you're legally allowed to vote, and you don't, you don't deserve to celebrate the 4th of July. Shame on you.
Being "allowed" to vote doesn't mean shit. Demanding a say in your own government is what counts. Unfortunately, we're too fat and stupified (as a Nation) to give a damn.
I guess we'll have to wait for the next international crisis (that isn't our government's fault) before we do something about bringing them to heel. Ironic, really, as it's only then that they'll get karma back for all the corporate cocksucking that is their fault and that we don't (as a Nation) care about right now.
Reading this, I was reminded of the producers/designers I've met in the games business over the years.
They have all been, without exception, soulless, talentless, buzzword compliant corporate cocksuckers with an "enthusiasm span" of about two weeks and all the loyalty and team spirit of a rattlesnake with a migraine.
The big giggle is that they grab the credit for great games (check the credits list in your favourite game), but shit never sticks to them. No matter how tits up the game goes, producers/designers always manage to pin the blame on development and stagger on to the next project, usually with a better package, because, hey, they gained valuable experience, right?
Here's a typical conversation between a producer and a developer.
Producer: I can't accept this, it needs better gameplay.
Developer: OK, in what areas?
Producer: All of it! I've got ten projects on the go, I can't think of everything. Just fix it!
Developer: How can I fix it if you won't tell me what you want?
Producer: I don't like your attitude.
Developer: What? I want to fix it, but...
Producer: Oh, wait, I've just got a better offer from Zappo-O-Games, I'm outie. Bob here will be taking over.
Developer: The fuck?
Producer Bob: Hi! I'm Bob! I'm twenty years old and I've got no practical experience to speak of, but boy can I fake sincere short term enthusiasm for this project! I just love your Mecha combat game! Really, I love it! But we need you to change it into a racing game with giant armoured spheres! Six weeks OK?
but do you really want a record in place every time you pay with cash
Of course! For I am a tractable law abiding citizen. Surely the only people who would mind are thieves and child molesters and drug dealers and commies and satanists and terrorists and (shudder) copyright pirates, right?
Seriously, you want to know how this will be pushed? War on Drugs. A recent test on banknotes in London showed that 99% of them contained traces of cocaine. We must stop the evil! Won't someone please think of the children! And so on.
Why copyright law can't be more like patent law I don't understand. Is the work of an author or an illustrator really that much different from that of a designer?
I think so. A patent describes a process that other people can use to produce a final product. Even when the patent expires, there's still effort involved to create your own particular interpretation of the final product.
Copyright directly protects a single final product. When the copyright expires, anyone can copy the fruits of your labour verbatim with minimal cost and effort.
That said, I do agree that copyright terms are way too long, and that eternal copyright is abhorent. And I'm an author.
I think it was more of a slow lingering death. The best episodes were superb, but the dross just drowned it all out in the end.
In particular, there was only so many times that I could take Mulder's whiny monotonic yelling and flashbacks to childhood anal probings. The whole alien conspiracy thing got tired, confused and irritating, and I stopped caring long before Duchovny left.
Basically, they ran out of ideas about the time the movie was made, and have been coasting since then. Gillian will be missed, but only in an abstract way, I think. Frankly, I'm surprised she's stayed so long, considering the amount of skin they've been making her show in the past couple of seasons. Not that I've watched much of them, but the trailers have all been Gillian in a vest, Gillian sweating through a blouse, looking down Gillian's pleasant but modest cleavage... The sexual tension between Scully and Mulder was delightfully and tastefully handled - it's sad to see Scully reduced to a titillation role, and I think Gillian's right to get out while she's still got some dignity and credibility left.
Um, most of those "ethnic minorities" aren't US... maybe you meant that. It's early. Humor Gene fell off in my sleep
S'ok, it was my PC gene going berserk. I meant, "a minority in the USA (as opposed to in Bangladesh or Canada)". We tend to forget that "ethnic minority" is a meaninglessly ethnocentric term if left unqualified. For example, in some places in the USA, caucasian are an ethnic minority at the local level, while at a global scale, anyone except asians are a minority (depending on how widely you define asian, and on whether you think ethnicity is viewer objective, viewer subjective or subject subjective...).
Darn. Even as I take the piss out of Voyager, it infects me with it's PC doubletalk and makes me meander off topic. Will the madness never end? Give me WWF with rayguns!;)
This thing is worth $10,000? And it actively seeks out intruders?
Marvin: Halt, evildoer!
Evildoer: Here boy! C'mon! C'mon boy!
(Squeal of robot tyres on floor tiles)
Marvin: Cease your ambulation, meat creature!
Evildoer: This way! This way boy!
(Rumble of robot tyres on wooden ramp)
Marvin: Resistance is... Bzzzt... scanning new environment...
(Sound of van door slamming. Squeal of van tires on tarmac. Sound of cash register as Evildoer sells $10,000 robot.)
I was usually too busy working the accidents caused by the dumbasses that thought 45MPH is a good speed for a posted 30MPH zone in the rain. A rental company that did this would have done wonders to lower my workload
How would catching people doing over the state limit anywhere stop them from doing exactly the state limit in a 30mph zone in the rain?
A driver travelling at a fast enough speed is unlikely to be able to determine that the "person" by the road is in fact a scarecrow with a plastic radar gun!
Here in Luxembourg, they do this near road contruction places: A cardboard "roadworker" motioning drivers to slow down
Some police forces in England were deploying cardboard police cars by the side of the road. Motorists would see them, slow down, realise they'd been tricked, accelerate away... and then get caught by the real speed trap half a mile down the road.;)
The rationale was that the cardboard car "reminded" drivers to slow down, and only the worst offenders would accelerate again. AFAIK, they were catching too many people, and withdrew the scheme.
Re. Space 1999: and miraculously, it was aimed exaclty in the direction of numerous interesting planets and aliens. They are critically short of space shuttles, but manage to lose one per episode. Somehow, next week, n-1 == n again
It's a busy universe. Low budget, but busy.;)
Also, they were probably building Eagles out of discarded Chinese take out boxes, toenail clippings and sticky tape. Just like Voyager did with photon/quantum/zorbatron torpedoes, remember? Oh, no, wait, we don't remember, because they never explained where they kept finding them.;)
And I respectfully disagree with the other earlier poster about Farscape. I do not consider that a piece of quality sci-fi
As a raving Farscape fanatic (as raving as we get any way), I have to fervently, er, agree with you.;)
Farscape isn't original. It's basically Buck Rogers with elements from the A Team or any other "Run away from the bad guys!" show. It's also not actually SF (see the sig), any more than a historical drama is a drama first, and a piece of history second. The plots are sometimes banal, occasionally complete rip offs, and the characters are stereotypes.
However! In the quality of scripting, dialogue, acting and cinematography, Farscape is streets ahead of written-by-committee, aimed-at-the-lowest-common-denominator pulp like Voyager, and still better than the suspiciously similar Andromeda. If only they'd get rid of the damn muppets...;)
Fox, if you are listening, please do us a favor: create a show that will have some value after 20 years. I think things like _good_ plots and characters with character, not 2D stereo types, might be a good start
I hear you, but I don't think it's going to happen. B5, Farscape and Space: Above and Beyond have/had those in various degrees, but none of them get viewing figures close to the dumbed down "particle of the week" tits and ass fest that is Voyager.
While I agree with you in principle, in practice the best we can probably hope for is that they make it dumb but fun. WWF with ray guns.
the Starfury fighters fire maneuvering thrusters to move, and doing that strafing thing where the ship is pointed at 90 degrees to the movement vector
Yes, that was nice when they remembered to do it, but they weren't consistent.
Actually, there was at least one "flip and fire" in Space: Above and Beyond, when Chiggy Von Richthofen got nailed. Also, they had missiles, slug guns, LIDAR, ECM, even starfighters with guns on turrets. Nice.
I have some advice for the new producers of BG, based on observation of original Battlestar Galactica and Galactica 1980.
I too have some advice, based on watching the Star Trek franchise.
Put serious tits and ass in from day one.
Make the captain a bald black woman. Hell, make her a disabled lesbian single parent as well.
Put serious tits and ass in from day one.
Pick a new (US) ethnic minority to showcase. I'd suggest having a Bangladeshi, or Innuit or Yupik first officer. Who's also a robot. And an alien.
Put serious tits and ass in from day one.
Your teasers and promos should consist entirely of space dogfights and tits and ass.
Put serious tits and ass in from day one.
Whenever you run out of ideas, blow up the ship then claim it was all a dream, or a time travel episode, or a holodeck simulation.
Did I mention the importance of tits and ass?
Let's face it - Battlestar Galactica is cheesy pulp. Let's revel in it! I want to see chisel jawed men punching bug eyed monsters, and seven breasted bimbos in glittery unitards. I want WWF Iiiiin Spaaaaaace!;)
Re:I suppose in some idealistic sense,
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SO what if the ISP blocks it? THEY are then eating the cost of that incoming traffic, they just aren't forwarding it on to you, so you pay for it with higher fees
Uh, no. ISP's use ORBS to block traffic as high up as possible to save them money as well. You do pay for your ISP for the priviledge of receiving spam, just not (generally) per message. Business users (and GRPS users) catch it in the shorts, as they pay twice - once in the ISP's network costs, and again per byte of message.
Re:Make a decision, folks
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Censorship is either good or bad. Pick one.
Censorship is bad.
Making people responsible for their actions is good.
ORBS does not censor content. ORBS gives people the information they need to make an informed decision to filter traffic from incompetent idiots.
Is that clear enough, or do I need to use shorter words?
Companies don't have a right to use de facto or legalised monopoly power to take wealth from many people and give it to a few major shareholders.
Companies have both a right and indeed a social duty to generate wealth for many (shareholders, employees and consumers) through genuine technical innovation and level playing field competitiveness.
In other words, we should reward go-getters for going and getting, not for employing the best paralegal teams and spoiling the other guy's efforts.
Politicians continue promoting the flooding of America with 3rd world immigration that compound the problem further
Interesting post. Mitigating factors:
Non-Caucaseans are detained disproportionally frequently (e.g. for minor traffic offences or just for Walking While Black), so have a higher chance of being arrested and prosecuted than a Caucasean suspect. That leads to a cycle of discrimination == convictions == disrimination...
Crime is largely a function of environment. No job, no eddycation, no prospects, easy access to (expensive) drugs == crime. To solve this problem you have to take money, and lots of it, from middle class white folks and throw it at the ghettoes. We're talking trillions rather than millions. Are you going to vote for that, or would you rather have another tax cut?
But you're right that we should debate this honestly.
We need private groups to put wireless webcams watching city hall entrances
During the anti-capitalist demonstrations in London this spring, the police turned off the public BBC webcams in any area of the city where they were carrying out crowd control (including mass detentions and punishment beatings).
So, are you willing to bet the cop on duty on the monitors doesn't have a quota to meet? Nearly all police departments have official or unofficial quota systems by which they judge arrests or cititations of particular crimes
This is absolutely correct, and a splendid point. A friend in traffic told me that handheld speed detectors are often deployed heavily at the end of the month to meet quota. He reckons that if he wanted, he could write two or three times as many tickets as he currently does, but then he'd have to explain why he was ticketing "abnormally". So he just picks up the worst offenders at the start of the month, then fills quota at the end.
I would personally have to provide identification every time the camera falsely identifies me as a criminal than to let a criminal walk the streets
I can't honestly believe that you've thought that through. Every time?
Do you remember the black motorist who was stopped so often that he had posters put up saying "This man is not a criminal"?
That's the lengths you'd have to go to if they were stubborn about taking your look-a-like off the system. And given that they'll be most keen to retain the worst criminals, if you happen to look a lot like Bloodbath Bill, you'd better be prepared to be clubbed, maced, tazered and shot before proving your innocence.
Slashdot Mirror
Being "allowed" to vote doesn't mean shit. Demanding a say in your own government is what counts. Unfortunately, we're too fat and stupified (as a Nation) to give a damn.
I guess we'll have to wait for the next international crisis (that isn't our government's fault) before we do something about bringing them to heel. Ironic, really, as it's only then that they'll get karma back for all the corporate cocksucking that is their fault and that we don't (as a Nation) care about right now.
Reading this, I was reminded of the producers/designers I've met in the games business over the years.
They have all been, without exception, soulless, talentless, buzzword compliant corporate cocksuckers with an "enthusiasm span" of about two weeks and all the loyalty and team spirit of a rattlesnake with a migraine.
The big giggle is that they grab the credit for great games (check the credits list in your favourite game), but shit never sticks to them. No matter how tits up the game goes, producers/designers always manage to pin the blame on development and stagger on to the next project, usually with a better package, because, hey, they gained valuable experience, right?
Here's a typical conversation between a producer and a developer.
Think I'm joking? I only wish.
London, 1999, 99%.
Of course! For I am a tractable law abiding citizen. Surely the only people who would mind are thieves and child molesters and drug dealers and commies and satanists and terrorists and (shudder) copyright pirates, right?
Seriously, you want to know how this will be pushed? War on Drugs. A recent test on banknotes in London showed that 99% of them contained traces of cocaine. We must stop the evil! Won't someone please think of the children! And so on.
Uh, yeah, well said.
Chinese law and custom does not recognise any intellectual property, including copyright.
The GPL says "This source is copyright Joe Developer. However, you may copy or modify it if blah blah blah..."
They'll just stop reading at "This source is copyright". And they have the law (Chinese law) on their side.
I think so. A patent describes a process that other people can use to produce a final product. Even when the patent expires, there's still effort involved to create your own particular interpretation of the final product.
Copyright directly protects a single final product. When the copyright expires, anyone can copy the fruits of your labour verbatim with minimal cost and effort.
That said, I do agree that copyright terms are way too long, and that eternal copyright is abhorent. And I'm an author.
I think it was more of a slow lingering death. The best episodes were superb, but the dross just drowned it all out in the end.
In particular, there was only so many times that I could take Mulder's whiny monotonic yelling and flashbacks to childhood anal probings. The whole alien conspiracy thing got tired, confused and irritating, and I stopped caring long before Duchovny left.
Basically, they ran out of ideas about the time the movie was made, and have been coasting since then. Gillian will be missed, but only in an abstract way, I think. Frankly, I'm surprised she's stayed so long, considering the amount of skin they've been making her show in the past couple of seasons. Not that I've watched much of them, but the trailers have all been Gillian in a vest, Gillian sweating through a blouse, looking down Gillian's pleasant but modest cleavage... The sexual tension between Scully and Mulder was delightfully and tastefully handled - it's sad to see Scully reduced to a titillation role, and I think Gillian's right to get out while she's still got some dignity and credibility left.
S'ok, it was my PC gene going berserk. I meant, "a minority in the USA (as opposed to in Bangladesh or Canada)". We tend to forget that "ethnic minority" is a meaninglessly ethnocentric term if left unqualified. For example, in some places in the USA, caucasian are an ethnic minority at the local level, while at a global scale, anyone except asians are a minority (depending on how widely you define asian, and on whether you think ethnicity is viewer objective, viewer subjective or subject subjective...).
Darn. Even as I take the piss out of Voyager, it infects me with it's PC doubletalk and makes me meander off topic. Will the madness never end? Give me WWF with rayguns!;)
This thing is worth $10,000? And it actively seeks out intruders?
(Squeal of robot tyres on floor tiles)
(Rumble of robot tyres on wooden ramp)
(Sound of van door slamming. Squeal of van tires on tarmac. Sound of cash register as Evildoer sells $10,000 robot.)
How would catching people doing over the state limit anywhere stop them from doing exactly the state limit in a 30mph zone in the rain?
I do agree with you in principle though.
- A driver travelling at a fast enough speed is unlikely to be able to determine that the "person" by the road is in fact a scarecrow with a plastic radar gun!
Here in Luxembourg, they do this near road contruction places: A cardboard "roadworker" motioning drivers to slow downSome police forces in England were deploying cardboard police cars by the side of the road. Motorists would see them, slow down, realise they'd been tricked, accelerate away... and then get caught by the real speed trap half a mile down the road. ;)
The rationale was that the cardboard car "reminded" drivers to slow down, and only the worst offenders would accelerate again. AFAIK, they were catching too many people, and withdrew the scheme.
It's a busy universe. Low budget, but busy. ;)
Also, they were probably building Eagles out of discarded Chinese take out boxes, toenail clippings and sticky tape. Just like Voyager did with photon/quantum/zorbatron torpedoes, remember? Oh, no, wait, we don't remember, because they never explained where they kept finding them. ;)
As a raving Farscape fanatic (as raving as we get any way), I have to fervently, er, agree with you. ;)
Farscape isn't original. It's basically Buck Rogers with elements from the A Team or any other "Run away from the bad guys!" show. It's also not actually SF (see the sig), any more than a historical drama is a drama first, and a piece of history second. The plots are sometimes banal, occasionally complete rip offs, and the characters are stereotypes.
However! In the quality of scripting, dialogue, acting and cinematography, Farscape is streets ahead of written-by-committee, aimed-at-the-lowest-common-denominator pulp like Voyager, and still better than the suspiciously similar Andromeda. If only they'd get rid of the damn muppets...If they're going for total kitch, they should use the original clips, with some Episode 4.1 digital enhancement magic. ;)
Either that, or render a whole bunch of shots that are different from each other by a barely noticable margin. :)
I hear you, but I don't think it's going to happen. B5, Farscape and Space: Above and Beyond have/had those in various degrees, but none of them get viewing figures close to the dumbed down "particle of the week" tits and ass fest that is Voyager.
While I agree with you in principle, in practice the best we can probably hope for is that they make it dumb but fun. WWF with ray guns.
Well said. He gave it far more credibility than it deserved. Replacements then?
Yes, that was nice when they remembered to do it, but they weren't consistent.
Actually, there was at least one "flip and fire" in Space: Above and Beyond, when Chiggy Von Richthofen got nailed. Also, they had missiles, slug guns, LIDAR, ECM, even starfighters with guns on turrets. Nice.
I too have some advice, based on watching the Star Trek franchise.
Let's face it - Battlestar Galactica is cheesy pulp. Let's revel in it! I want to see chisel jawed men punching bug eyed monsters, and seven breasted bimbos in glittery unitards. I want WWF Iiiiin Spaaaaaace! ;)
Uh, no. ISP's use ORBS to block traffic as high up as possible to save them money as well. You do pay for your ISP for the priviledge of receiving spam, just not (generally) per message. Business users (and GRPS users) catch it in the shorts, as they pay twice - once in the ISP's network costs, and again per byte of message.
Censorship is bad.
Making people responsible for their actions is good.
ORBS does not censor content. ORBS gives people the information they need to make an informed decision to filter traffic from incompetent idiots.
Is that clear enough, or do I need to use shorter words?
I'll refine that:
In other words, we should reward go-getters for going and getting, not for employing the best paralegal teams and spoiling the other guy's efforts.
Interesting post. Mitigating factors:
But you're right that we should debate this honestly.
During the anti-capitalist demonstrations in London this spring, the police turned off the public BBC webcams in any area of the city where they were carrying out crowd control (including mass detentions and punishment beatings).
This is absolutely correct, and a splendid point. A friend in traffic told me that handheld speed detectors are often deployed heavily at the end of the month to meet quota. He reckons that if he wanted, he could write two or three times as many tickets as he currently does, but then he'd have to explain why he was ticketing "abnormally". So he just picks up the worst offenders at the start of the month, then fills quota at the end.
I can't honestly believe that you've thought that through. Every time?
Do you remember the black motorist who was stopped so often that he had posters put up saying "This man is not a criminal"?
That's the lengths you'd have to go to if they were stubborn about taking your look-a-like off the system. And given that they'll be most keen to retain the worst criminals, if you happen to look a lot like Bloodbath Bill, you'd better be prepared to be clubbed, maced, tazered and shot before proving your innocence.