Even the RIAA is not going after people selling used or shrinkwrapped CD's.
Actually, they went after used CD vendors years ago because of "lost sales" over the fact that CDs don't degrade in audio quality with repeated usage (records and tapes degrade from friction with the needles and tape heads). The RIAA lost.
I used to use Bladeenc at 256kbps to make all my MP3s. But when I switched to a Fraunhofer-based package, I realized that high frequencies were suffering in the Blade encoding, and sharp sounds (like the sound of two drumsticks colliding) were severely blunted. I haven't tried LAME yet, but according to r3mix.net, it's better than the Fraunhofer. But then again, they didn't give much for comment on the specifics of the actual perceived sound quality between Fraunhofer and LAME. Human ears, not frequency diagrams, are the only real benchmark.
Boy, the assumptions about my point of view are rolling in today.
Do you need Napster to function correctly? This guy needed that marijuana, and I agree that the decision to take it from him was bad. But it shows you what courts are willing to do. If the courts shut down Napster, the people who fight for its return won't have much of an argument. If you can tell me one thing that Napster provides that cannot be done by anything else, and that you absolutely must have, then you do have an argument.
No, I'm implying that items for which the overwhelming majority of its use is illegal. Napster is primarily used to download copyrighted material, and anyone telling me otherwise would be kidding themselves.
Here in Saskatchewan, we recently had a case where a man who was growing medicinal marijuana had it taken away from him even though he absolutely needed it to function. He couldn't even walk without it, yet it was still confiscated because it was illegal. Now, this might not be a perfect case, but don't think that because Napster has legitimate uses that it automatically becomes okay.
Yes, but does the mere existence of a legitimate use make it okay? I'm sure there's some legitimate use for marijuana and assault rifles, but they're both illegal in many places.
Well, on the one side we have this guy. On the other side, we have many people, including security experts that say that the preview pane activates the VBScript automatically. Who's right?
How we all laughed at the threat of the "Goodtimes" virus. Infect a PC just by reading an e-mail? Ha!
In the year 2000, we would have reason to take Goodtimes seriously.
(Really now, does anyone see any reason for Outlook to execute VBScripts in the preview window? You can make a case for the existence of scripting, but this one little detail was what allowed it to spread so fast.)
...is totally ludicrous. Come on, the use of underground sewage has reduced the spreading of disease as much if not more than simple water supply. It is far and away one of the most taken for granted things we have the privilege of having. There only thing in my mind that could compete with sewage systems for number one is refrigeration, and even then it'd be a tough call.
Not to be inflammatory, but I'd hardly think that Linux users are nVidia's main customer base. No, their main customer base is game players, and like it or not, anyone whose #1 priority in a computer is games is running Windows. True, this may change if Linux develops a strong foothold in the gaming market, but right now, out of all the games in my CD rack, only two (Q1 and Q2, neither of which I have installed at the moment) can run on Linux.
Don't get me wrong, I know and understand that open source drivers can be a Good Thing, but saying that open source fans are nVidia's bread and butter is stretching things more than a little.
Re:Going through the features...
on
ATI Radeon 256
·
· Score: 1
I got my info from www.extremehw.con. The proclaimed 1500Mtexels is the "effective" texel fill rate with the "Hyper-Z" technology or whatever they're calling it. At a core clock of 200MHz, it's 2 pixels/clock with up to 3 textures/pixel. That's 400MPix actual at 1200MTex. They just say 500MPix and 1500MTex because they use a deferred scheme to not render onscreen textures ups the efficiency.
Going through the features...
on
ATI Radeon 256
·
· Score: 1
...this looks kinda like a Matrox chip. Not quite the fastest, but it has a buttload of features. The fillrate numbers are kinda inflated since they only render onscreen textures, and it runs at 200MHz. So the actual numbers should be 400MPixels and 1200MTexels. Not really competitive with the speculated GeForce2 GTS specs at 800MPixels (at least, I think this is the case) and 1600 MTexels, that is unless ATI's pricing is better. 32MB GF2s are apparently going to be $349US. Ah, well. There's no point in passing any final judgement until the damn thing's on the shelves where we can get at it, so I won't go any further.
The trend away from hard copy docs disturbs me. Heck, we're even starting to see motherboards with online-only manuals, which are useless when your computer is in front of you in pieces.
I'm going to try to learn Linux this summer, and I know damn well that a good hard copy book will help big time. Sure, I have a copy of Sam's Teach Yourself Linux in 24 Hours in PDF format, but that won't help if I screw something up and it won't boot, period. And Adobe's acrobat reader is the only viewer that can render it worth a damn, and they don't have a search-capable PDF reader for Linux available. I could print it out, but that's really clumsy. 400 8.5"x11" pages without professional binding? Get real.
Having a hard copy of my motherboard's manual has saved my butt a lot of times. My HP48G calculator came with a 600-page user's guide, whereas the 49G's docs are mostly in PDF format at HP's website. Hard copy is just plain more convenient and easier to deal with. Flipping through pages is far easier with my fingers than with a mouse.
Wow, if the Motion Picture Association has been doing that all this time, I'd hate to think of what the RIAA is capable of. Good thing the RIAA's busy commoditizing movies.
Q1: I had never heard of digital audio tape until years after it was introduced. It never achieved any tangible market penetration that I saw. DVD, on the other hand, has reached the point where most people are generally aware of it and what it can do. So I can't say whether or not it'll be the new standard, but the way things are, it looks likely.
Q2: Boycotts that seek to turn the actions of a corporation around almost never achieve that goal. Intel giving in on the Pentium bug processor swap is the only one I can think of.
But that doesn't mean that fighting is fruitless. It's just far more likely that the angry protestors will start up their own camp. That's what happened with.ARC compression; the owner of.ARC got into a fuss over PKARC and Phil Katz just went and made PKZIP. Everybody switched, and nobody uses.ARC anymore. Hollywood became the center of the movie industry because moviemakers were pissed at Edison's monopolistic control of movies in New York. Everyone packed up their bags and left for California and look at things now.
And then there's a story of a Finnish programmer who was unimpressed with the choice of operating systems available to him. (I know there was no ill will in this case, but it's a great example of what can happen when a person believes they can do something)
Just saying no to them and doing nothing else would have a minimal effect at best, but doing something like supporting an alternative or in this case, contributing to the EFF could go a long way. If you have enough faith in your Congressman/Member of Parliament/whatever political representative to do something about it, then write to them. We're all in this together.
The people offended by the lewdness of the TV shows you cite are far from being the entire target audience of those shows. Married with Children and South Park are television shows. They're not real. If people are offended by them, then they really should lighten up. They have the choice not to watch them. The entire target audience of the movie industry, however, is being ripped off in a very real manner and I'm not going to accept being told to lighten up. And I don't have much of a choice of who to get my movies from, do I?
Don't get me wrong here. I understand where you're coming from. I may have been harsh with that last post and for that I apologize. I also do understand that my actions aren't likely to make them turn around, but that doesn't mean I'm going to allow myself to get ripped off by them.
Linux users aren't the only people affected by the tactics of the MPAA!
What about the people who buy a DVD for the home theatre and want to make a VHS copy for the bedroom? DVDs in Europe often have fewer features than North American DVDs. Try telling the enthusiast who owns many imported CDs that he can't import DVDs. Hell, what will people think if they were to be informed of the outright price fixing that's going on with region coding? People detest restrictions placed on them, even if they're not seriously affected. Intel caught hell from its customers over the Pentium bug, even though the bug itself didn't cause any serious problems for anybody. What people were angry about was Intel's response (Read this). In the DVD case, there are real effects of the MPAA's schemes. Anybody from set-top box users to computer users could potentially be affected.
The business practices we're fighting affect the entire damn DVD customer base. Not just Linux users (might I point out that I'm not one of them, yet I still am vocal on the matter). I don't care how much of a difference it makes, I'm casting my vote.
So tell me, how far will they have to go before they lose your patronage?
But then our chief weapon against the evils of DVD encryption is lost. The content is still encrypted. Those MPAA idiots are still locking us into their commercial interests, and are not thinking about the future long-term culteral heritage. 100 years laters, archivists interested in what we see, how we think will laugh at us for trying to protect the unprotectable. The region-locks are also provide too much power over how we use the technology.
Ah, the weakness of society.
I myself am outraged by what the MPAA and the DVD people are trying to do. And the way I'm dealing with it is to not buy/rent/watch DVDs!
Saying "jeez, what they're doing is really bad" and then turning around and buying their product is like sticking a big "rape me hard" sign on your back. If you don't agree with their business practices, don't give them your patronage! It floors me how people often neglect to vote in the most effective way - with their dollars.
People are inherently selfish. We're seeing a lot of that here, from those whose main argument was they they couldn't watch The Matrix on their Linux boxes, and are now thinking that they have no argument since DVD playback through licensed players are coming to Linux. What about those running *BSD? Any other Unix? Hell, what about BeOS? Wasn't Be meant for multimedia? Sure, there's open source drivers for two decoder cards out there (H+ & DXr2) that could theoretically be rewritten for any other OS, but why should we be so limited in our choice of hardware? If I run BeOS on a system that doesn't have a free PCI slot for a DVD decoder card, does that mean I should be shut out of watching DVDs on that system?
Our "chief weapon" never was that "Linux users couldn't play DVDs". Our chief weapon is that we are being denied fair use and that the MPAA and DVDCCA are illegally profitting from various tactics in the DVD market (player licensing and region coding/price fixing). That and some legitimate users (such as myself, whose copy of SoftDVD won't work with the ViperV550 it legally came with unless I use hideously out of date drivers) are being sorely inconvenienced by these schemes.
In my second term EE design class this year, we had a mantra: "If the customer ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." And why should the customer pay for soemthing that doesn't satisfy them or outright pisses them off? Anyone who detests the MPAA and DVDCCA's tactics should vote with their wallets. We're the customers and we have to show them that we ain't happy.
------------------------------------- Hello, my name is Basmati Kasaar. I am suffering from rare and deadly diseases, poor scores on final exams, extreme virginity, fear of being kidnapped and executed by anal electrocution, and guilt for not forwarding out 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe that if you send them on, then that poor 6 year old girl in Arkansas with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her off to the traveling freak show.
Do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you and everyone you send "his" email to $1000? How stupid are you?
Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I'll get laid by every Playboy model in the magazine! What a bunch of bullshit. So basically, this message is a big FUCK YOU to all the people out there who have nothing better to do than to sendme stupid chain mail forwards.
Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my apartment and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing the chain which was started by Jesus in 5 A.D. and was brought to this country by midget pilgrims on the Mayflower and if it makes it to the year 2000, it'll be in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest continuous streak of blatant stupidity.
If you're going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing. I've seen all the "send this to 50 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being" forwards about 90 times.
THE FOUR BASIC TYPES OF CHAIN LETTERS:
Chain Letter Type 1:
(scroll down)
Make a wish!!!
No, really, go on and make one!!!
Oh please, they'll never go out with you!!!
Wish something else!!!
Not that, you pervert!!
Is your finger getting tired yet?
STOP!!!!
Wasn't that fun?
Hope you made a great wish
Now, to make you feel guilty, here's what I'll do. First of all, if you don't send this to 5096 people in the next 5 seconds, you will be raped by a mad goat and thrown off a high building into a pile of manure. It's true!
Because, THIS letter isn't like all of those fake ones, THIS one is TRUE!! Really!!! Here's how it goes:
*Send this to 1 person: One person will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*Send this to 2-5 people: 2-5 people will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*Send this to 5-10 people: 5-10 people will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter, and may form a plot on your life.
*Send this to 10-20 people: 10-20 people will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter and will napalm your house.
Thanks!!!! Good Luck!!!
------------------------------------------------ ------- Chain Letter Type 2
Hello, and thank you for reading this letter. You see, there is a starving little boy in Baklaliviatatlaglooshen who has no arms, no legs, no parents, and no goats. This little boy's life could be saved, because for every time you pass this on, a dollar will be donated to the Little Starving Legless Armless Goatless Boy from Baklaliviatatlaglooshen Fund.
Oh, and remember, we have absolutely no way of counting the emails sent and this is all a complete load of bullshit. So go on, reach out. Send this to 5 people in the next 47 seconds.
Oh, and a reminder - if you accidentally send this to 4 or 6 people, you will die instantly.
Thanks again!!
------------------------------------------------ ------- Chain Letter Type 3
Hi there!! This chain letter has been in existence since 1897. This is absolutely incredible because there was no email then and probably not as many sad pricks with nothing better to do.
So this is how it works:
Pass this on to 15,067 people in the next 7 minutes or something horrible will happen to you like:
*Bizarre Horror Story #1
Miranda Pinsley was walking home from school on Saturday. She had recently received this letter and ignored it. She then tripped in a crack in the sidewalk, fell into the sewer, was gushed down a drainpipe in a flood of poopie, and went flying out over a waterfall.
Not only did she smell nasty, she died.
This Could Happen To You!!!
*Bizarre Horror Story #2
Dexter Bip, a 13 year old boy, got a chain letter in his mail and ignored it. Later that day, he was hit by a car and so was his boyfriend (hey, some people swing that way). They both died and went to hell and were cursed to eat adorable kittens every day for eternity.
This Could Happen To You Too!!!
Remember, you could end up just like Pinsley and Bip. Just send this letter to all of your loser friends, and everything will be okay.
------------------------------------------------ ------- Chain Letter Type 4:
As if you care, here is a poem that I wrote. Send it to every one of your friends.
Friends
A friend is someone who is always at your side,
A friend is someone who likes you even though you stink of shit, and your breath smells like you've been eating cat food,
A friend is someone who likes you even though you're as ugly as a hat full of arseholes,
A friend is someone who cleans up for you after you've soiled yourself,
A friend is someone who stays with you all night while you cry about your sad, sad life,
A friend is someone who pretends they like you when they really think you should be raped by mad goats, then thrown to vicious dogs,
A friend is someone who scrubs your toilet, vacuums and then gets the cheque and leaves and doesn't speak much English... no, sorry that's the cleaning lady.
A friend is not someone who sends you chain letters because he wants his wish of being rich to come true.
Now pass this on! If you don't, you'll never have sex ever again.
If you get some chain letter that's threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it. If it's funny, send it on.
Don't piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth, who's been tied to a dead elephant for 27 years, whose only saviour is the 5 cents per letter he'll receive if you forward this mail, otherwise you'll end up like Miranda. Right?
Now forward this to everyone you know otherwise you'll find all your knickers missing tomorrow morning.
The Electrical Engineering program I'm in has a class called "Electrical Engineering Design 1" which is actually a class where we use pure logic for problem skills. An example is where we're given a circuit with a few basic components and told that the source has a step input charateristic - then we sketch the response of the circuit. No complex calculations or Laplace transforms or whatever. We just ask "What will the response look like?" Then we look at it and think "well, this current will be initially zero and will exponentially rise to a steady state of V/R, and the change in flux will cause an exponentially decaying voltage on this coil...." and so on. We just think.
There are other examples. Ever try to numerically find the capacitance per unit length of a coax-type cable where the inner conductor is actually off-center? It can be a real bitch numerically - but applying logic with flow lines and equipotentials can result in a graphical solution that may not be precise to the 19th decimal point, but it's a ballpark figure that's pretty damn easy.
You're at the corner of second avenue and fifteenth street. Assume the street numbers increase as you go south and the avenue numbers increase as you go east. Assuming you cannot move westward or southward, how many different routes are there to get to the corner of 7th avenue and 20th street?
Apply logic and it's dead easy. Trying numerically can be rubber room material.
There may be Universities that teach people how to solve complex differential equations in their heads, but this class focuses on sheer problem solving skills. And that's exactly what engineering is - problem solving.
This only adds to the theory that *all* DVD players have some way to circumvent the region coding. If/when the region coding scam is revealed as a violation of world trade laws, ther'll have to be some way of undoing the region lock on all DVD players.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they went after used CD vendors years ago because of "lost sales" over the fact that CDs don't degrade in audio quality with repeated usage (records and tapes degrade from friction with the needles and tape heads). The RIAA lost.
Yeah, I find UF a bit (ahem) preachy as well. You'll probably get a good laugh then out of Loser Friendly over at SomethingAwful.
No, the first Athlon chipset was AMD's own 750 "Irongate". It was always notorious with GeForces.
I used to use Bladeenc at 256kbps to make all my MP3s. But when I switched to a Fraunhofer-based package, I realized that high frequencies were suffering in the Blade encoding, and sharp sounds (like the sound of two drumsticks colliding) were severely blunted. I haven't tried LAME yet, but according to r3mix.net, it's better than the Fraunhofer. But then again, they didn't give much for comment on the specifics of the actual perceived sound quality between Fraunhofer and LAME. Human ears, not frequency diagrams, are the only real benchmark.
Do you need Napster to function correctly? This guy needed that marijuana, and I agree that the decision to take it from him was bad. But it shows you what courts are willing to do. If the courts shut down Napster, the people who fight for its return won't have much of an argument. If you can tell me one thing that Napster provides that cannot be done by anything else, and that you absolutely must have, then you do have an argument.
Here in Saskatchewan, we recently had a case where a man who was growing medicinal marijuana had it taken away from him even though he absolutely needed it to function. He couldn't even walk without it, yet it was still confiscated because it was illegal. Now, this might not be a perfect case, but don't think that because Napster has legitimate uses that it automatically becomes okay.
Yes, but does the mere existence of a legitimate use make it okay? I'm sure there's some legitimate use for marijuana and assault rifles, but they're both illegal in many places.
Well, on the one side we have this guy. On the other side, we have many people, including security experts that say that the preview pane activates the VBScript automatically. Who's right?
There was a bunch of different language translators for the Gameboy about ten years ago...
In the year 2000, we would have reason to take Goodtimes seriously.
(Really now, does anyone see any reason for Outlook to execute VBScripts in the preview window? You can make a case for the existence of scripting, but this one little detail was what allowed it to spread so fast.)
...is totally ludicrous. Come on, the use of underground sewage has reduced the spreading of disease as much if not more than simple water supply. It is far and away one of the most taken for granted things we have the privilege of having. There only thing in my mind that could compete with sewage systems for number one is refrigeration, and even then it'd be a tough call.
Not to be inflammatory, but I'd hardly think that Linux users are nVidia's main customer base. No, their main customer base is game players, and like it or not, anyone whose #1 priority in a computer is games is running Windows. True, this may change if Linux develops a strong foothold in the gaming market, but right now, out of all the games in my CD rack, only two (Q1 and Q2, neither of which I have installed at the moment) can run on Linux.
Don't get me wrong, I know and understand that open source drivers can be a Good Thing, but saying that open source fans are nVidia's bread and butter is stretching things more than a little.
I got my info from www.extremehw.con. The proclaimed 1500Mtexels is the "effective" texel fill rate with the "Hyper-Z" technology or whatever they're calling it. At a core clock of 200MHz, it's 2 pixels/clock with up to 3 textures/pixel. That's 400MPix actual at 1200MTex. They just say 500MPix and 1500MTex because they use a deferred scheme to not render onscreen textures ups the efficiency.
...this looks kinda like a Matrox chip. Not quite the fastest, but it has a buttload of features. The fillrate numbers are kinda inflated since they only render onscreen textures, and it runs at 200MHz. So the actual numbers should be 400MPixels and 1200MTexels. Not really competitive with the speculated GeForce2 GTS specs at 800MPixels (at least, I think this is the case) and 1600 MTexels, that is unless ATI's pricing is better. 32MB GF2s are apparently going to be $349US. Ah, well. There's no point in passing any final judgement until the damn thing's on the shelves where we can get at it, so I won't go any further.
I'm going to try to learn Linux this summer, and I know damn well that a good hard copy book will help big time. Sure, I have a copy of Sam's Teach Yourself Linux in 24 Hours in PDF format, but that won't help if I screw something up and it won't boot, period. And Adobe's acrobat reader is the only viewer that can render it worth a damn, and they don't have a search-capable PDF reader for Linux available. I could print it out, but that's really clumsy. 400 8.5"x11" pages without professional binding? Get real.
Having a hard copy of my motherboard's manual has saved my butt a lot of times. My HP48G calculator came with a 600-page user's guide, whereas the 49G's docs are mostly in PDF format at HP's website. Hard copy is just plain more convenient and easier to deal with. Flipping through pages is far easier with my fingers than with a mouse.
Wow, if the Motion Picture Association has been doing that all this time, I'd hate to think of what the RIAA is capable of. Good thing the RIAA's busy commoditizing movies.
Q2: Boycotts that seek to turn the actions of a corporation around almost never achieve that goal. Intel giving in on the Pentium bug processor swap is the only one I can think of.
But that doesn't mean that fighting is fruitless. It's just far more likely that the angry protestors will start up their own camp. That's what happened with .ARC compression; the owner of .ARC got into a fuss over PKARC and Phil Katz just went and made PKZIP. Everybody switched, and nobody uses .ARC anymore. Hollywood became the center of the movie industry because moviemakers were pissed at Edison's monopolistic control of movies in New York. Everyone packed up their bags and left for California and look at things now.
And then there's a story of a Finnish programmer who was unimpressed with the choice of operating systems available to him. (I know there was no ill will in this case, but it's a great example of what can happen when a person believes they can do something)
Just saying no to them and doing nothing else would have a minimal effect at best, but doing something like supporting an alternative or in this case, contributing to the EFF could go a long way. If you have enough faith in your Congressman/Member of Parliament/whatever political representative to do something about it, then write to them. We're all in this together.
Don't get me wrong here. I understand where you're coming from. I may have been harsh with that last post and for that I apologize. I also do understand that my actions aren't likely to make them turn around, but that doesn't mean I'm going to allow myself to get ripped off by them.
Linux users aren't the only people affected by the tactics of the MPAA!
What about the people who buy a DVD for the home theatre and want to make a VHS copy for the bedroom? DVDs in Europe often have fewer features than North American DVDs. Try telling the enthusiast who owns many imported CDs that he can't import DVDs. Hell, what will people think if they were to be informed of the outright price fixing that's going on with region coding? People detest restrictions placed on them, even if they're not seriously affected. Intel caught hell from its customers over the Pentium bug, even though the bug itself didn't cause any serious problems for anybody. What people were angry about was Intel's response (Read this). In the DVD case, there are real effects of the MPAA's schemes. Anybody from set-top box users to computer users could potentially be affected.
The business practices we're fighting affect the entire damn DVD customer base. Not just Linux users (might I point out that I'm not one of them, yet I still am vocal on the matter). I don't care how much of a difference it makes, I'm casting my vote.
So tell me, how far will they have to go before they lose your patronage?
Ah, the weakness of society.
I myself am outraged by what the MPAA and the DVD people are trying to do. And the way I'm dealing with it is to not buy/rent/watch DVDs!
Saying "jeez, what they're doing is really bad" and then turning around and buying their product is like sticking a big "rape me hard" sign on your back. If you don't agree with their business practices, don't give them your patronage! It floors me how people often neglect to vote in the most effective way - with their dollars.
People are inherently selfish. We're seeing a lot of that here, from those whose main argument was they they couldn't watch The Matrix on their Linux boxes, and are now thinking that they have no argument since DVD playback through licensed players are coming to Linux. What about those running *BSD? Any other Unix? Hell, what about BeOS? Wasn't Be meant for multimedia? Sure, there's open source drivers for two decoder cards out there (H+ & DXr2) that could theoretically be rewritten for any other OS, but why should we be so limited in our choice of hardware? If I run BeOS on a system that doesn't have a free PCI slot for a DVD decoder card, does that mean I should be shut out of watching DVDs on that system?
Our "chief weapon" never was that "Linux users couldn't play DVDs". Our chief weapon is that we are being denied fair use and that the MPAA and DVDCCA are illegally profitting from various tactics in the DVD market (player licensing and region coding/price fixing). That and some legitimate users (such as myself, whose copy of SoftDVD won't work with the ViperV550 it legally came with unless I use hideously out of date drivers) are being sorely inconvenienced by these schemes.
In my second term EE design class this year, we had a mantra: "If the customer ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." And why should the customer pay for soemthing that doesn't satisfy them or outright pisses them off? Anyone who detests the MPAA and DVDCCA's tactics should vote with their wallets. We're the customers and we have to show them that we ain't happy.
Artists to Napster: Drop dead!
I didn't write this, but it's perfectly relevant.
- -------
- -------
- -------
- -----------
-------------------------------------
Hello, my name is Basmati Kasaar. I am suffering from rare and deadly diseases, poor scores on final exams, extreme virginity, fear of being kidnapped and executed by anal electrocution, and guilt for not forwarding out 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe that if you send them on, then that poor 6 year old girl in Arkansas with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her off to the traveling freak show.
Do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you and everyone you send "his" email to $1000? How stupid are you?
Ooooh, looky here! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I'll get laid by every Playboy model in the magazine! What a bunch of bullshit. So basically, this message is a big FUCK YOU to all the people out there who have nothing better to do than to sendme stupid chain mail forwards.
Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my apartment and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing the chain which was started by Jesus in 5 A.D. and was brought to this country by midget pilgrims on the Mayflower and if it makes it to the year 2000, it'll be in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest continuous streak of blatant stupidity.
If you're going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing. I've seen all the "send this to 50 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being" forwards about 90 times.
THE FOUR BASIC TYPES OF CHAIN LETTERS:
Chain Letter Type 1:
(scroll down)
Make a wish!!!
No, really, go on and make one!!!
Oh please, they'll never go out with you!!!
Wish something else!!!
Not that, you pervert!!
Is your finger getting tired yet?
STOP!!!!
Wasn't that fun?
Hope you made a great wish
Now, to make you feel guilty, here's what I'll do. First of all, if you don't send this to 5096 people in the next 5 seconds, you will be raped by a mad goat and thrown off a high building into a pile of manure. It's true!
Because, THIS letter isn't like all of those fake ones, THIS one is TRUE!! Really!!!
Here's how it goes:
*Send this to 1 person: One person will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*Send this to 2-5 people: 2-5 people will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*Send this to 5-10 people: 5-10 people will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter, and may form a plot on your life.
*Send this to 10-20 people: 10-20 people will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter and will napalm your house.
Thanks!!!! Good Luck!!!
-----------------------------------------------
Chain Letter Type 2
Hello, and thank you for reading this letter. You see, there is a starving little boy in Baklaliviatatlaglooshen who has no arms, no legs, no parents, and no goats. This little boy's life could be saved, because for every time you pass this on, a dollar will be donated to the Little Starving Legless Armless Goatless Boy from Baklaliviatatlaglooshen Fund.
Oh, and remember, we have absolutely no way of counting the emails sent and this is all a complete load of bullshit. So go on, reach out. Send this to 5 people in the next 47 seconds.
Oh, and a reminder - if you accidentally send this to 4 or 6 people, you will die instantly.
Thanks again!!
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Chain Letter Type 3
Hi there!! This chain letter has been in existence since 1897. This is absolutely incredible because there was no email then and probably not as many sad pricks with nothing better to do.
So this is how it works:
Pass this on to 15,067 people in the next 7 minutes or something horrible will happen to you like:
*Bizarre Horror Story #1
Miranda Pinsley was walking home from school on Saturday. She had recently received this letter and ignored it. She then tripped in a crack in the sidewalk, fell into the sewer, was gushed down a drainpipe in a flood of poopie, and went flying out over a waterfall.
Not only did she smell nasty, she died.
This Could Happen To You!!!
*Bizarre Horror Story #2
Dexter Bip, a 13 year old boy, got a chain letter in his mail and ignored it. Later that day, he was hit by a car and so was his boyfriend (hey, some people swing that way). They both died and went to hell and were cursed to eat adorable kittens every day for eternity.
This Could Happen To You Too!!!
Remember, you could end up just like Pinsley and Bip. Just send this letter to all of your loser friends, and everything will be okay.
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Chain Letter Type 4:
As if you care, here is a poem that I wrote. Send it to every one of your friends.
Friends
A friend is someone who is always at your side,
A friend is someone who likes you even though you stink of shit, and your breath smells like you've been eating cat food,
A friend is someone who likes you even though you're as ugly as a hat full of arseholes,
A friend is someone who cleans up for you after you've soiled yourself,
A friend is someone who stays with you all night while you cry about your sad, sad life,
A friend is someone who pretends they like you when they really think you should be raped by mad goats, then thrown to vicious dogs,
A friend is someone who scrubs your toilet, vacuums and then gets the cheque and leaves and doesn't speak much English...
no, sorry that's the cleaning lady.
A friend is not someone who sends you chain letters because he wants his wish of being rich to come true.
Now pass this on! If you don't, you'll never have sex ever again.
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The point being?
If you get some chain letter that's threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life, delete it. If it's funny, send it on.
Don't piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth, who's been tied to a dead elephant for 27 years, whose only saviour is the 5 cents per letter he'll receive if you forward this mail, otherwise you'll end up like Miranda. Right?
Now forward this to everyone you know otherwise you'll find all your knickers missing tomorrow morning.
There are other examples. Ever try to numerically find the capacitance per unit length of a coax-type cable where the inner conductor is actually off-center? It can be a real bitch numerically - but applying logic with flow lines and equipotentials can result in a graphical solution that may not be precise to the 19th decimal point, but it's a ballpark figure that's pretty damn easy.
You're at the corner of second avenue and fifteenth street. Assume the street numbers increase as you go south and the avenue numbers increase as you go east. Assuming you cannot move westward or southward, how many different routes are there to get to the corner of 7th avenue and 20th street?
Apply logic and it's dead easy. Trying numerically can be rubber room material.
There may be Universities that teach people how to solve complex differential equations in their heads, but this class focuses on sheer problem solving skills. And that's exactly what engineering is - problem solving.
Ah, the Konami code. I lost count of how many games they used that one in. What the hell. Time to fire up NESticle.
This only adds to the theory that *all* DVD players have some way to circumvent the region coding. If/when the region coding scam is revealed as a violation of world trade laws, ther'll have to be some way of undoing the region lock on all DVD players.