No, I think your current system of paying people to make you do unnecessary work on ridiculous topics such as "The Pre-Roman Carthaginian Patriarchy" or "Rights of the 13th Century African Immigrants" is probably right on-target.
By the time you get out, you should be perfectly suited to a lifetime of meaningless, tedious work that slowly kills you.
Suppose you have a child who becomes addicted to crack or heroine, would you like to see a reduction in funding of the DEA
Well.. if I had a child who became addicted to crack or heroin, the DEA would gladly step in and throw him in a dark hole for the next 20 years, so.. I don't know.
I agree with you on the welfare issue, but the DEA is not a humanitarian program. It has its reasons for existing, but they're more about making sure the citizens know who's in power than trying to help anyone. I could go into more detail, but then I'd be hit with Redundant tags left and right.
My formula for success is, tentatively, to spend: More on the space program, the same amount on welfare, slightly less on the military, less on agricultural subsidies, and almost nothing on the DEA; and to make the tax stucture more progressive while raising tariffs juuust slightly.
I may be wrong on several of these issues but of course there's no way to tell since we have a one-party system (The Almighty Corporate Party, with its Democrat and Replublican branches) who are adamantly opposed to change.
Your message contains no real content, essentially an admission that everything you said before is incorrect!
My five-year-old niece and I mostly argue about whether or not she can throw play-dough at my monitor - but I'd feel more comfortable having her pick the next U.S. President than your dumb ass!
Mortal Kombat 2 was very good. The rest were shit. They should have banned Mortal Kombat 1, 3, and 4. And all the dumbass spinoffs. And they should have modeled Sonya after Natalie Portman. (Dare I mention her fatality?)
Okay, I've come to accept that, in the U.S., minors under 18 don't have any rights. Granted, actual citizens are prohibited from beating them up, but that doesn't qualify as a right, just a protection.
Now, you might be saying, "The phrase 'minors under 18' is redundant," but that's not true. "Minor" is defined, for some weird reason, based on context. So a 17-year old in an R-rated movie is not a "minor" in that context, and a 20-year-old drinking beer, is. In fact, if two 20-year-olds in Nevada walk into a casino and sit down, they can both be arrested, charged with "contributing to the delinquency of a minor", and tried as adults.
So, the fight against the ban on video games is a lost cause. Minors should fight, instead, for the cause of being recognized as FULL CITIZENS IN EVERY WAY at age 18. That includes fighting wars, drinking beer, running for president, voting, and getting reasonable insurance.
If we can't charge people an extra $500/year on car insurance because they're black or jewish, why can we charge people an extra $500/year because they're 22? Even if there was a strong correlation between accidents and black drivers, it would still be illegal for insurance companies to raise premiums.
Maybe if someone under 65 actually VOTED instead of adopting the "fuck the system and smoke pot" attitude, this could all change.
You respond to arguments exactly the same way my five-year-old niece does; instead of arguing a point, or clashing, you repeat "that's just your opinion".
Everything you've written is also opinion; the only difference is that your opinion is unsupported and happens to be asinine.
Electing an extremely conservative pit bull who wants to run the country in a pre-Vietnam fashion does not qualify as "a little rebellion now and then". That's two steps back, not one step forward.
McCain resonated with the terminally myopic because he was bold, and scared the fuck out of everyone else because he was mentally unstable and brimming over with repressed rage.
McCain was a pugnacious little bastard, well-known for getting in fistfights, racist slurs, and his bad, bad temper.
That guy would have had us at war with China within six months of inauguration. Now, whether or not you think that's a good thing, I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure he wasn't above torturing a few Chinese to get revenge for his P.O.W. time.
And, sure, he's justified. But I don't like to elect mentally unstable presidents - even justified ones.
Signal 11 postulate: Anything that can be interpreted by human ears must obviously be free. Obviously.
The fact that it runs contrary to actual reality is apparently irrelevent. I've always struggled with this "basic human rights" concept. Here's my postuate: "If they have bigger guns, they can charge us for anything they want."
Anyway, if we have the divinely granted right to life, liberty, and property, we may as well have the divinely granted right to define property as we see fit. We may as well define sonic vibrations as non-taxable. Hell, we may as well have the divinely granted right to scantily-clad women. Works for me.
"Information wants to be free!" "That's quite insightful - where did you hear that?" "I'm reading it off the bumper sticker I ripped off of Signal 11's car!" (Superosity, paraphrased)
I've always thought it was a sign of an unhealthy community when labels became significant, i.e. "Negro" versus "Black" versus "African-American".
Your whining over the [h|cr]acker issue is pointless. My point is, simply put, that fixed media is a dangerous thing in an era where 0-day updates are everything.
See, obviously I didn't make my point clear enough, since I got moderated down as "flamebait".
Lots of people who are trying to jump on this weird "learn Linux and make money" bandwagon end up buying a Red Hat box off the shelf from their local WaldenSoftware or CompUSA, installing it, connecting to the internet, and just kind of going along.
These "default Red Hat installs", I would estimate, account for 75% of Linux exploits. In stark contrast, few people who download Debian and realize that you need to update it once in a while are ever hacked.
Man, those off-the-shelf Red Hat boxes are the best thing ever to happen to the hacker community. Powerful enough to be useful, simple to exploit.
What would have been funny is if you'd somehow made a connection between grits, black holes and mrs. Portman that made some attempt at vernal coherence, while yet maintaining literal impossiblity.
Let me try.
If my pants were in a black hole, Natalie Portman wouldn't even have to pour hot grits in them... they'd eventually end up there all by themselves.
An extension of this logic leads me to conclude that eventually, millions of billions of years into the future, I'll end up getting into Natalie Portman's pants.
That latest word, is that the budget will be 3.14 million.
More specifically, it's going to cost $3,141,529.65. Significant digits, my man.
Re:"We DEMAND you have FUN.. on our terms!"
on
Disconnected
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Softball games are for marketing; Tribes is for R&D. Since marketing people and R&D people should never, under any circumstances, socialize (it's never happened before, but there's some speculation it could destroy civilization as we know it), this is for the best.
In my limited experience, departments seem to be isolated from one another, but within departments, very few people are islands unto themselves.
And I am quite proud to be isolated from upper management.
How does stealing from AOL amount to someone being a 'programmer's hero'?
Obviously, you haven't been on Slashdot very long, so let me explain things to you.
Big corporations are evil because they are in the position of both controlling the government through financial leverage and the general population through employment and other more insidious dirty tricks such as advertising and control of the media and cultural brainwashing. Therefore, it is AOK to steal from big corporations. As King Missile once put it, "It's your duty as an oppressed worker to steal from your oppressor! Take stuff from work, and goof off on the company time!"
Conversely, smart people are always heroic. Compare the works of Alan Turing to the works of Jesus. Who is more heroic? Why, Alan Turing, of course, because Jesus couldn't come up with a Universal Turing Machine (the basis for modern computer science) without some kind of Divine Intervention, which is cheating. Turing was also gay, but that only annoys the trolls, and there are little pieces of the "Secret Gospel of Jesus" which imply strongly that Jesus may also have been gay.
Therefore, to use a favorite Slashdot analogy, various democracies around the world have been usurped by a giant multinational aristocracy, and only we (and Seattle anarchists) seem to understand this. Only Jedi Knights (l33t h4xx0rs) can bring this empire to its knees, with the aid of the force (l33t kernal h4xx0ring).
In conclusion, the l33t 0-day work done on AOL's IM client is a minor victory for the forces of good, since, through raw brainpower alone, a guy we claim as our own (although he'd kick us in the teeth if we claimed him to his face) has taken a tiny bit of money and power from Steve Case, and given it back to the poor (by which I mean college nerds with fast computers), Robin Hood style (Ayn Rand can fuck herself).
You have to admit that if I somehow got an "Ask Slashdot" posted where I asked the question: "How do I get my Windows 98 box to recognize 4 ethernet cards without crashing?", I'd get the following five answers:
1. Works fine for me - under Linux.
2. Why are you using Windows?
3. Linux supports theoretically infinite ethernet devices.
4. Natalie Portman!
5. FUCK YOU AND YOUR WINDOWS BOX, YOU WHORE
If someone is really smart and wants to steal or transfer company records behind your back, he or she will find a way. It can be disguised, routed through unusual channels, encypted, or even sent out in screen shot format as a bunch of JPGs.
If, on the other hand, they're an idiot, and sending the stuff out either recklessly or accidentally, you don't need technology to handle it. Either look over their shoulder once in a while, or get them drunk.
So, do what companies always do: the bare minimum required to meet legal standards, and grudgingly, at that.
Let me tell you, I couldn't agree more: I think Courtney Love's "talent" (if you can call it that) rests entirely in knowing who to rip off, knowing who to fuck, and knowing who to whine about. Just like Mitnick was less a hacker than a social engineer, Ms. Love is less a musician than a social engineer.
Her career in three names: Kurt Cobain. Michael Stipe. Billy Corgan.
Kurt and his subsequent death allowed her to form a band, capture national attention, and allow the misconception that she had something "deep" to write lyrics about.
Michael Stipe has a *lot* of pull in the music industry, and it's no secret that Courtney and Michael's relationship was very... close.
Billy Corgan essentially wrote Courtney's last album; after her band failed repeatedly to commit even a single track to tape in several major cities, she hooked up with Billy and had it completed in weeks. Hmm.
Courtney Love is essentially a celebrity for celebrity's sake, and it's obvious to me that she wants to use her celebrity to grandstand about issues that piss her off, not to create art. It's a common American misconception that anyone who's name appears on a CD is an artist. This is untrue. Tori Amos is an artist. Britney Spears is a performer. Courtney Love is a politician.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but keep it straight, for fuck's sake.
Plagarizing Albini is no different than riding Kurt, Michael, and Billy's coattails to the top.
I don't know, but if you want to pick up chicks I don't think talking about music formats is the way to go about it.
I disagree. Chicks dig musicians, and they've resigned themselves to the reality that they'll never understand anything we say, anyway. (and vice versa).
Re:Necessity is the mother of invention
on
GPG vs. PGP?
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· Score: 1
You know, maybe you ought to just use a nice binary web browser, like IE...
Sure, algebra is completely indispensible in programming - no one disputes that. And trig has its uses. But what was the last time you used a derivative in a program??
The thing is, non-celebrities (like me) crave some attention for their work, and want to see it acknowledged.
Minor celebrities (like CmdrTaco) sort of think it would be neat if someone would mention their work and that it was good enough to use. As you can tell from the article, CmdrTaco doesn't really have a solid stance on this issue.
Major celebrities (like those musicians you mentioned) don't ever want to hear from you, ever. They don't want to hear "thanks", or "you rock", or "you inspired my work". In fact, they don't ever want to hear from another human being again, with the possible exception of their significant others.
This isn't really an article about ethics - it's more about ego, and politeness.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I think your current system of paying people to make you do unnecessary work on ridiculous topics such as "The Pre-Roman Carthaginian Patriarchy" or "Rights of the 13th Century African Immigrants" is probably right on-target.
By the time you get out, you should be perfectly suited to a lifetime of meaningless, tedious work that slowly kills you.
Suppose you have a child who becomes addicted to crack or heroine, would you like to see a reduction in funding of the DEA
Well.. if I had a child who became addicted to crack or heroin, the DEA would gladly step in and throw him in a dark hole for the next 20 years, so.. I don't know.
I agree with you on the welfare issue, but the DEA is not a humanitarian program. It has its reasons for existing, but they're more about making sure the citizens know who's in power than trying to help anyone. I could go into more detail, but then I'd be hit with Redundant tags left and right.
My formula for success is, tentatively, to spend: More on the space program, the same amount on welfare, slightly less on the military, less on agricultural subsidies, and almost nothing on the DEA; and to make the tax stucture more progressive while raising tariffs juuust slightly.
I may be wrong on several of these issues but of course there's no way to tell since we have a one-party system (The Almighty Corporate Party, with its Democrat and Replublican branches) who are adamantly opposed to change.
Wrong!
Your message contains no real content, essentially an admission that everything you said before is incorrect!
My five-year-old niece and I mostly argue about whether or not she can throw play-dough at my monitor - but I'd feel more comfortable having her pick the next U.S. President than your dumb ass!
Uhh, could it be because people under 25 have about $500/year more in accidents than those who don't? Nah, it must be discrimination.
Read the whole thread. Blacks do, in fact, have higher accident rates than whites. They are not charged extra.
Using "experience" as a euphemism for "age" is no better than using "place of residence" as a euphemism for "race".
Oh, and I'd have to say that information should be free as in love.
Mortal Kombat 2 was very good. The rest were shit. They should have banned Mortal Kombat 1, 3, and 4. And all the dumbass spinoffs. And they should have modeled Sonya after Natalie Portman. (Dare I mention her fatality?)
Okay, I've come to accept that, in the U.S., minors under 18 don't have any rights. Granted, actual citizens are prohibited from beating them up, but that doesn't qualify as a right, just a protection.
Now, you might be saying, "The phrase 'minors under 18' is redundant," but that's not true. "Minor" is defined, for some weird reason, based on context. So a 17-year old in an R-rated movie is not a "minor" in that context, and a 20-year-old drinking beer, is. In fact, if two 20-year-olds in Nevada walk into a casino and sit down, they can both be arrested, charged with "contributing to the delinquency of a minor", and tried as adults.
So, the fight against the ban on video games is a lost cause. Minors should fight, instead, for the cause of being recognized as FULL CITIZENS IN EVERY WAY at age 18. That includes fighting wars, drinking beer, running for president, voting, and getting reasonable insurance.
If we can't charge people an extra $500/year on car insurance because they're black or jewish, why can we charge people an extra $500/year because they're 22? Even if there was a strong correlation between accidents and black drivers, it would still be illegal for insurance companies to raise premiums.
Maybe if someone under 65 actually VOTED instead of adopting the "fuck the system and smoke pot" attitude, this could all change.
Wrong!
You respond to arguments exactly the same way my five-year-old niece does; instead of arguing a point, or clashing, you repeat "that's just your opinion".
Everything you've written is also opinion; the only difference is that your opinion is unsupported and happens to be asinine.
Electing an extremely conservative pit bull who wants to run the country in a pre-Vietnam fashion does not qualify as "a little rebellion now and then". That's two steps back, not one step forward.
McCain resonated with the terminally myopic because he was bold, and scared the fuck out of everyone else because he was mentally unstable and brimming over with repressed rage.
Wrong!
McCain was a pugnacious little bastard, well-known for getting in fistfights, racist slurs, and his bad, bad temper.
That guy would have had us at war with China within six months of inauguration. Now, whether or not you think that's a good thing, I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure he wasn't above torturing a few Chinese to get revenge for his P.O.W. time.
And, sure, he's justified. But I don't like to elect mentally unstable presidents - even justified ones.
Signal 11 postulate: Anything that can be interpreted by human ears must obviously be free. Obviously.
The fact that it runs contrary to actual reality is apparently irrelevent. I've always struggled with this "basic human rights" concept. Here's my postuate: "If they have bigger guns, they can charge us for anything they want."
Anyway, if we have the divinely granted right to life, liberty, and property, we may as well have the divinely granted right to define property as we see fit. We may as well define sonic vibrations as non-taxable. Hell, we may as well have the divinely granted right to scantily-clad women. Works for me.
"Information wants to be free!" "That's quite insightful - where did you hear that?" "I'm reading it off the bumper sticker I ripped off of Signal 11's car!" (Superosity, paraphrased)
Hey, Semantics Whore...
I've always thought it was a sign of an unhealthy community when labels became significant, i.e. "Negro" versus "Black" versus "African-American".
Your whining over the [h|cr]acker issue is pointless. My point is, simply put, that fixed media is a dangerous thing in an era where 0-day updates are everything.
See, obviously I didn't make my point clear enough, since I got moderated down as "flamebait".
Lots of people who are trying to jump on this weird "learn Linux and make money" bandwagon end up buying a Red Hat box off the shelf from their local WaldenSoftware or CompUSA, installing it, connecting to the internet, and just kind of going along.
These "default Red Hat installs", I would estimate, account for 75% of Linux exploits. In stark contrast, few people who download Debian and realize that you need to update it once in a while are ever hacked.
Man, those off-the-shelf Red Hat boxes are the best thing ever to happen to the hacker community. Powerful enough to be useful, simple to exploit.
Oooh... if only Hiro Protagonist were around to hear you say that.
What would have been funny is if you'd somehow made a connection between grits, black holes and mrs. Portman that made some attempt at vernal coherence, while yet maintaining literal impossiblity. Let me try.
If my pants were in a black hole, Natalie Portman wouldn't even have to pour hot grits in them... they'd eventually end up there all by themselves.
An extension of this logic leads me to conclude that eventually, millions of billions of years into the future, I'll end up getting into Natalie Portman's pants.
That latest word, is that the budget will be 3.14 million.
More specifically, it's going to cost $3,141,529.65. Significant digits, my man.
Softball games are for marketing; Tribes is for R&D. Since marketing people and R&D people should never, under any circumstances, socialize (it's never happened before, but there's some speculation it could destroy civilization as we know it), this is for the best.
In my limited experience, departments seem to be isolated from one another, but within departments, very few people are islands unto themselves.
And I am quite proud to be isolated from upper management.
How does stealing from AOL amount to someone being a 'programmer's hero'?
Obviously, you haven't been on Slashdot very long, so let me explain things to you.
Big corporations are evil because they are in the position of both controlling the government through financial leverage and the general population through employment and other more insidious dirty tricks such as advertising and control of the media and cultural brainwashing. Therefore, it is AOK to steal from big corporations. As King Missile once put it, "It's your duty as an oppressed worker to steal from your oppressor! Take stuff from work, and goof off on the company time!"
Conversely, smart people are always heroic. Compare the works of Alan Turing to the works of Jesus. Who is more heroic? Why, Alan Turing, of course, because Jesus couldn't come up with a Universal Turing Machine (the basis for modern computer science) without some kind of Divine Intervention, which is cheating. Turing was also gay, but that only annoys the trolls, and there are little pieces of the "Secret Gospel of Jesus" which imply strongly that Jesus may also have been gay.
Therefore, to use a favorite Slashdot analogy, various democracies around the world have been usurped by a giant multinational aristocracy, and only we (and Seattle anarchists) seem to understand this. Only Jedi Knights (l33t h4xx0rs) can bring this empire to its knees, with the aid of the force (l33t kernal h4xx0ring).
In conclusion, the l33t 0-day work done on AOL's IM client is a minor victory for the forces of good, since, through raw brainpower alone, a guy we claim as our own (although he'd kick us in the teeth if we claimed him to his face) has taken a tiny bit of money and power from Steve Case, and given it back to the poor (by which I mean college nerds with fast computers), Robin Hood style (Ayn Rand can fuck herself).
You have to admit that if I somehow got an "Ask Slashdot" posted where I asked the question: "How do I get my Windows 98 box to recognize 4 ethernet cards without crashing?", I'd get the following five answers:
1. Works fine for me - under Linux.
2. Why are you using Windows?
3. Linux supports theoretically infinite ethernet devices.
4. Natalie Portman!
5. FUCK YOU AND YOUR WINDOWS BOX, YOU WHORE
Hole existed long before Kurt's death.
That's funny, I'd never heard of them.. and neither had anyone I know.. hmmm.. strange...
Perhaps they existed in the same sense that my band exists.
If someone is really smart and wants to steal or transfer company records behind your back, he or she will find a way. It can be disguised, routed through unusual channels, encypted, or even sent out in screen shot format as a bunch of JPGs.
If, on the other hand, they're an idiot, and sending the stuff out either recklessly or accidentally, you don't need technology to handle it. Either look over their shoulder once in a while, or get them drunk.
So, do what companies always do: the bare minimum required to meet legal standards, and grudgingly, at that.
Let me tell you, I couldn't agree more: I think Courtney Love's "talent" (if you can call it that) rests entirely in knowing who to rip off, knowing who to fuck, and knowing who to whine about. Just like Mitnick was less a hacker than a social engineer, Ms. Love is less a musician than a social engineer.
Her career in three names: Kurt Cobain. Michael Stipe. Billy Corgan.
Kurt and his subsequent death allowed her to form a band, capture national attention, and allow the misconception that she had something "deep" to write lyrics about.
Michael Stipe has a *lot* of pull in the music industry, and it's no secret that Courtney and Michael's relationship was very... close.
Billy Corgan essentially wrote Courtney's last album; after her band failed repeatedly to commit even a single track to tape in several major cities, she hooked up with Billy and had it completed in weeks. Hmm.
Courtney Love is essentially a celebrity for celebrity's sake, and it's obvious to me that she wants to use her celebrity to grandstand about issues that piss her off, not to create art. It's a common American misconception that anyone who's name appears on a CD is an artist. This is untrue. Tori Amos is an artist. Britney Spears is a performer. Courtney Love is a politician.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but keep it straight, for fuck's sake.
Plagarizing Albini is no different than riding Kurt, Michael, and Billy's coattails to the top.
I don't know, but if you want to pick up chicks I don't think talking about music formats is the way to go about it.
I disagree. Chicks dig musicians, and they've resigned themselves to the reality that they'll never understand anything we say, anyway. (and vice versa).
You know, maybe you ought to just use a nice binary web browser, like IE...
Sure, algebra is completely indispensible in programming - no one disputes that. And trig has its uses. But what was the last time you used a derivative in a program??
The thing is, non-celebrities (like me) crave some attention for their work, and want to see it acknowledged.
Minor celebrities (like CmdrTaco) sort of think it would be neat if someone would mention their work and that it was good enough to use. As you can tell from the article, CmdrTaco doesn't really have a solid stance on this issue.
Major celebrities (like those musicians you mentioned) don't ever want to hear from you, ever. They don't want to hear "thanks", or "you rock", or "you inspired my work". In fact, they don't ever want to hear from another human being again, with the possible exception of their significant others.
This isn't really an article about ethics - it's more about ego, and politeness.