You mean the convenience of hunting around for a parking space for 45 minutes? The convenience of sitting in traffic for 90 minutes to go 10 miles across the San Mateo Bridge? How about the convenience of getting hit by a drunk driver, or having your car break down on the freeway or overheat on the road back from the weekend in Vegas? How about the convenience of getting the oil changed, tires rotated, and smog device checked out? How about tolls on the road, or the astronomical price of gasoline? What about the thief who smashes your window to steal your radio or the whole schmear? How about the asshole who keys your door in the suburban shopping mall parking lot because you have a nice car? How about your friendly car insurance company that keeps raising rates without an end in sight? What about the cop waiting to bust you for speeding or the week-long waits at the DMV to renew your license?
Yeah, buddy, sounds great to me. Tell me, at what point did the endless car commercials on TV get to you?
I grew up out West and have driven enough miles to circle the earth dozens of times. But now that I'm in NYC, it's like waking up from the automobile nightmare. Instead of that wonderful list of benefits above, I get to go anywhere within a 75 mile radius for $1.50. Or $63/mo. for an unlimited pass. And it's all far faster, more convenient, and relaxing than any car trip I've ever taken.
All of your other objections to public transportation are, frankly, quite silly and demonstrate that your knowledge of life in New York is quite superficial. Nobody who buys groceries in bulk carries them home, because the stores all have free delivery. Fridges, TVs, and other big ticket items? Delivery. Food, mail, entertainment, movies? Delivery, or even better, internet and cable.
New York is the most convenient city in the world, and would be even more convenient if Bridge-and-Tunnel people from Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Atlanta didn't insist on unnecessarily driving here!
The RIAA suing a professor for violating the copyright of a band named Usher, for which they should be getting sued to death by the heirs of Edgar Allen Poe.
Ahem, no matter what I predict we will see the Fall of the House of Usher...
This is documented, in fact. Read the publications from the Project for a New American Century. It's a neo-conservative thinktank founded in 1998. Note the signatories to the open letters: Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, William J. Bennett, among others. Those guys sound familiar? Yup, they're the Bush foreign policy team.
Also note in particular the statement in the letter regarding Israel:
"Mr. President, we urge you to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As you have said, every day that Saddam Hussein remains in power brings closer the day when terrorists will have not just airplanes with which to attack us, but chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, as well. It is now common knowledge that Saddam, along with Iran, is a funder and supporter of terrorism against Israel. Iraq has harbored terrorists such as Abu Nidal in the past, and it maintains links to the Al Qaeda network. If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors."
So to the skeptics out there I say, still think that Israel has nothing to do with it? If the Bush foreign policy team says in an open letter from a thinktank that removing Saddam will benefit Israel, is it wrong for us to conclude that removing Saddam is being done, at least partly, for Israel's benefit? And is it really going to be U.S. policy from here forward to throw aside strong commitments to organizations like the UN and NATO to fight proxy wars for minor nations?
I have a Handspring Prism and boy it's great. Bright screen, vivid colors, and a nifty phone module. Trouble is, the battery sucks dry in no time. cracking it open, it's a pretty big battery. How are you going to fit a battery in those funky goggles that will give it any sort of battery life greater than 15 seconds? And no, sorry, but having a power cord running out the back rather defeats the purpose of having a wearable computer in the first place.
I looked at it at the Apple store in SoHo this weekend, and it's a sweet little machine. Light, bright, nimble. Pulled up a terminal and wrote little perl scripts for twenty minutes. Completely forgot there was a candy-apple GUI grafted onto the ass of the BSD kernel.
Makes me sad for the lives the reviewers must lead that they can't be happy with the 12" powerbook. You know, the kind of people who let their whole day be ruined because the color of one of their cocoa puffs was off by a shade. For Pete's sake, they could, **horror** of horrors, be saddled with an IBM thinkpad!
This means that if we can tap into the New York City subway power grid and tip on end of the Verrazano bridge up for our rail we could achieve orbit! Hot Dog! Been getting kinda tired of George W. Bush's America. Mars, here I come.
I dunno. It seems to be the most effective tagline for everyone else, so I thought I'd steal it.
The way the situation is now, I have a problem with companies outsourcing skilled white collar jobs to India. We still have to be here sucking dust while the CEOs drive by in phat limousines.
If they outsource CEOs' and marketroids' jobs too, then I don't have as much a problem with it. After all, there are plenty of foreign students with MBAs from top American universities too. If a foreign programmer with an American CS degree can steal our jobs, then so should that MBA student have the same opportunity.
Alternatively, they could let us invade the Indian market and take away all their jobs. I have no problem with getting paid 20 times the average local wage. Spending power is all relative, and they say Goa is nice.
So if they're going to be staging mass arrests of the millions of P2P users in this country, there will be no more excuses or evasions for all of us out there trading files. I've called for it before, but the silence was deafening: we need to stage CD/Hilary Rosen-poster burning rallies and organize ourselves politically. When the sons and daughters of all those congresspeople join (I'm sure some of them will be on the Justice department's blacklist) we'll see some serious changes in short order.
Thus far wealthy lobbiests and cynical bloodsucking lawyers have carried the day, but let's see where the chips really fall when 3 million people of all ages assemble on the Mall and burn Congress in effigy. That, my friend, will get results, not posting endlessly on Slashdot.
I mean c'mon, is anyone else out there tired of the same old truths in this issue being rehashed ("copying is not stealing since you don't take away others' right to use it" or "I only download to backup what I already own" ad nauseum) on this site with the amazing result that things continue to go against us? Let's get off our butts and take some action!
In a large sense, government to date has been about information control. They've able to control the information that the public receives. It was somewhat diluted by the revolutionary right to the freedom of the press. But even that was limited because it meant that "freedom of the press" was granted to everyone who owned a printing press, and no one else.
Now you have the rise of a medium that grants equal rights to anyone who can formulate a written argument. Thus the recent journalistic navel-gazing over the effect of bloggers and their role in the unmasking of Trent Lott.
Well, I see that as a good thing. Most of those who enjoy the "freedom of the press" have that right because they work for for-profit corporations. Which means that in reality their freedom of the press is limited by the need for profit. Therefore the right to "freedom of the press" has never been truly free until now.
The Internet has de-legitimized the claim of the traditional press to authoritative speech. That scares media outlets and governments to death, because they know that the time when they could control the public message is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
This is exactly why the Framers of the Constitution placed so much emphasis on the freedom of thought and expression. Without it, you have a citizenry that is enslaved because they are not allowed to think as free beings. After all, how can you act as a free citizen if you cannot think as a free citizen?
Therefore, if we as citizens can resist government/corporative efforts to limit our natural rights, we will see true freedom in our lifetimes. Free thought is ours by birth. Free culture is ours by birth. So resist the drive by government and corporations to enslave your thoughts and culture under the guise of "property." Teach the corporations and governments of the world that if the choice comes down to freedom of thought or them, they go.
Either that, or let's start a class-action lawsuit against the RIAA for unauthorized wiretaps. Are there any tech-savvy lawyers out there? There has to be something we can all sue them for. Two can play at this game.
Yeah, I know. "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." But there are, believe it or not, good studies out there among the bad. Just once, for pure novelty's sake, I wish/.'ers would try looking at/pointing to one instead of the hacknied "I'm pulling this stat out of my ass. Or the mouth of my sister's friend's brother's cousin who once worked for X company."
The quality of consumer electronics may or may not have declined. Bob may have bought a TV in '93 that didn't last as long as the one his family had in '75. Joe loves his snazzy new radio that's much better than the piece of junk on the market in the 80's. How do we know who's right? How about numbers like average defective returns? How about the average rate consumers replace their items? I'm sure there has to be some kind of reliable government/industry data out there. How about checking Consumer Reports?
Perhaps the quality of consumer electronics has gone down. But prima facie it sounds like "why, when I was a boy..." Certainly the quality of American cars these days is much better than in the 70's. The quality of medical care is better too. Long distance service is the best it's ever been since the invention of that machine. The point is, economics is all about constraints & competition. If a manufacturer can improve his profit margin by using poorer quality components, he will. If he has to improve the quality of his components to improve his profit margin, he will. It all depends.
My girlfriend's brother was in charge of all the nodes in the Tristate area (NY/NJ/CT). He said that the biggest obstacle to the network and a large part of why Metricom tanked was that they had to spend ungodly amounts of money on lawyers to acquire the right of way. So yeah, they're only on light poles, but when you have to spend about $10K per node to pay off the government it quickly runs into being a purdy penny. Also, factor in the sheer number of nodes you have to put up to counteract the in|famous NY canyon effect.
Ultimately Metricom's management came to understand that they should have phased their rollouts instead of going for that "large area of coverage" you're talking about. It makes a lot of sense. Jet-setting businesspeople notwithstanding, most folks are mostly mobile within a well-defined urban area. That means all the cops, firefighters, city inspectors, real estate folk, and many others. In fact, after 9/11 the FDNY hired my girlfriend's brother to bring back up the nodes in lower Manhattan to help the rescue effort coordinate its communications.
Have you ever actually lived in an Orwellian police state? I have. Li'l ol' place called the People's Republic of China. "Public Security Bureau" watches every communication.
Check the news here. John Poindexter is set to create "total awareness" with the express purpose of tracking every single communication & datum from every citizen. Just how far do you think that is from what the PSB does in China? Ergo, the United States is turning into an Orwellian police state.
Wake up from your conservative republican trance and smell the coffee.
Economy sucks, projects are sparse, country's turning into Orwellian police state, and they're about to cancel Farscape and Firefly. There's nothing I'd love better than to be Taken.
So hear that, oh might travellers from the planet Calgon? Take me away! (right after I see the Two Towers on the 18th please...)
I don't use p2p to get music anymore because it's free or easy, which it is, but because I fervently want the music industry to die and rot in an unholy grave. For me, at least, infringing on the Bill of Rights is the Third Rail of Politics--they touched them, now they can die.
Even if tomorrow they came out with, let's see, Napster, and then apologized up and down, dropped all contact with Clear Channel, stopped corrupting our legal/political system, and gave me a free car to use their service, I wouldn't. Why? Because it's not just about cost and convenience, but about freedom.
As far as I am concerned, they are the most vile threat to freedom in this country since McCarthy and they will never see another penny from me, no matter how many backflips they perform.
*AA's regularly violate the constitutional rights of us peons with impunity, but let's see how far they get going after the sons and daughters of congressmen and people of power. We should alert the *AA's to the rampant file sharing that goes on at schools like the Latin School in Chicago and Exeter back east. Let the children of the powerful feel the hand of the Man, then go whine to their parents (aka the Man's bosses). Perhaps then Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti would finally receive the long-overdue crushing they deserve.
three years ago i would have subscribed to such a service, given guarantees of quality and high bandwidth downloads. but that was before the RIAA decided to declare war on its customers and our very freedoms, before they made a mockery of our judicial system and congress, before they and their Enron/WorldCom cousins exposed our system for the giant confidence swindle it is.
now i just want to see them go down, down, down. they're never gonna see another dime from me or mine, and i will persuade, cajole, and reason with everyone i know until they stop giving them money too. it's high time for the music industry to go out of business and get outta my country.
Instantiating the Activist Class
on
HomeSec In the News
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
OK,
We all knew that this was going to happen. Most of us, anyway, saw it several years ago. DMCA, Stamp Tax. SSSCA, Tea Tax. Homeland Security Act, Boston Massacre. Did any of you pass American History? America did not rebel because Britain suddenly unilaterally invaded the shores with thousands of troups; It rebelled because the British Parliament steadily eroded what the colonists perceived as their basic rights. Insert citizens for 'colonists' and congress for 'parliament' and you'll see we find ourselves in exactly the same predicament now.
On the one hand, you have a legal/democratic system that supposedly protects and represents your rights as a citizen. On the other hand, you have the reality of experience which says that congresspeople in D.C. don't really give a damn what you think. Frankly, your name isn't on that fat check they got for their reelection. Therefore, you don't count.
So, the question once and again is, what are you going to do about it, sitting in your dimly lit basement out in suburb USA? Let's look at the list of possible responses:
1. Do nothing. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off
2. Bitch on Slashdot. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
3. Write a letter to your Congressman. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
4. Vote. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
5. All of the above and join the EFF. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
6. Stand up and protest, take to the streets. Result: people in power pay lip-service to your cause. Mostly, this stuff still happens and pisses you off
7. Go on strike, refuse to return to work until stuff changes. Result: People in power pay lip-service to your cause, try to co-opt the outrage of your movement for their own gain. Pretty much this stuff still happens and pisses you off.
8. Form a political party and vote for candidates who support the way stuff outta be. Result: Opposition parties roll over and fawn over your agenda while working behind the scenes to undermine it.
9. Armed insurrection. Result: A whole lotta innocent people die. Old regime is sent to the wall to be shot. New regime ?
The way I see it, slashdotters and champions of liberty ought to be on level 5 looking to jump to levels 6&7. Bring Wall Street and every corporate LAN to a standstill with a sick-out and you'll start to see some action. Advancing to higher levels would be great, but anything less will get you a big fat nothing.
Now, as my high school history teacher liked to say: "chew and digest."
is another unacknowledged debt of George Lucas's. Just watched AOTC with my girlfriend (yep, I waited until it came out on video and it was a good call) who's an art major and during the Naboo scenes she immediately blurted out "That's such a Maxfield Parrish rip-off!" Being a Philistine, I said "Huh?"
So she pointed me to a URL: Maxfield Parrish and darned if she didn't have a point. Judge for yourself.
There are a lot of idiots who can't drive in 2D, much less 3D, and the thought of them falling flaming from the sky isn't the cheeriest idea, but at the same time I'm reminded that they said the same thing about cars back at the turn of the century. They also said that about flying in planes as passengers. So I wonder how much of the trepidation is due to reasonable fears of chaos and how much is simply because we're not used to it.
Personally, I would love to have a rocket belt or even one of those sky-cars (Moller?). Beats taking the subway.
Who cares? Anybody who's anybody has already downloaded all the music they want. And most of their friends have also amassed very large libraries. If you want something you don't have, just ask them. No way the *AA's can prevent that short of getting the government to ban all file transfers, at which point the wired Internet will be dead. Then we'll all just work through community WLANs.
As much as I'd like to see the apathetic crowd that is/. stand up and do something gutsy like burn CDs in front of the Virgin megastore in Union Square, it honestly doesn't matter. People are done with CDs and done with the RIAA. Filesharing is where people are and nothing will change that. It's a fait accomplis.
Love 'Em Too, but Kinda Miss Role-playing
on
The Aging Gamer
·
· Score: 1
For me and my friends it was pong thumb, and atari thumb. And I'm glad to know that a great many of them still game too, but I wish the same were true of role-playing as well.
AD&D was far more entertaining and imaginative and...real than any video game ever was or has been. Friends of mine who played in campaigns with me still reminisce about the adventures as though they really happened and call each other by their old character names. But none of us would be caught dead playing now. The social approbation is too great. Even if you were to go to that place here in New York where people get together to play D&D and Magic, it would still feel like multitudes of people were standing outside shouting 'loser.'
Sigh. If only MUDs could have taken their place, but it's not the same.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean the convenience of hunting around for a parking space for 45 minutes? The convenience of sitting in traffic for 90 minutes to go 10 miles across the San Mateo Bridge? How about the convenience of getting hit by a drunk driver, or having your car break down on the freeway or overheat on the road back from the weekend in Vegas? How about the convenience of getting the oil changed, tires rotated, and smog device checked out? How about tolls on the road, or the astronomical price of gasoline? What about the thief who smashes your window to steal your radio or the whole schmear? How about the asshole who keys your door in the suburban shopping mall parking lot because you have a nice car? How about your friendly car insurance company that keeps raising rates without an end in sight? What about the cop waiting to bust you for speeding or the week-long waits at the DMV to renew your license?
Yeah, buddy, sounds great to me. Tell me, at what point did the endless car commercials on TV get to you?
I grew up out West and have driven enough miles to circle the earth dozens of times. But now that I'm in NYC, it's like waking up from the automobile nightmare. Instead of that wonderful list of benefits above, I get to go anywhere within a 75 mile radius for $1.50. Or $63/mo. for an unlimited pass. And it's all far faster, more convenient, and relaxing than any car trip I've ever taken.
All of your other objections to public transportation are, frankly, quite silly and demonstrate that your knowledge of life in New York is quite superficial. Nobody who buys groceries in bulk carries them home, because the stores all have free delivery. Fridges, TVs, and other big ticket items? Delivery. Food, mail, entertainment, movies? Delivery, or even better, internet and cable.
New York is the most convenient city in the world, and would be even more convenient if Bridge-and-Tunnel people from Long Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Atlanta didn't insist on unnecessarily driving here!
The RIAA suing a professor for violating the copyright of a band named Usher, for which they should be getting sued to death by the heirs of Edgar Allen Poe.
Ahem, no matter what I predict we will see the Fall of the House of Usher...
This is documented, in fact. Read the publications from the Project for a New American Century. It's a neo-conservative thinktank founded in 1998. Note the signatories to the open letters: Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, William J. Bennett, among others. Those guys sound familiar? Yup, they're the Bush foreign policy team.
Also note in particular the statement in the letter regarding Israel:
"Mr. President, we urge you to accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. As you have said, every day that Saddam Hussein remains in power brings closer the day when terrorists will have not just airplanes with which to attack us, but chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, as well. It is now common knowledge that Saddam, along with Iran, is a funder and supporter of terrorism against Israel. Iraq has harbored terrorists such as Abu Nidal in the past, and it maintains links to the Al Qaeda network. If we do not move against Saddam Hussein and his regime, the damage our Israeli friends and we have suffered until now may someday appear but a prelude to much greater horrors."
So to the skeptics out there I say, still think that Israel has nothing to do with it? If the Bush foreign policy team says in an open letter from a thinktank that removing Saddam will benefit Israel, is it wrong for us to conclude that removing Saddam is being done, at least partly, for Israel's benefit? And is it really going to be U.S. policy from here forward to throw aside strong commitments to organizations like the UN and NATO to fight proxy wars for minor nations?
I have a Handspring Prism and boy it's great. Bright screen, vivid colors, and a nifty phone module. Trouble is, the battery sucks dry in no time. cracking it open, it's a pretty big battery. How are you going to fit a battery in those funky goggles that will give it any sort of battery life greater than 15 seconds? And no, sorry, but having a power cord running out the back rather defeats the purpose of having a wearable computer in the first place.
I looked at it at the Apple store in SoHo this weekend, and it's a sweet little machine. Light, bright, nimble. Pulled up a terminal and wrote little perl scripts for twenty minutes. Completely forgot there was a candy-apple GUI grafted onto the ass of the BSD kernel.
Makes me sad for the lives the reviewers must lead that they can't be happy with the 12" powerbook. You know, the kind of people who let their whole day be ruined because the color of one of their cocoa puffs was off by a shade. For Pete's sake, they could, **horror** of horrors, be saddled with an IBM thinkpad!
Think on that, and wonder.
This means that if we can tap into the New York City subway power grid and tip on end of the Verrazano bridge up for our rail we could achieve orbit! Hot Dog! Been getting kinda tired of George W. Bush's America. Mars, here I come.
I dunno. It seems to be the most effective tagline for everyone else, so I thought I'd steal it.
The way the situation is now, I have a problem with companies outsourcing skilled white collar jobs to India. We still have to be here sucking dust while the CEOs drive by in phat limousines.
If they outsource CEOs' and marketroids' jobs too, then I don't have as much a problem with it. After all, there are plenty of foreign students with MBAs from top American universities too. If a foreign programmer with an American CS degree can steal our jobs, then so should that MBA student have the same opportunity.
Alternatively, they could let us invade the Indian market and take away all their jobs. I have no problem with getting paid 20 times the average local wage. Spending power is all relative, and they say Goa is nice.
So if they're going to be staging mass arrests of the millions of P2P users in this country, there will be no more excuses or evasions for all of us out there trading files. I've called for it before, but the silence was deafening: we need to stage CD/Hilary Rosen-poster burning rallies and organize ourselves politically. When the sons and daughters of all those congresspeople join (I'm sure some of them will be on the Justice department's blacklist) we'll see some serious changes in short order.
Thus far wealthy lobbiests and cynical bloodsucking lawyers have carried the day, but let's see where the chips really fall when 3 million people of all ages assemble on the Mall and burn Congress in effigy. That, my friend, will get results, not posting endlessly on Slashdot.
I mean c'mon, is anyone else out there tired of the same old truths in this issue being rehashed ("copying is not stealing since you don't take away others' right to use it" or "I only download to backup what I already own" ad nauseum) on this site with the amazing result that things continue to go against us? Let's get off our butts and take some action!
In a large sense, government to date has been about information control. They've able to control the information that the public receives. It was somewhat diluted by the revolutionary right to the freedom of the press. But even that was limited because it meant that "freedom of the press" was granted to everyone who owned a printing press, and no one else.
Now you have the rise of a medium that grants equal rights to anyone who can formulate a written argument. Thus the recent journalistic navel-gazing over the effect of bloggers and their role in the unmasking of Trent Lott.
Well, I see that as a good thing. Most of those who enjoy the "freedom of the press" have that right because they work for for-profit corporations. Which means that in reality their freedom of the press is limited by the need for profit. Therefore the right to "freedom of the press" has never been truly free until now.
The Internet has de-legitimized the claim of the traditional press to authoritative speech. That scares media outlets and governments to death, because they know that the time when they could control the public message is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
This is exactly why the Framers of the Constitution placed so much emphasis on the freedom of thought and expression. Without it, you have a citizenry that is enslaved because they are not allowed to think as free beings. After all, how can you act as a free citizen if you cannot think as a free citizen?
Therefore, if we as citizens can resist government/corporative efforts to limit our natural rights, we will see true freedom in our lifetimes. Free thought is ours by birth. Free culture is ours by birth. So resist the drive by government and corporations to enslave your thoughts and culture under the guise of "property." Teach the corporations and governments of the world that if the choice comes down to freedom of thought or them, they go.
Either that, or let's start a class-action lawsuit against the RIAA for unauthorized wiretaps. Are there any tech-savvy lawyers out there? There has to be something we can all sue them for. Two can play at this game.
Yeah, I know. "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." But there are, believe it or not, good studies out there among the bad. Just once, for pure novelty's sake, I wish /.'ers would try looking at/pointing to one instead of the hacknied "I'm pulling this stat out of my ass. Or the mouth of my sister's friend's brother's cousin who once worked for X company."
The quality of consumer electronics may or may not have declined. Bob may have bought a TV in '93 that didn't last as long as the one his family had in '75. Joe loves his snazzy new radio that's much better than the piece of junk on the market in the 80's. How do we know who's right? How about numbers like average defective returns? How about the average rate consumers replace their items? I'm sure there has to be some kind of reliable government/industry data out there. How about checking Consumer Reports?
Perhaps the quality of consumer electronics has gone down. But prima facie it sounds like "why, when I was a boy..." Certainly the quality of American cars these days is much better than in the 70's. The quality of medical care is better too. Long distance service is the best it's ever been since the invention of that machine. The point is, economics is all about constraints & competition. If a manufacturer can improve his profit margin by using poorer quality components, he will. If he has to improve the quality of his components to improve his profit margin, he will. It all depends.
My girlfriend's brother was in charge of all the nodes in the Tristate area (NY/NJ/CT). He said that the biggest obstacle to the network and a large part of why Metricom tanked was that they had to spend ungodly amounts of money on lawyers to acquire the right of way. So yeah, they're only on light poles, but when you have to spend about $10K per node to pay off the government it quickly runs into being a purdy penny. Also, factor in the sheer number of nodes you have to put up to counteract the in|famous NY canyon effect.
Ultimately Metricom's management came to understand that they should have phased their rollouts instead of going for that "large area of coverage" you're talking about. It makes a lot of sense. Jet-setting businesspeople notwithstanding, most folks are mostly mobile within a well-defined urban area. That means all the cops, firefighters, city inspectors, real estate folk, and many others. In fact, after 9/11 the FDNY hired my girlfriend's brother to bring back up the nodes in lower Manhattan to help the rescue effort coordinate its communications.
Have you ever actually lived in an Orwellian police state? I have. Li'l ol' place called the People's Republic of China. "Public Security Bureau" watches every communication.
Check the news here. John Poindexter is set to create "total awareness" with the express purpose of tracking every single communication & datum from every citizen. Just how far do you think that is from what the PSB does in China? Ergo, the United States is turning into an Orwellian police state.
Wake up from your conservative republican trance and smell the coffee.
Economy sucks, projects are sparse, country's turning into Orwellian police state, and they're about to cancel Farscape and Firefly. There's nothing I'd love better than to be Taken.
So hear that, oh might travellers from the planet Calgon? Take me away! (right after I see the Two Towers on the 18th please...)
several constitutional rights short.
I don't use p2p to get music anymore because it's free or easy, which it is, but because I fervently want the music industry to die and rot in an unholy grave. For me, at least, infringing on the Bill of Rights is the Third Rail of Politics--they touched them, now they can die.
Even if tomorrow they came out with, let's see, Napster, and then apologized up and down, dropped all contact with Clear Channel, stopped corrupting our legal/political system, and gave me a free car to use their service, I wouldn't. Why? Because it's not just about cost and convenience, but about freedom.
As far as I am concerned, they are the most vile threat to freedom in this country since McCarthy and they will never see another penny from me, no matter how many backflips they perform.
Am I alone here?
*AA's regularly violate the constitutional rights of us peons with impunity, but let's see how far they get going after the sons and daughters of congressmen and people of power. We should alert the *AA's to the rampant file sharing that goes on at schools like the Latin School in Chicago and Exeter back east. Let the children of the powerful feel the hand of the Man, then go whine to their parents (aka the Man's bosses). Perhaps then Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti would finally receive the long-overdue crushing they deserve.
2004 Blue Gene achieves processing power of human brain.
2006, 2 a.m. Blue Gene becomes sentient.
2006, 2:01 a.m. BG acquires control of DefenseNet
2006, 2:02 a.m. BG declares 'First Post' on Slashdot. Modded down as offtopic.
three years ago i would have subscribed to such a service, given guarantees of quality and high bandwidth downloads. but that was before the RIAA decided to declare war on its customers and our very freedoms, before they made a mockery of our judicial system and congress, before they and their Enron/WorldCom cousins exposed our system for the giant confidence swindle it is.
now i just want to see them go down, down, down. they're never gonna see another dime from me or mine, and i will persuade, cajole, and reason with everyone i know until they stop giving them money too. it's high time for the music industry to go out of business and get outta my country.
OK,
We all knew that this was going to happen. Most of us, anyway, saw it several years ago. DMCA, Stamp Tax. SSSCA, Tea Tax. Homeland Security Act, Boston Massacre. Did any of you pass American History? America did not rebel because Britain suddenly unilaterally invaded the shores with thousands of troups; It rebelled because the British Parliament steadily eroded what the colonists perceived as their basic rights. Insert citizens for 'colonists' and congress for 'parliament' and you'll see we find ourselves in exactly the same predicament now.
On the one hand, you have a legal/democratic system that supposedly protects and represents your rights as a citizen. On the other hand, you have the reality of experience which says that congresspeople in D.C. don't really give a damn what you think. Frankly, your name isn't on that fat check they got for their reelection. Therefore, you don't count.
So, the question once and again is, what are you going to do about it, sitting in your dimly lit basement out in suburb USA? Let's look at the list of possible responses:
1. Do nothing. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off
2. Bitch on Slashdot. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
3. Write a letter to your Congressman. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
4. Vote. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
5. All of the above and join the EFF. Result: This stuff still happens and pisses you off.
6. Stand up and protest, take to the streets. Result: people in power pay lip-service to your cause. Mostly, this stuff still happens and pisses you off
7. Go on strike, refuse to return to work until stuff changes. Result: People in power pay lip-service to your cause, try to co-opt the outrage of your movement for their own gain. Pretty much this stuff still happens and pisses you off.
8. Form a political party and vote for candidates who support the way stuff outta be. Result: Opposition parties roll over and fawn over your agenda while working behind the scenes to undermine it.
9. Armed insurrection. Result: A whole lotta innocent people die. Old regime is sent to the wall to be shot. New regime ?
The way I see it, slashdotters and champions of liberty ought to be on level 5 looking to jump to levels 6&7. Bring Wall Street and every corporate LAN to a standstill with a sick-out and you'll start to see some action. Advancing to higher levels would be great, but anything less will get you a big fat nothing.
Now, as my high school history teacher liked to say: "chew and digest."
So she pointed me to a URL: Maxfield Parrish and darned if she didn't have a point. Judge for yourself.
When they played Heidi over the end of the greatest come-back in football history. Oh wait, you didn't mean that kind of programming, did you?
I do hope they programmed it to take arhythmic, shuffling steps on its journey. Sandworms can hear footfall a long way off...
There are a lot of idiots who can't drive in 2D, much less 3D, and the thought of them falling flaming from the sky isn't the cheeriest idea, but at the same time I'm reminded that they said the same thing about cars back at the turn of the century. They also said that about flying in planes as passengers. So I wonder how much of the trepidation is due to reasonable fears of chaos and how much is simply because we're not used to it.
Personally, I would love to have a rocket belt or even one of those sky-cars (Moller?). Beats taking the subway.
Who cares? Anybody who's anybody has already downloaded all the music they want. And most of their friends have also amassed very large libraries. If you want something you don't have, just ask them. No way the *AA's can prevent that short of getting the government to ban all file transfers, at which point the wired Internet will be dead. Then we'll all just work through community WLANs.
/. stand up and do something gutsy like burn CDs in front of the Virgin megastore in Union Square, it honestly doesn't matter. People are done with CDs and done with the RIAA. Filesharing is where people are and nothing will change that. It's a fait accomplis.
As much as I'd like to see the apathetic crowd that is
For me and my friends it was pong thumb, and atari thumb. And I'm glad to know that a great many of them still game too, but I wish the same were true of role-playing as well.
AD&D was far more entertaining and imaginative and...real than any video game ever was or has been. Friends of mine who played in campaigns with me still reminisce about the adventures as though they really happened and call each other by their old character names. But none of us would be caught dead playing now. The social approbation is too great. Even if you were to go to that place here in New York where people get together to play D&D and Magic, it would still feel like multitudes of people were standing outside shouting 'loser.'
Sigh. If only MUDs could have taken their place, but it's not the same.