Have this guy locked up for ten years. He abducted three teens, forced them to perform illegal acts which he later blamed them for and washed himself of any guilt.
Seriously, it's fricking religious nuts like these that are turning the world into a bureaucratic nazi hell. Money has corrupted these people beyond return, and then they go on TV and tell the world how fun it is to be a corporate puppet.
Stop the civil wars, and declare a war on these hotheads. They are the ones threatening our lives and our freedom. They are the ones who want us locked up just because we're going to deprive them from one cup of coffee by downloading one song off the net, when they can very well afford coffee without our help. They are the enemy.
Funny, I think 2001 is the first year I didn't see at least one movie per week, not even one per month, presumably because 95% of them sucked shit.
It's quite telling when a bunch of chums (some smart, some dumb) look at the 24-plex' listings and all say "there's nothing worth watching". What's even more telling is that the economy is supposedly in a tight spot, yet admission prices have jumped 25% in most cinemas. Are the movies 25% better ? nahhh, they just hurt more when you realize you've just sat through 2 hours of crap that cost you 12$ (canadian). I'd much rather watch 2 hours of Family Man back-to-back for the same price, at least I'd walk out of the dark room with a fresh smile.
Piracy has very little to do with it. I think it plays on the 'value threshold' as I like to call it. Some movies might be worth seeing on a big screen, others you think "hmm nah, i'll wait for the DVD/VHS". Now if one finds a DivX of that second-grade movie, and it's relatively easy and inexpensive to obtain, then why not ? At the same time, this sends a faint monetary message to the movie industry : "we're not going to invest in movies that suck". When thousands of people start doing this, the execs will notice, they might start grasping for more legislative strings to pull, but the message will get across one way or another.
The BIOS can be 'repaired' using a bios-editing utility. I had used such a thing on my own board (Abit KT7A-Raid) for the same reason, as ACPI was causing all sorts of hell. After redesigning the Award bios' interface with this utility, I was able to get the "Disable ACPI" back and turn the phucker off for good. Box has been running great ever since, whether it was on Win98/ME/2k/XP or my old LFS linux system.
Seriously, this is overkill. Excellent cooling can be achieved with a traditional water pump and thermocouples (TEC's, Peltiers, whatever). At least that way you don't risk freezing your fingers off.
Bah.. I've been hearing "Fast and the Furious rocks my nuts" ever since that movie's been out. It just so happens that there are alot of overzealous 16-year old Honda Civic drivers up here in Gatineau, Quebec. They fit right along with the "I hope I lose my virginity tonight" bar-lounging crowd and the "My dad is an investment broker" bunch.
The problem these days isn't media influence, it's just the dumb kids who are so damned susceptible to this bullshit. I'm not so old, but I look at the teens just 6-7 years younger than I, and I wonder what happened to good old fun like gathering at a friend's apartment and discovering zen through alcohol. My college years are over and I don't party as much, but I look at this year's new crowd and they're all lost, trying to find meaning where there is none, merely imitating whatever they see on TV.
We've got ten-year-olds dressing up like 40-year-old downtown whores, we've got fourteen-year-olds getting pregnant and dropping out of high school to live in their boyfriend's parents' basement, and then we've got kids shooting other kids. Again, I ask, where are the parents ? They are watching Survivor, or fending off debt collectors, or just working in a suit 24/7 never stopping to listen to their kids. These people shouldn't be allowed to breed!
Hmm.. we don't see such things too often up here in Canada.
Last time I saw an uncoordinated and pointless riot, was about 8 years ago in Montreal when Guns'n'Roses just gave up 20 minutes into their show because one of the guys was a little too fried. They wouldn't refund the thousands of showgoers (and these tickets weren't cheap), so we basically had thousands of angry showgoers who were doubly pissed. Now THAT was ugly, I admit, but there hasn't been anything like that ever since. More often we'll hear about a demented farmer kidnapping some lowlife tramp and chopping her up, only to discard of the mess along side the road (fertilizer?), or perhaps a life-long welfare leech throwing molotov's at government buildings then making a huge scene on regional TV.. individuals, but rarely groups.
Well.. hrm.. there would be a small bunch of desperate freakos that would want to drive up and sneak in somehow ("Girl #7, I'm your biggest fan! *fap*fap*fap*"). In theory, they wouldn't be too dangerous, since the real sickos would be hunting more isolated prey far from any webcam.. but still.
Well then how about spring-loaded padded walls ? When someone gets pushed into the wall, they bounch back with equal force and send their aggressor flying:)
Perhaps these riot cops should take a hint and figure out that to keep people from rioting, you just have to NOT PISS THEM OFF. These "non-lethal" weapons are pathetic jokes. If they want to keep people on the other side of something, green goo isn't the way, just build a tall strong fence (or two).
Riot-control gimmicks like these will only more severely hurt and/or piss off rioters, who will figure out clever ways around them (how about skiing across the goop while toting a spud launcher ?)
Last time we had a serious riot up here in Quebec, more than a few people were very severely injured, particularly one guy had his throat crushed (he is now mute and breathing through a surgically-created port in his neck) because of some dumb cop's point-blank rubber bullet shot. All this because of a bunch of rich fuckers meeting with leaders of the G7 to discuss how they're going to sell the planet to U.S.-based corporations.
If you're going to fuck your own citizens in masses, you'd better expect big riots. Green goo won't improve anything.
There is one major problem in this idea. Home and car stereo devices 'push' the audio in a raw format, passing them on to the receiver/mixer which then routes things to the amps. Shoutcast is a pull-technology; you request a stream, and the mp3 server sends it to you in encoded form. Thus, your stereo is sitting stupid, waiting for sound to come on the wires, while your shoutcast server is also sitting stupid, waiting for someone to request a stream.
For things to work, your stereo unit would need to send a request to the mp3 server for anything to happen; on the other hand, your mp3 server could push the audio to a dumb receiver which is constantly 'listening'.
Essentially, you would need to sit at a computer and fire up XMMS, then play it out to your stereo. I'm assuming you want the stereo to handle things on its own, via remote control. In such case, you might want to find one of those BookPC-type-things, paint it black or silver and give it an IRMan. You'll need at least one 'smart' component in the loop, might as well make it another low-profile computer.
Mickey Mouse was recently hired as an intern for G.W. Bush. When approached for comment, the former cartoon rodent declared "I just have my dresses dry-cleaned more often than Ms Lewinsky."
Why not develop a new browser or plugin that uses HTML + Postscript + animation enhancements to produce resolution-independent graphics while still retaining easy cross-platform implementation ?
I hear Mac OS X uses Postscript/PDF for its display engine, why not do the same on the web ? We could keep using existing PS tools to create content, yet it would allow designers to better reproduce their 'vision' with a more traditional approach.
Heck, turn the browser into a QuarkXPress-like layout manager. Turn boring blogs into electronic newspaper, that would look and 'feel' natural to the user.
The big fat problem with Flash is quite obvious. HTML has blossomed (not always prettily) because it is a common standard with freely available documentation. Flash is a closed, binary format and you have to pay big bucks for the Macromedia "IDE" in order to create content. Programmatic creation of Flash using libswf or Ming is useful but can't replace the GUI.
Unless Macromedia releases a free editor for Flash, that's not too crippled, well then Flash will remain a gimmick for those with disposable time and money.
Choice is nice, but do we really need n+1 floppy-based firewalls ? It seems like another beta of $nat_fw_kit comes out every other day, often only differentiated by the user interface and nothing else. Seems to me like these guys should pool together and try to merge the best of everyone's toolset.
Their customers are dissatisfied with the service. Most other drivers start cursing when they see a bus in front of them, since they basically terrorize the road, driving at low speeds and changing three lanes like it was their god-given right to piss the world off. They also like to not look where they're going, especially when rejoining the road after a pickup. And we all pay for this junk..
To hell with buses, we need something individual and non-intrusive. Perhaps a single-seat car, or just some sort of compact hooded quad just for the work/school commute. Light, inexpensive, 1/6th the size of the common car. That would alleviate traffic and parking woes if well marketed and produced for the masses.
Here's another example : I just saw about _fifteen_ ads on TV for the Pontiac Vibe in the last hour. They have this unfinished excuse for a beat, with people nodding and tapping whenever the car inches by.
They don't say a thing about the car. All I know is that it's a direct competitor (and poorly styled rip-off) of the Ford Focus (which I absolutely love). They never mention the price, nor features, nor anything pertinent.
"Look. Ugly car. Ugly music. Buy now!" At least they could have thrown in some naked women or something.. anything! The sad part is that this kind of 'empty' advertising probably works on the 70% of the population who are terminally stupid, so there will be more and more until there is nothing else.
Spam phone calls on a cell phone are illegal (in the sense that you can win the argument). Since they're harassing you on YOUR DIME, you can and should always prosecute the marketer. They will be fined and you are eligible for a reward varying between 200 and 500$ depending on the alignment of Jupiter's moons.
If the marketers are stupid enough to disregard this once this wireless tracking shite becomes commonplace, then I'll do my best to entrap them and make a living from busting spam artists.
What's this 21st century hippy thing about buses ? I no longer bus, I _drive_ my own car to work, despite the greater cash expense (parking, gas, maintenance).
Now when I get to work I find myself fully awake and in a great mood. Much better than reading/sleeping on a slow, always late, overcramped bus with a bunch of loud teens.
I like it so much, that sometimes I leave home 20-30 minutes early and just drive around for the joy of it, with my little subwoofer kicking hard and fast. Driving is like the hormonal impact of watching girls make out, it's a gentle tingly feeling you'd want to hold forever (at least until you run out of gas).
It could identify human shape and draw a little box around it.
Okay, well what about midgets and motorized paraplegics ? "It's a bike, it's a moose, it's a Geo Tracker!.. oh crap, it's a >splat< ok, *WAS* a cripple, now it's a stain on my driveshaft."
Be it Mercedes or NASA, no machine can possibly know how to handle all the wide-ranging things it might encounter. Until we all have GPS chips in our necks that are polled by every electronic device at every millisecond, these automated wet dreams will remain vapor.
That's a fast bus. I live about 5-6km from work. On a clear day, I might get to work in 25-30 minutes. In contrast, I could peacefully bike to work in about half that time. That's an ideal case scenario, add rain/snow/fucking idiots with diplomatic immunity who drive like 3 year olds on shrooms, and that 25-minute ride swells up to an hour or more. Last year one particular bus ride took 3 hours to complete thanks to traffic and an obviously dim driver who refused to stray from the course despite half a dozen accidents (hondas + snow = lots of tow trucks on the road).
Since that day I haven't contributed a single penny to the bus system. It's a broken service, despite the steep price and pathetic QoS. I'd rather pay gas and parking than invest in those cretins, the added expense of handling my own vehicle is more than made up for by actually getting to work on time everyday (or at least being late, but consistent:). IMHO, the only good bus system would be a 'free' system (purely tax funded), because that's pretty much all it's good for, but we all know that's not going to happen, certainly not here in AmeriCanada.
Q: Is the road (thus, the government) responsible for my parking and speeding tickets ? Without those roads, I would never have had the chance to speed, thus I would not have been fined.
A: No. What I do with the road is of my business and responsibility.
Q:Is the phone company liable if I receive death threats from an irate caller ? What if he/she follows through and subsequently tries to physically assault me ? What if I get killed ?
A: Oh my god, you could be killed. Sue everything!... ahem! no, not really. Shit happens buddy. Better luck next life.
Q: Is Sony the one to be sued if my Discman is old and damaged, refusing to play any CD with a minor scratch or kink, thus discouraging me from buying newer CDs and reducing some fat industry executives' royalty payments ?
A: Absolutely. You're destroying the american economy. Sue Sony, sue the store that sold you the Discman, sue your neighbor because he wouldn't lend you HIS Discman, then once you've sued everyone clean and fattened your wallet, the RIAA will sue YOU just because they can.
Translation: The article points it out quite clearly and honestly that this is yet another stupid frivolous lawsuit that has buckets of legal precedents against it, thus it shouldn't even last 5 minutes in the courtroom. We'll just have to see how effective the legal system really is, or finally admit to ourselves that law is merely a purchased commodity.
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Have this guy locked up for ten years. He abducted three teens, forced them to perform illegal acts which he later blamed them for and washed himself of any guilt.
Seriously, it's fricking religious nuts like these that are turning the world into a bureaucratic nazi hell. Money has corrupted these people beyond return, and then they go on TV and tell the world how fun it is to be a corporate puppet.
Stop the civil wars, and declare a war on these hotheads. They are the ones threatening our lives and our freedom. They are the ones who want us locked up just because we're going to deprive them from one cup of coffee by downloading one song off the net, when they can very well afford coffee without our help. They are the enemy.
Funny, I think 2001 is the first year I didn't see at least one movie per week, not even one per month, presumably because 95% of them sucked shit.
It's quite telling when a bunch of chums (some smart, some dumb) look at the 24-plex' listings and all say "there's nothing worth watching". What's even more telling is that the economy is supposedly in a tight spot, yet admission prices have jumped 25% in most cinemas. Are the movies 25% better ? nahhh, they just hurt more when you realize you've just sat through 2 hours of crap that cost you 12$ (canadian). I'd much rather watch 2 hours of Family Man back-to-back for the same price, at least I'd walk out of the dark room with a fresh smile.
Piracy has very little to do with it. I think it plays on the 'value threshold' as I like to call it. Some movies might be worth seeing on a big screen, others you think "hmm nah, i'll wait for the DVD/VHS". Now if one finds a DivX of that second-grade movie, and it's relatively easy and inexpensive to obtain, then why not ? At the same time, this sends a faint monetary message to the movie industry : "we're not going to invest in movies that suck". When thousands of people start doing this, the execs will notice, they might start grasping for more legislative strings to pull, but the message will get across one way or another.
The BIOS can be 'repaired' using a bios-editing utility. I had used such a thing on my own board (Abit KT7A-Raid) for the same reason, as ACPI was causing all sorts of hell. After redesigning the Award bios' interface with this utility, I was able to get the "Disable ACPI" back and turn the phucker off for good. Box has been running great ever since, whether it was on Win98/ME/2k/XP or my old LFS linux system.
Seriously, this is overkill. Excellent cooling can be achieved with a traditional water pump and thermocouples (TEC's, Peltiers, whatever). At least that way you don't risk freezing your fingers off.
Does this mean there will be a (black) market for aborted fetuses ? I don't like the idea of a bunch of whores selling their unborn babies.
Bah.. I've been hearing "Fast and the Furious rocks my nuts" ever since that movie's been out. It just so happens that there are alot of overzealous 16-year old Honda Civic drivers up here in Gatineau, Quebec. They fit right along with the "I hope I lose my virginity tonight" bar-lounging crowd and the "My dad is an investment broker" bunch.
The problem these days isn't media influence, it's just the dumb kids who are so damned susceptible to this bullshit. I'm not so old, but I look at the teens just 6-7 years younger than I, and I wonder what happened to good old fun like gathering at a friend's apartment and discovering zen through alcohol. My college years are over and I don't party as much, but I look at this year's new crowd and they're all lost, trying to find meaning where there is none, merely imitating whatever they see on TV.
We've got ten-year-olds dressing up like 40-year-old downtown whores, we've got fourteen-year-olds getting pregnant and dropping out of high school to live in their boyfriend's parents' basement, and then we've got kids shooting other kids. Again, I ask, where are the parents ? They are watching Survivor, or fending off debt collectors, or just working in a suit 24/7 never stopping to listen to their kids. These people shouldn't be allowed to breed!
Hmm.. we don't see such things too often up here in Canada.
Last time I saw an uncoordinated and pointless riot, was about 8 years ago in Montreal when Guns'n'Roses just gave up 20 minutes into their show because one of the guys was a little too fried. They wouldn't refund the thousands of showgoers (and these tickets weren't cheap), so we basically had thousands of angry showgoers who were doubly pissed. Now THAT was ugly, I admit, but there hasn't been anything like that ever since. More often we'll hear about a demented farmer kidnapping some lowlife tramp and chopping her up, only to discard of the mess along side the road (fertilizer?), or perhaps a life-long welfare leech throwing molotov's at government buildings then making a huge scene on regional TV.. individuals, but rarely groups.
Well.. hrm.. there would be a small bunch of desperate freakos that would want to drive up and sneak in somehow ("Girl #7, I'm your biggest fan! *fap*fap*fap*"). In theory, they wouldn't be too dangerous, since the real sickos would be hunting more isolated prey far from any webcam.. but still.
Well then how about spring-loaded padded walls ? When someone gets pushed into the wall, they bounch back with equal force and send their aggressor flying :)
I've got a great name for this :
(drumroll)
Active X
(rimshot)
Perhaps these riot cops should take a hint and figure out that to keep people from rioting, you just have to NOT PISS THEM OFF. These "non-lethal" weapons are pathetic jokes. If they want to keep people on the other side of something, green goo isn't the way, just build a tall strong fence (or two).
Riot-control gimmicks like these will only more severely hurt and/or piss off rioters, who will figure out clever ways around them (how about skiing across the goop while toting a spud launcher ?)
Last time we had a serious riot up here in Quebec, more than a few people were very severely injured, particularly one guy had his throat crushed (he is now mute and breathing through a surgically-created port in his neck) because of some dumb cop's point-blank rubber bullet shot. All this because of a bunch of rich fuckers meeting with leaders of the G7 to discuss how they're going to sell the planet to U.S.-based corporations.
If you're going to fuck your own citizens in masses, you'd better expect big riots. Green goo won't improve anything.
There is one major problem in this idea. Home and car stereo devices 'push' the audio in a raw format, passing them on to the receiver/mixer which then routes things to the amps. Shoutcast is a pull-technology; you request a stream, and the mp3 server sends it to you in encoded form. Thus, your stereo is sitting stupid, waiting for sound to come on the wires, while your shoutcast server is also sitting stupid, waiting for someone to request a stream.
For things to work, your stereo unit would need to send a request to the mp3 server for anything to happen; on the other hand, your mp3 server could push the audio to a dumb receiver which is constantly 'listening'.
Essentially, you would need to sit at a computer and fire up XMMS, then play it out to your stereo. I'm assuming you want the stereo to handle things on its own, via remote control. In such case, you might want to find one of those BookPC-type-things, paint it black or silver and give it an IRMan. You'll need at least one 'smart' component in the loop, might as well make it another low-profile computer.
Mickey Mouse was recently hired as an intern for G.W. Bush. When approached for comment, the former cartoon rodent declared "I just have my dresses dry-cleaned more often than Ms Lewinsky."
Why not develop a new browser or plugin that uses HTML + Postscript + animation enhancements to produce resolution-independent graphics while still retaining easy cross-platform implementation ?
I hear Mac OS X uses Postscript/PDF for its display engine, why not do the same on the web ? We could keep using existing PS tools to create content, yet it would allow designers to better reproduce their 'vision' with a more traditional approach.
Heck, turn the browser into a QuarkXPress-like layout manager. Turn boring blogs into electronic newspaper, that would look and 'feel' natural to the user.
The big fat problem with Flash is quite obvious. HTML has blossomed (not always prettily) because it is a common standard with freely available documentation. Flash is a closed, binary format and you have to pay big bucks for the Macromedia "IDE" in order to create content. Programmatic creation of Flash using libswf or Ming is useful but can't replace the GUI.
Unless Macromedia releases a free editor for Flash, that's not too crippled, well then Flash will remain a gimmick for those with disposable time and money.
Choice is nice, but do we really need n+1 floppy-based firewalls ? It seems like another beta of $nat_fw_kit comes out every other day, often only differentiated by the user interface and nothing else. Seems to me like these guys should pool together and try to merge the best of everyone's toolset.
Ok, can anyone find a good thing about buses ?
Their customers are dissatisfied with the service. Most other drivers start cursing when they see a bus in front of them, since they basically terrorize the road, driving at low speeds and changing three lanes like it was their god-given right to piss the world off. They also like to not look where they're going, especially when rejoining the road after a pickup. And we all pay for this junk..
To hell with buses, we need something individual and non-intrusive. Perhaps a single-seat car, or just some sort of compact hooded quad just for the work/school commute. Light, inexpensive, 1/6th the size of the common car. That would alleviate traffic and parking woes if well marketed and produced for the masses.
Here's another example : I just saw about _fifteen_ ads on TV for the Pontiac Vibe in the last hour. They have this unfinished excuse for a beat, with people nodding and tapping whenever the car inches by.
They don't say a thing about the car. All I know is that it's a direct competitor (and poorly styled rip-off) of the Ford Focus (which I absolutely love). They never mention the price, nor features, nor anything pertinent.
"Look. Ugly car. Ugly music. Buy now!" At least they could have thrown in some naked women or something.. anything! The sad part is that this kind of 'empty' advertising probably works on the 70% of the population who are terminally stupid, so there will be more and more until there is nothing else.
Spam phone calls on a cell phone are illegal (in the sense that you can win the argument). Since they're harassing you on YOUR DIME, you can and should always prosecute the marketer. They will be fined and you are eligible for a reward varying between 200 and 500$ depending on the alignment of Jupiter's moons.
If the marketers are stupid enough to disregard this once this wireless tracking shite becomes commonplace, then I'll do my best to entrap them and make a living from busting spam artists.
What's this 21st century hippy thing about buses ? I no longer bus, I _drive_ my own car to work, despite the greater cash expense (parking, gas, maintenance).
Now when I get to work I find myself fully awake and in a great mood. Much better than reading/sleeping on a slow, always late, overcramped bus with a bunch of loud teens.
I like it so much, that sometimes I leave home 20-30 minutes early and just drive around for the joy of it, with my little subwoofer kicking hard and fast. Driving is like the hormonal impact of watching girls make out, it's a gentle tingly feeling you'd want to hold forever (at least until you run out of gas).
Okay, well what about midgets and motorized paraplegics ? "It's a bike, it's a moose, it's a Geo Tracker!.. oh crap, it's a >splat< ok, *WAS* a cripple, now it's a stain on my driveshaft."
Be it Mercedes or NASA, no machine can possibly know how to handle all the wide-ranging things it might encounter. Until we all have GPS chips in our necks that are polled by every electronic device at every millisecond, these automated wet dreams will remain vapor.
That's a fast bus. I live about 5-6km from work. On a clear day, I might get to work in 25-30 minutes. In contrast, I could peacefully bike to work in about half that time. That's an ideal case scenario, add rain/snow/fucking idiots with diplomatic immunity who drive like 3 year olds on shrooms, and that 25-minute ride swells up to an hour or more. Last year one particular bus ride took 3 hours to complete thanks to traffic and an obviously dim driver who refused to stray from the course despite half a dozen accidents (hondas + snow = lots of tow trucks on the road).
:). IMHO, the only good bus system would be a 'free' system (purely tax funded), because that's pretty much all it's good for, but we all know that's not going to happen, certainly not here in AmeriCanada.
Since that day I haven't contributed a single penny to the bus system. It's a broken service, despite the steep price and pathetic QoS. I'd rather pay gas and parking than invest in those cretins, the added expense of handling my own vehicle is more than made up for by actually getting to work on time everyday (or at least being late, but consistent
Why no heatsink ? Heatsinks don't make noise, so just leave it on and give yourself that much more leeway.
Q: Is the road (thus, the government) responsible for my parking and speeding tickets ? Without those roads, I would never have had the chance to speed, thus I would not have been fined.
... ahem! no, not really. Shit happens buddy. Better luck next life.
A: No. What I do with the road is of my business and responsibility.
Q:Is the phone company liable if I receive death threats from an irate caller ? What if he/she follows through and subsequently tries to physically assault me ? What if I get killed ?
A: Oh my god, you could be killed. Sue everything!
Q: Is Sony the one to be sued if my Discman is old and damaged, refusing to play any CD with a minor scratch or kink, thus discouraging me from buying newer CDs and reducing some fat industry executives' royalty payments ?
A: Absolutely. You're destroying the american economy. Sue Sony, sue the store that sold you the Discman, sue your neighbor because he wouldn't lend you HIS Discman, then once you've sued everyone clean and fattened your wallet, the RIAA will sue YOU just because they can.
Translation: The article points it out quite clearly and honestly that this is yet another stupid frivolous lawsuit that has buckets of legal precedents against it, thus it shouldn't even last 5 minutes in the courtroom. We'll just have to see how effective the legal system really is, or finally admit to ourselves that law is merely a purchased commodity.
Since all "utilities" in China are owned by the government, they get to filter all they want.
Oh please! Don't let them take my utilities away! I can't live without my Grep!