost always does have such a majority. Hence the current lot's sudden loss of interest in electoral reform the moment they got in.
Until recently we could have relied on the House of Lords to impose some sense if the government and the Commons were to do something outrageous, but Blair's government has effectively removed any meaningful powers from the Lords; if the Lords veto any Bill on its final (third?) passage through their house, the Commons now has the final say on the matter. In effect, we no longer have an upper house. Power is concentrated on Downing Street and the ruling cabal of whichever Party is headquartered there.
We have as a result already had some very dubious legislation passed as a result of this, eg. the IR35 tax regulations which force British IT contractors to pay 50% of their income in taxes. The Lords saw this as an unfair imposition on a minority and also as inimical to the health of the economy, but the government didn't want to listen and since they effectively owned the Commons, they didn't have to.
These days it sucks just as much to be a Brit as it does to be a Yank.
...because in the UK, although we do have violent video games like Grand Theft Auto, we don't hand out guns like choc-chip cookies and we especially don't let them anywhere near children. Especially children with IQ's somewhere in the imbecile range.
On the other hand it should come as no surprise that this sort of thing would happen in the US where guns are objects of worship and virtually anyone with a few dollars to spend can have one for the asking. Even if they are the sort of cretin who would leave a gun lying around for kids to play with unsupervised.
Those of you who are about to jump in here with the usual empty hypocrisy about nonexistent militias and duty to defend against government tyranny, you're all in denial about this gun thing. Get over it. You've been living under a tyranny since GWB stole the election and I still don't see any militias forming up to defend the people's freedom. I do see plenty of ordinary people getting shot though.
People with guns shoot people. If you let people have guns, people will get shot. Yes, it is as simple as that.
For those of you still living in 1890: don't you dare mod this down as a troll. It's fair comment and you know it. It's time you lot started thinking about what kind of society you really want to live in rather than clinging onto some outmoded romantic ideal of the brave homesteader defending his land. You're supposed to be a civilized people, for heaven's sake. Get this: civilization means not having to rely on the threat of armed force in the course of your daily life.
Plus you have to put up with the racket they make before they do fail. That part can last for a year or more.
OTOH, when a firewall box does finally die, you shouldn't lose much. The only thing of value on there was your config. And you did back that up, right?
Don't buy it. Make the fuckers sweat. They still need to be taught a lesson. When they've sacked all their IP lawyers and stopped harrassing kids with million-dollar lawsuits, then it's time to buy their products. Not before.
If you absolutely must have an RIAA tune, buy it, but otherwise ignore their stuff entirely.
This is absolutely the problem with you people. That's like telling an alcoholic: "Well, OK, if you really must have a drink then go ahead and have one but otherwise keep off the stuff".
You're either in this or you're not. If you want to change the way the world works you need to make it part of your way of life today, and let others see your example and question why. You won't get far, as part of a relatively small and obscure politically disaffected minority already, in harming the RIAA economically if you can't even live up to your own principles. Nor will you succeed in recruiting others to your cause except in the most ineffective and half-hearted way. It that's the best anybody can do then we've already lost.
The most effective way of dealing with this, and possibly the *only* way (given the RIAA's stranglehold on the law) is just to stop buying new CD's, to stop going to concerts by RIAA artists and stop listening to commercial music radio stations and to get as many other people as possible to do the same.
Cut off their oxygen, and they'll die. It's that simple.
The problem is, people on slashdot generally do very little other than preaching to the choir, posting indignant rants full of tough talk about what they dream of doing to the RIAA. What little energy they have for actual combat is soon exhausted from pointlessly arguing with trolls planted by the RIAA (yes, they're here now; they learned this trick from Microsoft).
Me, I stopped buying retail CD's and going to big concerts long ago.
And I regularly wear teeshirts with provocative RIAA slogans like "CD: Corrupt Disc", which many people then ask me to explain.
The next step, for the truly brave, is to sell off your entire CD collection without replacing it. Because every extra second hand CD that's sold represents the potential loss of a new CD sale for RIAA members. And get as good a price as you can; divert as many of those disposable dollars as you can away from the commercial music economy.
Most of this is optional depending on how motivated you are to stick it to the Man. But the bottom line is: If you're not happy with the product, learn to live without it.
It's not as if it's that hard; as many people have pointed out there are many sources of non-RIAA music. But even if there weren't, what's worse: living entirely without music until the beast is dead, or continuing to feed the beast and being its bitch forever?
Hmm. I never really found Garfield that funny. What I like about Penny Arcade is its bitter, angryedge (sh1t, I'm still laughing about that one!). When it loses that, then it's over, but probably not before.
How the heck did I end up doing advocacy for a games discussion site? It's not my thing at all. Some things are better than humour.
The article is a bit lacking in substance. There only seems to be a few short paragraphs, I can't find a continutation page. Was it really worth posting?
Patrick Farley's e-sheep collection is the greatest thing on the internet bar none. Farley has redefined the art form. And make no mistake, this is art all right, in the serious meaning of the word.
Take some time to visit e-sheep and look at *everything*. Clear your desk first because you'll be there a while.
Prepare to be moved.
And if you're half as impressed as I was, don't forget to throw some pennies in the hat. We need to keep Patrick hard at work, he deserves to make a living at this and it would be our loss if he were to give up cartooning owing to lack of funds.
and I have yet to find a command line interface for xine...
On this SuSE 8.1 box (somewhat upgraded via apt4rpm):
ralph@testbed:~> xine -?
Usage: xine [OPTIONS]... [MRL]
OPTIONS are: -v, --version Display version. --verbose [=level] Set verbosity level. Default is 1. -V, --video-driver <drv> Select video driver by id. Available drivers: aadxr3 dxr3 xv SyncFB aa xshm none sdl vidixfb vidix fb -A, --audio-driver <drv> Select audio driver by id. Available drivers: null alsa oss arts esd -u, --spu-channel <#> Select SPU (subtitle) channel '#'. -a, --audio-channel <#> Select audio channel '#'. -p, --auto-play [opt] Play on start. Can be followed by:
There is much more of this (78 lines total) covering just about every option you could wish for, but I can't get it through Slashdot's lameness filter.
...as a videoconferencing consultant. Do you have any idea now much money big firms pay out to people like that? Not to mention the cost of the hardware - six-foot plasma screens and the like - which you get at a discount and then mark up substantially.
If you don't take advantage of this while you can, you must be a dope.
Heh. It's actually the story that you can get everything cheap in Akihabara that's the myth. Oft-repeated, but still a myth. Like country bumpkins used to tell tales of the streets of London being paved with gold.
There are always places where you can get discounts on some odd stuff like you mentioned - mostly obscure items that lack mass market appeal, or are slightly obsolete or otherwise difficult or slow to sell and have ended up as remaindered stock.
But you could say exactly the same thing about London, (see Tottenham Court Road). Or, probably, any city. If you had to hunt the back alleys for a few good deals that hardly paints a picture of Akihabara as a unique Mecca for cheap hardware.
The best deals to be had in consumer electronics and computer hardware these days are mostly online, in any part of the world. For good reasons - low overheads and good market access (their potentially highest-spending customers are already online and interested).
This all seems too much like preaching to the choir. The only people who visit these sites are already of the geek persuasion. It's these faceless career politicians that we need to get to, and that means convincing Joe Public. Who doesn't generally run Wine, or even Linux for that matter.
Our only real hope rests with those heroes who managed to find the time and resources to get to Brussels and protest in person. But I'm guessing they will be so few in number that the bastards behind this legislation will find it all too easy to brush it off completely.
I'm not sanguine about a positive resolution. In fact I despair totally.
With very few exceptions (Gun-toting ESR and stubborn old RMS), the geek community are easy meat. It's in our nature. We're just too focussed on our artificial little techno-world and just don't have the cojones to get out there and fling half-bricks at the police.
Some will no doubt pontificate about doing the right thing and writing letters to MEPs but I've tried this already and the arrogant bastards only ever get some underling to write back confirming their support for the proposal and explaining why they are right and you are wrong. And that's if they even bother to reply at all, which isn't often. They are far too busy sucking co^H^H up to big business lobbyists to give a damn about the public at large, let alone a minority they unthinkingly dismiss as "techies" or "weenies".
Democracy? There ain't no such thing.
Bear in mind that this is just one legislative issue among many threatening the tech community, and there are many many other ways in which government is attempting to stiff local communities, middle income earners, small businesses, and the public in general. Take your pick.
I don't know about you lot but I just don't have the time or energy to fight every issue individually, especially when all the lawful means of resistance are so utterly useless. And it's hard to pick just one.
It makes you ask yourself: what is wrong with this system that we're under attack on multiple fronts from the establishment *all the time*? What the hell do we have to do to get some peace so we can just get on with our lives? Anything's got to be better than this.
Most people would rather try to ignore what's being done to them and just immerse themselves in what remains of their comfort zone. But we can't postpone confrontation indefinitely. It's just a matter of how much of our lives and liberties we're prepared to let our "elected" "representatives" feed to the sharks, before we will finally find our balls and stop burying our heads in the sand.
If we can't find a peaceful way to take back the political process soon (and I doubt that's even possible now as the existing establishment's grip tightens daily) I suspect many of us will be practising our ballistic bricklaying skills before our lives are done. Just try to remember while you hide in your comfort zones, people, that the longer it takes to get to that point the bloodier it will be for all of us. You included.
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking along similar lines.
Like, for example, if several major members of OPEC were to begin pricing their oil for export in Euros rather than dollars. Most of the substantial national USD reserves around the world (procured mainly for the purpose of buying oil) would then find themselves being sold off to buy Euros.
One analysis I saw said the US treasury has continued to print dollars in order to buy imports as if there were no tomorrow, with the result that these foreign reserves now account for half the US dollars in existence. But this is just storing up big trouble for tomorrow.
Figure it out for yourselves. If half the world's dollars, previously locked up, were to start leaking out onto the money markets following an OPEC move towards the Euro, the value of the dollar would quickly go to nothing.
Actually it's a matter of record that this process has already begun. North Korea has already switched exports of its oil over to the Euro. By last spring, Saddaam Hussein had almost completed a three-year long process of switching Iraq's oil exports over to the Euro (presumably this was mainly intended to take a swipe at the US). Venezuela has been considering such a move for some time, to reduce dependence on the dollar. Who's next?
Many people think that this was the real reason President Bush's government sought to remove Hussein, to deter other OPEC leaders from attempting to follow suit. Just as, in fact, it had supported Venezuala's failed military coup in 2002.
Where are you, moderators? Well I thought it was funny anyway.
It's truly funny to see the most puerile rant in this discussion closing with an admonition to "Grow up".
But that's just typical of the sort of hypocrisy we've come to expect from your sort.
Heh. This puts the ball squarely back in SCO's court. Darl McBride's whinging "open letter" demanded that the Open Source community had to fix their development process in order to monitor for, and prevent, leaks of "intellectual property". Well, this tool seems to do just that...
... in your face, McBride!
It's obvious that Darl was no doubt expecting his challenge about "fixing the process" to throw the Open Source community into a panic of bickering about what to do next which would last for weeks, triggering discussions about potential liability (which the press would no doubt interpret as an admission of guilt), generally make us look bad and thereby strengthen his case in the sadly all-too-relevant court of public opinion.
So he clearly he wasn't expecting Eric to solve his problem later THE VERY SAME DAY!
Jeez, you couldn't make this stuff up. Ha ha bloody ha
Isn't that always the way
Ahem. You may need to re-read that speech. I quote (emphasis mine):
Gore supported the Supreme Court decision only in order to bring an end to the country's uncertainty, misery and embarrassment. He didn't agree with it though. How ironic that the electors should be deprived of a man noble enough to make such a sacrifice, only to be left with a President who was apparently willing to bring the country to its knees rather than relinquish his ill-gotten gains.
The science fiction of the "golden age" - principally the John W Campbell era so I'm referring to Asimov, Heinlein, E. E. "Doc" Smith and other writers of their generation - had become very dated by the late 1960's. Not just because history diverged so rapidly from the predictions made in the stories, but because social attitudes had changed so much by then.
That golden age stuff is great if you're a kid, or if you just read to pass the time - and I loved it as a kid myself - but by the time you're getting to your late teens a lot of that pre-war and immediately post-war writing seems to lack a little depth. It generally wasn't very strong on character development, or philosophy of any kind. It was rip-roaring, page-turning gee-whiz space opera, and robot mysteries, and utopian visions of a humanity in charge of the universe and it was all generally very dewy-eyed about technology.
But by the late 1960's/early 1970's people were getting a little cynical about technology. Many people of the hippy generation, scared out of their wits by the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, oil shortages etc. had reached the conclusion that technology was only a means for The Man to exploit and control.
As the old pulp titles' readership dwindled and publishers became desperate to stay relevant, a younger generation of postmodern "speculative fiction" writers were now given the stage. SF took a more dystopian turn. And these new writers, seeking to divorce themselves from the cheesy cliches of the previous twenty five years were eager to experiment with different story forms and styles.
Thus began the New Wave of the 1970's, dominated by the output of prominent authors like Ellison, Delany, Zelazny, Moorcock to name a few.
The result, for the average Science Fiction fan, was a new diet of arty-farty experimental writing consisting of "stories" with no beginning, middle or end, whose point was usually entirely obscure and whose characters' motivation one couldn't even begin to guess. Just like most postmodern art it often seemed to be much more about style than substance. So imagine how this would have looked to people entirely unfamiliar with the SF genre: hardly welcoming to new readers.
Some people obviousy liked it but it just didn't have the mass appeal the golden age writers had enjoyed.
My personal theory is that those New Wave authors were all so heavily into drugs they didn't even know what they were were writing. They were literally living on another planet. If you read that stuff now - and the lavish praise they heaped upon each other - it doesn't just seem dated, it even seems terribly pompous and self-referential.
People will point to exceptions - after all a good writer is a good writer - and I suppose you would have to include Philip K Dick. But even in his case, it was sometimes hard to figure out exactly what the point was. Like >i>The Man in the High Castle, for instance. Maybe it's a purely personal thing, but when I finish reading a story the one thing I don't want to be left with is a bunch of questions. Little questions like: "What actually just happened?" and "What the f*** was that all about?"
I think it was at this point that more fantasy-oriented material became more popular. It was probably the only SF genre that people could actually understand and therefore relate to. By the late 1970's, the thing every nerdish college freshman "had to read" was Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. A straightforward tale dealing with Campbellian themes but in a suitably twisted way: utopia meets dystopia. The mainstream focus had shifted away from technological futures, that's for sure.
It took a while for fantasy titles to begin to dominate the Sci-Fi shelves in the book store, but in the meantime somthing happened tha
Only state secrecy and state funding could produce something like that (or an evil mastermind).
Because it might look crappy to you, but these are the laws that look good to the guys with the money. These are the laws that let them keep it.
It's worrisome because although most Britons consider themselves to live in a pretty benign regime, the fact is that this is purely incidental and can change suddenly at any time.
There is this legal entity, you see, known as "The Crown". It used to refer to the monarch but the power of the Crown was transferred to HM Government back when the monarch was relegated to a purely "constitutional" role.
You would surely be made to feel much more uneasy about your position were you only to consider a comprehensive list of the immense legal powers the Crown has over you and every British subject. You must remember that Britain, crucially, has no written constitution as such and, perhaps even more importantly, no written Bill of Rights. Indeed it's very telling that we must properly refer to ourselves as "subjects" and not "citizens".
We forget this easily because our own government keeps quiet about it and because most other developed nations are all republics where people are essentially (in theory anyway) free citizens rather than subjects.
Our entry into the European Union has been a positive thing in this regard because under Europea Law, if we suffer mistreatment in the hands of our own government, and are unable to obtain relief from the House of Lords, we can, in theory, still appeal to the European Court in Strasbourg. However, the European Court's remit is limited (national governments still retain final authority in many domestic matters) and anyway the British government will only play this game as long as it is convenient for them to do so. They could withdraw from that part of the treaty any time they feel like doing so, so long as they have a good Parliamentary majority to pass the required Act of Parliament. And the British electoral system is built in such a way that our government of the day, whoever they may be, almost always does have such a majority. Hence the current lot's sudden loss of interest in electoral reform the moment they got in.
Until recently we could have relied on the House of Lords to impose some sense if the government and the Commons were to do something outrageous, but Blair's government has effectively removed any meaningful powers from the Lords; if the Lords veto any Bill on its final (third?) passage through their house, the Commons now has the final say on the matter. In effect, we no longer have an upper house. Power is concentrated on Downing Street and the ruling cabal of whichever Party is headquartered there.
We have as a result already had some very dubious legislation passed as a result of this, eg. the IR35 tax regulations which force British IT contractors to pay 50% of their income in taxes. The Lords saw this as an unfair imposition on a minority and also as inimical to the health of the economy, but the government didn't want to listen and since they effectively owned the Commons, they didn't have to.
These days it sucks just as much to be a Brit as it does to be a Yank.
...because in the UK, although we do have violent video games like Grand Theft Auto, we don't hand out guns like choc-chip cookies and we especially don't let them anywhere near children. Especially children with IQ's somewhere in the imbecile range.
On the other hand it should come as no surprise that this sort of thing would happen in the US where guns are objects of worship and virtually anyone with a few dollars to spend can have one for the asking. Even if they are the sort of cretin who would leave a gun lying around for kids to play with unsupervised.
Those of you who are about to jump in here with the usual empty hypocrisy about nonexistent militias and duty to defend against government tyranny, you're all in denial about this gun thing. Get over it. You've been living under a tyranny since GWB stole the election and I still don't see any militias forming up to defend the people's freedom. I do see plenty of ordinary people getting shot though.
People with guns shoot people. If you let people have guns, people will get shot. Yes, it is as simple as that.
For those of you still living in 1890: don't you dare mod this down as a troll. It's fair comment and you know it. It's time you lot started thinking about what kind of society you really want to live in rather than clinging onto some outmoded romantic ideal of the brave homesteader defending his land. You're supposed to be a civilized people, for heaven's sake. Get this: civilization means not having to rely on the threat of armed force in the course of your daily life.
Plus you have to put up with the racket they make before they do fail. That part can last for a year or more.
OTOH, when a firewall box does finally die, you shouldn't lose much. The only thing of value on there was your config. And you did back that up, right?
Don't buy it. Make the fuckers sweat. They still need to be taught a lesson. When they've sacked all their IP lawyers and stopped harrassing kids with million-dollar lawsuits, then it's time to buy their products. Not before.
This is absolutely the problem with you people. That's like telling an alcoholic: "Well, OK, if you really must have a drink then go ahead and have one but otherwise keep off the stuff".
You're either in this or you're not. If you want to change the way the world works you need to make it part of your way of life today, and let others see your example and question why. You won't get far, as part of a relatively small and obscure politically disaffected minority already, in harming the RIAA economically if you can't even live up to your own principles. Nor will you succeed in recruiting others to your cause except in the most ineffective and half-hearted way. It that's the best anybody can do then we've already lost.
Cut off their oxygen, and they'll die. It's that simple.
The problem is, people on slashdot generally do very little other than preaching to the choir, posting indignant rants full of tough talk about what they dream of doing to the RIAA. What little energy they have for actual combat is soon exhausted from pointlessly arguing with trolls planted by the RIAA (yes, they're here now; they learned this trick from Microsoft).
Me, I stopped buying retail CD's and going to big concerts long ago.
And I regularly wear teeshirts with provocative RIAA slogans like "CD: Corrupt Disc", which many people then ask me to explain.
The next step, for the truly brave, is to sell off your entire CD collection without replacing it. Because every extra second hand CD that's sold represents the potential loss of a new CD sale for RIAA members. And get as good a price as you can; divert as many of those disposable dollars as you can away from the commercial music economy.
Most of this is optional depending on how motivated you are to stick it to the Man. But the bottom line is: If you're not happy with the product, learn to live without it.
It's not as if it's that hard; as many people have pointed out there are many sources of non-RIAA music. But even if there weren't, what's worse: living entirely without music until the beast is dead, or continuing to feed the beast and being its bitch forever?
How the heck did I end up doing advocacy for a games discussion site? It's not my thing at all. Some things are better than humour.
Go visit e-sheep instead.
The article is a bit lacking in substance. There only seems to be a few short paragraphs, I can't find a continutation page. Was it really worth posting?
Take some time to visit e-sheep and look at *everything*. Clear your desk first because you'll be there a while.
Prepare to be moved.
And if you're half as impressed as I was, don't forget to throw some pennies in the hat. We need to keep Patrick hard at work, he deserves to make a living at this and it would be our loss if he were to give up cartooning owing to lack of funds.
Yeah but Penny Arcade is *still* frequently very funny even if you're not a gaming nut.
Sluggy is fun, so is Bruno the Bandit. And Superosity often makes me laugh out loud too.
On this SuSE 8.1 box (somewhat upgraded via apt4rpm):
There is much more of this (78 lines total) covering just about every option you could wish for, but I can't get it through Slashdot's lameness filter.
...as a videoconferencing consultant. Do you have any idea now much money big firms pay out to people like that? Not to mention the cost of the hardware - six-foot plasma screens and the like - which you get at a discount and then mark up substantially.
If you don't take advantage of this while you can, you must be a dope.
Heh. It's actually the story that you can get everything cheap in Akihabara that's the myth. Oft-repeated, but still a myth. Like country bumpkins used to tell tales of the streets of London being paved with gold.
There are always places where you can get discounts on some odd stuff like you mentioned - mostly obscure items that lack mass market appeal, or are slightly obsolete or otherwise difficult or slow to sell and have ended up as remaindered stock.
But you could say exactly the same thing about London, (see Tottenham Court Road). Or, probably, any city. If you had to hunt the back alleys for a few good deals that hardly paints a picture of Akihabara as a unique Mecca for cheap hardware.
The best deals to be had in consumer electronics and computer hardware these days are mostly online, in any part of the world. For good reasons - low overheads and good market access (their potentially highest-spending customers are already online and interested).
6a. The slaves realize to their horror that the new master has become as evil as the old master was.
7. if the old master comes back up it must realize a new master is present and become a slave.
7a. Some of the slaves conspire with the old master to assist his return to power.
This all seems too much like preaching to the choir. The only people who visit these sites are already of the geek persuasion. It's these faceless career politicians that we need to get to, and that means convincing Joe Public. Who doesn't generally run Wine, or even Linux for that matter.
Our only real hope rests with those heroes who managed to find the time and resources to get to Brussels and protest in person. But I'm guessing they will be so few in number that the bastards behind this legislation will find it all too easy to brush it off completely.
I'm not sanguine about a positive resolution. In fact I despair totally.
With very few exceptions (Gun-toting ESR and stubborn old RMS), the geek community are easy meat. It's in our nature. We're just too focussed on our artificial little techno-world and just don't have the cojones to get out there and fling half-bricks at the police.
Some will no doubt pontificate about doing the right thing and writing letters to MEPs but I've tried this already and the arrogant bastards only ever get some underling to write back confirming their support for the proposal and explaining why they are right and you are wrong. And that's if they even bother to reply at all, which isn't often. They are far too busy sucking co^H^H up to big business lobbyists to give a damn about the public at large, let alone a minority they unthinkingly dismiss as "techies" or "weenies".
Democracy? There ain't no such thing.
Bear in mind that this is just one legislative issue among many threatening the tech community, and there are many many other ways in which government is attempting to stiff local communities, middle income earners, small businesses, and the public in general. Take your pick.
I don't know about you lot but I just don't have the time or energy to fight every issue individually, especially when all the lawful means of resistance are so utterly useless. And it's hard to pick just one.
It makes you ask yourself: what is wrong with this system that we're under attack on multiple fronts from the establishment *all the time*? What the hell do we have to do to get some peace so we can just get on with our lives? Anything's got to be better than this.
Most people would rather try to ignore what's being done to them and just immerse themselves in what remains of their comfort zone. But we can't postpone confrontation indefinitely. It's just a matter of how much of our lives and liberties we're prepared to let our "elected" "representatives" feed to the sharks, before we will finally find our balls and stop burying our heads in the sand.
If we can't find a peaceful way to take back the political process soon (and I doubt that's even possible now as the existing establishment's grip tightens daily) I suspect many of us will be practising our ballistic bricklaying skills before our lives are done. Just try to remember while you hide in your comfort zones, people, that the longer it takes to get to that point the bloodier it will be for all of us. You included.