And to think I wasted my last moderator point on some dumbass troll, when I could have waited for your glorious post and given it the attention it deserves.
I'd forgotten that. Europe has a tiny land mass of 3,998,000 sq miles, whereas the USA has a massive land mass of 3,717,796 sq miles...
DAMN those facts! It's so much easier to spit off mindless hyperpole a la Rush Limbaugh than actually doing some research! Thanks, friend.
Additionally, most conservatives are able to communicate without using the f-word in every third sentence.
Yes, that naughty "f-word." My goodness, the baby Jesus might cry if we were to use the "f-word!" Geepers, Wally, did he use the "f-word"? Better run tell Dad!
As a counterexample to liberals being "arrogant elitists" I give you Exhibit A, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an arrogant fuck if ever there were one. (Ooops! There's that "f-word" again! My oh my! Won't somebody please think of the children?) Not saying he's not a genius, not saying I don't repsect him. But he is arrogant, he is elitist, and he is oh so conservative. Read some books. And let's just totally ignore Rep. Dick Armey, cuz, well, that's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Oh, and by the way: Your post just serves to reaffirm my belief that conservatives are sanctimonious assholes who'd rather preach than think.
Do you even understand what the word "independent" means? I made no claims about Salon's bias, nor will I do so. (Mainly because such arguments are specious at best). "Independent", however, means that they are separate from any corporate control, and that remains true. Of course seeing as how conservatives absolutely obsess over the so-called liberal bias in the media, it suprises me exactly NONE that you interpreted my sentence thusly.
Come one take it for what it is. You read it because youre a leftist and you want toi read news with a leftist view. It's the same reason why I read Worldnetdaily.com
Would somebody PLEASE give the conservative community a fucking DICTIONARY? I swear to GOD there are about half a dozen conservatives who can spell, and maybe three or four of those who can construct gramatically correct sentences. And one of those is George Will! JESUS! I try to pay attention to the arguments and not the sentence structure, but fuck me! It just makes one start to think that 99% of the conservatives on the net are, well, morons!
Gee, I dunno. Maybe it's because they are the only news organization on the fucking planet that isn't owned by AOL/Time Warner, Fox, Belo or Clear Channel? As far as I can tell they are the only independent news organization on the web. Everything else just regurgitates stories a la/.
<muttering>
Soft core porn m'ass. Dumb motherfuckers don't know what the fuck they're talkin about listenin to dr. laura watchin Ricki Lake homeschooled dumbasses swear to god gonna git a gun...
</muttering>
- Rev.
Personally, I could give a crap if I could break the world's record in... whatever. I'll leave that to the comptetive types who get their sense of self worth from beating other people.
BUT: If these techniques could be used to be a sort of super-Viagara, not only keeping Mr. Happy up and running but also keep Mr. Coronary Failure from showing up... Well I'd be tearing down the door to get it done.
And you know how a normal tongue is three times stronger than normal muscle tissue? Think about it! A super tongue! I'd start spelling "cunnilingus" with even more N's. And I'd have oh so many new friends with large breasts and flat stomachs and tasteful tattoos. Hell, I might even get famous and get on Stile Project! Woo-hoo!
The best models I have seen have different groups responsible for the design, the coding, and the hardware. The design people are usually the freaky Mac types, the administrative people are the moles who are really into that kind of thing, and the software people are the attractive psychologically balanced ones who do the actual work.
Ahem. Excuse me.
Seriously, the separation of labor between these three camps works out best because it allows each group to maximize their specialty. If you have some designers with good HTML skills, then your coders can, for example, just drop in, custom JSP tags where appropriate without having to mess with the web server or design principles. A group consisting of people who have a lot of knowledge in one of these areas and a little knowledge in each of the other two tend to perform best. I hate to use the word "synergy" but it really is appropriate here.
Depending on your resources there are other areas to consider as well. Q&A is extremely important and can help the developers to more efficiently debug. Content writers and proofreaders are important as well; someone who can tell the difference between "your" and "you're" can be a real boon to your professionalism.
But the basic web team, IMHO, should minimally consist of the three core elements I listed above. The most successful projects I have worked on have been variotions on this theme.
I pity you. Truly, I do. If the most astute literary analysis you can come up with is a whining "that's just your opinion!" then you are missing out on many great authors who have made frequently illuminating commentaries on the human condition. Do you truly believe that "The Plague" is a treatise on human nature of no more importance than the latest Danielle Steele novel? Or that "The Brothers Karamazov" holds equal philosophical value to "Harry Potter"? Or that "1984" has nothing whatsoever important to say -- no matter how allegorical -- about freedom and totalitarian governments?
No book is an authoritative guide on the human condition. There isn't one. But some books can provide far greater insights into that condition than others. Reducing it to simply being an "opinion" is nothing more than intellectual laziness.
I have a son that is two. I can only hope that I will be as upstanding a father as you have been. If my son is clever enough to make astute jokes at Spielberg films, I think I'll be proud.
Y'know, the only reason we SAW that movie was so that we could play Joel & friends after smoking a fattie. Unfortunately, the movie was so astoundingly atrocious that our powers of mockery were beaten into submission. Furthermore it was a tremendous buzzkill.
I mean, there were points during that movie where the only appropriate response was to cry a river. Hardly MST3K worthy. It was that bad.
Also, it helps if you have about 5 dried grams of mushrooms. This has always helped me to have a deeper understanding of astronomical phenomena. Seriously. Don't do this if you want to take measurements, of course. But if you just want to enjoy the sights and ponder your universal significance, then get some shrooms.
Oh yes, I totally agree. I don't know how many times I've thought "Y'know, Mozilla is really in the way of my terminal window. If I could just reshape my terminal window so that it resembled a big L that would really help my workflow!" Plus, if we were able to change windows into whatever shape we wanted it would certainly allow for some boasting rights over M$!
I just want to know if X could even be extended to support this.
Ooh! Ooh! You know what ELSE would be cool? If you could have windows that morphed all on their own! We could have Lava-Gnome or Lava-KDE or whatever. The artsy-fartsy types would flock to Linux from their wimpy Macs, and usability can just go fuck itself!
Wow. A whole new world of possibilities has just opened up before us. But would this be a cathedral or bazaar model for development? That's the important quetsion.
- Rev.
Re:Hardware reviews from Salon!??
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 2
What are you talking about? Salon has made it a staple of their content to deal with technical issues since they started publishing. Salon deals with many different issues, from P2P to penis grabbing to LSD, and they have done most of it extremely well. Just because they do not focus exclusively on technology does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that they cannot write quality reviews of the latest game console.
Here, read this or this. I think it'll help you see more clearly.
- Rev.
Re:why so negative towards xbox?
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
I mean really, linking the xbox release with one totally negative article, while other sites have given it a much better outlook. Please try to be fair here slashdot.
BWAHAHAHAHA! Asking/. to be fair and balanced when dealing with M$-related things is like asking Rush Limbaugh to stop parroting Republican dogma: i.e., it just won't happen.
It doesn't seem that you got what he was saying. He was attempting to address the notion of "value" as being something that does not necessarily include monetary worth. If you define value to be only about how much it will bring in the market, then everything you have said is correct. If, however, you include actual quality in your definition of value, then the original poster has a point, however poorly he may have expressed it.
I saw a news segment a while ago about the guys (yes, all men) in NYC who's job is to go check out the huge freaking sewers that come out of the Manhattan whenever they get clogged, pipes that are big enough to stand in full of human excrement. Yes, it is as nasty as it sounds. Their job is to be walking fecal decompactors.
I'd rather be one of those guys than your buddy who is animating Jar-Jar. At least then I wouldn't be embarrased about my job.
Or cast N'Sync as Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin and Fatty, with Britney as Eowyn and Christina as Arwen Evenstar. Throw in Clooney as Strider and Stallone as Boromir, and you open the way for Jim Carrey and Gary Busey to steal the show as Legolas and Gimli. With Travolta as fearless leader Gandalf the Thetan..
Thank you for bringing that apocalyptic vision into my head. You have successfully tarnished the tale I most love to reread. Now, I must kill you! Good-bye!
Actually, I think this brings up a good point. The casting seems to be spot on. Ian McKellan as Gandalf made my toes curl the first time I heard it. He's perfect. Here's hoping it all works out.
CUZ IF IT DOESN'T, I'M TAKING HOSTAGES! I canNOT handle another TPM-like disappointment and remain a stable individual. End of story.
Wow, this guy posts early but it looks good so he gets modded up. What a crock.
XML solves the interchange problem. By this, it is meant that XML allows two systems that do not share a predetermined data exchange protocol to share data. Thats it.
That is a VAST oversimplification. What if instead you had said "computers allow us to carry out a repeated set of instructions. That's it." Doesn't quite tell the whole story, does it? Nor does your kindergarten-level definition of XML tell the whole story.
Applications of XML to programming lang design (XSL) and other domains are largely a waste of time and won't last.
Hmmm.... And will the stock market rebound in the next six months? Will Jesus FINALLY return and lift the Believers up into heaven? Will it rain next Friday?
You can speak out of your ass all you like. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen. XSL/XSLT has been around for a while now, and its user base has only been expanding.
He's a moron, obviously has done nothing more than skimmed a few chapters in some cheap-ass Wrox text, and he gets modded up to 5. There is no justice, I tell you!
Austin, Texas has had a nude beach for decades called "Hippie Hollow." Obviously started in the 60's, the crowd ain't that bad. Mixture of older & younger.
Yet ANOTHER blow against Candadian individualism. Sorry.
Look man, I know you haven't yet come to terms with the fact that the entire world doesn't share your narrow opinions on what should and should not be posted on/., but lemme tell you something: there are people who read/. who have kids and very much appreciate reviews such as this one. Rushdie might be a geek, but he's not a nerd. There are *hundreds* of books released each year that are more important than Rusdhie's, and a great many of them deal with the Internet. But I'm not going to clamor for/. to review them. I subscribe to the New York Review of Books for that.
Sheesh.
Besides if you want to see it reviewed then YOU review it. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if you do a good job it'll get posted.
d) you want to buy a product from a web site. It asks your date of birth. Response: 1/1/1970.
Do they seriously believe that people are going to give them that info?
Yes, they do. And people will.
I have been involved in setting up several web ventures; a handful of them were even successful. One project I was working on involved credit scoring with hooks into buying insurance and such. Before setting off on this we did some research on how willing people would be to become a part of this, seeing as how it required more than the usual amount of personal information. The company we outsourced the research to came back with some truly unexpected results: over 60% of the respondents either were willing to give their information, or didn't have strong feelings against it. Only around 25% of the people we surveyed responded negatively.
Remember, this was information such as social security number, credit history, mother's maiden name, and so forth -- the most personal of information. This took us completely by surprise; we were fully expecting this to be a major hurdle to overcome.
Eventually the effort was killed not by lack of market potential, but by legislation prohibiting the distribution of such information directly to the consumer. (This was backed largely by the credit reporting agencies and their lobbies.)
So do I beleive that.NET will be successful? Absoultely. If it offers even the most trivial of benefits to consumers, they will flock to it like cattle to the slaughter.
As far as the major parties are concerned, the proposition that "'Republicans' do not favor government interference in commerce..." is largely a myth. While it may make up a part of the party platform, in action the Republicans are very little different from their Democratic brethren when it comes to tinkering with the economy. The recent multi-billion dollar bailout of the airline industry being the most recent example (and one that is certainly more justifiable.) Each and every member of Congress has their own pork to protect, and they vary rarely let ideology get in the way of their reelecton bids.
Indeed, the DMCA was signed largely with Republican backing, as was NAFTA, GATT, and other free-trade legislation. Similarly, tarriffs against imported steel has had the backing from members of both parties from the steel belt. This is not suprising or even morally unjustifiable, but it further serves to illustrate the point.
Is it some sort of MTV-esque "Look at how bad I am, I like Thompson!' thing?
Perhaps partially. I admire and respect Thompson because gonzo journalism was, at its onset, a new and refreshing change from more traditional reporting styles. It was a partially successful experiment, and worthy of trying.
But perhaps more importantly I admire anyone who is able to flagrantly flout society's conventions and morality and be successful doing so. Since the mainstream media continues to hound upon the virtues of leading a pure and chaste life, it is refreshing to have someone show that extreme debauchery does not necessarily lead to a life of tragedy, if you are smart about it. I don't consider him a "drug crazy retard", but a journalist who has pursued (and abandoned) some interesting styles and who is a better-than-average writer.
But, given that ACLU has a mission, stating the obvious, to promote liberties, why has the ACLU long been absent on issues related to technology?
What are you talking about? The ACLU has a long history of defending tech rights, and were the first organization to challenge an Internet-related federal law and have it heard by the Supreme Court. Check out Reno v. ACLU if you haven't done so before. This case was heard way, way back in 1997. The ACLU has also worked in conjunction with the EFF and/or EPIC on numerous occasions.
More recently they have filed amicus briefs in cases regarding anonymous speech on the net, as well as in the DeCSS case.
To state that the ACLU has "no argument" with laws such as the DMCA or the SSSCA is to argue from simple ignorance. Both of those laws directly conflict with the values that the ACLU tries to advance and preserve.
Slashdot Mirror
And to think I wasted my last moderator point on some dumbass troll, when I could have waited for your glorious post and given it the attention it deserves.
I'd forgotten that. Europe has a tiny land mass of 3,998,000 sq miles, whereas the USA has a massive land mass of 3,717,796 sq miles...
DAMN those facts! It's so much easier to spit off mindless hyperpole a la Rush Limbaugh than actually doing some research! Thanks, friend.
- Rev.Additionally, most conservatives are able to communicate without using the f-word in every third sentence.
Yes, that naughty "f-word." My goodness, the baby Jesus might cry if we were to use the "f-word!" Geepers, Wally, did he use the "f-word"? Better run tell Dad!
As a counterexample to liberals being "arrogant elitists" I give you Exhibit A, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, an arrogant fuck if ever there were one. (Ooops! There's that "f-word" again! My oh my! Won't somebody please think of the children?) Not saying he's not a genius, not saying I don't repsect him. But he is arrogant, he is elitist, and he is oh so conservative. Read some books. And let's just totally ignore Rep. Dick Armey, cuz, well, that's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Oh, and by the way: Your post just serves to reaffirm my belief that conservatives are sanctimonious assholes who'd rather preach than think.
TTFN!
- Rev.Come one take it for what it is. You read it because youre a leftist and you want toi read news with a leftist view. It's the same reason why I read Worldnetdaily.com
Would somebody PLEASE give the conservative community a fucking DICTIONARY? I swear to GOD there are about half a dozen conservatives who can spell, and maybe three or four of those who can construct gramatically correct sentences. And one of those is George Will! JESUS! I try to pay attention to the arguments and not the sentence structure, but fuck me! It just makes one start to think that 99% of the conservatives on the net are, well, morons!
Gee, I dunno. Maybe it's because they are the only news organization on the fucking planet that isn't owned by AOL/Time Warner, Fox, Belo or Clear Channel? As far as I can tell they are the only independent news organization on the web. Everything else just regurgitates stories a la /.
<muttering>Soft core porn m'ass. Dumb motherfuckers don't know what the fuck they're talkin about listenin to dr. laura watchin Ricki Lake homeschooled dumbasses swear to god gonna git a gun...
</muttering> - Rev.
Personally, I could give a crap if I could break the world's record in... whatever. I'll leave that to the comptetive types who get their sense of self worth from beating other people.
BUT: If these techniques could be used to be a sort of super-Viagara, not only keeping Mr. Happy up and running but also keep Mr. Coronary Failure from showing up... Well I'd be tearing down the door to get it done.
And you know how a normal tongue is three times stronger than normal muscle tissue? Think about it! A super tongue! I'd start spelling "cunnilingus" with even more N's. And I'd have oh so many new friends with large breasts and flat stomachs and tasteful tattoos. Hell, I might even get famous and get on Stile Project! Woo-hoo!
- Rev.The best models I have seen have different groups responsible for the design, the coding, and the hardware. The design people are usually the freaky Mac types, the administrative people are the moles who are really into that kind of thing, and the software people are the attractive psychologically balanced ones who do the actual work.
Ahem. Excuse me.
Seriously, the separation of labor between these three camps works out best because it allows each group to maximize their specialty. If you have some designers with good HTML skills, then your coders can, for example, just drop in, custom JSP tags where appropriate without having to mess with the web server or design principles. A group consisting of people who have a lot of knowledge in one of these areas and a little knowledge in each of the other two tend to perform best. I hate to use the word "synergy" but it really is appropriate here.
Depending on your resources there are other areas to consider as well. Q&A is extremely important and can help the developers to more efficiently debug. Content writers and proofreaders are important as well; someone who can tell the difference between "your" and "you're" can be a real boon to your professionalism.
But the basic web team, IMHO, should minimally consist of the three core elements I listed above. The most successful projects I have worked on have been variotions on this theme.
- Rev.I pity you. Truly, I do. If the most astute literary analysis you can come up with is a whining "that's just your opinion!" then you are missing out on many great authors who have made frequently illuminating commentaries on the human condition. Do you truly believe that "The Plague" is a treatise on human nature of no more importance than the latest Danielle Steele novel? Or that "The Brothers Karamazov" holds equal philosophical value to "Harry Potter"? Or that "1984" has nothing whatsoever important to say -- no matter how allegorical -- about freedom and totalitarian governments?
No book is an authoritative guide on the human condition. There isn't one. But some books can provide far greater insights into that condition than others. Reducing it to simply being an "opinion" is nothing more than intellectual laziness.
IMHO.
That's irony, son. Can you dig it?
- Rev.I have a son that is two. I can only hope that I will be as upstanding a father as you have been. If my son is clever enough to make astute jokes at Spielberg films, I think I'll be proud.
No sarcasm. Totally serious. Brah-vo.
Y'know, the only reason we SAW that movie was so that we could play Joel & friends after smoking a fattie. Unfortunately, the movie was so astoundingly atrocious that our powers of mockery were beaten into submission. Furthermore it was a tremendous buzzkill.
I mean, there were points during that movie where the only appropriate response was to cry a river. Hardly MST3K worthy. It was that bad.
Also, it helps if you have about 5 dried grams of mushrooms. This has always helped me to have a deeper understanding of astronomical phenomena. Seriously. Don't do this if you want to take measurements, of course. But if you just want to enjoy the sights and ponder your universal significance, then get some shrooms.
My two bits.
- Rev.Yes!
Pat yourself on the back. You're the first person to notice. (Or at least the first person to say anything about it.)
- Rev.Oh yes, I totally agree. I don't know how many times I've thought "Y'know, Mozilla is really in the way of my terminal window. If I could just reshape my terminal window so that it resembled a big L that would really help my workflow!" Plus, if we were able to change windows into whatever shape we wanted it would certainly allow for some boasting rights over M$!
I just want to know if X could even be extended to support this.
Ooh! Ooh! You know what ELSE would be cool? If you could have windows that morphed all on their own! We could have Lava-Gnome or Lava-KDE or whatever. The artsy-fartsy types would flock to Linux from their wimpy Macs, and usability can just go fuck itself!
Wow. A whole new world of possibilities has just opened up before us. But would this be a cathedral or bazaar model for development? That's the important quetsion.
- Rev.What are you talking about? Salon has made it a staple of their content to deal with technical issues since they started publishing. Salon deals with many different issues, from P2P to penis grabbing to LSD, and they have done most of it extremely well. Just because they do not focus exclusively on technology does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that they cannot write quality reviews of the latest game console.
Here, read this or this. I think it'll help you see more clearly.
- Rev.I mean really, linking the xbox release with one totally negative article, while other sites have given it a much better outlook. Please try to be fair here slashdot.
BWAHAHAHAHA! Asking /. to be fair and balanced when dealing with M$-related things is like asking Rush Limbaugh to stop parroting Republican dogma: i.e., it just won't happen.
It doesn't seem that you got what he was saying. He was attempting to address the notion of "value" as being something that does not necessarily include monetary worth. If you define value to be only about how much it will bring in the market, then everything you have said is correct. If, however, you include actual quality in your definition of value, then the original poster has a point, however poorly he may have expressed it.
I saw a news segment a while ago about the guys (yes, all men) in NYC who's job is to go check out the huge freaking sewers that come out of the Manhattan whenever they get clogged, pipes that are big enough to stand in full of human excrement. Yes, it is as nasty as it sounds. Their job is to be walking fecal decompactors.
I'd rather be one of those guys than your buddy who is animating Jar-Jar. At least then I wouldn't be embarrased about my job.
Or cast N'Sync as Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin and Fatty, with Britney as Eowyn and Christina as Arwen Evenstar. Throw in Clooney as Strider and Stallone as Boromir, and you open the way for Jim Carrey and Gary Busey to steal the show as Legolas and Gimli. With Travolta as fearless leader Gandalf the Thetan..
Thank you for bringing that apocalyptic vision into my head. You have successfully tarnished the tale I most love to reread. Now, I must kill you! Good-bye!
Actually, I think this brings up a good point. The casting seems to be spot on. Ian McKellan as Gandalf made my toes curl the first time I heard it. He's perfect. Here's hoping it all works out.
CUZ IF IT DOESN'T, I'M TAKING HOSTAGES! I canNOT handle another TPM-like disappointment and remain a stable individual. End of story.
Wow, this guy posts early but it looks good so he gets modded up. What a crock.
XML solves the interchange problem. By this, it is meant that XML allows two systems that do not share a predetermined data exchange protocol to share data. Thats it.
That is a VAST oversimplification. What if instead you had said "computers allow us to carry out a repeated set of instructions. That's it." Doesn't quite tell the whole story, does it? Nor does your kindergarten-level definition of XML tell the whole story.
Applications of XML to programming lang design (XSL) and other domains are largely a waste of time and won't last.
Hmmm.... And will the stock market rebound in the next six months? Will Jesus FINALLY return and lift the Believers up into heaven? Will it rain next Friday?
You can speak out of your ass all you like. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen. XSL/XSLT has been around for a while now, and its user base has only been expanding.
He's a moron, obviously has done nothing more than skimmed a few chapters in some cheap-ass Wrox text, and he gets modded up to 5. There is no justice, I tell you!
Austin, Texas has had a nude beach for decades called "Hippie Hollow." Obviously started in the 60's, the crowd ain't that bad. Mixture of older & younger.
Yet ANOTHER blow against Candadian individualism. Sorry.
Look man, I know you haven't yet come to terms with the fact that the entire world doesn't share your narrow opinions on what should and should not be posted on /., but lemme tell you something: there are people who read /. who have kids and very much appreciate reviews such as this one. Rushdie might be a geek, but he's not a nerd. There are *hundreds* of books released each year that are more important than Rusdhie's, and a great many of them deal with the Internet. But I'm not going to clamor for /. to review them. I subscribe to the New York Review of Books for that.
Sheesh.
Besides if you want to see it reviewed then YOU review it. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if you do a good job it'll get posted.
d) you want to buy a product from a web site. It asks your date of birth. Response: 1/1/1970.
Do they seriously believe that people are going to give them that info?
Yes, they do. And people will.
I have been involved in setting up several web ventures; a handful of them were even successful. One project I was working on involved credit scoring with hooks into buying insurance and such. Before setting off on this we did some research on how willing people would be to become a part of this, seeing as how it required more than the usual amount of personal information. The company we outsourced the research to came back with some truly unexpected results: over 60% of the respondents either were willing to give their information, or didn't have strong feelings against it. Only around 25% of the people we surveyed responded negatively.
Remember, this was information such as social security number, credit history, mother's maiden name, and so forth -- the most personal of information. This took us completely by surprise; we were fully expecting this to be a major hurdle to overcome.
Eventually the effort was killed not by lack of market potential, but by legislation prohibiting the distribution of such information directly to the consumer. (This was backed largely by the credit reporting agencies and their lobbies.)
So do I beleive that .NET will be successful? Absoultely. If it offers even the most trivial of benefits to consumers, they will flock to it like cattle to the slaughter.
As far as the major parties are concerned, the proposition that "'Republicans' do not favor government interference in commerce..." is largely a myth. While it may make up a part of the party platform, in action the Republicans are very little different from their Democratic brethren when it comes to tinkering with the economy. The recent multi-billion dollar bailout of the airline industry being the most recent example (and one that is certainly more justifiable.) Each and every member of Congress has their own pork to protect, and they vary rarely let ideology get in the way of their reelecton bids.
Indeed, the DMCA was signed largely with Republican backing, as was NAFTA, GATT, and other free-trade legislation. Similarly, tarriffs against imported steel has had the backing from members of both parties from the steel belt. This is not suprising or even morally unjustifiable, but it further serves to illustrate the point.
Is it some sort of MTV-esque "Look at how bad I am, I like Thompson!' thing?
Perhaps partially. I admire and respect Thompson because gonzo journalism was, at its onset, a new and refreshing change from more traditional reporting styles. It was a partially successful experiment, and worthy of trying.
But perhaps more importantly I admire anyone who is able to flagrantly flout society's conventions and morality and be successful doing so. Since the mainstream media continues to hound upon the virtues of leading a pure and chaste life, it is refreshing to have someone show that extreme debauchery does not necessarily lead to a life of tragedy, if you are smart about it. I don't consider him a "drug crazy retard", but a journalist who has pursued (and abandoned) some interesting styles and who is a better-than-average writer.
What have you read by him?
But, given that ACLU has a mission, stating the obvious, to promote liberties, why has the ACLU long been absent on issues related to technology?
What are you talking about? The ACLU has a long history of defending tech rights, and were the first organization to challenge an Internet-related federal law and have it heard by the Supreme Court. Check out Reno v. ACLU if you haven't done so before. This case was heard way, way back in 1997. The ACLU has also worked in conjunction with the EFF and/or EPIC on numerous occasions.
More recently they have filed amicus briefs in cases regarding anonymous speech on the net, as well as in the DeCSS case.
To state that the ACLU has "no argument" with laws such as the DMCA or the SSSCA is to argue from simple ignorance. Both of those laws directly conflict with the values that the ACLU tries to advance and preserve.
I would just like to say that that is the funniest thing I have read on /. since this whole WTC thing happened.
Brah. Vo.
- Rev.