You cannot possibly become addicted to porn. Heroin, yes. Nicotine, yes. Porno, no. You may very well like photos of young women going at each other, but that doesn't mean that you are addicted.
I Am Not A Neurologist, but the prevalence of chemical addictions doesn't mean that there's no such thing as psychological addictions.
I think that anything that can produce an emotional response can addict at least somebody.
Fortunately, porn doesn't fry your brain like certain drugs, no matter what the Puritans-In-Charge may tell you.
And if someone does become a rapist or whatnot after sampling porn, it's because of a preexisting, severe psychological disorder, not because they've seen depictions of nudity and sex.
Of course, you don't hear much about any crusades of concerned parents fighting hatred, prejudice, poverty, governmental corruption, corporate rule, cultural stagnation, or rampant Puritanism, for example. That's because real problems get ignores, while manufactured "issues" get all the attention. The death of independence in the mainstream media ensures that Joe Average will never know about most of these problems until they bite him in the ass.
And while I'm talking about "Puritanism", I find it really hard to buy the idea that there could be anything virtuous or "pure" about a society that violently repressed almost all natural human instincts, was openly intolerant of religious and ideological differences, and burned at the stake anybody who didn't conform, out of sheer superstition, fear and ignorance.
Yet even if the "Puritans" per se are fodder for the history books, their virus-meme has spread itself across the US and firmly embedded itself in society's collective psyche.
"Keeping smut out of the hands of children" smacks of a workaround of the real problem.
This kind of mentality will prevent the formation of a sane society, one that is not afraid of sex and the human body, one in which even a child can tell the difference between images which are art or textbook material and those which are simply in poor taste.
If we continue sheltering our children from everything, they'll never learn how to protect themselves, and they'll never be able to deal with reality. And we're already seeing the effects of this phenomenon: millions who can't cope with the world around them, and in turn are more willing than ever to sell out their freedoms for a dubious-at-best sense of security.
And this decrease of freedoms and increase of governmental hand-holding creates more of these helpless people, which feeds the vicious cycle.
Even if the creation of a sane, healthy society is too "impossible" for lazy and unimaginative politicos to even consider, I think that there's still a quick, simple solution that won't cut our freedoms short:
Encourage parents to guide their kids while using the Internet.
[straw man:] Of course, thousands of parents cry, "But we can't be there to monitor them 24/7!"
And, of course, the Powers-That-Be agree. Spending time with your kids means less time "working"... might hurt the economy if parents started doing that en masse.
But I'm not advocating that parents monitor children's access. By "guiding", I mean teaching kids how to use the Internet responsibly, and instilling a sense of responsibility in them that will follow them wherever they go. Of course, it might mean that parents might have to learn a thing or two about the Internet themselves, not to mention responsibility.
Overall, however, the benefits to society would be too great to ignore. Children growing up with a sense of responsibility and independence will create adults who aren't afraid to stand up for their freedoms, and who can fend for themselves.
Also, parents who think they need their kids' access "secured" because they "can't be with their kids all the time" need to severely reexamine their assumptions. What many are trying to say is "I can't spend any time with my kids because I'm at work all the time and I want a magic pill to take the burden of parenting off my shoulders."
The damage, if any, caused to kids by seeing a few pornographic images absolutely pales in comparison to growing up with no real parental contact.
Understandibly, there may be situations where this isn't possible, such as single parents (who, btw, have a very tough job and my utmost respect), but children of single parents are usually expected to act with some degree of responsibility and independence in all aspects of life, and these virtues easily translate to the online world. (Not to mention the opposite: that responsibilities in Internet usage can also serve as important lessons for Real Life.)
Treating the Internet as an excuse to take away kids' freedoms (and consequently, their responsibilities), only serves to erode any responsibility and independence they may have learned offline.
By ignoring, rejecting, and fearing the ideas laid out above, American society has become its own dirty little secret. Insisting on living a self-destructive lifestyle and avoiding our real problems with shoddy workarounds is insane. But somehow it's become the "American Way".
You represent a country that claims to be for freedom and whatnot
"Nobody outside the US believes that anyway."
Hence the word "claims".
i.e. they say they're for freedom, so they have an image to maintain. Not that they are for freedom.
For their way of doing government, freedom is flat-out the most dangerous idea there is.
The U.S. Gov't wants Americans to celebrate the overthrow of an oppressive regime that took place over 200 years ago, yet it's terrified that the same notions of freedom might cause the same thing to happen to them!
The solution they've chosen? Encourage a lip-service token "patriotism" that keeps the masses tranquilized and makes the thinkers too cynical to care about their country and the sad, sad state it's in.
China may seem more oppressive, but at least they're making progress, little by little. In the grand scheme of things, this "Great Firewall" is just a minor setback.
The real reason they don't censor porn is probably to piss off the Puritans running the US.
Just imagine being in the US Gov't.'s shoes:
You represent a country that claims to be for freedom and whatnot, and your main beef with the Chinese gov't. is that they censor what you don't want censored and they don't censor what you do want censored!
Now, your challenge as a Patriotic Puritan Bureaucrat is to convince a hostile nation (i.e. one that doesn't always kowtow to the Inherent Might-Makes-Right Moral Superiority of Uncle Sam) that censoring some things is wrong, while censoring other things is somehow acceptable or even commendable!
Frankly, I don't see how we can convince other nations to embrace liberty until we drop our masks of pretension and hypocrisy and embrace it ourselves.
Actually, humans are much more efficient, and effective, when they perceive their tasks as "play", rather than "work".
If you can make an education in math, science, arts, humanities, and computing seem more palatable by disguising it as a game, you will turn around the lives of many.
This uses an innovative pointing device called the "silent mouse", a sleek stealth pointer that doesn't make a clicking noise at all when the button is pressed, thereby circumventing Mr. Bezos' One-Click Shopping patent.
Infinite-click shopping.
In this business model, the customer must keep continuously clicking the mouse, or else our company's hired goons come to his house and steal all of his stuff.
We feel this is necessary, because if a customer stops clicking, it may be because he's dead, and if anyone inherits his stuff, they'd get copies of our merchandise without even paying for it!
We feel that this practice of "copying" other people's property after they're dead violates our intellectual property rights. After all, is it really fair for those big mean dead people, who don't even buy our merchandise anymore, steal our customers among the living?
Not a chance. I'm sure you don't like dead people any more than I do-- they smell bad, they rot, and they remind us of our own mortality (which is really bad for bu$ine$$!). If these nasty cadavers keep ripping off our profits, we might end up just like them! Is that what you want to see, dear, beloved, precious, financially-secure customer?
Of course not. That's why we're taking the ghosts of everybody who ever died to court. And if that doesn't work, we're considering a business partnership with GhostBusters.com, Inc.
Finally, we've also patented dying, especially for anybody who's ever used the Internet, as well as the concept of death itself.
To protect our customer base, we're seeking an injunction against dying for everybody on the planet. Violators will be shot.
We remain committed to being a pillar of innovation, since innovation has an incredible market potential, as long as it's exploited correctly.
And, to show our devotion to our customers, we're lowering the mandatory click frequency of infinite-click shopping from 100 clicks per second to a mere 2. (We can't make it just 1, for patent reasons.)
Hmm.. the quality of moderation seems to be rapidly declining on this forum.
"Off-topic"==offtopic with regards to the thread, not the main post.
Anyone reading at a threshold of 1 would have missed the parent comment anyway, and not seen the reply in the first place (although in nested mode that may vary). Therefore, I must conclude that the moderation was given specifically to punish the "offending" party, rather than to facilitate the separation of high-quality posts and low-quality ones.
Moderation exists to enable those who want to read the "good" posts to ignore the mediocre-to-crappy ones, not as a check on free speech. (I'm not referring to "free speech" as a right or anything, simply as a privilege granted to all by principle, as intended by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. And, no, I'm not pretending to speak for someone else, but rather rehashing something he's said dozens of times.)
What all this means is that moderation exists to moderate the post, not the poster. The whole concept of "karma" was not intended to discourage people from saying whatever happened to be on their mind, however puerile, but rather to ensure that only the most disciplined, insightful, and mature Slashdot posters would get to moderate. This goal, however noble, has apparently failed.
By now, meta-moderators occupy the same spot in my mind as the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. Once upon a time, you were told that they exist, but after a while you grow up and realize that you've been had.
Now, here comes my little experiment. First, remember that:
I'm posting this under my "real" pseudonym, rather than as AC. (ACs seem to be moderated much less, since they just represent a post, and not an actual poster against whom moderators who've had a bad day can lash out.)
This post is on-topic with regards to the current thread, which deals with the current sad, sad state of/. moderation. Whether the parent thread itself is considered "off-topic" is immaterial here.
Karma per se is not an issue here. I've still got a ways to go before I'm posting at a default score of zero.
Moderators enjoy the same degree of cowardly anonymity in their "moderation" as ACs do in their posting.
Now, the experiment. Since I'm posting as "hypergeek" rather than AC, I'm bound to be moderated down by some angry clown who happens to dislike what I've said in this post. If I had posted as AC and just "signed" the post as 'hypergeek', then my previous post would be moderated down, not this one. Now that we've established the inevitability of my being moderated down, let's take a look at what this post is not.
It is not "flamebait". Any hostility in this post is directed at lousy moderators. Anyone who posts a flame, or any other post for that matter, is no longer a moderator in this context.
It is not a "flame". A flame is an inflammatory post directed at an individual. Chewing out a faceless, anonymous moderator, or an entire class of moderators, doesn't cut it.
I've already established why it's not "off-topic".
It is not redundant, by any stretch of the imagination.
It is not a "troll", which specifically refers to a class of posts giving gross misinformation in an attempt to trigger flames from the clueless. This post, on the other hand, feeds an unsavory dose of the truth in an attempt to trigger moderation from the stupid and aggressive.
It is not "overrated", because, as posted at its default score, it is unrated. If you can't express your distaste for a post in any terms other than "I don't like it", you shouldn't be moderating in the first place.
Have I covered all the bases? Good. (On to step 2 of the experiment...)
Now, despite all the above, or perhaps because of it, chances are that some imbecile is going to moderate this one down, despite having absolutely no grounds to do so.
Perhaps this post could be (Score: -1, I-Wanted-To-Shut-This-Guy-Up-Because-I-Don't-Like- His-Posts-And-I- Can-Do-So-In-Complete-Anonymity-And-Impunity-Ha-Ha -Ha), but little else.
I'm just curious as to what category they come up with for this one... maybe someone'll petition CmdrTaco to create a new category for this one. (Score: -1, hypergeek)
The abuse of anonymity is deplored in ACs, but celebrated in moderators.
This twitch-impulse moderation has got to stop, folks. You're discouraging people from posting with their actual account. (I, for one, have posted much stupider (and more off-topic) things recently as an AC, and have been moderated up, simply because less is expected of an AC.)
So, down with lazy moderators. You're not boosting the S/N ratio of Slashdot by enforcing your own personal grudges.
And my profound apologies to anyone who's reading this article in "nested" mode, and had to scroll through this rant.
A cell-chip implant into my aural nerves? Crank Slayer up to 10 and not damage my normal hearing?
Is it possible that you could "burn out" the very neurons that control your hearing? Then your normal hearing would be just as screwed as your "internal" hearing system.
Researchers confirmed today that severe sleep deprivation causes Mongoose to code in what appears to be Pascal. The researchers emphasized that Mongoose was *severely* sleep-deprived at the time, and urged all programmers to get a good (2^5 + 2^3) winks every now and then.
switch(time(NULL)%circadean_rythm) { case now: case then: sleep(40); break; default: wakey_wakey_sleepyhead(); }
This snippet of code brought to you by the alphanumeric characters 1, T, B, and S.
Get real. This is not a feudal system by any stretch of the imagination.
You seem to be quite unimaginative as to how far the imagination can stretch.
Here's the connection I see with the feudal system:
First off, under the 1886 (I believe) case County of Santa Clara [sound familiar?] vs. Southern Pacific Railroad (if I've got my history correct), the Supreme Court somehow held that, under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, corporations are "persons" and are entitled to the same legal protections as real people.
Unfortunately, under this guise of equality, these bodies of legal fiction known as Corporations managed to lie, cheat, swindle, bully, muscle, and bribe their way into being considered a greater entity than the individual, no longer a subservient body.
This, of course, means that despite the U.S. Constitution's clause prohibiting it, the United States does grant certain "individuals" a title of nobility; it's called "Inc.".
For your passphrase, use a fairly large, inconspicuous image file (or some other type of file that exists in abundance on your computer), after the file's been filtered (and mangled) through four or five of your countless command-line tools, in the exact order.
This makes it impossible to memorize your passphrase (a bad thing if the file gets deleted/corrupted, or if new versions of your command-line tools produce slightly different output), but it makes it possible for you to honestly say to the court that you don't have the passphrase in your possession (and that the other side already had the passphrase in its possession, since they've got your box), and that you could only provide the passphrase if you were given full access to your computer (which they sure as hell aren't going to agree to)!
(Of course, I'm not advocating using this method for illegal activities, but am merely providing a way to protect your Constitutional rights from the heavy hand of Government and Big Mean Corporations, and to protect your sensitive, personal data from prying eyes;-)
Now, my main concern over the Andover/VA merger is that Slashdot may pick up a teensy bit of pro-Linux flavor, which I can only ascribe to the powerful forces at work behind the scenes at VA.
And the Slashdot version, the Karma-whore* chameleon(TM).
(*Notice: No offense intended to any karma-whores, -pimps, -gigolos (or Karma Man-Whores) or any other types of karma-escorts or karma-adult-entertainment-professionals who may be out there. Admittedly I'd be squite a hypocrite if I did intend such offense >:)
-Hypr Geeque
P.S.: Bless all those wonderful moderators out there... (wink, wink; nudge, nudge;-)
I guess this means that I can finally give up on porting nethack to my TI-89 calculator!
On the other hand, the PDA's handwriting recognition could mistake one of the single-letter commands for another, with disastrous results... (No, no! I said to 'z' the wand, not 'a'!!!)
-Hypr Geeque
P.S.: I actually was contemplating doing that... (I just discovered the game a week ago and boy is it addictive... I'm starting to dream in nethack!)
It seems to me that the U.N. is starting to get scared of all the freedom/power that mere individuals enjoy on the Internet. It is a severe impediment to their vision of "order" and they try to set a precedent by "cleansing" the web of a class of information that is widely despised, namely racism.
Ploys like this, and using vague, futuristic-sounding euphemisms like "globalization" seem to indicate that the Powers That Be want a single, unified world government, and it looks like individual rights are incompatible with their "vision".
While I certainly consider ridding the world of racism to be a noble goal, ridding the world of the expression of racism is simply "sweeping the dust under the rug", so to speak. That is, the spectre of racism is still there, it's simply been rendered invisible and removed from most people's attention.
Unfortunately, what you can't see can hurt you, and often hurts you more than a danger you saw coming.
As the top-level post suggests, the best way to combat racism is to inform the populace and teach our children the principles of tolerance, equality, and "live-and-let-live".
Unfortunately, anybody seeking to destroy civil liberties knows that those three principles, along with the concept of free will, are the pillars of freedom.
That means that the U.N.'s vision of combatting racism by keeping it hidden is not an attempt to foster a spirit of fraternity and equality among mankind, but rather to keep humanity tranquilized, and make us ever-more susceptible to further subjugation.
Sorry if this post seems a bit paranoiac, but it's crucial to keep an eye out for emerging trends, especially when those trends signify Bad Things.
This could be very useful for training astronauts.
No need for expensive training equipment like the "vomit comet", underwater tanks, and that whirly-gig-type-thingy-of-which-I've-forgotten-the -proper-name, when you can just simulate space missions, and the experience of weightlessness, in a virtual reality training program.
Slashdot Mirror
I Am Not A Neurologist, but the prevalence of chemical addictions doesn't mean that there's no such thing as psychological addictions.
I think that anything that can produce an emotional response can addict at least somebody.
Fortunately, porn doesn't fry your brain like certain drugs, no matter what the Puritans-In-Charge may tell you.
And if someone does become a rapist or whatnot after sampling porn, it's because of a preexisting, severe psychological disorder, not because they've seen depictions of nudity and sex.
Of course, you don't hear much about any crusades of concerned parents fighting hatred, prejudice, poverty, governmental corruption, corporate rule, cultural stagnation, or rampant Puritanism, for example. That's because real problems get ignores, while manufactured "issues" get all the attention. The death of independence in the mainstream media ensures that Joe Average will never know about most of these problems until they bite him in the ass.
And while I'm talking about "Puritanism", I find it really hard to buy the idea that there could be anything virtuous or "pure" about a society that violently repressed almost all natural human instincts, was openly intolerant of religious and ideological differences, and burned at the stake anybody who didn't conform, out of sheer superstition, fear and ignorance.
Yet even if the "Puritans" per se are fodder for the history books, their virus-meme has spread itself across the US and firmly embedded itself in society's collective psyche.
Welcome to the United Salems of America.
--
This kind of mentality will prevent the formation of a sane society, one that is not afraid of sex and the human body, one in which even a child can tell the difference between images which are art or textbook material and those which are simply in poor taste.
If we continue sheltering our children from everything, they'll never learn how to protect themselves, and they'll never be able to deal with reality. And we're already seeing the effects of this phenomenon: millions who can't cope with the world around them, and in turn are more willing than ever to sell out their freedoms for a dubious-at-best sense of security.
And this decrease of freedoms and increase of governmental hand-holding creates more of these helpless people, which feeds the vicious cycle.
Even if the creation of a sane, healthy society is too "impossible" for lazy and unimaginative politicos to even consider, I think that there's still a quick, simple solution that won't cut our freedoms short:
Encourage parents to guide their kids while using the Internet.
[straw man:]
Of course, thousands of parents cry, "But we can't be there to monitor them 24/7!"
And, of course, the Powers-That-Be agree. Spending time with your kids means less time "working"... might hurt the economy if parents started doing that en masse.
But I'm not advocating that parents monitor children's access. By "guiding", I mean teaching kids how to use the Internet responsibly, and instilling a sense of responsibility in them that will follow them wherever they go. Of course, it might mean that parents might have to learn a thing or two about the Internet themselves, not to mention responsibility.
Overall, however, the benefits to society would be too great to ignore. Children growing up with a sense of responsibility and independence will create adults who aren't afraid to stand up for their freedoms, and who can fend for themselves.
Also, parents who think they need their kids' access "secured" because they "can't be with their kids all the time" need to severely reexamine their assumptions. What many are trying to say is "I can't spend any time with my kids because I'm at work all the time and I want a magic pill to take the burden of parenting off my shoulders."
The damage, if any, caused to kids by seeing a few pornographic images absolutely pales in comparison to growing up with no real parental contact.
Understandibly, there may be situations where this isn't possible, such as single parents (who, btw, have a very tough job and my utmost respect), but children of single parents are usually expected to act with some degree of responsibility and independence in all aspects of life, and these virtues easily translate to the online world. (Not to mention the opposite: that responsibilities in Internet usage can also serve as important lessons for Real Life.)
Treating the Internet as an excuse to take away kids' freedoms (and consequently, their responsibilities), only serves to erode any responsibility and independence they may have learned offline.
By ignoring, rejecting, and fearing the ideas laid out above, American society has become its own dirty little secret. Insisting on living a self-destructive lifestyle and avoiding our real problems with shoddy workarounds is insane. But somehow it's become the "American Way".
--
Hence the word "claims".
i.e. they say they're for freedom, so they have an image to maintain. Not that they are for freedom.
For their way of doing government, freedom is flat-out the most dangerous idea there is.
The U.S. Gov't wants Americans to celebrate the overthrow of an oppressive regime that took place over 200 years ago, yet it's terrified that the same notions of freedom might cause the same thing to happen to them!
The solution they've chosen? Encourage a lip-service token "patriotism" that keeps the masses tranquilized and makes the thinkers too cynical to care about their country and the sad, sad state it's in.
China may seem more oppressive, but at least they're making progress, little by little. In the grand scheme of things, this "Great Firewall" is just a minor setback.
--
Just imagine being in the US Gov't.'s shoes:
You represent a country that claims to be for freedom and whatnot, and your main beef with the Chinese gov't. is that they censor what you don't want censored and they don't censor what you do want censored!
Now, your challenge as a Patriotic Puritan Bureaucrat is to convince a hostile nation (i.e. one that doesn't always kowtow to the Inherent Might-Makes-Right Moral Superiority of Uncle Sam) that censoring some things is wrong, while censoring other things is somehow acceptable or even commendable!
Frankly, I don't see how we can convince other nations to embrace liberty until we drop our masks of pretension and hypocrisy and embrace it ourselves.
--
If you can make an education in math, science, arts, humanities, and computing seem more palatable by disguising it as a game, you will turn around the lives of many.
--
This uses an innovative pointing device called the "silent mouse", a sleek stealth pointer that doesn't make a clicking noise at all when the button is pressed, thereby circumventing Mr. Bezos' One-Click Shopping patent.
In this business model, the customer must keep continuously clicking the mouse, or else our company's hired goons come to his house and steal all of his stuff.
We feel this is necessary, because if a customer stops clicking, it may be because he's dead, and if anyone inherits his stuff, they'd get copies of our merchandise without even paying for it!
We feel that this practice of "copying" other people's property after they're dead violates our intellectual property rights. After all, is it really fair for those big mean dead people, who don't even buy our merchandise anymore, steal our customers among the living?
Not a chance. I'm sure you don't like dead people any more than I do-- they smell bad, they rot, and they remind us of our own mortality (which is really bad for bu$ine$$!). If these nasty cadavers keep ripping off our profits, we might end up just like them! Is that what you want to see, dear, beloved, precious, financially-secure customer?
Of course not. That's why we're taking the ghosts of everybody who ever died to court. And if that doesn't work, we're considering a business partnership with GhostBusters.com, Inc.
Finally, we've also patented dying, especially for anybody who's ever used the Internet, as well as the concept of death itself.
To protect our customer base, we're seeking an injunction against dying for everybody on the planet. Violators will be shot.
We remain committed to being a pillar of innovation, since innovation has an incredible market potential, as long as it's exploited correctly.
And, to show our devotion to our customers, we're lowering the mandatory click frequency of infinite-click shopping from 100 clicks per second to a mere 2. (We can't make it just 1, for patent reasons.)
Sin-cerely,
Biff Jefos
See Eee Oh, Amazinglygreedy.com
--
- "Off-topic"==offtopic with regards to the thread, not the main post.
- Anyone reading at a threshold of 1 would have missed the parent comment anyway, and not seen the reply in the first place (although in nested mode that may vary). Therefore, I must conclude that the moderation was given specifically to punish the "offending" party, rather than to facilitate the separation of high-quality posts and low-quality ones.
Moderation exists to enable those who want to read the "good" posts to ignore the mediocre-to-crappy ones, not as a check on free speech. (I'm not referring to "free speech" as a right or anything, simply as a privilege granted to all by principle, as intended by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. And, no, I'm not pretending to speak for someone else, but rather rehashing something he's said dozens of times.)What all this means is that moderation exists to moderate the post, not the poster. The whole concept of "karma" was not intended to discourage people from saying whatever happened to be on their mind, however puerile, but rather to ensure that only the most disciplined, insightful, and mature Slashdot posters would get to moderate. This goal, however noble, has apparently failed.
By now, meta-moderators occupy the same spot in my mind as the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. Once upon a time, you were told that they exist, but after a while you grow up and realize that you've been had.
Now, here comes my little experiment. First, remember that:
- I'm posting this under my "real" pseudonym, rather than as AC. (ACs seem to be moderated much less, since they just represent a post, and not an actual poster against whom moderators who've had a bad day can lash out.)
- This post is on-topic with regards to the current thread, which deals with the current sad, sad state of
/. moderation. Whether the parent thread itself is considered "off-topic" is immaterial here. - Karma per se is not an issue here. I've still got a ways to go before I'm posting at a default score of zero.
- Moderators enjoy the same degree of cowardly anonymity in their "moderation" as ACs do in their posting.
Now, the experiment. Since I'm posting as "hypergeek" rather than AC, I'm bound to be moderated down by some angry clown who happens to dislike what I've said in this post. If I had posted as AC and just "signed" the post as 'hypergeek', then my previous post would be moderated down, not this one. Now that we've established the inevitability of my being moderated down, let's take a look at what this post is not.Have I covered all the bases? Good. (On to step 2 of the experiment...)
Now, despite all the above, or perhaps because of it, chances are that some imbecile is going to moderate this one down, despite having absolutely no grounds to do so.
Perhaps this post could be (Score: -1, I-Wanted-To-Shut-This-Guy-Up-Because-I-Don't-Like- His-Posts-And-I- Can-Do-So-In-Complete-Anonymity-And-Impunity-Ha-Ha -Ha), but little else.
I'm just curious as to what category they come up with for this one... maybe someone'll petition CmdrTaco to create a new category for this one. (Score: -1, hypergeek)
The abuse of anonymity is deplored in ACs, but celebrated in moderators.
This twitch-impulse moderation has got to stop, folks. You're discouraging people from posting with their actual account. (I, for one, have posted much stupider (and more off-topic) things recently as an AC, and have been moderated up, simply because less is expected of an AC.)
So, down with lazy moderators. You're not boosting the S/N ratio of Slashdot by enforcing your own personal grudges.
And my profound apologies to anyone who's reading this article in "nested" mode, and had to scroll through this rant.
Is it possible that you could "burn out" the very neurons that control your hearing? Then your normal hearing would be just as screwed as your "internal" hearing system.
Hehe. Isn't it funny how this post got marked "redundant"?
(Umm... better say something on-topic... "go AOL/TW!" Grr... that oughter hold them durn mawderaiturs...)
[ring, ring...]
Moe: Moe's Tavern.
AC:Yeah... I'm looking for a Dr. Borg... first name, Anita...
Moe: Dammit! I'm sick of all you fscking ACs prank calling me all the time! When I find out who you are, I'll kill you!
[Slams down receiver]
Dr. Anita Borg: Has anyone called while I was out? I'm expecting an important call from the last female CS Major on the planet!
Moe: Uhhhmmmmmm..... heh heh.... Look, lady... y'wanna free beer or something?
Borg: Free beer? How dare you imply that I could be tempted by that! I want free speech, dammit; not free beer!
Stan: You BASTARDS!
When I first saw the headline, I thought it was another lawsuit...
Researchers confirmed today that severe sleep deprivation causes Mongoose to code in what appears to be Pascal. The researchers emphasized that Mongoose was *severely* sleep-deprived at the time, and urged all programmers to get a good (2^5 + 2^3) winks every now and then.
switch(time(NULL)%circadean_rythm) {
case now:
case then:
sleep(40);
break;
default:
wakey_wakey_sleepyhead();
}
This snippet of code brought to you by the alphanumeric characters 1, T, B, and S.
If this trend keeps up, Windows 2002 (or whenever) will be down to a mere 65+ bugs!
One must truly marvel at the efficacy of the debugging team at Microsoft.
"MS: It's not a software company, it's a neurological nightmare."
-a Multiple Schlerosis awareness billboard
D'oh! Ah dun fergawt tuh enable them cookiemajiggers...
Or, in the Official language of Northwestern: this whole scenario is "doubleplus ungood".
-Hypr Geeque
You seem to be quite unimaginative as to how far the imagination can stretch.
Here's the connection I see with the feudal system:
First off, under the 1886 (I believe) case County of Santa Clara [sound familiar?] vs. Southern Pacific Railroad (if I've got my history correct), the Supreme Court somehow held that, under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, corporations are "persons" and are entitled to the same legal protections as real people.
Unfortunately, under this guise of equality, these bodies of legal fiction known as Corporations managed to lie, cheat, swindle, bully, muscle, and bribe their way into being considered a greater entity than the individual, no longer a subservient body.
This, of course, means that despite the U.S. Constitution's clause prohibiting it, the United States does grant certain "individuals" a title of nobility; it's called "Inc." .
Just my paltry offering of worthless babble.
-Hypr Geeque
This makes it impossible to memorize your passphrase (a bad thing if the file gets deleted/corrupted, or if new versions of your command-line tools produce slightly different output), but it makes it possible for you to honestly say to the court that you don't have the passphrase in your possession (and that the other side already had the passphrase in its possession, since they've got your box), and that you could only provide the passphrase if you were given full access to your computer (which they sure as hell aren't going to agree to)!
(Of course, I'm not advocating using this method for illegal activities, but am merely providing a way to protect your Constitutional rights from the heavy hand of Government and Big Mean Corporations, and to protect your sensitive, personal data from prying eyes ;-)
-Hypr Geeque
(This concludes my blatant sarcasm... for now...)
What it lacks in creativity it more than makes up for in dragon-sounding coolness, IMO.
-Hypr Geeque
"Chicken, again? But, Mom, it tastes just like iguana meat!"
-Hypr "Gonna-Get-My-Karma-Into-The-Double-Digits-Even-If It-Means-I-Have-To-Start-Counting-In-Binary" Geeque
(*Notice: No offense intended to any karma-whores, -pimps, -gigolos (or Karma Man-Whores) or any other types of karma-escorts or karma-adult-entertainment-professionals who may be out there. Admittedly I'd be squite a hypocrite if I did intend such offense >:)
-Hypr Geeque
P.S.: Bless all those wonderful moderators out there... (wink, wink; nudge, nudge ;-)
I guess this means that I can finally give up on porting nethack to my TI-89 calculator!
On the other hand, the PDA's handwriting recognition could mistake one of the single-letter commands for another, with disastrous results... (No, no! I said to 'z' the wand, not 'a'!!!)
-Hypr Geeque
P.S.: I actually was contemplating doing that... (I just discovered the game a week ago and boy is it addictive... I'm starting to dream in nethack!)
Ploys like this, and using vague, futuristic-sounding euphemisms like "globalization" seem to indicate that the Powers That Be want a single, unified world government, and it looks like individual rights are incompatible with their "vision".
While I certainly consider ridding the world of racism to be a noble goal, ridding the world of the expression of racism is simply "sweeping the dust under the rug", so to speak. That is, the spectre of racism is still there, it's simply been rendered invisible and removed from most people's attention.
Unfortunately, what you can't see can hurt you, and often hurts you more than a danger you saw coming.
As the top-level post suggests, the best way to combat racism is to inform the populace and teach our children the principles of tolerance, equality, and "live-and-let-live".
Unfortunately, anybody seeking to destroy civil liberties knows that those three principles, along with the concept of free will, are the pillars of freedom.
That means that the U.N.'s vision of combatting racism by keeping it hidden is not an attempt to foster a spirit of fraternity and equality among mankind, but rather to keep humanity tranquilized , and make us ever-more susceptible to further subjugation.
Sorry if this post seems a bit paranoiac, but it's crucial to keep an eye out for emerging trends, especially when those trends signify Bad Things.
So keep your vigilance eternal, folks.
-Hypr Geeque
No need for expensive training equipment like the "vomit comet", underwater tanks, and that whirly-gig-type-thingy-of-which-I've-forgotten-the -proper-name, when you can just simulate space missions, and the experience of weightlessness, in a virtual reality training program.
-Hypr Geeque