...a geek dick-measuring contest. Guys, it should've dawned on you by now that constructing elaborate home networks to compensate for a small penis size WILL NOT get you chicks. The jocks had it right from the start; spend all that money on a nice car and a few tailored suits, and you're far, far more likely to get laid by something other than a RealDoll, tiny penis or no.
But seriously, I'd be much more interested to see what people had on their computers, and how much of that stuff they had. As in, "just how many gigs of porn do you have?" or "what the fuck is up with you torrenting all those Gilligan's Island episodes?"
Me, I collect photos off the internet and turn them into wallpapers, which I run by category on eight separate desktops via the KDE pager. The collection, although not Guiness World Record making by any stretch, now stands at well over 10 gigs of high-quality or ultra-high quality photos, with about 40% of those photos having been converted into wallpapers (more than 10,000 cycling between the eight desktops). I know, a pretty fucking boring hobby, but one I enjoy and I've never run into anyone with a larger personal collection (obsession).
This is the kind of thing I'd find of interest. I'd "Ask Slashdot" but I've pissed off the monkeys, er, editors one too many times and couldn't get a fucking presidential assassination link greenlighted at this point.
$8/month for a television show? My "basic" cable comes with nearly 100 channels, operating 24/7, and it only costs me $45/month. Granted I watch only a few shows every week, but the fact is I CAN watch as many as I like, and I have access to more than I could possibly sample at any given moment in time. That nifty little device called "the VCR" allows me to record these shows if I don't feel like watching them when they're actually on, even record them perpetually through the programming. Or I can just BitTorrent something if I miss it or forget to swap a tape.
There's no way on this green Earth I'd ever pay $8 for a few episodes of any TV show. That's far in excess of what I pay for the same access just with cable, and very convenient access due to that VCR-thingie I was talking about (no need for Tivo in my world). And if I'll never pay that kind of money for a TV show, you can bet your hairy ass I wouldn't even consider forking over $7 for four lousy ipod broadcasts - even putting aside the fact that I don't own an ipod and like 90% of my fellow Americans, will probably never own an ipod.
It seems to me that someone has set the price point for both podcasts and the online downloads of TV shows waaaaaaaaay too high. You'd have to be daft, desperate, or the media equivalent of a crack junkie to waste your money this way.
Gnome or KDE, it's the same for both - programmers who think they're cute or clever name their little darlings something unintelligible and unintuitive, most likely marveling at the depth of their intellect while doing so.
One of the first things I do when I install on a new machine is completely revamp the entire menu structure, renaming every program with a cutsey moniker to something blatantly obvious. That way even a complete newb can sit down and find what he or she wants quickly without any head-scratching or "what-the-fuck"-ing. All programs go into self-evident directories and subdirectories from the menu (e.g., Multimedia -> Video Players); no need for additional descriptors cluttering things up because anything in/Multimedia/Video Players is going to be a bloody video player, probably named something along the lines of "Xine Video Player" or "VLC Video Player".
And while I'm at it, I get rid of all that damned menu icons and replace them with something simple, like directory icons for directories, bullets for programs, and file icons for simple files. I know, a radical concept, but if I wanted my menu cluttered with candy-store pngs I'd let my 8-year-old nephew construct the fucking menu bar. God knows, the standard install LOOKS as if my 8-year-old nephew did the deed; it sure as shit isn't even remotely professional-looking....
Max
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM
on
A Look at GNOME 2.14
·
· Score: 1
Also, with Xine, VLC, and mplayer, it is impossible to play DVDs legally.
Joe User doesn't give a shit. So far as Joe is concerned it's his computer and his DVD, and any asshole who tells him that he can't play the DVD he owns in the computer he owns can fuck off and die. Laws made by ass-reamed politicians sponsored by the MPAA be damned.
It's geeks who shit bricks about this sort of stuff. Joe ignores it as yet another politician-initiated fuckup, just like all the other laughable fuckups that Congress has been involved in over the last 240 years. Besides, exactly how many people have had the gestapo kick in their door and drag them off for playing their copy of "Wild Things" on their computer recently? Methinks the answer is "none", primarily because despite the wild masturbatory fantasies of the MPAA and certain southern sheriffs, we have yet to see the government mandate cameras within the privacy of our own homes.
For now, it povides comfort to the Chinese who want to be free, to know that they're not alone.
Which is probably on par with the comfort the Hungarians felt in 1956 and the Czechoslovakians experienced in 1968, when the West sympathized so loudly with their plight. And probably about as effective.
And chances are you've tacitly approved of China's policies by buying shit they make - some of which is probably in the very computer you're posting from right now. Really, if you're that worked up about it you should go through your house (and machine) and toss anything and everything that was made in China.
While I'm by no means a Google fanboy (I despise fanboys, especially corporate fanboys), the fact is that it isn't Googles job to protest social injustice. I do find it hypocritical that they dare to spout the "do no evil" mantra when it's painfully clear they don't give a shit any more than any other company does, but it's the mantra (and fanboys) I'll attack, not the fact that they're doing business with a country that you personally buy stuff from all the time, whether you know it or not.
You're talking about the movie/TV industry and assuming that the primary motivation of the people who actually run things is centered about money. It isn't, and hasn't been, for a very, very long time. These people are almost solely motivated by POWER - the power to decide what you can and cannot watch, and under what circumstances. They want control far more than they want money; they're absolutely fucking obsessed with it.
I've noticed that outsiders have a difficult time understanding this concept. They seem to think that the public somehow decides which shows get on the air and which do not, or which shows stay on the air and which do not, despite copious amounts of evidence to the contrary. They also seem to think that market forces have something to do with the process, a load of horseshit that anyone who actually works within the industry will recognize by the stink right away.
First rule: if it's ever about money OR power, power wins. Period. End of discussion. Fuck the market, fuck the revenue losses, fuck what the public thinks, it's power uber alles, and all the way. Once you grasp that you suddenly begin to understand why a host of highly-rated shows have been inexplicably canceled over the years, while other real losers have managed to hang on season after season. Profitable shows get cancelled because someone in authority doesn't like the show, or doesn't like someone on the show, and feels like sticking the knife in just to prove that he has a big dick; unprofitable shows hang on because the reverse is true - someone in power likes the show, or is getting regular blowjobs from the lead actress, or whatever it is that floats their boat.
If you want a semi-famous example, just look at Gail Berman's track record at Fox. She's been directly responsible for the untimely deaths of more than a half-dozen profitable shows simply for personal reasons (and is thought to have been involved in putting a half-dozen more into the coffin as well). She kills shows mainly because she harbors a seething hatred for beautiful young actresses who get a lot of attention, despite the fact that none of these actresses has ever done a thing to Ms. Berman. Her behavior, and the reasons for her behavior, are so well-known it's a running joke in the industry. This one person is in large part responsible for the reason why Fox is known as 'The Place Good Shows Go to Die'.
So when you see the movie/TV industry propose something which will do nothing at all about piracy, yet will piss off most of their customers, and you ask why they'd even consider such a thing, the answer is simple: it's about power. Money has nothing to do with it. The money doesn't matter because the obsession with power supercedes it. Always.
The folks who run the movie/TV industry have always been little tin-pot dictators, and unchallenged little tin-pot dictators, up until the point that broadband made it possible for the consumer to give them a big "fuck you, assholes" - even if it was only a minority of consumers. Think of how much they hated the VCR and how hard they fought it; despite the fact that the VCR meant huge new potential revenues, it also meant a loss of CONTROL - control over WHEN people watched shows. Not that it mattered for shit to the bottom line when they watched a show, but the very idea that Joe and Jane Consumer could make the choice for themselves was utter blasphemy. How dare those little fucking proles think that the choice of when to watch a show was theirs to make?
Now take that hatred over that loss of control and apply it to the current broadband internet situation and imagine just what sort of frothing, enraged lunatics you're dealing with. Again, huge profits are just waiting to be made, but the price is a big loss of power; so guess which concern is more important? They'll do anything and everything to stop YOU from taking back some of the power they've held against you since TV was first invented, and to hell with profitability. As far as they're concerned you're
If there's another 9/11 there won't be much a fight. There'll be a nuking, and it won't be on American soil. We'll regret it after the fact (just as most of us regret Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even as we debate the necessity of the deeds), but that's...after the fact. It won't do the 'Arab world' much good if a large chunk of it gets turned into radioactive ash because yet another group of loons managed to execute a big PR attack on American soil.
Don't kid yourself into thinking that we'll send in more troops and tanks if something like this happens. A good many of us are already pissed off about a push-over like Iraq, and more become disgruntled with every passing day. There's not a chance in hell we'd go for a Desert Storm repeat, complete with attendant body bags, if it became clear that the tactic had zero effect on preventing a recurrence of 9/11. We'd just push the fucking button and see if THAT solved the problem.
Any direct head-to-head conflict between Americans and the Middle East will be a huge loss for the Middle East.
I suspect that many nerds is also pretty well informed as to politics.
And I suspect that, like most other human beings on the planet, they make up their minds in ignorance and collect only the facts that support the point of view they like best. I sincerely doubt that most "nerds" are any more informed than the general public; they just get their particular brand of rose-colored glasses from some non-TV source.
I'm a libertarian. That means I despise both the right AND the left, because both sides are dominated by extremists enamored of using government power to force everyone else to think, and believe, and behave, in whatever fashion they've defined as The One True And Right Way(TM). If you identify yourself with either group of asshats you're just another fucking fascist looking to prove that you have a bigger dick than your neighbor, and that makes you a traitor to everything this country (once) stood for.
As a libertarian I also despise YOU, poster, for precisely the reasons listed above. You're so deluded into thinking you're the fucking champion of liberty you believe that you're perfectly justified with 'shooting in the face' anyone who doesn't hold your point of view. You think Bush supporters are dangerous? Take a look in the goddamn mirror, Mr. Fascist; you're a nutbag just like the rest of 'em, only your stripes are different.
I don't want the Bushies in control of the government, mainly because I think they're a bunch of corporate cock-sucking morons who wouldn't know a 'free market' or the Bill of Rights if either up and bitch-slapped them across the face. But I'll be damned if I let some ranting lunatic anti-freedom fucker like you into office, since you're so obviously predisposed to using government force to shut down the opinions (or snuff the lives) of anyone who doesn't think the way you do. You're just as bad as the Bushies your criticize - perhaps worse. The only difference here, and difference that everyone on Slashdot should be grateful for, is that you have no fucking power, nor will you ever have any fucking power. Should you by some stroke of unbelievable luck ever acquire some, I'm most certain that someone just like you will "shoot you in the face".
This is actually a pretty sad state of affairs, when you think about it. It makes the news when the PTO actually rejects a ridiculous patent, because the rejection of ridiculous patents has become so unusual. Just think - the idea has to be as outlandish and insane as a *warp drive* to get the patent office to say "no", and even then the act of saying "no" has become so rare that it's now newsworthy.
Nobody was violating Apple's copyright. Apple is (ab)using the DMCA to shut these guys down.
And yet despite the obvious truth of this statement, Apple apologists are running rampant throughout this discussion.
I get the impression that Apple could cut out the hearts of babies and still their fans would jump to their defense, giving us a laundry list of reasons why it's a necessary or good thing for Apple to slaughter infants by the truckload.
Thinking that the free market (what's left of it) will solve this problem for Linux users is naive, at best. Congress will simply pass a DCMA version 2.0 making it *illegal* to connect to the internet with a computer that doesn't use so-called Trusted Computing. End of the revolution, you all get to bend over and grab your ankles unless you want to be labeled a "terrorist" and spend the rest of your days...bending over and grabbing your ankles.
In case some of you haven't noticed, Congress has shown a profound lack of interest in giving a shit about what the common Joe and Jane think. They sure as hell don't give a shit what a tiny minority of geeks think. To them you're all a bunch on awnry, libertarian ne'er-do-wells in need of a good bitch-slapping anyway.
I agree with pretty much everything you've said except for your disdain over the possibility of achieving practical immortality. Only the rankest of fools could possibly think that we'd somehow manage to keep progressing technologically in all fields, yet somehow forever be subject to some mystical "Law of Death" which confounds all efforts to extend life and defeat the process of aging. That smacks of nothing more than religious superstition.
There's nothing special about aging and death. It too will yield to science.
Not really. If you could get past the rabid enviroloons who shit bricks every time someone says the word 'nuclear', a relatively simply Orion-style probe could reasonably be expected to achieve a velocity of 10% or more of the speed of light in short order. And it could carry enough fuel to slow down for orbital insertion once it reached the target system, using that same power to boost one hell of a signal back to Earth about what it sees.
That means that a system 5 light years away could be reached by such a probe in 50 years - or less, depending on the size of the engine and the amount of fuel you're willing to use. That's well within a single human lifetime, meaning the same scientists who saw the probe off could be around when it starts transmitting its data back home.
The problems here aren't technological, but political. You'd have to face down the leftie extremists who scream every time something remotely radiological is boosted into orbit, and deal with them again when they complain that we're polluting the 'environment' (what environment? There is no life in space) with the toxic backwash of the probe, despite the fact that aside from a few stray hydrogen atoms there's nothing about to poison.
The only way to stop global warming were for the people of the world to collectively reduce their usage of energy and lower their standard of living.
No scientist living claims there's a way to stop global warming, only (perhaps) to reduce it somewhat. The damage (regardless of the cause) is already done and far beyond our understanding, much less our ability to repair.
But just remember that our great and global civilization wont be the first to have underestimated their effect on nature. History has shown that civilizations CAN affect the environment around them to the point that their civilization becomes unsustainable.
I don't know what sort of science fiction you've been reading, but global warming isn't going to make the Earth uninhabitable, or even remotely so. That sort of thing is nothing more than alarmist bullshit.
at this point we might as well just try to find ourselves another planet, or work on technologies that make sure our civilization can survive the future
No need to find another planet; this one will be just fine. All we have to do is what we humans do best - ADAPT. I radical concept for some, but one the rest of us have mastered over the course of several million years.
I'm thinking that they could've gotten better results for less money simply by hiring multilingual hookers to give their soldiers an "education" in language and cultural idiosyncracies prior to deployment. That's how the U.S. army has traditional done the job for the last century, although I admit it's usually been *after* the country in question has been occupied....
I never saw the point in moving from Win2000 to XP (I won't call this an 'upgrade', because it sure as shit isn't), and there's nothing whatsoever compelling in Vista that would make me even consider throwing my Win2000 away. Granted, I generally only use my Windows partitions for games, but then - so do most 'power' Windows users. Those that aren't power users are content with email, browsing, playing music, maybe watching an occasional video - and you can do each and every one of those things on Win98, much less any newer version of Windows. You certainly don't need anything beyond Win2000 for any of this.
The only people I see actually going out and spending cash on Vista are those buying a new stock computer, pre-made from someplace like Dell - because they'll need a new computer just to boot the fucking OS. The average Joe and Jane User already have machines which far exceed the specs required for their usage, machines that they're used to and have configured 'just so'. Not to mention the headache of moving all of their data, a real chore for Joe and the Missus.
There aren't any more 'must have' apps for Windows that convince people to upgrade before the life of their machine expires. We already have everything that 99% of us need, and what the other 1% thinks none of us gives two shits about. As for the win/machine combo upgrade, most people are going to say "been there, did that far too many times, fuck if I'm going to do it again anytime in the near future", and move on - without Vista making so much as a blip on their radar.
It turns out that all of that contributed - accidentally or not - to the health of the forests.
Unmanaged forests have regular small burns, usually due to lightning strikes, which clear out fuel before it can pile up. Forests managed like the U.S. lands have been for the last 30 years (due to the ignorance of persuasive environmentalists) allow that fuel to accumulate, turning what would otherwise be small fires into huge ones - fires that kill trees that would survive smaller, less hot blazes.
The native Americans weren't 'selective loggers' nor 'caretakers of the land'. They burned off huge swaths of forest merely because it was convenient and for no other reason. This didn't contribute in any way, shape or form to the health of the environment. The damage they did was far more excessive than any amount of clear-cutting by timber companies. To say, for example, that burning off the entire Willamette valley from Roseburg to Portland on a regular basis is "healthy" is just plain ludicrous.
Clearly, such a game would be gravely offensive and inappropriate.
It's also free speech. The entire basis for the freedom of expression is that people have a right to say things you don't like; they have a right to *offend*. You, of course, have an equal right to offend back, or boycott, or do whatever you think is appropriate - so long as you don't try to stifle their free speech in the process.
Just for trivia sake, here's a historical tidbit for you: you know how scalping is thrown around as the example of how savage and cruel the Indians were? Well, it was invented by the Europeans.
Scalping was a fairly common thing across North America for centuries before the Europeans arrived, and was adopted by the Europeans as an easy way to keep track of kills (which were paid for). As another poster pointed out, it was easier to transport scalps than entire skulls, which is what the Europeans did before their arrival at North America as proof of bounty.
It's revisionist history to claim that the Europeans invented the practice when any archeologist worth his salt can tell you otherwise.
That's not North America. That's South/Central. North America was mostly peopled by the descendants of [probably] siberian immigrants that came over the land bridge back in the way-back time
And that's horseshit. The so-called Native Americans who crossed the land bridge 10,000 years ago migrated all the way to Terra del Fuego; genetically they're the same people. The only folks who're markedly different from this group are a few tribal entities in the Amazon - the last descendents of an apparent first migration 25,000-35,000 years ago, who managed to escape wholesale genocide at the hands of the group in the second migration only because the people in the second migration didn't want their shitty, deadly, dangerous jungle land.
Most of them were relatively peaceful and kept to themselves
I can't believe you've swallowed this crap. Most native American tribes were quite warlike and made a habit of wiping each other out to the last man, woman, and child whenever their own populations got too large to support. There's an enormous amount of documented evidence supporting this - and that's not even going into the unique and disgusting ways they developed for killing all sorts of folks just for the sake of amusement - or in sacrifice to their gods. The Aztecs are only distinguished from everyone else because they managed to get their butchery down to a science.
revering nature
You do know the whole "noble savage" thing was disproven ages ago, don't you? We're talking about the same people who "revered nature" by, for example, killing entire herds of animals in brush traps and the like, and leaving all the excess meat to rot? Or who burned off large swathes of forest both for the instant barbecue and because it supported the kind of animals they liked to eat better? Want me to go on?
Aside from a couple of warlike types, most of them weren't out killin' anything but food.
Really, get a clue. This is crap, as any anthropologist can tell you. Native Americans were just as fucked up, brutal, and murderous as their European cousins, no exceptions.
We invaded their land, killed them, attempted cultural genocide
Which, if you've studied any history at all, is just par for the course for just about every surviving ethnic group on the planet. The vast majority of the ones who didn't get involved in this kind of violence are dead.
And that includes Native Americans, who have a very long history of committing insanely brutal acts not only against each other, but, it appears, against the people who seem to have been here before them. You did know that the scientific evidence for a prior migration (approximately 25,000-35,000 years ago) is rapidly mounting, didn't you? And that with the exception of certain Amazonian tribes (established by mitochrondial DNA studies), it appears they were completely wiped out by the second migration from Asia, the people we call "Native" Americans?
Native Americans are not, and were never, noble savages, although even today a few idiots still seem to believe this horseshit. Furthermore, they weren't even the first people on the continent; they came, they say, the killed everyone who was here first and took their land - just like we did to them. Or you did to us (I'm part Cherokee).
Until quite recently this was just the way of the world. Deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
...a geek dick-measuring contest. Guys, it should've dawned on you by now that constructing elaborate home networks to compensate for a small penis size WILL NOT get you chicks. The jocks had it right from the start; spend all that money on a nice car and a few tailored suits, and you're far, far more likely to get laid by something other than a RealDoll, tiny penis or no.
But seriously, I'd be much more interested to see what people had on their computers, and how much of that stuff they had. As in, "just how many gigs of porn do you have?" or "what the fuck is up with you torrenting all those Gilligan's Island episodes?"
Me, I collect photos off the internet and turn them into wallpapers, which I run by category on eight separate desktops via the KDE pager. The collection, although not Guiness World Record making by any stretch, now stands at well over 10 gigs of high-quality or ultra-high quality photos, with about 40% of those photos having been converted into wallpapers (more than 10,000 cycling between the eight desktops). I know, a pretty fucking boring hobby, but one I enjoy and I've never run into anyone with a larger personal collection (obsession).
This is the kind of thing I'd find of interest. I'd "Ask Slashdot" but I've pissed off the monkeys, er, editors one too many times and couldn't get a fucking presidential assassination link greenlighted at this point.
Max
$8/month for a television show? My "basic" cable comes with nearly 100 channels, operating 24/7, and it only costs me $45/month. Granted I watch only a few shows every week, but the fact is I CAN watch as many as I like, and I have access to more than I could possibly sample at any given moment in time. That nifty little device called "the VCR" allows me to record these shows if I don't feel like watching them when they're actually on, even record them perpetually through the programming. Or I can just BitTorrent something if I miss it or forget to swap a tape.
There's no way on this green Earth I'd ever pay $8 for a few episodes of any TV show. That's far in excess of what I pay for the same access just with cable, and very convenient access due to that VCR-thingie I was talking about (no need for Tivo in my world). And if I'll never pay that kind of money for a TV show, you can bet your hairy ass I wouldn't even consider forking over $7 for four lousy ipod broadcasts - even putting aside the fact that I don't own an ipod and like 90% of my fellow Americans, will probably never own an ipod.
It seems to me that someone has set the price point for both podcasts and the online downloads of TV shows waaaaaaaaay too high. You'd have to be daft, desperate, or the media equivalent of a crack junkie to waste your money this way.
Max
Gnome or KDE, it's the same for both - programmers who think they're cute or clever name their little darlings something unintelligible and unintuitive, most likely marveling at the depth of their intellect while doing so.
/Multimedia/Video Players is going to be a bloody video player, probably named something along the lines of "Xine Video Player" or "VLC Video Player".
One of the first things I do when I install on a new machine is completely revamp the entire menu structure, renaming every program with a cutsey moniker to something blatantly obvious. That way even a complete newb can sit down and find what he or she wants quickly without any head-scratching or "what-the-fuck"-ing. All programs go into self-evident directories and subdirectories from the menu (e.g., Multimedia -> Video Players); no need for additional descriptors cluttering things up because anything in
And while I'm at it, I get rid of all that damned menu icons and replace them with something simple, like directory icons for directories, bullets for programs, and file icons for simple files. I know, a radical concept, but if I wanted my menu cluttered with candy-store pngs I'd let my 8-year-old nephew construct the fucking menu bar. God knows, the standard install LOOKS as if my 8-year-old nephew did the deed; it sure as shit isn't even remotely professional-looking....
Max
Also, with Xine, VLC, and mplayer, it is impossible to play DVDs legally.
Joe User doesn't give a shit. So far as Joe is concerned it's his computer and his DVD, and any asshole who tells him that he can't play the DVD he owns in the computer he owns can fuck off and die. Laws made by ass-reamed politicians sponsored by the MPAA be damned.
It's geeks who shit bricks about this sort of stuff. Joe ignores it as yet another politician-initiated fuckup, just like all the other laughable fuckups that Congress has been involved in over the last 240 years. Besides, exactly how many people have had the gestapo kick in their door and drag them off for playing their copy of "Wild Things" on their computer recently? Methinks the answer is "none", primarily because despite the wild masturbatory fantasies of the MPAA and certain southern sheriffs, we have yet to see the government mandate cameras within the privacy of our own homes.
Max
For now, it povides comfort to the Chinese who want to be free, to know that they're not alone.
Which is probably on par with the comfort the Hungarians felt in 1956 and the Czechoslovakians experienced in 1968, when the West sympathized so loudly with their plight. And probably about as effective.
Max
What the hell is an "extreamist feminest"? Is that anything like a "dumbfuck mysogynist"?
Max
And chances are you've tacitly approved of China's policies by buying shit they make - some of which is probably in the very computer you're posting from right now. Really, if you're that worked up about it you should go through your house (and machine) and toss anything and everything that was made in China.
While I'm by no means a Google fanboy (I despise fanboys, especially corporate fanboys), the fact is that it isn't Googles job to protest social injustice. I do find it hypocritical that they dare to spout the "do no evil" mantra when it's painfully clear they don't give a shit any more than any other company does, but it's the mantra (and fanboys) I'll attack, not the fact that they're doing business with a country that you personally buy stuff from all the time, whether you know it or not.
Max
You're talking about the movie/TV industry and assuming that the primary motivation of the people who actually run things is centered about money. It isn't, and hasn't been, for a very, very long time. These people are almost solely motivated by POWER - the power to decide what you can and cannot watch, and under what circumstances. They want control far more than they want money; they're absolutely fucking obsessed with it.
I've noticed that outsiders have a difficult time understanding this concept. They seem to think that the public somehow decides which shows get on the air and which do not, or which shows stay on the air and which do not, despite copious amounts of evidence to the contrary. They also seem to think that market forces have something to do with the process, a load of horseshit that anyone who actually works within the industry will recognize by the stink right away.
First rule: if it's ever about money OR power, power wins. Period. End of discussion. Fuck the market, fuck the revenue losses, fuck what the public thinks, it's power uber alles, and all the way. Once you grasp that you suddenly begin to understand why a host of highly-rated shows have been inexplicably canceled over the years, while other real losers have managed to hang on season after season. Profitable shows get cancelled because someone in authority doesn't like the show, or doesn't like someone on the show, and feels like sticking the knife in just to prove that he has a big dick; unprofitable shows hang on because the reverse is true - someone in power likes the show, or is getting regular blowjobs from the lead actress, or whatever it is that floats their boat.
If you want a semi-famous example, just look at Gail Berman's track record at Fox. She's been directly responsible for the untimely deaths of more than a half-dozen profitable shows simply for personal reasons (and is thought to have been involved in putting a half-dozen more into the coffin as well). She kills shows mainly because she harbors a seething hatred for beautiful young actresses who get a lot of attention, despite the fact that none of these actresses has ever done a thing to Ms. Berman. Her behavior, and the reasons for her behavior, are so well-known it's a running joke in the industry. This one person is in large part responsible for the reason why Fox is known as 'The Place Good Shows Go to Die'.
So when you see the movie/TV industry propose something which will do nothing at all about piracy, yet will piss off most of their customers, and you ask why they'd even consider such a thing, the answer is simple: it's about power. Money has nothing to do with it. The money doesn't matter because the obsession with power supercedes it. Always.
The folks who run the movie/TV industry have always been little tin-pot dictators, and unchallenged little tin-pot dictators, up until the point that broadband made it possible for the consumer to give them a big "fuck you, assholes" - even if it was only a minority of consumers. Think of how much they hated the VCR and how hard they fought it; despite the fact that the VCR meant huge new potential revenues, it also meant a loss of CONTROL - control over WHEN people watched shows. Not that it mattered for shit to the bottom line when they watched a show, but the very idea that Joe and Jane Consumer could make the choice for themselves was utter blasphemy. How dare those little fucking proles think that the choice of when to watch a show was theirs to make?
Now take that hatred over that loss of control and apply it to the current broadband internet situation and imagine just what sort of frothing, enraged lunatics you're dealing with. Again, huge profits are just waiting to be made, but the price is a big loss of power; so guess which concern is more important? They'll do anything and everything to stop YOU from taking back some of the power they've held against you since TV was first invented, and to hell with profitability. As far as they're concerned you're
All those protesters didn't even have the balls to boycott american goods
To do that they'd have to boycott China and Taiwan.
Max
If there's another 9/11 there won't be much a fight. There'll be a nuking, and it won't be on American soil. We'll regret it after the fact (just as most of us regret Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even as we debate the necessity of the deeds), but that's...after the fact. It won't do the 'Arab world' much good if a large chunk of it gets turned into radioactive ash because yet another group of loons managed to execute a big PR attack on American soil.
Don't kid yourself into thinking that we'll send in more troops and tanks if something like this happens. A good many of us are already pissed off about a push-over like Iraq, and more become disgruntled with every passing day. There's not a chance in hell we'd go for a Desert Storm repeat, complete with attendant body bags, if it became clear that the tactic had zero effect on preventing a recurrence of 9/11. We'd just push the fucking button and see if THAT solved the problem.
Any direct head-to-head conflict between Americans and the Middle East will be a huge loss for the Middle East.
Max
I suspect that many nerds is also pretty well informed as to politics.
And I suspect that, like most other human beings on the planet, they make up their minds in ignorance and collect only the facts that support the point of view they like best. I sincerely doubt that most "nerds" are any more informed than the general public; they just get their particular brand of rose-colored glasses from some non-TV source.
Max
I'm a libertarian. That means I despise both the right AND the left, because both sides are dominated by extremists enamored of using government power to force everyone else to think, and believe, and behave, in whatever fashion they've defined as The One True And Right Way(TM). If you identify yourself with either group of asshats you're just another fucking fascist looking to prove that you have a bigger dick than your neighbor, and that makes you a traitor to everything this country (once) stood for.
As a libertarian I also despise YOU, poster, for precisely the reasons listed above. You're so deluded into thinking you're the fucking champion of liberty you believe that you're perfectly justified with 'shooting in the face' anyone who doesn't hold your point of view. You think Bush supporters are dangerous? Take a look in the goddamn mirror, Mr. Fascist; you're a nutbag just like the rest of 'em, only your stripes are different.
I don't want the Bushies in control of the government, mainly because I think they're a bunch of corporate cock-sucking morons who wouldn't know a 'free market' or the Bill of Rights if either up and bitch-slapped them across the face. But I'll be damned if I let some ranting lunatic anti-freedom fucker like you into office, since you're so obviously predisposed to using government force to shut down the opinions (or snuff the lives) of anyone who doesn't think the way you do. You're just as bad as the Bushies your criticize - perhaps worse. The only difference here, and difference that everyone on Slashdot should be grateful for, is that you have no fucking power, nor will you ever have any fucking power. Should you by some stroke of unbelievable luck ever acquire some, I'm most certain that someone just like you will "shoot you in the face".
And good riddance.
Max
This is actually a pretty sad state of affairs, when you think about it. It makes the news when the PTO actually rejects a ridiculous patent, because the rejection of ridiculous patents has become so unusual. Just think - the idea has to be as outlandish and insane as a *warp drive* to get the patent office to say "no", and even then the act of saying "no" has become so rare that it's now newsworthy.
Max
Nobody was violating Apple's copyright. Apple is (ab)using the DMCA to shut these guys down.
And yet despite the obvious truth of this statement, Apple apologists are running rampant throughout this discussion.
I get the impression that Apple could cut out the hearts of babies and still their fans would jump to their defense, giving us a laundry list of reasons why it's a necessary or good thing for Apple to slaughter infants by the truckload.
Max
Thinking that the free market (what's left of it) will solve this problem for Linux users is naive, at best. Congress will simply pass a DCMA version 2.0 making it *illegal* to connect to the internet with a computer that doesn't use so-called Trusted Computing. End of the revolution, you all get to bend over and grab your ankles unless you want to be labeled a "terrorist" and spend the rest of your days...bending over and grabbing your ankles.
In case some of you haven't noticed, Congress has shown a profound lack of interest in giving a shit about what the common Joe and Jane think. They sure as hell don't give a shit what a tiny minority of geeks think. To them you're all a bunch on awnry, libertarian ne'er-do-wells in need of a good bitch-slapping anyway.
Max
I agree with pretty much everything you've said except for your disdain over the possibility of achieving practical immortality. Only the rankest of fools could possibly think that we'd somehow manage to keep progressing technologically in all fields, yet somehow forever be subject to some mystical "Law of Death" which confounds all efforts to extend life and defeat the process of aging. That smacks of nothing more than religious superstition.
There's nothing special about aging and death. It too will yield to science.
Max
Short of some major technology breakthroughs
Not really. If you could get past the rabid enviroloons who shit bricks every time someone says the word 'nuclear', a relatively simply Orion-style probe could reasonably be expected to achieve a velocity of 10% or more of the speed of light in short order. And it could carry enough fuel to slow down for orbital insertion once it reached the target system, using that same power to boost one hell of a signal back to Earth about what it sees.
That means that a system 5 light years away could be reached by such a probe in 50 years - or less, depending on the size of the engine and the amount of fuel you're willing to use. That's well within a single human lifetime, meaning the same scientists who saw the probe off could be around when it starts transmitting its data back home.
The problems here aren't technological, but political. You'd have to face down the leftie extremists who scream every time something remotely radiological is boosted into orbit, and deal with them again when they complain that we're polluting the 'environment' (what environment? There is no life in space) with the toxic backwash of the probe, despite the fact that aside from a few stray hydrogen atoms there's nothing about to poison.
Max
The only way to stop global warming were for the people of the world to collectively reduce their usage of energy and lower their standard of living.
No scientist living claims there's a way to stop global warming, only (perhaps) to reduce it somewhat. The damage (regardless of the cause) is already done and far beyond our understanding, much less our ability to repair.
But just remember that our great and global civilization wont be the first to have underestimated their effect on nature. History has shown that civilizations CAN affect the environment around them to the point that their civilization becomes unsustainable.
I don't know what sort of science fiction you've been reading, but global warming isn't going to make the Earth uninhabitable, or even remotely so. That sort of thing is nothing more than alarmist bullshit.
at this point we might as well just try to find ourselves another planet, or work on technologies that make sure our civilization can survive the future
No need to find another planet; this one will be just fine. All we have to do is what we humans do best - ADAPT. I radical concept for some, but one the rest of us have mastered over the course of several million years.
Max
I'm thinking that they could've gotten better results for less money simply by hiring multilingual hookers to give their soldiers an "education" in language and cultural idiosyncracies prior to deployment. That's how the U.S. army has traditional done the job for the last century, although I admit it's usually been *after* the country in question has been occupied....
Max
I never saw the point in moving from Win2000 to XP (I won't call this an 'upgrade', because it sure as shit isn't), and there's nothing whatsoever compelling in Vista that would make me even consider throwing my Win2000 away. Granted, I generally only use my Windows partitions for games, but then - so do most 'power' Windows users. Those that aren't power users are content with email, browsing, playing music, maybe watching an occasional video - and you can do each and every one of those things on Win98, much less any newer version of Windows. You certainly don't need anything beyond Win2000 for any of this.
The only people I see actually going out and spending cash on Vista are those buying a new stock computer, pre-made from someplace like Dell - because they'll need a new computer just to boot the fucking OS. The average Joe and Jane User already have machines which far exceed the specs required for their usage, machines that they're used to and have configured 'just so'. Not to mention the headache of moving all of their data, a real chore for Joe and the Missus.
There aren't any more 'must have' apps for Windows that convince people to upgrade before the life of their machine expires. We already have everything that 99% of us need, and what the other 1% thinks none of us gives two shits about. As for the win/machine combo upgrade, most people are going to say "been there, did that far too many times, fuck if I'm going to do it again anytime in the near future", and move on - without Vista making so much as a blip on their radar.
Max
It turns out that all of that contributed - accidentally or not - to the health of the forests.
Unmanaged forests have regular small burns, usually due to lightning strikes, which clear out fuel before it can pile up. Forests managed like the U.S. lands have been for the last 30 years (due to the ignorance of persuasive environmentalists) allow that fuel to accumulate, turning what would otherwise be small fires into huge ones - fires that kill trees that would survive smaller, less hot blazes.
The native Americans weren't 'selective loggers' nor 'caretakers of the land'. They burned off huge swaths of forest merely because it was convenient and for no other reason. This didn't contribute in any way, shape or form to the health of the environment. The damage they did was far more excessive than any amount of clear-cutting by timber companies. To say, for example, that burning off the entire Willamette valley from Roseburg to Portland on a regular basis is "healthy" is just plain ludicrous.
Max
Clearly, such a game would be gravely offensive and inappropriate.
It's also free speech. The entire basis for the freedom of expression is that people have a right to say things you don't like; they have a right to *offend*. You, of course, have an equal right to offend back, or boycott, or do whatever you think is appropriate - so long as you don't try to stifle their free speech in the process.
Max
Just for trivia sake, here's a historical tidbit for you: you know how scalping is thrown around as the example of how savage and cruel the Indians were? Well, it was invented by the Europeans.
Scalping was a fairly common thing across North America for centuries before the Europeans arrived, and was adopted by the Europeans as an easy way to keep track of kills (which were paid for). As another poster pointed out, it was easier to transport scalps than entire skulls, which is what the Europeans did before their arrival at North America as proof of bounty.
It's revisionist history to claim that the Europeans invented the practice when any archeologist worth his salt can tell you otherwise.
Max
That's not North America. That's South/Central. North America was mostly peopled by the descendants of [probably] siberian immigrants that came over the land bridge back in the way-back time
And that's horseshit. The so-called Native Americans who crossed the land bridge 10,000 years ago migrated all the way to Terra del Fuego; genetically they're the same people. The only folks who're markedly different from this group are a few tribal entities in the Amazon - the last descendents of an apparent first migration 25,000-35,000 years ago, who managed to escape wholesale genocide at the hands of the group in the second migration only because the people in the second migration didn't want their shitty, deadly, dangerous jungle land.
Most of them were relatively peaceful and kept to themselves
I can't believe you've swallowed this crap. Most native American tribes were quite warlike and made a habit of wiping each other out to the last man, woman, and child whenever their own populations got too large to support. There's an enormous amount of documented evidence supporting this - and that's not even going into the unique and disgusting ways they developed for killing all sorts of folks just for the sake of amusement - or in sacrifice to their gods. The Aztecs are only distinguished from everyone else because they managed to get their butchery down to a science.
revering nature
You do know the whole "noble savage" thing was disproven ages ago, don't you? We're talking about the same people who "revered nature" by, for example, killing entire herds of animals in brush traps and the like, and leaving all the excess meat to rot? Or who burned off large swathes of forest both for the instant barbecue and because it supported the kind of animals they liked to eat better? Want me to go on?
Aside from a couple of warlike types, most of them weren't out killin' anything but food.
Really, get a clue. This is crap, as any anthropologist can tell you. Native Americans were just as fucked up, brutal, and murderous as their European cousins, no exceptions.
Max
We invaded their land, killed them, attempted cultural genocide
Which, if you've studied any history at all, is just par for the course for just about every surviving ethnic group on the planet. The vast majority of the ones who didn't get involved in this kind of violence are dead.
And that includes Native Americans, who have a very long history of committing insanely brutal acts not only against each other, but, it appears, against the people who seem to have been here before them. You did know that the scientific evidence for a prior migration (approximately 25,000-35,000 years ago) is rapidly mounting, didn't you? And that with the exception of certain Amazonian tribes (established by mitochrondial DNA studies), it appears they were completely wiped out by the second migration from Asia, the people we call "Native" Americans?
Native Americans are not, and were never, noble savages, although even today a few idiots still seem to believe this horseshit. Furthermore, they weren't even the first people on the continent; they came, they say, the killed everyone who was here first and took their land - just like we did to them. Or you did to us (I'm part Cherokee).
Until quite recently this was just the way of the world. Deal with it.
Max