ThaNooch, NewYorkCountryLawyer, et al vs the People Who Take Everything Seriously
Never thought when I started visiting this site that I'd spend so much time laughing my ass off.
And in response to my esteemed opponent here today to represent the RIAA, might I respectfully point out that I got yer copyright violation right here.
I hate to introduce a serious note, but there's people out there who could benefit from a little bot-love. People who are disabled, deformed and badly disfigured have traditionally had a lot of trouble finding partners.
Masturbation and prostitutes are often their only access to sex. Love is something for other people. A mechanical counterfeit might be more acceptable than the alternative.
I don't get it. One of the most popular uses for a botnet, according to the article, is for spam mailings. But how can spammers afford to pay any significant amount of money for the service? I understand that they're mailing out to millions of people and count on a high level of rejection, but how many people are stupid enough to open something that says, "5PL1t H3R 1n HALF WYTH YORE HUGE ORGAN"? Let's face it, half the population is female, and probably not interested (unless they're buying for their boyfriend, and wouldn't THAT be a kick-ass Christmas present); a majority of the male half of the population are probably reasonably satisfied with their equipment; and even a vast majority of those poor, pathetic guys who actually have "AY tiney Pinnus That You GIrflrend Lauff at" probably have an IQ in at least the high double digits (I mean, they figured out how to turn on a computer and collect their e-mail, at least). So they probably wouldn't open that message either.
And then there's the spam filters, which are getting pretty good these days.
So that leaves what percentage of the population stupid enough to open one of these things and infect their computers with something vile? And if they're that stupid, how likely is it that they have a bank account worth looting? Or that they haven't been hit before so often they just sign their paycheque over to the spammers automatically and save everybody a lot of trouble?
An excellent example of how science is supposed to get done.
We think we know. We're pretty sure we know. We're damned sure we know and nobody's even close to providing a better explanation. Alright.....this is how it is; take it to the bank. (But we'll still give you a hearing if you have convincing proof something else is happening. You'd better have a testable hypothesis, though).
The method isn't perfect, but it spits out right answers more often than anything else.
Which launches at similar velocity when a short skirt, thong underwear, inattention toward the family pet, and a dog's standard mode of greeting all come into unfortunate juxtaposition.
is that this arrogant dick thinks he has the right to speak for all of us. If we heard what he was sending, I guarantee there's a whole lot of us that would disagree with all or part of it.
It's obvious that whoever designed this experiment has no experience with elite athletes. All of them will tell you that the "slow down" phenomenon requires intense focus, and usually some unusual circumstance that kicks you into overdrive. Really good athletes can do it a lot. Ted Williams used to say that he could actually see the seams on a pitched baseball.
I have experienced the phenomenon a couple of times during hockey games, and it felt exactly as though everything was moving in slow motion while I continued at regular speed.
One time I saw it in action, and confirmed with the guy afterward that he had indeed experienced it. An open, condensation-soaked bottle of beer slipped out of his hand as he stood talking at a party. His other hand flashed out and he stuck his ring finger squarely into the mouth of the bottle as it dropped toward the floor. I questioned him closely because I wondered whether his experience was similar to mine. He confirmed that he felt as though he had all day to catch the bottle, and chose to catch it by sticking his ring finger into the neck because he was holding a cigarette between his index and middle fingers.
I know these experiences are anecdotal and without scientific value, but I think they point toward the need for a better-designed experiment. The "Zen state" that seems associated with it might be detectable on an EEG, for example, and a lot of repetition would probably help.
With any luck, maybe a few other people will join this thread, and a nice little series of template letters will assemble itself. It would certainly make things a lot easier for people who feel strongly about this issue but don't like to write a lot.
Libraries are an excellent source of CD's. I have been informed by a loathsome scofflaw who apparently duplicates these from time to time that even the ones in poor shape usually produce excellent-quality copies, especially if one is lucky enough to have good software.
Clearly, I cannot support the activities of this person, whom I know only by his nickname, "Big Burner". He most certainly has no respect for the law and the paragons of virtue who enact and enforce it.
I certainly didn't make these jackasses change their minds, but I'd like to think my letter may have helped a tiny little bit. For anybody who may want to adapt it for use against the American species of jackass, here it is:
Dear Mr. Prentice:
You are planning to enact a copyright law that has profound implications for my privacy, my property and my wallet. It is based solely on the greed and misrepresentation of industries that have an almost-unparalleled record for perfidy. I cannot believe you are unaware of the flawed assumptions and outright lies the recording and motion picture industries use to inflate their alleged financial losses due to downloading and copyright violation. You are prepared to put the country my family has bled to protect at the service of a venal and corrupt special interest group, and I will not let you do so without consequence.
If you move forward with this, I promise that not only will I vote against your party in the next election, I will work hard to oppose it in every way I possibly can. That includes actively campaigning for a party I would not otherwise support, and approaching my friends in a way I never have before to secure their cooperation in this matter.
Should you proceed, I will do all in my power to end your political career and end your party's leadership of my country.
This e-mail will be followed by a printed letter to your office.
Sincerely,
Dave (Hyades1 sounded too stupid, so I used my real name)
Sorry to contradict you, but I think you misunderstood my point, and you're factually wrong about the cost of stopping and starting your car. Here's a little info on both points I mentioned as examples, along with their sources (one Canadian, one American). These are just a couple of many insignificant changes we can make that have the potential to make a really big difference. My point is that we can do a lot without making any of those draconian lifestyle changes everybody's afraid of.
"If every driver of a light duty vehicle avoided idling by five minutes a day, collectively, we would save 1.8 million litres per day of fuel, almost 4500 tonnes of GHG emissions, and $1.7 million in fuel costs every day (assuming fuel costs are $0.95/L).
There is lots of opportunity to achieve that goal. Research indicates that Canadian motorists idle their vehicles an average of 5 to 10 minutes a day. One study suggests that in the peak of winter, Canadians voluntarily idle their vehicles for a combined total of more than 75 million minutes a day - equivalent to one vehicle idling for 144 years! We idle about 40 percent less in summer, but it still amounts to an enormous waste of fuel and money.
Research has shown that if you are going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds (except in traffic), you will actually save on fuel by turning off then restarting the engine. The catalytic converter will stay warm for up to 25 minutes after the engine is shut off so frequent restarts will not produce the large amounts of harmful emissions equivalent to cold starts."
"If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars."
I'd be interested in hearing your response. I had a hard time believing how much we just piss away, too. There's lots more of these silly little changes that could be made that don't cost anything but have real effects when they're all added up.
Nuclear may well be the best available alternative. We'll never know, because it's so heavily subsidized market forces don't apply. Alternatives like wind, tide and solar (or a decentralized mix of them) are still in their infancy because oil and nuclear suck all the air (air = government money) out of the room.
And I have a problem with the definition of "energy needs". Direct and indirect subsidies make energy so cheap we're careless and stupid with it. We could make major reductions in energy use with no effect on our lifestyles. One easy example: a national no-idling law. If you're going to leave your car/truck running for more than a minute, you'd better have a damned good reason. Otherwise, you pay a fine. Sort of like a "selfish asshole tax". HUGE energy savings. Another: use compact fluorescent lights temporarily while we develop full-spectrum LED's. Again, huge savings, low cost. (I know fluorescents aren't 100% enviro-cool, but the total cost is less than regular light bulbs.)
My former boss has a place at the rural/urban boundary area. He's gone off the grid completely, and is doing fine. He hadn't planned on it...just figured he was nearly there anyway and wanted to see how easy it would be to go whole-hog.
We also have to face one sad fact: Nuclear reactors and their waste are attractive targets for terrorists. One incident could have major, long-term, EXPENSIVE consequences. Even tailings from uranium mining operations have had some nasty environmental effects. You don't want to think about the contamination from a pulverized shipment of spent fuel rods if it got blown up.
There have been some stunningly good science fiction novels over the years. A lot of science fiction films, though, are more about eye-candy.
Bladerunner did it right. I was a big Philip K. Dick fan, and I went to the original expecting to be disappointed. I wasn't. Bladerunner is still one of my all-time favorite films, in any genre.
Don't get me wrong, I love special effects. I just wish sometimes they'd pick more challenging stories to use them with. I hope all the software advances will make it cheap enough to do some movies that are a bit less mainstream.
Your analogies are amusing, but don't quite fit. Perhaps you could compare sleep-deprived drivers (rather than drunk ones) with interns, who are renowned for long hours and little sleep. When you're totting up the fatalities, would you include a driver who dies in a one-car crash, or should he be excluded because a sleep-deprived intern might kill the odd patient, but is unlikely to kill himself?
Slashdot Mirror
I know I'm going to get killed for this, but...are you sure this story wasn't about Uranus rather than Saturn?
ThaNooch, NewYorkCountryLawyer, et al vs the People Who Take Everything Seriously
Never thought when I started visiting this site that I'd spend so much time laughing my ass off.
And in response to my esteemed opponent here today to represent the RIAA, might I respectfully point out that I got yer copyright violation right here.
Computerized Australian Technology lives.....until you take a good look at it.
Computerized Australian Technology...until you take a good look at it.
I hate to introduce a serious note, but there's people out there who could benefit from a little bot-love. People who are disabled, deformed and badly disfigured have traditionally had a lot of trouble finding partners.
Masturbation and prostitutes are often their only access to sex. Love is something for other people. A mechanical counterfeit might be more acceptable than the alternative.
R-estroom...DAMN I wish I'd thought of that.
Like Bill Mahr's version of that old board game, Clue: "A Republican, in the Men's Room, with his Cock".
I don't get it. One of the most popular uses for a botnet, according to the article, is for spam mailings. But how can spammers afford to pay any significant amount of money for the service? I understand that they're mailing out to millions of people and count on a high level of rejection, but how many people are stupid enough to open something that says, "5PL1t H3R 1n HALF WYTH YORE HUGE ORGAN"? Let's face it, half the population is female, and probably not interested (unless they're buying for their boyfriend, and wouldn't THAT be a kick-ass Christmas present); a majority of the male half of the population are probably reasonably satisfied with their equipment; and even a vast majority of those poor, pathetic guys who actually have "AY tiney Pinnus That You GIrflrend Lauff at" probably have an IQ in at least the high double digits (I mean, they figured out how to turn on a computer and collect their e-mail, at least). So they probably wouldn't open that message either.
And then there's the spam filters, which are getting pretty good these days.
So that leaves what percentage of the population stupid enough to open one of these things and infect their computers with something vile? And if they're that stupid, how likely is it that they have a bank account worth looting? Or that they haven't been hit before so often they just sign their paycheque over to the spammers automatically and save everybody a lot of trouble?
Help. Somebody please explain it all to me.
An excellent example of how science is supposed to get done.
We think we know. We're pretty sure we know. We're damned sure we know and nobody's even close to providing a better explanation. Alright.....this is how it is; take it to the bank. (But we'll still give you a hearing if you have convincing proof something else is happening. You'd better have a testable hypothesis, though).
The method isn't perfect, but it spits out right answers more often than anything else.
Which launches at similar velocity when a short skirt, thong underwear, inattention toward the family pet, and a dog's standard mode of greeting all come into unfortunate juxtaposition.
Nonsense! A cute bum is MUCH more important than big tits.
is that this arrogant dick thinks he has the right to speak for all of us. If we heard what he was sending, I guarantee there's a whole lot of us that would disagree with all or part of it.
Aw, the poor things. It looks like they wanted just one thing they could flat-out guarantee was compatible with Vista. Well, sometimes, anyway.
Try trapping a politician into telling the truth. Now that takes skill.
No wonder Microsoft tried to bribe it out of Nigeria.
Oh, sweet Jesus God, a death ray from the skies! It just doesn't get any better than that!
Flash Gordon: "Ming, you'll never get away with this!"
It's obvious that whoever designed this experiment has no experience with elite athletes. All of them will tell you that the "slow down" phenomenon requires intense focus, and usually some unusual circumstance that kicks you into overdrive. Really good athletes can do it a lot. Ted Williams used to say that he could actually see the seams on a pitched baseball.
I have experienced the phenomenon a couple of times during hockey games, and it felt exactly as though everything was moving in slow motion while I continued at regular speed.
One time I saw it in action, and confirmed with the guy afterward that he had indeed experienced it. An open, condensation-soaked bottle of beer slipped out of his hand as he stood talking at a party. His other hand flashed out and he stuck his ring finger squarely into the mouth of the bottle as it dropped toward the floor. I questioned him closely because I wondered whether his experience was similar to mine. He confirmed that he felt as though he had all day to catch the bottle, and chose to catch it by sticking his ring finger into the neck because he was holding a cigarette between his index and middle fingers.
I know these experiences are anecdotal and without scientific value, but I think they point toward the need for a better-designed experiment. The "Zen state" that seems associated with it might be detectable on an EEG, for example, and a lot of repetition would probably help.
"The caveat is that you have to let them monitor your use of the program."
So how does this make the free copy any different than the one you pay for? Just askin'.
"...hidden from direct observation in enormous gas clouds in intergalactic space..." >p>
If all that missing matter is contained in gas clouds, I think I know where to find it. There's an election coming up, right?
Excellent letter! I also copied the PM.
With any luck, maybe a few other people will join this thread, and a nice little series of template letters will assemble itself. It would certainly make things a lot easier for people who feel strongly about this issue but don't like to write a lot.
Libraries are an excellent source of CD's. I have been informed by a loathsome scofflaw who apparently duplicates these from time to time that even the ones in poor shape usually produce excellent-quality copies, especially if one is lucky enough to have good software.
Clearly, I cannot support the activities of this person, whom I know only by his nickname, "Big Burner". He most certainly has no respect for the law and the paragons of virtue who enact and enforce it.
I certainly didn't make these jackasses change their minds, but I'd like to think my letter may have helped a tiny little bit. For anybody who may want to adapt it for use against the American species of jackass, here it is:
Dear Mr. Prentice:
You are planning to enact a copyright law that has profound implications for my privacy, my property and my wallet. It is based solely on the greed and misrepresentation of industries that have an almost-unparalleled record for perfidy. I cannot believe you are unaware of the flawed assumptions and outright lies the recording and motion picture industries use to inflate their alleged financial losses due to downloading and copyright violation. You are prepared to put the country my family has bled to protect at the service of a venal and corrupt special interest group, and I will not let you do so without consequence.
If you move forward with this, I promise that not only will I vote against your party in the next election, I will work hard to oppose it in every way I possibly can. That includes actively campaigning for a party I would not otherwise support, and approaching my friends in a way I never have before to secure their cooperation in this matter.
Should you proceed, I will do all in my power to end your political career and end your party's leadership of my country.
This e-mail will be followed by a printed letter to your office.
Sincerely,
Dave (Hyades1 sounded too stupid, so I used my real name)
Sorry to contradict you, but I think you misunderstood my point, and you're factually wrong about the cost of stopping and starting your car. Here's a little info on both points I mentioned as examples, along with their sources (one Canadian, one American). These are just a couple of many insignificant changes we can make that have the potential to make a really big difference. My point is that we can do a lot without making any of those draconian lifestyle changes everybody's afraid of.
"If every driver of a light duty vehicle avoided idling by five minutes a day, collectively, we would save 1.8 million litres per day of fuel, almost 4500 tonnes of GHG emissions, and $1.7 million in fuel costs every day (assuming fuel costs are $0.95/L). There is lots of opportunity to achieve that goal. Research indicates that Canadian motorists idle their vehicles an average of 5 to 10 minutes a day. One study suggests that in the peak of winter, Canadians voluntarily idle their vehicles for a combined total of more than 75 million minutes a day - equivalent to one vehicle idling for 144 years! We idle about 40 percent less in summer, but it still amounts to an enormous waste of fuel and money. Research has shown that if you are going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds (except in traffic), you will actually save on fuel by turning off then restarting the engine. The catalytic converter will stay warm for up to 25 minutes after the engine is shut off so frequent restarts will not produce the large amounts of harmful emissions equivalent to cold starts."
http://www.oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/idling/issues/why-idling-problem.cfm?attr=16
"If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars."
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls
I'd be interested in hearing your response. I had a hard time believing how much we just piss away, too. There's lots more of these silly little changes that could be made that don't cost anything but have real effects when they're all added up.
Nuclear may well be the best available alternative. We'll never know, because it's so heavily subsidized market forces don't apply. Alternatives like wind, tide and solar (or a decentralized mix of them) are still in their infancy because oil and nuclear suck all the air (air = government money) out of the room.
And I have a problem with the definition of "energy needs". Direct and indirect subsidies make energy so cheap we're careless and stupid with it. We could make major reductions in energy use with no effect on our lifestyles. One easy example: a national no-idling law. If you're going to leave your car/truck running for more than a minute, you'd better have a damned good reason. Otherwise, you pay a fine. Sort of like a "selfish asshole tax". HUGE energy savings. Another: use compact fluorescent lights temporarily while we develop full-spectrum LED's. Again, huge savings, low cost. (I know fluorescents aren't 100% enviro-cool, but the total cost is less than regular light bulbs.)
My former boss has a place at the rural/urban boundary area. He's gone off the grid completely, and is doing fine. He hadn't planned on it...just figured he was nearly there anyway and wanted to see how easy it would be to go whole-hog.
We also have to face one sad fact: Nuclear reactors and their waste are attractive targets for terrorists. One incident could have major, long-term, EXPENSIVE consequences. Even tailings from uranium mining operations have had some nasty environmental effects. You don't want to think about the contamination from a pulverized shipment of spent fuel rods if it got blown up.
There have been some stunningly good science fiction novels over the years. A lot of science fiction films, though, are more about eye-candy.
Bladerunner did it right. I was a big Philip K. Dick fan, and I went to the original expecting to be disappointed. I wasn't. Bladerunner is still one of my all-time favorite films, in any genre.
Don't get me wrong, I love special effects. I just wish sometimes they'd pick more challenging stories to use them with. I hope all the software advances will make it cheap enough to do some movies that are a bit less mainstream.
"Most people die in bed"
Whose?
Your analogies are amusing, but don't quite fit. Perhaps you could compare sleep-deprived drivers (rather than drunk ones) with interns, who are renowned for long hours and little sleep. When you're totting up the fatalities, would you include a driver who dies in a one-car crash, or should he be excluded because a sleep-deprived intern might kill the odd patient, but is unlikely to kill himself?