Censorship issue aside, you're the one that's delusional. "Caffeine, alcohol and nicottene are drugs too" is the whinny cry of pro-drug-legalization brats who do not have any other arguments. There are some good arguments, but that ain't one of them. You're right, there's much misinformation and propaganda out there about illegal drugs, but poiniting a finger at the law-abiding isn't helping your cause.
Many people do not use illegal drugs for one main reason... They are ILLEGAL. We believe in an orderly society, which has developed for itself a set of rules and guidelines of conduct. These rules are called the Law, and the line between right and wrong is drawn pretty thick across the Drug divide. If you really think you 'know better', run for office.
The Law is a living thing, and it depends on evolving ideas and the variable needs of society; but as it is now, Drugs (not to be confused with medicinal or legal lower-case drugs) are illegal. If enough people in our society agreed to legalize pot, I would still draw the line in the same place, leagal vs. illegal.
I'm willing and interested in discussing the issue, but being called a hypocrite for choosing to play by the rules really irks me. For the record, I've tried pot a few times, years ago. It didn't impress me, and as I "grew up" I decided that I would rather adibe by the Law than look for something which WOULD impress me. Game theory won out over some faux sense of moral absolutism, so sue me.
You (general) can justify your drug use by saying that other, legal substances are ALSO addictive and even more harmful, but what you're doing is still against the law. To some people, THAT makes a difference.
I sincerely hope that this explains the method behind my delusional madness.
Can Taco whip up a little option that will let us filter any and all articles containing the string "Katz"??
I filter out Katz gas for a reason. Having his 'work' snuck in by another author is an underhanded tactic, just like the recent story anout anti-drug riders burried in bankrupcy legislation.
Slashdot: You're supposed to be on the side of light, not darkness... Or do you get paid for every Kat'z article that we read?
Nevermind Julia Childs... The Stoned Chef Challenge!!
Yep, modelled after the Iron Chef competition: "Kazon! It looks like the challenger is chopping up the Coca leaves with a chrome mirror, and now he's putting some hash into a blender with some little pink pills!" "Ohh! I've never seen that before.. he's adding a few drops of... What is that? LSD?"
I consider myself a 'clean' geek. I used to be 'clean and sober' until the age of 25, then I discovered that Sam Adams and Guinness were not like the other beers, but that's another story.
Anyway, as a 'clean' geek, I do not use any type of drug, and tend to not be around in person when they are being used. However, this Bill scares the crap out of me for the following reasons:
1. It's embedded, like a virus, on a completely unrelated piece of legislation. I see this as perversely unethical, and think that the sponsors of this Bill should be tarred and feathered in the Grand Old tradition reserved for anti-social hoodlums. The idea that some members of Congress expect to slide this regulation right under the noses of their peers, assuming that the latter are either asleep or too stupid to notice, is systemically offensive. The audacity of this should result in the Bill's sponsors excommunication from the political arena.
2. The speed with which society turned on smokers (I don't, both my parents puff 2 packs/day - it's an addiction, not a habit) means that no single substance is safe. All it takes is a few well placed comments by the right people, and your food coloring of choice, additive, flavor enhancer or whatever is likely to single you out as some depraved addict.
3. I NEED my morning coffee. I WANT my afternoon JOLT. I CRAVE my evening tea. (See #2)
4. I feel that (even though I do not partake of the bounty of Mother Nature to the same extent as others) no person really has the right to impose their standards and morality on what weeds a person adds to their diet in the privacy of their own home. Certainly, there are complications with operating heavy machinery and the reliable functioning safety critical professionals, but we've addressed these problems vis a vis alcohol already. Make being 'clean' a condition of employment where it's required, and let people make up their own minds.
5. To paraphrase Voltaire: 'I do not agree with what you're saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' This is a FREE COUNTRY in name, and if this sort of Bill (see #1-#4) passes, it will be the height of hypocracy, and an embarassment before the rest of the world - like we really need to be laughed at again...
I'd keep going, but it would be redundant. This is a very huge issue, not just due to drugs but due to the doors it opens to the 'holier than thou' and the means by which it is being delivered into the Law of the Land. Disgusting!
No, I had never read the FAQ before now. Wish I had though; I would have written about Mercerism or keeping up with the Joneses through pets, and avoided the overlap.
Thanks for the reference, it's nice to know I'm not the only freak to sit through the movie frame by frame.
You've seen the movie, so you blab the plot. Nice, take the thril out of it for the rest of us for a few Karma points.
You COULD have been a bit more subtle, telling only a few details so we would have something to look forward to. You could have given us a sense of it, or named a few minor scenes that were somehow remarkable..
Now we all have the gist, and will only be getting eye-candy. You say it was too short, at 1.5 hours. Took much less then that to read your post.
Thanks a bunch Karma Crack-Whore. You could have teased us all night, and made us beg for more; but you settled for the 5 minute blowjob.
For me, the comparison tracks pretty closely. Dune was a good movie in it's own right (IMO). It shared quite a bit with the book as well, IMO. Having read the book, the movie was a good mapping. Either you agree or you do not.
Same with DADOES and Bladerunner. The movie did touch on the items you mention, but it did so within certain constraints. There is just too damn much in the original book to make a 1:1 translation to the big screen. Very few books go 1:1 with the screen - those that do are really bad books.
There was no Mercerism in the movie, the idea of artifical pets was barely touched on (Zhora's snake), there was no mood machine... You're right, in stark, literal terms, the two are totally different. But on a deeper level, the ideas of compassion (Mercerism), and one's place in the world (as you put it) (Deckard running away with Rachel to make their own life together) translate pretty well.
It all depends on how hard you squint, and how much you want handed to you on a silver platter (as opposed to thinking about it yourself and making the connections that way).
Now, for a book-based movie, with writter approval, that fell totally flat... Let's talk Johnny Mnemonic.:)
Here's something I wrote in 96, for a Sci-Fi lit class I took:
I have seen Blade Runner a number of times. I have read the Philip K. Dick book on which the movie is based. I have seen the film several more times since then, in such gory detail that I feel I know more about the movie then most people. I've read several interviews with cast and crew, and I know about the differences between the several versions of the movie in existence.
I can appreciate the movie on it's own merits, and I can see it as a skillful adaptation of the philosophy of P. K. Dick's book. I've become so familiar with the work, that the last few times I've watched it, I've decided to change my point of view. I approached the movie with a preconceived notion, and found a surprising number of substantiating facts and impressions to support my hypothesis. In this paper I will try to show that my alternative view of BladeRunner, though not the most straight forward, is valid and possibly correct.
I propose that Rick Deckard is in fact himself a replicant. I further propose that Gaff, a character not found in the original work by P. K. Dick, is the real Blade Runner and furthermore that he, Gaff, uses Deckard to do his dirty-work. To show that Gaff is Deckard's handler requires that I first show that Deckard needs handling, that he is a replicant. There are many instances in the film why this could be true.
Throughout the movie, replicants are shown as having a glow in their eyes. There is a slight glow in Leon's eyes as Dave Holden tests him for empathy. The artificial owl in the Tyrell building has eyes that glow. As Pris makes herself at home at J.F.Sebastian's apartment, her eyes have that same glow. So do the eyes of Roy as he speaks to Tyrell and at times while he hunts Deckard.
When Rachel and Deckard begin to fall in love her eyes have this very same glow. At this time Deckard's eyes also glow. This might only be a lighting technique, designed to show that Deckard is somehow connected to Rachel. But since the other replicants also have this glow in their eyes, Deckard is like all of the replicants. He is made to look like a replicant. Though this is the only visual hint that Deckard may be a replicant, it is reinforced with many insinuations of the same in the plot.
It is very striking that Deckard can climb the exterior of the rain drenched Bradbury building after Roy has dislocated two of his fingers. How could he do this? Very easily, if he is a physically superior replicant. He appears to be in pain and struggling, but this is because he believes that he is human, not because he necessarily is human.
Why would Deckard believe that he is human? For the same reason that Rachel initially believes that she is human, implanted memories. Deckard truly believes that he is Rick Deckard - a Blade Runner. He believes that he has always lived his current lifestyle; even that he was once married to a woman who called him 'sushi' due to his 'cold fish' personality. But he calls Rachel, a known replicant, at home and asks her to join him at Taffy Lewis's night club. By doing this Deckard acknowledges that a replicant can have a normal private live. If Rachel can, so can Deckard.
During the course of the movie, we learn that replicants treasure their memories, whether these are real or implanted makes no difference. We can infer that it is not enough for replicants to have memories, they need something tangible to make their memories seem real. Replicants keep photographs. Roy refers to Leon's lost photographs of Zhora as 'precious'; the taunt in his voice serves to show that Leon is extremely attached to them. Rachel offers a picture of herself as a little girl to Deckard, as proof of her humanity. She loses hope only after Deckard points out in gory detail that it is a false memory. Before then, it doesn't matter that the memory is implanted, she has a picture she can hold, proof that it really happened.
Deckard himself hoards photographs, his apartment is literally cluttered with them. This suggests that Deckard has memories that go back for generations. But didn't Tyrell himself tell Deckard that replicants can be better controlled through implantation of memories? If Deckard is a replicant he has the potential for causing a great deal of suffering to the humans that surround him daily. He must be kept under strong and constant control. This would require that he have a great deal of memories. He has pictures to prove that he does.
The most blatant suggestion that Deckard is a replicant comes from Rachel. At one point she asks him if he has ever taken the Voight-Kampff test himself. Rather then answer, Deckard conveniently and instantaneously falls asleep, 'like a switched off light', or a shut off machine.
All this certainly suggests that Deckard is a replicant, and if he is one, then he must somehow be manipulated in order to have him act as a Blade Runner. A replicant would not willingly hunt down other replicants. I propose that Gaff is the true Blade Runner, that he uses Deckard as his work-horse, and that his lieutenant - Bryant - is fully aware of this arrangement.
The opening scroll of the film clearly states that replicants are used where the work to be done is too hazardous for humans. The hunting of replicants is certainly hazardous work. After all, Dave Holden has been placed on life-support after being shot by Leon. Gaff certainly makes his job much less hazardous by having Deckard do the dirty-work for him. Gaff does his job as Blade Runner, but manages to keep himself out of danger. He monitors Deckard's performance without putting himself in Deckard's view. He chauffeurs Deckard to the precinct to meet Bryant, and takes him to the Tyrell building. Gaff also gets Deckard started on the hunt for Leon by joining him in his search of Leon's apartment. Other then these direct interactions, Gaff keeps to the shadows, emerging only to verify that replicants have been retired, or to make sure Deckard is doing his (Gaff's) job.
While Deckard is researching the snake-scale found in Leon's bath-tub, there is a police officer in the background. Though he might be going about routine police business, he could also be monitoring Deckard for Gaff. In fact it might even be Gaff himself in uniform. While Deckard is pursuing Zhora through the streets, an instant after he passes a Hari-Krishna procession, the careful viewer can make out a man in the crowd. This man is carefully watching Deckard run after Zhora. This man is Gaff. After Deckard retires Zhora, the police are on the scene as soon as her body hits the ground. How did they know to be there? Easily, Gaff was watching and notified them to stand by. Gaff also arrives shortly after Roy's death, again only to verify that the replicant is no longer on his list.
All conversations between Deckard, Gaff and Bryant seem to have a double meaning alluding to Deckard's replicant identity. After Deckard is escorted to the police precinct (by Gaff), Bryant informs him that "if you're not cop, you're little people" meaning both that if Deckard doesn't do as he is told he will be disposed of, and that Deckard is not much of a person, since he's not human. After Deckard retires Zhora, Bryant tells him "You look as bad as that skin job..." - meaning Zhora, and then comments to Gaff "You could learn a lot from this man, Gaff...". The former implies that Deckard looks to him like a replicant, and the latter that Deckard the replicant is doing a better job then his puppet master, Gaff, would do in person.
Following Deckard's retirement of both Roy and Pris, Gaff tells him: "You've done a man's job, Sir" referring to himself, as in 'you have done this man's job', or saying that 'you have done this job as well as a man.' Gaff's next comment: "I guess you're through." and Deckard's reply: "Finished!", could quite possibly signify that now that Gaff has no more use for him, Deckard expects Gaff to retire him. Gaff also tells Deckard "Too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?"... This last statement is particularly interesting since it shows that Gaff knows Deckard so well as to know of his plans to run away with Rachel. Gaff knows what Deckard is thinking. He knows Deckard's motivations, thoughts and dreams, as well as Deckard knows Rachel's memories. Deckard has seen Rachel's memory implants. Gaff must have seen Deckard's.
Gaff's deep understanding of Deckard's mind comes out through his origami. While in Bryant's office, Deckard is unwilling, and quite possibly afraid, to engage the missing replicants. Gaff folds an origami chicken out of a discarded napkin. "I know you" says Gaff through this action, "You're scared". Once Deckard gets involved in the detective work of hunting down the replicants, once he becomes excited to be searching Leon's apartment, Gaff makes a match-stick figure of a man with an erection. By doing so he is saying "I know you, this turns you on, you're getting off doing this job".
The most significant piece of origami, one that most definitelly shows that Gaff is inside of Deckard's head, is the tin-foil unicorn. After Gaff seemingly turns his back and allows Deckard to escape with Rachel, he leaves the unicorn on Deckard's door-step as if to say "I am always watching you, I know you're with her and neither of you is real. You are both myths, not really alive". An even deeper significance of the origami unicorn is available to the viewer of the Director's Cut version of Blade Runner. This version of the film includes Deckard's dream sequence about a real, living unicorn. The appearance of the origami unicorn at the end of the movie shows that Gaff knows Deckard's mind so well that he can even see into his dreams. For Gaff to be so familiar with what makes Deckard tick, he must certainly have seen Deckard's memory implants.
There is another, additional message contained in the tin-foil unicorn. As Gaff's last words to Deckard echo from the past: "Too bad she won't live", Gaff seems to say "Here, I'm leaving her for you". Deckard nods, as if in the realization that he will now have to live in fear (of losing Rachel), just as all other replicants before him have lived in fear of being retired.
Gaff's origami could also be seen as a form of subliminal mind-control over Deckard. The chicken, a symbol of fear, to instill anxiety and tension that would make him appear and behave like a real Blade Runner on the trail of rogue replicants. The aroused male figure to program Deckard with an excitement, an urgency and the desire to complete his job and achieve his goal. The unicorn, as a reinforcement of his psychological grasp on Deckard, to make Deckard feel like a prisoner in the Panopticon, always under scrutiny, and trying to hold on to a dream.
Through the origami unicorn and his other origami figures, his words to Deckard, and his constant presence in Deckard's shadow, Gaff is shown as being intimately familiar with, and in complete control of, Deckard. Deckard's show of unusual physical prowess, his sentiment for photographs and the replicant glow in his eyes all suggest that Deckard is a replicant.
This may be a far-fetched interpretation of the film, but considering the wealth of circumstantial evidence from the film, and the fact that the same implication is made in Dick's original book, it certainly is a valid one.
I agree with you, but the same can largely be said for any language. (we revisit the difference between generations again.:) )
All a language is, on a level below HTML vs C, is a set of instructions. HTML is a language in that sense, if it wasn't it would have been called HTMC.
Looping CAN be done with HTML - though it's pretty pointless to open a page in one of it's own frames.
HTML does not combine file types into a package, it only appears that way because HTML provides a browser with references to those other files.
If you extend HTML to include CGI... well, you've just gotten I/O, variables, looping, subroutines. CGI is what makes slashdot possible, not HTML.
And deep down, few languages actually include I/O and file manipulation 'commands' - all they have is access points to OS service routines - since HTML is so ubiquitous, it can not provide such an OS hook, but Win32HTML could. ActiveX anyone?
But you are right, HTML is a means of encoding content, not instructions. Interestingly, there are (professionally used) languages wherein the data content is the instructions.:) Happy hunting.
And this was precisely the point of my post, once I got done with the trip down memory-lane. Hell, Charles Babbage had it harder than Seymour Cray and Stever Wozniak put together.
I wish OOG_THE_CAVEMAN would chime in about how hard it was when he was a kid.. They had to do their computing with pebbles you know.:)
I certainly don't consider all PC-TNG folks as notorious crackers, for from it. You guys have an advantage over the dinosaurs. You don't need to suffer from 'trench-mind' caused by seeing the beast evolve. You don't remember some of the assumptions that turned out wrong, or some of the mistakes that were made because the tech was "not there yet".
The best example I can think of is AI. The generation before mine tried AI in earnest, and failed, and the field suffered a bad reputation as a result. My generation assumed AI couldn't be done right because of this, and instead only a relative few 'crack-pots' persued knowledge-bases and neural nets. They made respectable progress by trying that which most thought (knew) was impossible. Now the hardware is up to speed, new ideas have formed with old experience being twice removed from todays minds. AI CAN be done. Maybe not in your generation of hackers, but in the next one. The young teen YOU inspire into the field will have an even higher level of abstraction in his/her mind, and will make even bigger steps than you and I put together.
I used the term 'script kiddie' as hyperbole. To me it implies someone who uses tools without necessarily (or usually) having the knowledge of the details that make them work.
"I write my papers in Vi, but my professor insists on MS-Word95... Man! Doing all that markup and formatting is a bitch! Not to mention keeping up with the changes in technology."
My first computer experience was my father's ATARI-800 in, oh, '83? It worked on the TV screen and it played games on a cartridge. I flipped Pac-Man, and loved Joust. . He used it for work, I was 10, it took his time from me and I didn't like it.
My second computer experience was his new, $7000 PC-XT. A 20MB disk, and the exuberant upgrade to a full 640k RAM.. It had it's own amber monitor, and did graphics. He could do a lot more work with it, and it didn't play Pac-Man, but I could play around with it anyway.
My third computer experience was the TRS-80 in the back of my 6th grade classroom. It had BASIC, and I distinctly remember an argument with my teacher... We were supposed to print out name on the screen over and over. She told us what to type:
10 PRINT "My Name is Jabber" 20 GOTO 10
I put a comma at the end of line 10, since I thought it was cool to see it cat and wrap the output. Then I put a semi-colon there to print my name in four columns instead of the assigned single column.
I got yelled at in front of my friends for 'not following directions' (that's been the story of my life since BTW). I was told that what I did was wrong, while what I did was go beyond my teacher's knowledge. I knew that what I did was cool and fun, and so did my friends. My teacher knew they thought so, and I was always last in line to use the computer since then. But I started to really like that XT (still have it BTW).
After butting heads with my teacher over the format of a PRINT statement, and being right, I fell in love. In a few weeks of playing with the XT I wrote a BASIC program to generate AD&D characters, to roll 'dice' and serve as a Dungeon Master's assistant. Eventually, by 8th grade, it would seed dungeons with treasure and monsters - though I never got to the point of having it design a dungeon layout or keep an internal map during a game. Interests changed.
High-school had computers in a separate room and my travels didn't take me in there. It was used for typing class. I kept playing with the XT, which also had FORTRAN and C on it. I started to understand why my dad liked his boring job so much. I got a color upgrade for the XT and played around with graphics a bit, but it didn't fascinate me as much as security and interface stuff. I wrote a menu system/program launcher very much like Direct Access 5 in 10th grade and thought it to be trivial. I was very hurt when I saw it sell for $40 a few years later.
During college, I worked as a SysAdmin in a middle-school in the area. I was so jealous of the opportunities those kids had. 2 computer labs, networked together with a Novell 3.xx system. Win3.1, QBASIC, C...
All they did was play games. All their teachers did was write papers. What a waste.
I was the computer authority, and the demands placed on me usually involved clearing printer jams. I was again arguing with teachers about the right way to do things. They knew I was right, once again, except this time I was doing it in front of their peers, and not mine; and most importantly, I was making them seem ignorant in front of their students. The kids liked that and were much more interested in computers by the time I left. I hope a few took interest; most didn't I'm sure.
In retrospect though, I think that this phenomenon of a younger generation leading the way is not a phenomenon at all. It happens with all new technology. I've already seen the next generation NOT have the same level of skill or interest. They're what we lovingly refer to as Script Kiddies, they use higher level tools than we did. Those tools required our skills to create, but not to use. It's always been this way and always will be.
We had to copy tapes, they have Napster. Our Fathers had to do their own tune-ups on their own carburators, we just pop in a performance chip and go. Our granparents died of smallpox and polio, our parents got vaccinated. Extrapolation int the future is left as an exercise to the reader.
I read the article. That said, I had an uneasy feeling when I read that "A Yale computer scientist has published his views on what will be the next 15 years of computing." I've read similar prognostication by Negroponte and other hyper-intellectuals who have the luxury of sitting around all day theorizing, and schmoozing (yes, I mean that) corporate directors and especially government paper-pushers out of research funds.
What Gelernter outlines is a pipe-dream. It's a 'wouldn't it be nice' scenario full of whinning about what's wrong with the current approach - while there's nothing of the sort actually wrong. Yes, he's patented it - but only to sell the patent, I'm sure.
A book is a natural metaphor only because we've been using them for centuries. [sarc]I'd rather see an OS modelled after drawings made in dirt using a pointy stick.[/sarc] Actually, there's nothing wrong with having files. Naming may be a bit awkward, but only if you let Windows do your file management without your awareness - now the argument seems biased, doesn't it? I know EXACTLY where my files are, and what their names mean. I was raised on DOS, and use UNIX as much as Windows, and I explicitly put my files where they belong. Same as I do with real paper files. Step 1, unset MS-Office defaults. Step 2, decide on directory tree hierarchy. Step 3, do my work. None of this "My Documents" crap.
What Gelernter is suggesting with his streaming OS , is an office with a secretary who has assistant secretaries for assistant secretaries. It's all files ultimately, but you're so far removed from that level, you don't realize it anymore. Bah! You want something done, do it yourself. "letter1.txt"
This sort of forecasting from a Yale Comp Sci is like listening to a Harvard Physics Professor talk about the feasibility of super-luminar velocity travel, if only we can accelerate our frame of reference in some sort of 'warp bubble'.. Of course! You make it sound so simple!! A 'warp bubble'! Why didn't *I* think of that?
Beware the mathematical proof that starts with "assume a spherical cow"! I got yer life-stream right here, buddy.
I've said it before, and I won't say it again since it's obvious. Insert randomly bad data to make it not profitable to continue data collection.
Swap Stop&Shop cards with buddies at the water cooler - send them cross-country - best still, make up a fake identity which only buys vice-foods, and watch those pre-approved credit card offers roll in for your imaginary friend.
Get a PO box. It's not a big help, but it's another level of indirection that an automated system has to filter. I have one. 99% of what I get there is junk, and 99% of that is from Micros~1 because I registered a few products..
Put spider-poison in your web page. A bunch of interesting words, and counter-referencing URLs in an HTML comment do wonders - but also confuse worthwhile serach engines. YMMV.
Encrypt. Even if you have nothing better to do it with but ROT13.
Why not IP6? Do you really have to ask? Whom would it inconvenience?
Your phone may not be tapped, and no one is bouncing an IR laser beam off of your living room window, but if anyone in the US thinks they are not under a microscope, they are sadly mistaken.
You have a credit card? You use it? You're profiled. Your spending habits drive the issuing of credit and the supply of goods to your geographical area.
You have a wholesale club or grocery store card? You're a statistic. Your nutritional habits are monitored by your friendly neighborhood grocer, and your area is blanketted for health risks based on this information.
You have medical insurance? You're analysed for risk, allergies, immunizations, tests. Ever have a VD test? Pregnancy test? Cancer test? Those premiums just don't want to drop, do they? Doctors don't release your personal information, that would be unethical. HMO's are just protecting their investment.
You have a car? Then you not only have a license and registration, you also have insurance. You buy gas with on credit? If you buy a lot, your insurance premium reflects that you drive a lot. You must inform the DMV within 2 weeks of changing residence, but it's ok, since you're in a free country.
You have a phone? You're cross-linked with the people you call, and the above information is crunched for your 'circle of friends'. Ever call overseas? Which country?
Computers were invented to do math, but showed tremedous utility in data processing. It is naive to think that this sort of profiling does not go on in the most money-oriented, statisticaly driven, heavily computerized country in the world. People may not be organized enough to plan something like this, but corporations are, after all, there is huge money at stake.
Reality check for the future... You give blood? Which database will those genetic tests end up in? You have a LoJack? A cell-phone? No need to tell anyone where you're going, they already know. Wouldn't you like to protect your new born son against abduction through a genetic sample taken at birth? Just wait until his girlfriend's father checks that information in 16 years, for a nominal fee of course...
Of course WAP is under fire. Of course WAP will be placed in the minority, and eventually phased out. WAPs have been running this country ever since it's inception and the time of reckoning is at hand. No longer will the minorities bow down to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ruling class!!
At first glance this article reminded me of a gag gift my grandfather used to have.
It was a gas powered cigarette lighter. It was actually a regular lighter, with a plastic tube that you were supposed to stick down your pants. Gas powered...
I just had this vision of plastic tubes extending up from a pair of Nikes... No thanks, my sneakers smell bad enough as it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Censorship issue aside, you're the one that's delusional. "Caffeine, alcohol and nicottene are drugs too" is the whinny cry of pro-drug-legalization brats who do not have any other arguments. There are some good arguments, but that ain't one of them. You're right, there's much misinformation and propaganda out there about illegal drugs, but poiniting a finger at the law-abiding isn't helping your cause.
Many people do not use illegal drugs for one main reason... They are ILLEGAL. We believe in an orderly society, which has developed for itself a set of rules and guidelines of conduct. These rules are called the Law, and the line between right and wrong is drawn pretty thick across the Drug divide. If you really think you 'know better', run for office.
The Law is a living thing, and it depends on evolving ideas and the variable needs of society; but as it is now, Drugs (not to be confused with medicinal or legal lower-case drugs) are illegal. If enough people in our society agreed to legalize pot, I would still draw the line in the same place, leagal vs. illegal.
I'm willing and interested in discussing the issue, but being called a hypocrite for choosing to play by the rules really irks me. For the record, I've tried pot a few times, years ago. It didn't impress me, and as I "grew up" I decided that I would rather adibe by the Law than look for something which WOULD impress me. Game theory won out over some faux sense of moral absolutism, so sue me.
You (general) can justify your drug use by saying that other, legal substances are ALSO addictive and even more harmful, but what you're doing is still against the law. To some people, THAT makes a difference.
I sincerely hope that this explains the method behind my delusional madness.
Can Taco whip up a little option that will let us filter any and all articles containing the string "Katz"??
I filter out Katz gas for a reason. Having his 'work' snuck in by another author is an underhanded tactic, just like the recent story anout anti-drug riders burried in bankrupcy legislation.
Slashdot: You're supposed to be on the side of light, not darkness... Or do you get paid for every Kat'z article that we read?
s/ISP/ASP/g
Asps are adders. Adders need logs to multiply.
If ignorance is bliss, you must be fucking ORGASMIC!
Damn that felt good!
Nevermind Julia Childs... The Stoned Chef Challenge!!
Yep, modelled after the Iron Chef competition:
"Kazon! It looks like the challenger is chopping up the Coca leaves with a chrome mirror, and now he's putting some hash into a blender with some little pink pills!" "Ohh! I've never seen that before.. he's adding a few drops of... What is that? LSD?"
I consider myself a 'clean' geek. I used to be 'clean and sober' until the age of 25, then I discovered that Sam Adams and Guinness were not like the other beers, but that's another story.
Anyway, as a 'clean' geek, I do not use any type of drug, and tend to not be around in person when they are being used. However, this Bill scares the crap out of me for the following reasons:
1. It's embedded, like a virus, on a completely unrelated piece of legislation. I see this as perversely unethical, and think that the sponsors of this Bill should be tarred and feathered in the Grand Old tradition reserved for anti-social hoodlums. The idea that some members of Congress expect to slide this regulation right under the noses of their peers, assuming that the latter are either asleep or too stupid to notice, is systemically offensive. The audacity of this should result in the Bill's sponsors excommunication from the political arena.
2. The speed with which society turned on smokers (I don't, both my parents puff 2 packs/day - it's an addiction, not a habit) means that no single substance is safe. All it takes is a few well placed comments by the right people, and your food coloring of choice, additive, flavor enhancer or whatever is likely to single you out as some depraved addict.
3. I NEED my morning coffee. I WANT my afternoon JOLT. I CRAVE my evening tea. (See #2)
4. I feel that (even though I do not partake of the bounty of Mother Nature to the same extent as others) no person really has the right to impose their standards and morality on what weeds a person adds to their diet in the privacy of their own home. Certainly, there are complications with operating heavy machinery and the reliable functioning safety critical professionals, but we've addressed these problems vis a vis alcohol already. Make being 'clean' a condition of employment where it's required, and let people make up their own minds.
5. To paraphrase Voltaire: 'I do not agree with what you're saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' This is a FREE COUNTRY in name, and if this sort of Bill (see #1-#4) passes, it will be the height of hypocracy, and an embarassment before the rest of the world - like we really need to be laughed at again...
I'd keep going, but it would be redundant. This is a very huge issue, not just due to drugs but due to the doors it opens to the 'holier than thou' and the means by which it is being delivered into the Law of the Land. Disgusting!
No, I had never read the FAQ before now. Wish I had though; I would have written about Mercerism or keeping up with the Joneses through pets, and avoided the overlap.
Thanks for the reference, it's nice to know I'm not the only freak to sit through the movie frame by frame.
You've seen the movie, so you blab the plot. Nice, take the thril out of it for the rest of us for a few Karma points.
You COULD have been a bit more subtle, telling only a few details so we would have something to look forward to. You could have given us a sense of it, or named a few minor scenes that were somehow remarkable..
Now we all have the gist, and will only be getting eye-candy. You say it was too short, at 1.5 hours. Took much less then that to read your post.
Thanks a bunch Karma Crack-Whore. You could have teased us all night, and made us beg for more; but you settled for the 5 minute blowjob.
The ArsTechnica /box seems to feed off of the "Recent:" box on the ArsTechnica page, not off of the articles mentioned on the main page itself.
/box picks it up w/o trouble.
:)
Once Ars puts a front page story into the "Recent:" category, the Ars
The same thing happenned with the "Securing Win2k" story Ars ran last week. It pays to visit Ars in person now and again.
For me, the comparison tracks pretty closely.
:)
Dune was a good movie in it's own right (IMO). It shared quite a bit with the book as well, IMO. Having read the book, the movie was a good mapping. Either you agree or you do not.
Same with DADOES and Bladerunner. The movie did touch on the items you mention, but it did so within certain constraints. There is just too damn much in the original book to make a 1:1 translation to the big screen. Very few books go 1:1 with the screen - those that do are really bad books.
There was no Mercerism in the movie, the idea of artifical pets was barely touched on (Zhora's snake), there was no mood machine... You're right, in stark, literal terms, the two are totally different. But on a deeper level, the ideas of compassion (Mercerism), and one's place in the world (as you put it) (Deckard running away with Rachel to make their own life together) translate pretty well.
It all depends on how hard you squint, and how much you want handed to you on a silver platter (as opposed to thinking about it yourself and making the connections that way).
Now, for a book-based movie, with writter approval, that fell totally flat... Let's talk Johnny Mnemonic.
Here's something I wrote in 96, for a Sci-Fi lit class I took:
I have seen Blade Runner a number of times. I have read the Philip K. Dick book on which the movie is based. I have seen the film several more times since then, in such gory detail that I feel I know more about the movie then most people. I've read several interviews with cast and crew, and I know about the differences between the several versions of the movie in existence.
I can appreciate the movie on it's own merits, and I can see it as a skillful adaptation of the philosophy of P. K. Dick's book. I've become so familiar with the work, that the last few times I've watched it, I've decided to change my point of view. I approached the movie with a preconceived notion, and found a surprising number of substantiating facts and impressions to support my hypothesis. In this paper I will try to show that my alternative view of BladeRunner, though not the most straight forward, is valid and possibly correct.
I propose that Rick Deckard is in fact himself a replicant. I further propose that Gaff, a character not found in the original work by P. K. Dick, is the real Blade Runner and furthermore that he, Gaff, uses Deckard to do his dirty-work.
To show that Gaff is Deckard's handler requires that I first show that Deckard needs handling, that he is a replicant. There are many instances in the film why this could be true.
Throughout the movie, replicants are shown as having a glow in their eyes. There is a slight glow in Leon's eyes as Dave Holden tests him for empathy. The artificial owl in the Tyrell building has eyes that glow. As Pris makes herself at home at J.F.Sebastian's apartment, her eyes have that same glow. So do the eyes of Roy as he speaks to Tyrell and at times while he hunts Deckard.
When Rachel and Deckard begin to fall in love her eyes have this very same glow. At this time Deckard's eyes also glow. This might only be a lighting technique, designed to show that Deckard is somehow connected to Rachel. But since the other replicants also have this glow in their eyes, Deckard is like all of the replicants. He is made to look like a replicant. Though this is the only visual hint that Deckard may be a replicant, it is reinforced with many insinuations of the same in the plot.
It is very striking that Deckard can climb the exterior of the rain drenched Bradbury building after Roy has dislocated two of his fingers. How could he do this? Very easily, if he is a physically superior replicant. He appears to be in pain and struggling, but this is because he believes that he is human, not because he necessarily is human.
Why would Deckard believe that he is human? For the same reason that Rachel initially believes that she is human, implanted memories. Deckard truly believes that he is Rick Deckard - a Blade Runner. He believes that he has always lived his current lifestyle; even that he was once married to a woman who called him 'sushi' due to his 'cold fish' personality. But he calls Rachel, a known replicant, at home and asks her to join him at Taffy Lewis's night club. By doing this Deckard acknowledges that a replicant can have a normal private live. If Rachel can, so can Deckard.
During the course of the movie, we learn that replicants treasure their memories, whether these are real or implanted makes no difference. We can infer that it is not enough for replicants to have memories, they need something tangible to make their memories seem real. Replicants keep photographs. Roy refers to Leon's lost photographs of Zhora as 'precious'; the taunt in his voice serves to show that Leon is extremely attached to them. Rachel offers a picture of herself as a little girl to Deckard, as proof of her humanity. She loses hope only after Deckard points out in gory detail that it is a false memory. Before then, it doesn't matter that the memory is implanted, she has a picture she can hold, proof that it really happened.
Deckard himself hoards photographs, his apartment is literally cluttered with them. This suggests that Deckard has memories that go back for generations. But didn't Tyrell himself tell Deckard that replicants can be better controlled through implantation of memories? If Deckard is a replicant he has the potential for causing a great deal of suffering to the humans that surround him daily. He must be kept under strong and constant control. This would require that he have a great deal of memories. He has pictures to prove that he does.
The most blatant suggestion that Deckard is a replicant comes from Rachel. At one point she asks him if he has ever taken the Voight-Kampff test himself. Rather then answer, Deckard conveniently and instantaneously falls asleep, 'like a switched off light', or a shut off machine.
All this certainly suggests that Deckard is a replicant, and if he is one, then he must somehow be manipulated in order to have him act as a Blade Runner. A replicant would not willingly hunt down other replicants. I propose that Gaff is the true Blade Runner, that he uses Deckard as his work-horse, and that his lieutenant - Bryant - is fully aware of this arrangement.
The opening scroll of the film clearly states that replicants are used where the work to be done is too hazardous for humans. The hunting of replicants is certainly hazardous work. After all, Dave Holden has been placed on life-support after being shot by Leon. Gaff certainly makes his job much less hazardous by having Deckard do the dirty-work for him. Gaff does his job as Blade Runner, but manages to keep himself out of danger. He monitors Deckard's performance without putting himself in Deckard's view. He chauffeurs Deckard to the precinct to meet Bryant, and takes him to the Tyrell building. Gaff also gets Deckard started on the hunt for Leon by joining him in his search of Leon's apartment. Other then these direct interactions, Gaff keeps to the shadows, emerging only to verify that replicants have been retired, or to make sure Deckard is doing his (Gaff's) job.
While Deckard is researching the snake-scale found in Leon's bath-tub, there is a police officer in the background. Though he might be going about routine police business, he could also be monitoring Deckard for Gaff. In fact it might even be Gaff himself in uniform. While Deckard is pursuing Zhora through the streets, an instant after he passes a Hari-Krishna procession, the careful viewer can make out a man in the crowd. This man is carefully watching Deckard run after Zhora. This man is Gaff. After Deckard retires Zhora, the police are on the scene as soon as her body hits the ground. How did they know to be there? Easily, Gaff was watching and notified them to stand by. Gaff also arrives shortly after Roy's death, again only to verify that the replicant is no longer on his list.
All conversations between Deckard, Gaff and Bryant seem to have a double meaning alluding to Deckard's replicant identity. After Deckard is escorted to the police precinct (by Gaff), Bryant informs him that "if you're not cop, you're little people" meaning both that if Deckard doesn't do as he is told he will be disposed of, and that Deckard is not much of a person, since he's not human. After Deckard retires Zhora, Bryant tells him "You look as bad as that skin job..." - meaning Zhora, and then comments to Gaff "You could learn a lot from this man, Gaff...". The former implies that Deckard looks to him like a replicant, and the latter that Deckard the replicant is doing a better job then his puppet master, Gaff, would do in person.
Following Deckard's retirement of both Roy and Pris, Gaff tells him: "You've done a man's job, Sir" referring to himself, as in 'you have done this man's job', or saying that 'you have done this job as well as a man.' Gaff's next comment: "I guess you're through." and Deckard's reply: "Finished!", could quite possibly signify that now that Gaff has no more use for him, Deckard expects Gaff to retire him. Gaff also tells Deckard "Too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?"... This last statement is particularly interesting since it shows that Gaff knows Deckard so well as to know of his plans to run away with Rachel. Gaff knows what Deckard is thinking. He knows Deckard's motivations, thoughts and dreams, as well as Deckard knows Rachel's memories. Deckard has seen Rachel's memory implants. Gaff must have seen Deckard's.
Gaff's deep understanding of Deckard's mind comes out through his origami. While in Bryant's office, Deckard is unwilling, and quite possibly afraid, to engage the missing replicants. Gaff folds an origami chicken out of a discarded napkin. "I know you" says Gaff through this action, "You're scared". Once Deckard gets involved in the detective work of hunting down the replicants, once he becomes excited to be searching Leon's apartment, Gaff makes a match-stick figure of a man with an erection. By doing so he is saying "I know you, this turns you on, you're getting off doing this job".
The most significant piece of origami, one that most definitelly shows that Gaff is inside of Deckard's head, is the tin-foil unicorn. After Gaff seemingly turns his back and allows Deckard to escape with Rachel, he leaves the unicorn on Deckard's door-step as if to say "I am always watching you, I know you're with her and neither of you is real. You are both myths, not really alive". An even deeper significance of the origami unicorn is available to the viewer of the Director's Cut version of Blade Runner. This version of the film includes Deckard's dream sequence about a real, living unicorn. The appearance of the origami unicorn at the end of the movie shows that Gaff knows Deckard's mind so well that he can even see into his dreams. For Gaff to be so familiar with what makes Deckard tick, he must certainly have seen Deckard's memory implants.
There is another, additional message contained in the tin-foil unicorn. As Gaff's last words to Deckard echo from the past: "Too bad she won't live", Gaff seems to say "Here, I'm leaving her for you". Deckard nods, as if in the realization that he will now have to live in fear (of losing Rachel), just as all other replicants before him have lived in fear of being retired.
Gaff's origami could also be seen as a form of subliminal mind-control over Deckard. The chicken, a symbol of fear, to instill anxiety and tension that would make him appear and behave like a real Blade Runner on the trail of rogue replicants. The aroused male figure to program Deckard with an excitement, an urgency and the desire to complete his job and achieve his goal. The unicorn, as a reinforcement of his psychological grasp on Deckard, to make Deckard feel like a prisoner in the Panopticon, always under scrutiny, and trying to hold on to a dream.
Through the origami unicorn and his other origami figures, his words to Deckard, and his constant presence in Deckard's shadow, Gaff is shown as being intimately familiar with, and in complete control of, Deckard. Deckard's show of unusual physical prowess, his sentiment for photographs and the replicant glow in his eyes all suggest that Deckard is a replicant.
This may be a far-fetched interpretation of the film, but considering the wealth of circumstantial evidence from the film, and the fact that the same implication is made in Dick's original book, it certainly is a valid one.
Omigawd! This is actually for real??
I thought someone had managed to troll CNN with the "My boss asked me to back-up the Internet for him" gag.
Wouldn't be the first time they 'reported' on a hoax.
I agree with you, but the same can largely be said for any language. (we revisit the difference between generations again. :) )
:) Happy hunting.
All a language is, on a level below HTML vs C, is a set of instructions. HTML is a language in that sense, if it wasn't it would have been called HTMC.
Looping CAN be done with HTML - though it's pretty pointless to open a page in one of it's own frames.
HTML does not combine file types into a package, it only appears that way because HTML provides a browser with references to those other files.
If you extend HTML to include CGI... well, you've just gotten I/O, variables, looping, subroutines. CGI is what makes slashdot possible, not HTML.
And deep down, few languages actually include I/O and file manipulation 'commands' - all they have is access points to OS service routines - since HTML is so ubiquitous, it can not provide such an OS hook, but Win32HTML could. ActiveX anyone?
But you are right, HTML is a means of encoding content, not instructions. Interestingly, there are (professionally used) languages wherein the data content is the instructions.
And this was precisely the point of my post, once I got done with the trip down memory-lane. Hell, Charles Babbage had it harder than Seymour Cray and Stever Wozniak put together.
:)
I wish OOG_THE_CAVEMAN would chime in about how hard it was when he was a kid.. They had to do their computing with pebbles you know.
I certainly don't consider all PC-TNG folks as notorious crackers, for from it. You guys have an advantage over the dinosaurs. You don't need to suffer from 'trench-mind' caused by seeing the beast evolve. You don't remember some of the assumptions that turned out wrong, or some of the mistakes that were made because the tech was "not there yet".
The best example I can think of is AI. The generation before mine tried AI in earnest, and failed, and the field suffered a bad reputation as a result. My generation assumed AI couldn't be done right because of this, and instead only a relative few 'crack-pots' persued knowledge-bases and neural nets. They made respectable progress by trying that which most thought (knew) was impossible. Now the hardware is up to speed, new ideas have formed with old experience being twice removed from todays minds. AI CAN be done. Maybe not in your generation of hackers, but in the next one. The young teen YOU inspire into the field will have an even higher level of abstraction in his/her mind, and will make even bigger steps than you and I put together.
I used the term 'script kiddie' as hyperbole. To me it implies someone who uses tools without necessarily (or usually) having the knowledge of the details that make them work.
"I write my papers in Vi, but my professor insists on MS-Word95... Man! Doing all that markup and formatting is a bitch! Not to mention keeping up with the changes in technology."
My first computer experience was my father's ATARI-800 in, oh, '83? It worked on the TV screen and it played games on a cartridge. I flipped Pac-Man, and loved Joust. . He used it for work, I was 10, it took his time from me and I didn't like it.
My second computer experience was his new, $7000 PC-XT. A 20MB disk, and the exuberant upgrade to a full 640k RAM.. It had it's own amber monitor, and did graphics. He could do a lot more work with it, and it didn't play Pac-Man, but I could play around with it anyway.
My third computer experience was the TRS-80 in the back of my 6th grade classroom. It had BASIC, and I distinctly remember an argument with my teacher... We were supposed to print out name on the screen over and over. She told us what to type:
10 PRINT "My Name is Jabber"
20 GOTO 10
I put a comma at the end of line 10, since I thought it was cool to see it cat and wrap the output. Then I put a semi-colon there to print my name in four columns instead of the assigned single column.
I got yelled at in front of my friends for 'not following directions' (that's been the story of my life since BTW). I was told that what I did was wrong, while what I did was go beyond my teacher's knowledge. I knew that what I did was cool and fun, and so did my friends. My teacher knew they thought so, and I was always last in line to use the computer since then. But I started to really like that XT (still have it BTW).
After butting heads with my teacher over the format of a PRINT statement, and being right, I fell in love. In a few weeks of playing with the XT I wrote a BASIC program to generate AD&D characters, to roll 'dice' and serve as a Dungeon Master's assistant. Eventually, by 8th grade, it would seed dungeons with treasure and monsters - though I never got to the point of having it design a dungeon layout or keep an internal map during a game. Interests changed.
High-school had computers in a separate room and my travels didn't take me in there. It was used for typing class. I kept playing with the XT, which also had FORTRAN and C on it. I started to understand why my dad liked his boring job so much. I got a color upgrade for the XT and played around with graphics a bit, but it didn't fascinate me as much as security and interface stuff. I wrote a menu system/program launcher very much like Direct Access 5 in 10th grade and thought it to be trivial. I was very hurt when I saw it sell for $40 a few years later.
During college, I worked as a SysAdmin in a middle-school in the area. I was so jealous of the opportunities those kids had. 2 computer labs, networked together with a Novell 3.xx system. Win3.1, QBASIC, C...
All they did was play games. All their teachers did was write papers. What a waste.
I was the computer authority, and the demands placed on me usually involved clearing printer jams. I was again arguing with teachers about the right way to do things. They knew I was right, once again, except this time I was doing it in front of their peers, and not mine; and most importantly, I was making them seem ignorant in front of their students. The kids liked that and were much more interested in computers by the time I left. I hope a few took interest; most didn't I'm sure.
In retrospect though, I think that this phenomenon of a younger generation leading the way is not a phenomenon at all. It happens with all new technology. I've already seen the next generation NOT have the same level of skill or interest. They're what we lovingly refer to as Script Kiddies, they use higher level tools than we did. Those tools required our skills to create, but not to use. It's always been this way and always will be.
We had to copy tapes, they have Napster. Our Fathers had to do their own tune-ups on their own carburators, we just pop in a performance chip and go. Our granparents died of smallpox and polio, our parents got vaccinated. Extrapolation int the future is left as an exercise to the reader.
I read the article. That said, I had an uneasy feeling when I read that "A Yale computer scientist has published his views on what will be the next 15 years of computing." I've read similar prognostication by Negroponte and other hyper-intellectuals who have the luxury of sitting around all day theorizing, and schmoozing (yes, I mean that) corporate directors and especially government paper-pushers out of research funds.
What Gelernter outlines is a pipe-dream. It's a 'wouldn't it be nice' scenario full of whinning about what's wrong with the current approach - while there's nothing of the sort actually wrong. Yes, he's patented it - but only to sell the patent, I'm sure.
A book is a natural metaphor only because we've been using them for centuries. [sarc]I'd rather see an OS modelled after drawings made in dirt using a pointy stick.[/sarc] Actually, there's nothing wrong with having files. Naming may be a bit awkward, but only if you let Windows do your file management without your awareness - now the argument seems biased, doesn't it? I know EXACTLY where my files are, and what their names mean. I was raised on DOS, and use UNIX as much as Windows, and I explicitly put my files where they belong. Same as I do with real paper files. Step 1, unset MS-Office defaults. Step 2, decide on directory tree hierarchy. Step 3, do my work. None of this "My Documents" crap.
What Gelernter is suggesting with his streaming OS , is an office with a secretary who has assistant secretaries for assistant secretaries. It's all files ultimately, but you're so far removed from that level, you don't realize it anymore. Bah! You want something done, do it yourself. "letter1.txt"
This sort of forecasting from a Yale Comp Sci is like listening to a Harvard Physics Professor talk about the feasibility of super-luminar velocity travel, if only we can accelerate our frame of reference in some sort of 'warp bubble'.. Of course! You make it sound so simple!! A 'warp bubble'! Why didn't *I* think of that?
Beware the mathematical proof that starts with "assume a spherical cow"! I got yer life-stream right here, buddy.
I've said it before, and I won't say it again since it's obvious. Insert randomly bad data to make it not profitable to continue data collection.
Swap Stop&Shop cards with buddies at the water cooler - send them cross-country - best still, make up a fake identity which only buys vice-foods, and watch those pre-approved credit card offers roll in for your imaginary friend.
Get a PO box. It's not a big help, but it's another level of indirection that an automated system has to filter. I have one. 99% of what I get there is junk, and 99% of that is from Micros~1 because I registered a few products..
Put spider-poison in your web page. A bunch of interesting words, and counter-referencing URLs in an HTML comment do wonders - but also confuse worthwhile serach engines. YMMV.
Encrypt. Even if you have nothing better to do it with but ROT13.
Why not IP6? Do you really have to ask? Whom would it inconvenience?
Your phone may not be tapped, and no one is bouncing an IR laser beam off of your living room window, but if anyone in the US thinks they are not under a microscope, they are sadly mistaken.
You have a credit card? You use it? You're profiled. Your spending habits drive the issuing of credit and the supply of goods to your geographical area.
You have a wholesale club or grocery store card? You're a statistic. Your nutritional habits are monitored by your friendly neighborhood grocer, and your area is blanketted for health risks based on this information.
You have medical insurance? You're analysed for risk, allergies, immunizations, tests. Ever have a VD test? Pregnancy test? Cancer test? Those premiums just don't want to drop, do they? Doctors don't release your personal information, that would be unethical. HMO's are just protecting their investment.
You have a car? Then you not only have a license and registration, you also have insurance. You buy gas with on credit? If you buy a lot, your insurance premium reflects that you drive a lot. You must inform the DMV within 2 weeks of changing residence, but it's ok, since you're in a free country.
You have a phone? You're cross-linked with the people you call, and the above information is crunched for your 'circle of friends'. Ever call overseas? Which country?
Computers were invented to do math, but showed tremedous utility in data processing. It is naive to think that this sort of profiling does not go on in the most money-oriented, statisticaly driven, heavily computerized country in the world. People may not be organized enough to plan something like this, but corporations are, after all, there is huge money at stake.
Reality check for the future... You give blood? Which database will those genetic tests end up in? You have a LoJack? A cell-phone? No need to tell anyone where you're going, they already know. Wouldn't you like to protect your new born son against abduction through a genetic sample taken at birth? Just wait until his girlfriend's father checks that information in 16 years, for a nominal fee of course...
Paranoid? Probably. Wrong? Probably not.
Crude: Gnarly Nads Unbound!
Economic: Great New Utilitarianism!
For RMS: Glory Not Unwelcome.
Sorry.. I'll go back to work now.
Of course WAP is under fire. Of course WAP will be placed in the minority, and eventually phased out. WAPs have been running this country ever since it's inception and the time of reckoning is at hand. No longer will the minorities bow down to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ruling class!!
Whaa?? Umm... Nevermind.
There's a great deal of animal research going on right now on the Internet. For example, RFC-2795 is well worth reading.
RFC-2795 is likely a good solution. If not, then it's proposed outcome will provide a suitable solution in due time.
At first glance this article reminded me of a gag gift my grandfather used to have.
It was a gas powered cigarette lighter. It was actually a regular lighter, with a plastic tube that you were supposed to stick down your pants. Gas powered...
I just had this vision of plastic tubes extending up from a pair of Nikes... No thanks, my sneakers smell bad enough as it is.