In the UK we used to have a "Poll Tax" which was deemed unfair by right-thinking individuals, and all sorts of methods of civil disobedience were used.
When they finally tracked me down, after years of evasion I decided to teach them a lesson.
I went into my local office where you could pay by cheque and I paid... by microwave.
That's right- I got a broken microwave oven- a really old heavy model, and I wrote out a cheque to those bastards on the top with a permanent marker.
At first they refused to accept it, saying that the bank would not handle it. I said "Ring them up". So they did. Yes, the bank would handle it, no there would not be any additional charge.
Haha!
Well it made me feel better at the time anyway, even though the queue of people waiting to pay didn't break out into spontaneous applause like they would have done had it been a quirky English comedy set in the gritty North of England.
" Whats the difference between a passanger talking on his cellphone and two passangers talking to each other on the same plane?"
The radiation bouncing around inside the cabin. Babum.
Not a very good joke is it ?
I would link to the/. story a while back that dealt with investigations of mobiles inside train cars in Japan but I can't be bothered. Story will likely be re-posted anyway.
As others have noted, Ebay has a blanket policy of no CDRs, even though they themselves point out that there are CDRs you can sell that do not infringe copyright.
My worse example is that I tried to sell an import copy of final fantasy 9 on ebay. (I am in the UK and this was the US version).
I basically stated that this was a US PS1 disc and you couldn't play it unless you had a US or chipped console.
So they pulled my auction, stating that I was "encouraging console chipping" to play (original) imports, which Sony had told them was illegal.
They said it would be OK to resubmit the auction if I made no mention of chipping, but I felt disinclined to walk the thin line between stating something they felt was encouraging evil crime and on the other hand not giving people enough information, so they'd complain when they couldn't play it. (I have had people in the US for example buy PAL videos from me and be mystified as to why they can't play them).
"If you use or install television receiving equipment to receive or record television programme services you are required by law to have a valid TV Licence."
and
"Using television receiving equipment to receive or record broadcast television programmes without the correct licence is a criminal offence."
also:
"If your business installs or uses any equipment such as a TV set, PC with a broadcast card or any other TV receiving equipment which is capable of receiving broadcast television programmes (and is ever used for that purpose), you'll need a TV Licence."
(my bold).
Their site used to have an example of watching a videotape someone else had recorded and said the thing about it being OK even if you didn't have a licence if the person who recorded it had one.
They seem to have cut loads of material from their site....
I have talked to people from TV licencing about this a lot over the phone and I know I am right.
"You don't have to pay the TV license unless you actually own a TV."
I have 2 TVs and no licence. You are in fact only required to have a licence to receive TV programmes, whether through an aerial or cable/sat box.
I use my TVs for watching videos, home movies, DVDs, divxs and playing console games. In fact it is even OK to constantly watch videos recorded off air without a licence as long as the person who recorded the show had a licence.
We used to have a window tax. Search google for "window tax" and see the hilarity.
Though actually, this is like the "council tax" we have in the UK now because the number of windows a house has are pretty much an indicator of how much the house is worth.
" We'll see a lot of "dumb patent clerk" posts. But I think the problem is fundamental to the patent system and can't be fixed with smarter patent clerks."
So the 1st clerk says he can't go to play hockey on the roof because he has a bunch of patent applications to process, so the 2nd clerk tells him to just approve them all, no-one will ever know.
Whole bunch of K.Smith jokes just waiting to happen here. "Just don't approve any more patents on the way to the parking lot!"
No race is *yet* being systematically killed. I was just pointing out that then when a society is running scared and they have a Name for their fears it is very possible that a dictator can sway a Nation and cause Nazi-Germany style disaster.
Sniper ? DDOS attack ? While you can brand these things "terrorism", no right-minded individual would think that the same group of people who planned the WTC terror are behind these things.
There have been and always will be mad serial killers and bad hackers (oops sorry, "crackers" for ESR/jargon file defenders). The fact that people are connecting ANY evil act to the same people who destroyed the WTC is evidence of the group insanity I originally mentioned. You have only to read/. at -1 to see further evidence: "Let's kill all those dirty sand-niggers and turn their homes into glass" etc.
Yes there are evil acts being carried out all over the world, not just targetted at Americans. However this is not a Star Wars film and there is no one set of "bad guys", just lots of mad, evil people with their own agendas and schedules.
Even your own post, with its "...Muslims killing innocent civilions" is guilty of gross generalization- we aren't on a holy crusade against the whole of Islam, you know...
Your post hints at but does not fully form the idea that the recent view of Terrorism is paranoid and McCarthyist.
Got the wrong change back when buying bread at the corner shop ? It must be run by the Al Quaeda.
That kid who wants to marry my daugter has dyed blue hair ? God-damn Al-Quaeda-loving bastard.
It's going that way again. If McCarthyism had gone just a bit further I can imagine them rounding up the "communists" and putting them on trains "to Madagascar".
It's fundamental human nature. There are scary problems in the world. Just convince the general population that it's the fault of some random group and then fear and anger will do the rest.
Welcome to Genocide.
Posting at + 1, so the modding down takes a tiny bit longer.
Soon all digital video will be as easy to download and play as MP3s are today."
Wow! Gosh! I am so looking forward to that day! That sounds so awesome and futuristic! Will there really come a day when digital video is as easy to download as an MP3 is today? Wow! I'm so amazed, shocked even! The future is such an exciting place!
"for a mostly blind guy with photographic memory."
If you're mostly blind then obviously having a "photographic memory" takes a lot less storage space.
Don't mod me down if you think I'm making fun of the partially-sighted ("I could have sworn I saw someone there!"). I am actually quite deaf myself. Do I want special treatment ? You bet- I want Japanese schoolgirls to... Oops, off-topic.
Nice sweeping generalization there. How many films are pure art and were not made to bring a profit ? Not too many, though I have seen a few Swedish films and they were a cut above Hollywood in the "bread and circuses" dept.
Slashdot Mirror
But now it's 35.00000001%.
graspee
You can get an old 911 (non-turbo, but much more classic shape) for peanuts these days, but the parts will hurt your wallet.
graspee
What if we're all part of some gigantic computer and the molecules we put to work computing were already computing something ?
Is God going to sue us for stealing processing power ?
graspee
True story this.
... by microwave.
In the UK we used to have a "Poll Tax" which was deemed unfair by right-thinking individuals, and all sorts of methods of civil disobedience were used.
When they finally tracked me down, after years of evasion I decided to teach them a lesson.
I went into my local office where you could pay by cheque and I paid
That's right- I got a broken microwave oven- a really old heavy model, and I wrote out a cheque to those bastards on the top with a permanent marker.
At first they refused to accept it, saying that the bank would not handle it. I said "Ring them up". So they did. Yes, the bank would handle it, no there would not be any additional charge.
Haha!
Well it made me feel better at the time anyway, even though the queue of people waiting to pay didn't break out into spontaneous applause like they would have done had it been a quirky English comedy set in the gritty North of England.
graspee
Well yeah, duh, but if you read the 2nd quote I gave it isn't ambiguous.
graspee
" Whats the difference between a passanger talking on his cellphone and two passangers talking to each other on the same plane?"
/. story a while back that dealt with investigations of mobiles inside train cars in Japan but I can't be bothered. Story will likely be re-posted anyway.
The radiation bouncing around inside the cabin. Babum.
Not a very good joke is it ?
I would link to the
graspee
As others have noted, Ebay has a blanket policy of no CDRs, even though they themselves point out that there are CDRs you can sell that do not infringe copyright.
My worse example is that I tried to sell an import copy of final fantasy 9 on ebay. (I am in the UK and this was the US version).
I basically stated that this was a US PS1 disc and you couldn't play it unless you had a US or chipped console.
So they pulled my auction, stating that I was "encouraging console chipping" to play (original) imports, which Sony had told them was illegal.
They said it would be OK to resubmit the auction if I made no mention of chipping, but I felt disinclined to walk the thin line between stating something they felt was encouraging evil crime and on the other hand not giving people enough information, so they'd complain when they couldn't play it. (I have had people in the US for example buy PAL videos from me and be mystified as to why they can't play them).
graspee
Wrong, both of you. From tvlicencing.co.uk:
"If you use or install television receiving equipment to receive or record television programme services you are required by law to have a valid TV Licence."
and
"Using television receiving equipment to receive
or record broadcast television programmes
without the correct licence is a criminal offence."
also:
"If your business installs or uses any equipment such as a TV set, PC with a broadcast card or any other TV receiving equipment which is capable of receiving broadcast television programmes (and is ever used for that purpose), you'll need a TV Licence."
(my bold).
Their site used to have an example of watching a videotape someone else had recorded and said the thing about it being OK even if you didn't have a licence if the person who recorded it had one.
They seem to have cut loads of material from their site....
I have talked to people from TV licencing about this a lot over the phone and I know I am right.
graspee
"You don't have to pay the TV license unless you actually own a TV."
I have 2 TVs and no licence. You are in fact only required to have a licence to receive TV programmes, whether through an aerial or cable/sat box.
I use my TVs for watching videos, home movies, DVDs, divxs and playing console games. In fact it is even OK to constantly watch videos recorded off air without a licence as long as the person who recorded the show had a licence.
graspee
We used to have a window tax. Search google for "window tax" and see the hilarity.
Though actually, this is like the "council tax" we have in the UK now because the number of windows a house has are pretty much an indicator of how much the house is worth.
graspee
" We'll see a lot of "dumb patent clerk" posts. But I think the problem is fundamental to the patent system and can't be fixed with smarter patent clerks."
So the 1st clerk says he can't go to play hockey on the roof because he has a bunch of patent applications to process, so the 2nd clerk tells him to just approve them all, no-one will ever know.
Whole bunch of K.Smith jokes just waiting to happen here. "Just don't approve any more patents on the way to the parking lot!"
graspee
"If you lie down with dogs, you'll get up with fleas..."
More like if you lie down with dogs you'll get on farmsex.com.
graspee
The last thing I bought that used special paper was the Sinclair ZX-Printer.
graspee
If you had a beowulf cluster of these you could keep it/them in a pencil-case.
graspee
No race is *yet* being systematically killed. I was just pointing out that then when a society is running scared and they have a Name for their fears it is very possible that a dictator can sway a Nation and cause Nazi-Germany style disaster.
/. at -1 to see further evidence: "Let's kill all those dirty sand-niggers and turn their homes into glass" etc.
Sniper ? DDOS attack ? While you can brand these things "terrorism", no right-minded individual would think that the same group of people who planned the WTC terror are behind these things.
There have been and always will be mad serial killers and bad hackers (oops sorry, "crackers" for ESR/jargon file defenders). The fact that people are connecting ANY evil act to the same people who destroyed the WTC is evidence of the group insanity I originally mentioned. You have only to read
Yes there are evil acts being carried out all over the world, not just targetted at Americans. However this is not a Star Wars film and there is no one set of "bad guys", just lots of mad, evil people with their own agendas and schedules.
Even your own post, with its "...Muslims killing innocent civilions" is guilty of gross generalization- we aren't on a holy crusade against the whole of Islam, you know...
graspee
Your post hints at but does not fully form the idea that the recent view of Terrorism is paranoid and McCarthyist.
Got the wrong change back when buying bread at the corner shop ? It must be run by the Al Quaeda.
That kid who wants to marry my daugter has dyed blue hair ? God-damn Al-Quaeda-loving bastard.
It's going that way again. If McCarthyism had gone just a bit further I can imagine them rounding up the "communists" and putting them on trains "to Madagascar".
It's fundamental human nature. There are scary problems in the world. Just convince the general population that it's the fault of some random group and then fear and anger will do the rest.
Welcome to Genocide.
Posting at + 1, so the modding down takes a tiny bit longer.
graspee
" I couldn't load ESPN.com yesterday at school, now I know why!" ...Because you got high, because you got high, because you got high...
(It can't just have been me!)
graspee
"New developments to watch for:
PC-based PVRs
Soon all digital video will be as easy to download and play as MP3s are today."
Wow! Gosh! I am so looking forward to that day! That sounds so awesome and futuristic! Will there really come a day when digital video is as easy to download as an MP3 is today? Wow! I'm so amazed, shocked even! The future is such an exciting place!
graspee
I hereby therefore put the entire sentence in the public domain. The whole sentence is:
"Do I want special treatment ? You bet- I want Japanese schoolgirls to translate my manga for me."
graspee
"for a mostly blind guy with photographic memory."
... Oops, off-topic.
If you're mostly blind then obviously having a "photographic memory" takes a lot less storage space.
Don't mod me down if you think I'm making fun of the partially-sighted ("I could have sworn I saw someone there!"). I am actually quite deaf myself. Do I want special treatment ? You bet- I want Japanese schoolgirls to
graspee
What a rip off! Turns out this rotate feature is not a free rotate but fixed 90 degree increments!
Pfff! And I wanted to have my aterm at a weird angle.
graspee
Nice sweeping generalization there. How many films are pure art and were not made to bring a profit ? Not too many, though I have seen a few Swedish films and they were a cut above Hollywood in the "bread and circuses" dept.
graspee
Films tend to be worse affected by breaks in the middle than TV progs, which are designed with it in mind.
graspee
Thanks! It's great when I can get information from fluent speakers of Japanese!
graspee
It's just that in a Japanese grammar book I have it gives the example:
"watashi no heya ni wa sutereo ga arimasu"
for
"There is a stereo in my room".
So- who knows.
eep- my karma will take a hit from this offtopic exchange- now I will have to funny and insightful for ages...
graspee