Our government is just trying to watch their backs. Keep folks from having guns, and they can't fight back when we roll into their town to violate their other rights.
Sounds like paranoid drivel.. but, you know, I think there's something to that.
If you wanted to subvert the goverment, you know what would be really useful? A big EMP gun. It doesn't actually kill anyone without a pacemaker, but it really levels the playing field in a revolution situation. And look what's illegal...
Mostly, I just really want an EMP gun. I'm very bitter that I'm not allowed to have one.
Unforunately my generalization was speaking more toward the quake 3 and other online only genre of PC games.
I had a similar conversation to this with a traditional (Dungeons and Dragons-style RPGs) gamer. He claimed that gaming was dead. When asked why, he answered that the game itself hadn't declined - it was just that the card "RPGs" like Magic: The Gathering had stolen away most of gaming's core constituency.
I think it's the same deal with computer games. I mean, I catch myself falling into the trap all the time. I have Balder's Gate II on my computer, which people are telling me is very good, but I've never played it. Why? Because every time I have some free time, I think "Do I really want to learn a whole complicated system and try to remember everything everyone's telling me? No.. actually I just want to shoot people in the face with the sniper rifle." And then I play Tribes.
There will always be computer games which improve on previous computer games in every way. The question is whether anyone will play them.
You know, it's funny, but most of the people shooting each other over heroin and cocaine prohibition don't have computers.
I'm going to make a social observation. Normally, one prefaces social observations with, "I am not a racist; these are just the facts." However, what I'm going to say is probably somehow racist, so I will make no such disclaimer.
Anyone who's read the numbers know that upper-middle class kids with internet access do not commit the majority of crimes. The majority of crimes, actually, are committed by underclass minorities who do not have internet access.
Occasionally, a fairly well-to-do kid will snap after being picked on for long enough, and will pump bullets into everyone he sees. In 1991, two years before Doom, when the most violent game I had was probably either SPACEWAR.EXE or Pool of Radiance, I was actively plotting to drive my mom's SUV through my middle school playground at 80 MPH. You beat a kid up every day for long enough, and he's going to want to kill you. I don't think his cultural influences matter one bit.
Nonsense would be more like one of the following:
1. EENY-OONY-WANAH! EENY-OONY-WANAH! (Gary Larson)
2. Tris is sure to shirr the deers out (R.E.M.)
3. Rarely is the question asked: 'Is our children learning?' (George W. Bush)
PERHAPS you should check to make sure that FOUR PEOPLE haven't said the same thing already.
Slashdotters are really good at 1) missing jokes; 2) making semantic corrections; 3) priding themselves on unimportant scientific distinctions. Slashdotters are not really good at 1) READING BEFORE THEY POST; 2) picking up chicks; 3) READING BEFORE THEY POST.
Depending on which moderator gets here first, this post will either be -1, Flamebait, or +3, Funny.
That's a logical way to look at it, but there's another level of depth.
Resources tend to carry over from generation to generation. Most people end up in exactly the same social class as their father, with exceptions. Therefore, if you are a doctor's son, chances are, you'll have access to a computer, a good private school, safety, etc., and may very well go on to become a doctor.
If you're a janitor's son, you probably have access to much, much less. Getting into college is therefore going to be pretty tough.
Affirmative action was our way to try to attempt to vault blacks out of the classes they had been placed in through discrimination. To some degree, it worked. Probably time for it to end, though.
I've done a lot of thinking about that, actually. Nanotechnology looks like it might end the war on drugs. Why? Because people won't actually need drugs - nanobots could, in theory, affect our brains however they were programmed.
Therefore, and this is highly theoretical, our brains could be tuned to be a) faster and smarter, b) constantly stoned, or c) infatuated with Ross Perot.
No kidding. Just last week I built a self-replicating robot that rips apart any carbon structures it finds and makes copies of itself. I thought it was pretty impressive, but now some clueless frat boy with a Ph.D. is going to end up getting the position I rightfully deserve.
The size wil [sic] probably drop by half every 8-12 months.
Then you can use the leftover space in the NOC to install an actual refrigerator! And you can put all kinds of stuff in it, like six-packs of bee.. uh... soda.
Making an optical switch from a physical little piece of glass mounted over silver and moving it as quickly as possible is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Seems analogous to making a hard drive that ran by hammering grooves into silly putty with a tiny, tiny jackhammer.
This has almost nothing to do with the RIAA or the MPAA. It has nothing to do with Beowulf Clusters or the CueCat or Ayn Rand. It doesn't even have much to do with Linux or Rob Malda or RMS and his livestock habits. It isn't a story about the post-Columbine era or the alienation of the geek culture or the failure of the DMCA.
This is, instead, a story about a big clunky horrible switch that, in ten years, will be the size of a frisbee and which we will all happily take for granted.
W. Bush is the devil.
Al Gore is not the devil, but he has an annoying tendency to fuck everything up.
Ralph Nader's social policy is perfect. His economic policy will make us all very poor.
The Libertarian party stands an even chance of plunging us into chaos.
Come on, man, just last week I pulled out my $9.95 Casio and set it to "Rock Beat" and did a rap of "The Real Slim Shady". I forgot most of the lyrics, but it's still pretty good. I wanted to edit out the part where my mom told me to turn it down because she was on the phone, but I accidentally taped eighteen seconds of ABBA in the middle right after she stopped talking instead. Anyway, it's got to be worth at least $5 to someone.
Hey, I'm a relatively well-payed systems developer, but everyone knows the whole point of fast food restaurant visits is to rob them blind of condiments.
After all, they're big evil corporations, and their marketing sucks so much that it pisses me off and they're lucky I stop at petty theft.
It's not your music... It may be your copy, but the music belongs to the artists.
This is generally untrue. A few bands (Metallica, R.E.M.) retain control over their own music. The vast majority immediately sign it over to their record label. A few never wrote it in the first place.
Yeah, the powers-that-be really, really want you to notice the two examples that actually worked. Of course they do. They'd rather have people sitting in gyms singing "kum-by-ya" than actually doing something that threatens their power.
Moderators: I'm disapointed in you for +'ing this guys reply, and not the original message.
Clearly, you don't understand moderation.
Moderation is intended to bring the signal out of the noise, not to turn a discussion site into a dogma site.
For example, if this was the '50s, and we were having a discussion on racism, a good moderator would moderate up the best arguments both for and against racism. They would moderate down penis birds, "me toos", claims that CmdrTaco is a homosexual, etc.
Of course, it doesn't work that way, and moderators tend to moderate what they like, i.e. "Linux Rules!" gets a +1, and "Linux Sucks!" gets a -1. But posting stuff like "You should have moderate this guy down because my idea is better" only makes the problem worse. What moderators should do is moderate them both up, if they're intelligent and on-topic, and let the reader decide which one is correct.
Don't be disappointed in the moderators for bringing out interesting points instead of squashing them because they're not what your parents taught you was true.
I certainly do not argue with the point that clashing with Valenti on logical grounds is important. In fact, it's everything. But making it clear that we are also extremely dissatisfied with the RIAA, and not just arguing on some theoretical logical ground they can easily ignore, is also important.
It's also the only reason we ever saw the PROTESTERS doing their thing. Otherwise, we would have had some stupid blerb on page 13 of the paper that said "Idiots in Sea Turtle Costumes Picket WTO".
Look, you mark him down flamebait, but he's right.
Slashdot articles from the last two weeks:
1. Hey! Come to the Slashdot Party in San Diego in 4 hours!
2. Hey! We're speaking at MIT tonight!
3. Hey! There's a Linux Expo in Denver this weekend!
4. Hey! Valenti's having a debate 36 minutes ago, you can still catch the tail end!
Now, I know Slashdot's more a discussion group than a news group, despite the misnomer "news for nerds". Still, it would be nice to occasionally get a little advance notice of things. I live in Reno, so I actually could have been at that party if it had been posted, say, 48 hours in advance, instead of 4.
The American push toward "polite civil disobedience" is, in my opinion, somewhat silly. Did the English stop Hitler from entering Poland by politely explaining that they disagreed with his policies? Did the Seattle Anarchists drive the WTO out of the U.S. by politely stating that they disagreed with the WTO's imperialistic international policies?
No.
Sometimes the only way to make one's point is to make it very, very crystal clear. Whether that means calling Valenti a cocksucker or smashing some Starbucks' up, I leave it to you to decide.
Re:Regrettably, snail mail is probably best...
on
Million E-mail March
·
· Score: 2
FUCK!!
This is the fifth post and it's already redundant!!
Look, see right up there in the story, where Rob suggests that you should lick a stamp and send off your letter?? Remember people posting this exact piece of advice on EVERY SINGLE political story to hit Slashdot, ever? Notice that the first thirty or so posts that got moderated up all say "why not send snail mail?"
I don't need to hear you all repeat Rob's advice like mindless drones! And, besides, it's the million email march! Women didn't generally show up to the million man march because they thought it would get the point across better!
Slashdot Mirror
"As a percentage of the GNP, how big should the government be? Patty-patty Buke Buke!!"
BUCHANAN: "I'd say about seventee..."
"WRONG! The correct answer is nineteen point four seven percent!"
Our government is just trying to watch their backs. Keep folks from having guns, and they can't fight back when we roll into their town to violate their other rights.
Sounds like paranoid drivel.. but, you know, I think there's something to that.
If you wanted to subvert the goverment, you know what would be really useful? A big EMP gun. It doesn't actually kill anyone without a pacemaker, but it really levels the playing field in a revolution situation. And look what's illegal...
Mostly, I just really want an EMP gun. I'm very bitter that I'm not allowed to have one.
Unforunately my generalization was speaking more toward the quake 3 and other online only genre of PC games.
I had a similar conversation to this with a traditional (Dungeons and Dragons-style RPGs) gamer. He claimed that gaming was dead. When asked why, he answered that the game itself hadn't declined - it was just that the card "RPGs" like Magic: The Gathering had stolen away most of gaming's core constituency.
I think it's the same deal with computer games. I mean, I catch myself falling into the trap all the time. I have Balder's Gate II on my computer, which people are telling me is very good, but I've never played it. Why? Because every time I have some free time, I think "Do I really want to learn a whole complicated system and try to remember everything everyone's telling me? No.. actually I just want to shoot people in the face with the sniper rifle." And then I play Tribes.
There will always be computer games which improve on previous computer games in every way. The question is whether anyone will play them.
You know, it's funny, but most of the people shooting each other over heroin and cocaine prohibition don't have computers.
I'm going to make a social observation. Normally, one prefaces social observations with, "I am not a racist; these are just the facts." However, what I'm going to say is probably somehow racist, so I will make no such disclaimer.
Anyone who's read the numbers know that upper-middle class kids with internet access do not commit the majority of crimes. The majority of crimes, actually, are committed by underclass minorities who do not have internet access.
Occasionally, a fairly well-to-do kid will snap after being picked on for long enough, and will pump bullets into everyone he sees. In 1991, two years before Doom, when the most violent game I had was probably either SPACEWAR.EXE or Pool of Radiance, I was actively plotting to drive my mom's SUV through my middle school playground at 80 MPH. You beat a kid up every day for long enough, and he's going to want to kill you. I don't think his cultural influences matter one bit.
Orwell isn't nonsense, you idiot!
Nonsense would be more like one of the following:
1. EENY-OONY-WANAH! EENY-OONY-WANAH! (Gary Larson)
2. Tris is sure to shirr the deers out (R.E.M.)
3. Rarely is the question asked: 'Is our children learning?' (George W. Bush)
PERHAPS you should check to make sure that FOUR PEOPLE haven't said the same thing already.
Slashdotters are really good at 1) missing jokes; 2) making semantic corrections; 3) priding themselves on unimportant scientific distinctions. Slashdotters are not really good at 1) READING BEFORE THEY POST; 2) picking up chicks; 3) READING BEFORE THEY POST.
Depending on which moderator gets here first, this post will either be -1, Flamebait, or +3, Funny.
That's a logical way to look at it, but there's another level of depth.
Resources tend to carry over from generation to generation. Most people end up in exactly the same social class as their father, with exceptions. Therefore, if you are a doctor's son, chances are, you'll have access to a computer, a good private school, safety, etc., and may very well go on to become a doctor.
If you're a janitor's son, you probably have access to much, much less. Getting into college is therefore going to be pretty tough.
Affirmative action was our way to try to attempt to vault blacks out of the classes they had been placed in through discrimination. To some degree, it worked. Probably time for it to end, though.
I've done a lot of thinking about that, actually. Nanotechnology looks like it might end the war on drugs. Why? Because people won't actually need drugs - nanobots could, in theory, affect our brains however they were programmed.
Therefore, and this is highly theoretical, our brains could be tuned to be a) faster and smarter, b) constantly stoned, or c) infatuated with Ross Perot.
No kidding. Just last week I built a self-replicating robot that rips apart any carbon structures it finds and makes copies of itself. I thought it was pretty impressive, but now some clueless frat boy with a Ph.D. is going to end up getting the position I rightfully deserve.
So ya the 5-10 grads will probably get employment with IBM or Dr Evil.
"Nano-Me! Stop humping the Boron atom!"
The size wil [sic] probably drop by half every 8-12 months.
Then you can use the leftover space in the NOC to install an actual refrigerator! And you can put all kinds of stuff in it, like six-packs of bee.. uh... soda.
Making an optical switch from a physical little piece of glass mounted over silver and moving it as quickly as possible is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Seems analogous to making a hard drive that ran by hammering grooves into silly putty with a tiny, tiny jackhammer.
This has almost nothing to do with the RIAA or the MPAA. It has nothing to do with Beowulf Clusters or the CueCat or Ayn Rand. It doesn't even have much to do with Linux or Rob Malda or RMS and his livestock habits. It isn't a story about the post-Columbine era or the alienation of the geek culture or the failure of the DMCA.
This is, instead, a story about a big clunky horrible switch that, in ten years, will be the size of a frisbee and which we will all happily take for granted.
Moderators are stupid.
This is fucking hilarious.
Vote "I'm with stupid
My thoughts, at this point:
W. Bush is the devil.
Al Gore is not the devil, but he has an annoying tendency to fuck everything up.
Ralph Nader's social policy is perfect. His economic policy will make us all very poor.
The Libertarian party stands an even chance of plunging us into chaos.
Perhaps I will vote for CmdrTaco.
Come on, man, just last week I pulled out my $9.95 Casio and set it to "Rock Beat" and did a rap of "The Real Slim Shady". I forgot most of the lyrics, but it's still pretty good. I wanted to edit out the part where my mom told me to turn it down because she was on the phone, but I accidentally taped eighteen seconds of ABBA in the middle right after she stopped talking instead. Anyway, it's got to be worth at least $5 to someone.
Hey, I'm a relatively well-payed systems developer, but everyone knows the whole point of fast food restaurant visits is to rob them blind of condiments.
After all, they're big evil corporations, and their marketing sucks so much that it pisses me off and they're lucky I stop at petty theft.
I pretty much feel the same way about the RIAA.
It's not your music... It may be your copy, but the music belongs to the artists.
This is generally untrue. A few bands (Metallica, R.E.M.) retain control over their own music. The vast majority immediately sign it over to their record label. A few never wrote it in the first place.
Yeah, the powers-that-be really, really want you to notice the two examples that actually worked. Of course they do. They'd rather have people sitting in gyms singing "kum-by-ya" than actually doing something that threatens their power.
Moderators: I'm disapointed in you for +'ing this guys reply, and not the original message.
Clearly, you don't understand moderation.
Moderation is intended to bring the signal out of the noise, not to turn a discussion site into a dogma site.
For example, if this was the '50s, and we were having a discussion on racism, a good moderator would moderate up the best arguments both for and against racism. They would moderate down penis birds, "me toos", claims that CmdrTaco is a homosexual, etc.
Of course, it doesn't work that way, and moderators tend to moderate what they like, i.e. "Linux Rules!" gets a +1, and "Linux Sucks!" gets a -1. But posting stuff like "You should have moderate this guy down because my idea is better" only makes the problem worse. What moderators should do is moderate them both up, if they're intelligent and on-topic, and let the reader decide which one is correct.
Don't be disappointed in the moderators for bringing out interesting points instead of squashing them because they're not what your parents taught you was true.
I certainly do not argue with the point that clashing with Valenti on logical grounds is important. In fact, it's everything. But making it clear that we are also extremely dissatisfied with the RIAA, and not just arguing on some theoretical logical ground they can easily ignore, is also important.
Come on, man.
It's also the only reason we ever saw the PROTESTERS doing their thing. Otherwise, we would have had some stupid blerb on page 13 of the paper that said "Idiots in Sea Turtle Costumes Picket WTO".
Look, you mark him down flamebait, but he's right.
Slashdot articles from the last two weeks:
1. Hey! Come to the Slashdot Party in San Diego in 4 hours!
2. Hey! We're speaking at MIT tonight!
3. Hey! There's a Linux Expo in Denver this weekend!
4. Hey! Valenti's having a debate 36 minutes ago, you can still catch the tail end!
Now, I know Slashdot's more a discussion group than a news group, despite the misnomer "news for nerds". Still, it would be nice to occasionally get a little advance notice of things. I live in Reno, so I actually could have been at that party if it had been posted, say, 48 hours in advance, instead of 4.
What, me?? No, no, I'm far too much of a coward.
This is why Slashdot needs a militia. I mean, what kind of Commander is CmdrTaco, anyway??
I disagree with you.
The American push toward "polite civil disobedience" is, in my opinion, somewhat silly. Did the English stop Hitler from entering Poland by politely explaining that they disagreed with his policies? Did the Seattle Anarchists drive the WTO out of the U.S. by politely stating that they disagreed with the WTO's imperialistic international policies?
No.
Sometimes the only way to make one's point is to make it very, very crystal clear. Whether that means calling Valenti a cocksucker or smashing some Starbucks' up, I leave it to you to decide.
FUCK!!
This is the fifth post and it's already redundant!!
Look, see right up there in the story, where Rob suggests that you should lick a stamp and send off your letter?? Remember people posting this exact piece of advice on EVERY SINGLE political story to hit Slashdot, ever? Notice that the first thirty or so posts that got moderated up all say "why not send snail mail?"
I don't need to hear you all repeat Rob's advice like mindless drones! And, besides, it's the million email march! Women didn't generally show up to the million man march because they thought it would get the point across better!
Arrgh! You people!