This wouldn't solve the starship problem. Water is heavy. You'd probably need more water than in all of Earths oceans to get to the Alpha Centauri system.
If I get one of these transplants, will I start involuntarily attacking or even killing people who eat bacon, ribs, sausage, pepperoni, and pulled pork? Will I start to dislike these foods myself?
How long before I can get a brain transplant from a pig? I've heard pigs are pretty smart. Does this mean that I will finally be able to figure out the great unification theory in physics and maybe invent a warp drive by figuring out how to create a gravitational pressure gradient in the fabric of space-time thus creating a propellant-free rocket so I can take my next vacation on the fifth planet of the Alpha Centauri A star system. Can I change my name to Wilbur?
Reminds me of an old SNL skit where they were doing one of their fake advertisements. It was for an alarm system that would "stop a burglar before he left his own house". Then they would show this with some burglar (was it Eddie Murphy?) trying to leave his own house but an alarm siren and flashing lights would go off and the police would arrive and arrest him. This seems to predate Minority Report by something like 15 years or so. Prior art? NBC or the scriptwriter for that show should have patented that idea so that they could sue these cops for "using their patented idea".
Does anyone know what episode that was or know any more details of that skit. It seems particularly relevant now. Maybe the comedy channel will run it again sometime. I think it might have been back when Joe Piscopo was still on the show but I can't remember.
I assume this was in Kansas or something. Certainly not in LA or NYC or you'd surely be dead. If you make any sudden movements or appear to be unpredictible and perhaps a threat they can legally shoot you, and they'll probably go for a head shot just in case that sweatshirt is made of Kevlar.
As much as I hate the police and would like to see them all tortured to death, I think you may have over-reacted.
The cops were all school yard bullies when they were kids. When guys like that join the army and make The Enemy (of the day) suffer I don't mind. Especially since they're usually TowelHeads. But cops do that kind of stuff to the citizens of their own country, and more to the point, to me. That's what gets me. Can't we just get rid of the police force and draft them all into the marines or something. Or send them to Antarctica where they can't do so much harm.
Are you sure that it's really legal? If you take pictures in countries outside the US (I'm assuming you're American), is it illegal in any other country?
I ask this because, from time to time, I like to take pictures of the faces of pretty and interesting looking girls in the city where I live and also when I travel. I do this, not by asking them, but by shooting first and (maybe) asking questions later.
Because I don't like to shoot with long lenses this almost always means that I am no farther than about six feet from them and pointing my lens directly at their faces. I don't so much mind getting attacked by an angry boyfriend/friend/brother, but I don't want to have to worry about her calling the police.
She obviously doesn't think of her face as being public property in any way. Usually being able to get a careful look at her face is a priviledge only usually granted to the lucky few which certainly does not include some guy she hasn't even talked to. From her POV, it's kind of a violation, but the law apparently doesn't agree with her.
Sometimes I tell models, who complain about how guys are always staring or how everyone is always hitting on them to just wear a ski mask or a latex prosthetic and billy-bob teeth. Usually they'll settle for mirror sunglasses and a baseball hat, which doesn't work. Anyway, I guess once you step outside your house, the photons that bounce off your body are legally in the public domain.
I just wonder if following her down the street for a couple of minutes with a video camera would be covered by those lovely anti-stalking laws.
Show me a foriegn television show anyone finds worth watching!
Show me *any* television show (besides ST:TNG of course, hehe) worth watching in *any* country. Show me an American movie worth watching. Now that's a tough one. Forget about the fact that most other countries love watching straight to video Rambo clones (all illegally copied of course:)). Do action movies even need subtitles? A fiery explosion is universal. Show me a Hollywood film and I'll show you an advertisement for an advertisement, a series of images shot to look good in the trailers. [gets off horse]
Show me which country invented and continues to invent nearly every single thing you use nearly every single day.
Wow. Are you Sirius? Aren't you forgetting about the Axis powers of Germany and Japan as well as the smaller tigers of the east like Taiwan where your motherboard and all it's memory came from. I don't need to mention England for obvious reasons, although they've always made great cars. It's obvious why they can't be productive. They're too busy listening to each other talk with those fascinating accents. Although eventually the novelty of those accents wears off. But then you come back to the states, listen to our vulgar American snarls for a couple of days and want to hop right back on that plane. Canada has no excuse, except for the cold maybe, and Quebec where everyone wishes they could move to France so they could have a real culture. I haven't forgotton about ATI, but how many other examples can you think of?
Why don't you give your computer to a homeless guy, there, Mother Theresa? In the meantime, we'll all keep feeding our kids as well as we can, and if you think there's a country on earth immune to greed, you're wrong. We just happen to be better at success. Sorry. If you don't like it, too bad. Maybe when we finally get around to annexing your country, we'll let you help name it.
This is exactly the kind of response that makes the rest of the world dislike Americans, but I suspect that you are at least half joking. Of course I only know that because I'm also a Merkin. A European may think you're actually serious. I just want to point out how American your definition of "success" is.
Of COURSE people who want to make a lot of money move to the U.S. What better place to unleash your mercenary fervour? That's what the American Dream *is* after all: having more than the guy next to you. (After all, if everyone had about the same amount of stuff, how would you know who the winner was? And Yanks love winners. Exclusively.)
I mean, considering their attitude, I always thought "E Pluribus Unem" meant "Looking Out For Number One".
I haven't figured out whether you are a Merkin or not. But you've answered your own question in a way. You know why so many continue to want to move here. It's not freedom. Other countries have just as much or more of that. It's money. Some Japanese even want to move here so that they can make even more money. Hehe. Or so they think.
Anyway, you're right about the American dream. In the US, success == wealth. Period. Only money gives you real bragging rights here. I don't have a major problem with this, but it does get tiresome after so many years. I really would like to live in another country for a while. Even Quebec is a significant rest from the rat race mentality here.
If having lots of money is the answer then what was the question? I have Cuban friends who make less than $15 a month, and they seem just as happy as most Americans that I know. Of course those Cubans would like to have more and would surely be happier, but would they be willing to sell their souls to get it, to become clockwatchers.
Oh yeah. And the "quality of life" in terms of income doesn't have to improve. It was good enough 30 years ago to beat most other countries.
It will take some time though. As we've slowly lost our so called freedoms or "rights" over the past 100 years, the process will continue unabated for the next 100 years until we have a real Stalin as president with the same power and the same hunger for killing. I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime without some major medical breakthroughs on stopping the aging process, so I'm not too worried. The government will continue to grow and what citizens are "permitted" to do will continue to shrink. But it will happen so gradually, bit by bit, that you almost won't notice. It will all seem perfectly normal. And it will be. As you say, it's a perfectly natural process. It's just what governments do, what they are.
You obviously are not an American. Maybe that's how the bobbies and the judges work in the United Kingdom or Australia or Germany or wherever, but here in the states the cops and judges are friends. To both of them the citizen is the enemy and obviously always always guilty if the cop says so. The cop is not on trial, you are. If you want the judge to question what the cop says, you'd better have iron-clad, indisputable evidence to back it up. The judge probably won't laugh at you, but his view of the alleged events will be *exactly* the same as the cops. Rather than call you a liar, he will merely rule against you. Next case!
And why don't you stop driving so fscking slow. Most of us are completely sick of waiting behind you, needing to be somewhere quickly, while you just take your sweet time, looking around at the scenery, leaning back, making sure the speedometer needle doesn't hit that dangerous 30 MPH mark. Don't you have *anything* you need to do? I think some states actually have a law where if you have more than a certain number of cars right behind you, you have to pull over and let them pass, but I've never seen it enforced. Actually driving a horse and buggy on anything but a real highway is still perfectly legal where I live. In fact it's the only "vehicle" that you don't need some kind of license from the state to operate. One local guy drives down my street every morning during rush hour with a real horse and buggy, a nice one actually, with a line of like 50 cars crawling behind him. The fact is that slow driving can be even more dangerous than fast driving, at least for other drivers, and fast driving seldom injures anyone else but the driver himself (and any passengers). Remember that speed is relative and those lazy, crawling speeds you like to drive at may actually seem dangerously fast to others whom I seriously hope you get stuck behind when you're late for some kind of appointment/meeting/date/emergency room visit.
At least in my state, I'm pretty sure there's a law against refusing to give your name to a police officer. I think there is also another law against giving a false name to a police officer. And another one against insulting a police officer. I'm not sure how an "insult" is to be interpreted here since lots of things could be seen as "insulting" depending on how sensitive you are. I think you can certainly go to prison for extending the middle finger of one of your hands with the back of your hand facing an officer of the law. The laws are so generally rigged against the evil civilian citizenry in favor of the benevolent police force that to refuse pretty much any request of a police officer should only be done on the advice of a good criminal attorney. I was once almost prosecuted for "refusing to obey" a police officer which is a felony in my state. So basically you have to do pretty much whatever they tell you to do or you can plan on spending a great deal of time in jail.
I was almost refused entry to Canada once because the immigration official looked up my record and said "You didn't tell us you have a criminal record". I said "What are you talking about?". And they mentioned this "failure to obey a police officer", which I guess makes me a dangerous criminal.
America has always been the country symbolized by "$". The immigrants who choose the US do so because they want to make as much money as possible, maybe even get rich. Even with all our ridiculous laws, it seems to still be the easiest country in which to make money. My town is full of Brazilians. They came here because in Brazil they made like $400 a month if they were lucky and now some of them are making like $3000 a month, although that may include working two full time jobs.
France and England are both great countries to live in but try making alot of money there. The only country I know of as focused on money as the US is Japan. Most people seem to immigrate for economic reasons and the US has a worldwide reputation as the "richest" country in the world.
There are still some people however who don't want to live in America because they've heard so many negative things about Americans, many of which are actually true.
I hate reading stories like this. Yeah, I'm a libertarian and all (at least until right this minute) but I'm sick of all this "budget" crap that NASA gets. Why don't we just give NASA the priority over *everything*, even national defense. Let them keep most of our tax dollars. I'd much rather be working as a slave for the cause of space exploration than whatever the reasons of the day are for our massive government.
What we need, not in a few decades or centuries but *right now*, before I even finish this post, is a real space exploration program. Blank checks for the following programs making use of serious spacecraft perhaps powered by nuclear fission and/or fuel cells.:
1. A permanent lunar base devoted to the purpose of manufacturing spacecraft too large or fragile to be constructed and launched from earth. We could use a space station for this, but to hell with that. A lunar base is more appropriate for showing those aliens that we've got a pair.
2. Serious preparations for launching manned missions to, not just one, but all of the interesting targets in our solar system at the same time. These would include Mars, most of Jovian moons (and yes, there are many) not forgetting about Io or Europa which might even support some kind of life.
3. Immediate serious planning for high speed manned and unmanned interstellar space travel to Alpha Centauri and all other star systems less than 10 light years away making use of whatever current or near future tech we need to get us there. This may include such proposals as pulsed fission bomb propulsion such as The Orion Project. Unmanned missions might also make use of Jovian planet slingshotting to get an initial boost.
4. And obviously we're going to be needing more than just a few of those new space elevators.
Time to get cracking. Those people working on medical cures can keep right on working but everyone else should start thinking about what they can contribute to the War Effort, err, I mean, Space Effort. Our entire economy should revolve around it. If the Russkies had never launched Sputnik maybe we'd all still think the moon was made of cheese. (Although didn't I read that those videos were faked?:))
This all reminds me so much of Contact (the book not the movie that I never saw). Sagan's dream of one world cooperating. Finding out that we are not alone in the galaxy by pooling the worlds' resources and finally building such a large radiotelescope that SETI actually works and we get The Message. Of course, it's terrestrial based, which has its limitations.
That book was the reason that I stopped by the VLA once when driving from the left coast to the right coast. Pretty spectacular. I liked the fact that Sagan's descriptions of the area were accurate. All those rabbits everywhere. What do they all eat? Maybe the radioastronomers feed them. Kind of made me want to move to New Mexico.
The question I'm asking myself is that if we can do a 1 sq km array why not a 2 sq km array? How big would the radiotelescope have to be to see the "edge" of the universe?
Try a comparison between your Klipsch speakers and a pair of Castles, Mordaunt-Shorts, or (high end) B&Ws. I think you'll find the Klipschs wanting. It's tough to beat British speakers. I would recommend a headphone test but you really need a headphone amp and a real pair of headphones (Senn HD600, Etys...) to do that. I think you'll find that from 160kbps to 320kbps MPC will rule the day right up until lossless ape or flac compression.
Are you not guilty of "harmful" speech just by discussing this in a forum where thousands of people can read it. Perhaps a homosexual who has never heard of NAMBLA will find out about the group and be encouraged to rape someone. Can that someone now sue you for even mentioning the name in public? If not, why not?
There is no such thing as "harmless" or "harmful" speech. Speech is speech. Even young children understand this. It's too bad adults like you have so much trouble with the concept.
I don't believe in your right to talk about your "tastes" in a public forum. Time to see the inside of a small prison cell.
Why don't you just admit that the only reason you are against the DMCA is because you want to steal the work of others, personally. That it's a practical issue, just for you. Perhaps the US should pass a law allowing only you to speak freely. Everyone else has no right to say anything except what you want to hear.
To be truly fair, we need a law making any speech that you "feel" is bad or harmful illegal. Of course as an athiest, I will have to be put to death. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but it's speech that can really kill you. Let's pass the Hemlock Amendment to the constitution. What happened to Galileo and Socrates was just. It was a moral imperative. Heresy must not be tolerated in any form. Death to the infidels, and to all Heretics!
It's not the same as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater (which also should be "protected" speech IMHO). Anyone who thinks like that definitely does not belong in the ACLU.
Free speech is a principle. Speech either is or is not free. Either you can go to jail for saying something or you can't. Period. It's because of people like you that we need the ACLU and Libertarians in general.
I look forward to the day when you have to worry about what you say in public for fear of being reported by others to the state. Remember that someone has to decide what speech is legal and what is not. And, that someone is not going to be you.
Perhaps one day it will be illegal to spell Microsoft with a "$", or to even speak the word with a negative tone of voice.
The details of NAMBLA's beliefs are completely irrelevant to this discussion. I don't care even the slightest what they believe. I don't care if they're advocating immediate (meaning right now, before I can even finish writing this sentence) thermonuclear war to fight world hunger, or the release of Ebola-Marburg-Smallpox-Lassa superviruses into the wild to save the rainforests, or having kittens for breakfast to promote healthy skin. The more unpopular and offensive the belief, the more important its defense. Popular beliefs don't need a constitution or a bill of rights to protect them. The Nazis didn't seize power. They were voted in.
Just because he can't figure out the methods of 1 out of 5 circles doesn't mean he's stupid. If someone finally shows him how to do it, he might think "Wow, that was clever", regardless of how obvious it might seem to the pranksters. It just means that 20% of the "artists" are smarter than he is.
What are they waiting for? I can see it now. Osama simultaneously blows up 10 major cities with suitcase hydrogen bombs. We catch him and there's plenty of evidence, but we have to let him walk because congress never passed a law against "blowing up 10 cities with suitcase hydrogen bombs". They'd better pass a law before the first person in history actually commits such a crime. And don't forget the new law about flying large planes into tall buildings.
But you can use someone else's computer as a proxy address, especially if they leave their computer on all night connected with broadband. Many businesses do this, of course. It's not easy, but it can be done and could theoretically get the proxy computer kicked from their ISP even if they've never even heard of P2P.
Good idea, but hard to implement. I can't stop buying DVDs because there is no alternative.
Already, I don't buy Hollywood DVDs because they don't have any lasting value anyway and are a big waste of money.
Already, I don't buy CDs because I can't listen to them before I buy them (how am I supposed to know if I like it or not). Although if I do manage to find music that I like through P2P networks or (soon to be dead) internet radio, I have no choice but to buy the CD if I want uncompressed quality. I try to buy used CDs though, just on principle, so that the RIAA doesn't get any of my money.
I have to see the good films projected. There is simply no substitute for this. But these films are rare and almost never come from Hollywood, and usually not even from the US. The last decent film I saw, played for a whole 2 days in a local "art" theater. I missed Claire Denis's last film, some kind of interesting vampire flick, because the damn thing only played for a few days in one theatre. If it doesn't come out on video I'll probably never get to see it. So the good films don't help them anyway.
Oh yeah, if the MPAA starts losing large amounts of money to a boycott due to their unpopular tactics and bad PR, they will (obviously) just blame it on piracy and P2P, and buy even more Draconian laws (P2P sharing death penalty perhaps) from our congress critters, and raise their prices. They will not die easily, not without a serious scorched earth policy. And, anyway it's not going to happen. He who has the gold makes the rules.
I don't have any hard statistics, but it was a "well known fact" in the laserdisc industry for years, alleged to be the main reason why laserdiscs never really took off in popularity.
Virtually all Hollywood movies are only made to be seen once, or at the most twice. They are not works of art, they are just supposed to be "fun", or a "wild ride", something like that. They are mostly just advertisements for themselves, filmed to supply lots of exciting looking shots for the trailers. This is why many trailers are much better than the movies themselves, Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project (yes, non-Hollywood but making use of the same principle) being two very notable examples. Most people I've talked to about this consider the idea of actually owning a movie to be a complete waste of time and money.
Now, it's possible that the huge marketing campaign and the "coolness" factor in being able to store a movie on compact disc sized media has encouraged more people to go out and buy them, but I still think it's an insignificant amount and the vast majority of movie downloaders would never have even considered buying the movie in the first place.
Hell, I have a decent collection of laserdiscs, each which cost me between $20 and $50, but I almost never watch them. They just sit there in storage, representing many hundreds of dollars of spending. Of course, some of them are out of print in every format including tape. These are the ones I treasure the most and am somewhat afraid to play for fear of scratching them etc. Many of the best movies never even came out on LD and will certainly never be released on DVD. I collect these movies because they are works of art and I want to own them and preserve them for the future. Even I don't see the point of buying the newest mainstream movie. How many times am I going to watch it? It's still cheaper to just rent the DVD, which I can do for $1.75 at a local store. How else are you going to try a movie you haven't seen before anyway? The vast majority of films are not worth watching twice and were never intended to be. It's that simple. The MPAA/Hollywood does not see films as an art form but rather as a revenue stream, just a business like anything else. They don't want their movies to have lasting value or "meaning" because that doesn't sell $9.00 movie tickets to the masses. They'd rather leave that task to those other countries (ones whose masses also queue up to watch this trash badly translated into their own languages).
Slashdot Mirror
This wouldn't solve the starship problem. Water is heavy. You'd probably need more water than in all of Earths oceans to get to the Alpha Centauri system.
If I get one of these transplants, will I start involuntarily attacking or even killing people who eat bacon, ribs, sausage, pepperoni, and pulled pork? Will I start to dislike these foods myself?
How long before I can get a brain transplant from a pig? I've heard pigs are pretty smart. Does this mean that I will finally be able to figure out the great unification theory in physics and maybe invent a warp drive by figuring out how to create a gravitational pressure gradient in the fabric of space-time thus creating a propellant-free rocket so I can take my next vacation on the fifth planet of the Alpha Centauri A star system. Can I change my name to Wilbur?
Oh come on. Isn't anyone gonna mod this guy up to 5:funny. I think this is pretty funny.
Reminds me of an old SNL skit where they were doing one of their fake advertisements. It was for an alarm system that would "stop a burglar before he left his own house". Then they would show this with some burglar (was it Eddie Murphy?) trying to leave his own house but an alarm siren and flashing lights would go off and the police would arrive and arrest him. This seems to predate Minority Report by something like 15 years or so. Prior art? NBC or the scriptwriter for that show should have patented that idea so that they could sue these cops for "using their patented idea". Does anyone know what episode that was or know any more details of that skit. It seems particularly relevant now. Maybe the comedy channel will run it again sometime. I think it might have been back when Joe Piscopo was still on the show but I can't remember.
I assume this was in Kansas or something. Certainly not in LA or NYC or you'd surely be dead. If you make any sudden movements or appear to be unpredictible and perhaps a threat they can legally shoot you, and they'll probably go for a head shot just in case that sweatshirt is made of Kevlar.
As much as I hate the police and would like to see them all tortured to death, I think you may have over-reacted.
The cops were all school yard bullies when they were kids. When guys like that join the army and make The Enemy (of the day) suffer I don't mind. Especially since they're usually TowelHeads. But cops do that kind of stuff to the citizens of their own country, and more to the point, to me. That's what gets me. Can't we just get rid of the police force and draft them all into the marines or something. Or send them to Antarctica where they can't do so much harm.
Are you sure that it's really legal? If you take pictures in countries outside the US (I'm assuming you're American), is it illegal in any other country?
I ask this because, from time to time, I like to take pictures of the faces of pretty and interesting looking girls in the city where I live and also when I travel. I do this, not by asking them, but by shooting first and (maybe) asking questions later.
Because I don't like to shoot with long lenses this almost always means that I am no farther than about six feet from them and pointing my lens directly at their faces. I don't so much mind getting attacked by an angry boyfriend/friend/brother, but I don't want to have to worry about her calling the police.
She obviously doesn't think of her face as being public property in any way. Usually being able to get a careful look at her face is a priviledge only usually granted to the lucky few which certainly does not include some guy she hasn't even talked to. From her POV, it's kind of a violation, but the law apparently doesn't agree with her.
Sometimes I tell models, who complain about how guys are always staring or how everyone is always hitting on them to just wear a ski mask or a latex prosthetic and billy-bob teeth. Usually they'll settle for mirror sunglasses and a baseball hat, which doesn't work. Anyway, I guess once you step outside your house, the photons that bounce off your body are legally in the public domain.
I just wonder if following her down the street for a couple of minutes with a video camera would be covered by those lovely anti-stalking laws.
Show me *any* television show (besides ST:TNG of course, hehe) worth watching in *any* country. Show me an American movie worth watching. Now that's a tough one. Forget about the fact that most other countries love watching straight to video Rambo clones (all illegally copied of course:)). Do action movies even need subtitles? A fiery explosion is universal. Show me a Hollywood film and I'll show you an advertisement for an advertisement, a series of images shot to look good in the trailers. [gets off horse]
Show me which country invented and continues to invent nearly every single thing you use nearly every single day.
Wow. Are you Sirius? Aren't you forgetting about the Axis powers of Germany and Japan as well as the smaller tigers of the east like Taiwan where your motherboard and all it's memory came from. I don't need to mention England for obvious reasons, although they've always made great cars. It's obvious why they can't be productive. They're too busy listening to each other talk with those fascinating accents. Although eventually the novelty of those accents wears off. But then you come back to the states, listen to our vulgar American snarls for a couple of days and want to hop right back on that plane. Canada has no excuse, except for the cold maybe, and Quebec where everyone wishes they could move to France so they could have a real culture. I haven't forgotton about ATI, but how many other examples can you think of?
This is exactly the kind of response that makes the rest of the world dislike Americans, but I suspect that you are at least half joking. Of course I only know that because I'm also a Merkin. A European may think you're actually serious. I just want to point out how American your definition of "success" is.
Anyway, you're right about the American dream. In the US, success == wealth. Period. Only money gives you real bragging rights here. I don't have a major problem with this, but it does get tiresome after so many years. I really would like to live in another country for a while. Even Quebec is a significant rest from the rat race mentality here.
If having lots of money is the answer then what was the question? I have Cuban friends who make less than $15 a month, and they seem just as happy as most Americans that I know. Of course those Cubans would like to have more and would surely be happier, but would they be willing to sell their souls to get it, to become clockwatchers. Oh yeah. And the "quality of life" in terms of income doesn't have to improve. It was good enough 30 years ago to beat most other countries.
It will take some time though. As we've slowly lost our so called freedoms or "rights" over the past 100 years, the process will continue unabated for the next 100 years until we have a real Stalin as president with the same power and the same hunger for killing. I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime without some major medical breakthroughs on stopping the aging process, so I'm not too worried. The government will continue to grow and what citizens are "permitted" to do will continue to shrink. But it will happen so gradually, bit by bit, that you almost won't notice. It will all seem perfectly normal. And it will be. As you say, it's a perfectly natural process. It's just what governments do, what they are.
You obviously are not an American. Maybe that's how the bobbies and the judges work in the United Kingdom or Australia or Germany or wherever, but here in the states the cops and judges are friends. To both of them the citizen is the enemy and obviously always always guilty if the cop says so. The cop is not on trial, you are. If you want the judge to question what the cop says, you'd better have iron-clad, indisputable evidence to back it up. The judge probably won't laugh at you, but his view of the alleged events will be *exactly* the same as the cops. Rather than call you a liar, he will merely rule against you. Next case!
And why don't you stop driving so fscking slow. Most of us are completely sick of waiting behind you, needing to be somewhere quickly, while you just take your sweet time, looking around at the scenery, leaning back, making sure the speedometer needle doesn't hit that dangerous 30 MPH mark. Don't you have *anything* you need to do? I think some states actually have a law where if you have more than a certain number of cars right behind you, you have to pull over and let them pass, but I've never seen it enforced. Actually driving a horse and buggy on anything but a real highway is still perfectly legal where I live. In fact it's the only "vehicle" that you don't need some kind of license from the state to operate. One local guy drives down my street every morning during rush hour with a real horse and buggy, a nice one actually, with a line of like 50 cars crawling behind him. The fact is that slow driving can be even more dangerous than fast driving, at least for other drivers, and fast driving seldom injures anyone else but the driver himself (and any passengers). Remember that speed is relative and those lazy, crawling speeds you like to drive at may actually seem dangerously fast to others whom I seriously hope you get stuck behind when you're late for some kind of appointment/meeting/date/emergency room visit.
At least in my state, I'm pretty sure there's a law against refusing to give your name to a police officer. I think there is also another law against giving a false name to a police officer. And another one against insulting a police officer. I'm not sure how an "insult" is to be interpreted here since lots of things could be seen as "insulting" depending on how sensitive you are. I think you can certainly go to prison for extending the middle finger of one of your hands with the back of your hand facing an officer of the law. The laws are so generally rigged against the evil civilian citizenry in favor of the benevolent police force that to refuse pretty much any request of a police officer should only be done on the advice of a good criminal attorney. I was once almost prosecuted for "refusing to obey" a police officer which is a felony in my state. So basically you have to do pretty much whatever they tell you to do or you can plan on spending a great deal of time in jail. I was almost refused entry to Canada once because the immigration official looked up my record and said "You didn't tell us you have a criminal record". I said "What are you talking about?". And they mentioned this "failure to obey a police officer", which I guess makes me a dangerous criminal.
America has always been the country symbolized by "$". The immigrants who choose the US do so because they want to make as much money as possible, maybe even get rich. Even with all our ridiculous laws, it seems to still be the easiest country in which to make money. My town is full of Brazilians. They came here because in Brazil they made like $400 a month if they were lucky and now some of them are making like $3000 a month, although that may include working two full time jobs. France and England are both great countries to live in but try making alot of money there. The only country I know of as focused on money as the US is Japan. Most people seem to immigrate for economic reasons and the US has a worldwide reputation as the "richest" country in the world. There are still some people however who don't want to live in America because they've heard so many negative things about Americans, many of which are actually true.
I hate reading stories like this. Yeah, I'm a libertarian and all (at least until right this minute) but I'm sick of all this "budget" crap that NASA gets. Why don't we just give NASA the priority over *everything*, even national defense. Let them keep most of our tax dollars. I'd much rather be working as a slave for the cause of space exploration than whatever the reasons of the day are for our massive government. What we need, not in a few decades or centuries but *right now*, before I even finish this post, is a real space exploration program. Blank checks for the following programs making use of serious spacecraft perhaps powered by nuclear fission and/or fuel cells.: 1. A permanent lunar base devoted to the purpose of manufacturing spacecraft too large or fragile to be constructed and launched from earth. We could use a space station for this, but to hell with that. A lunar base is more appropriate for showing those aliens that we've got a pair. 2. Serious preparations for launching manned missions to, not just one, but all of the interesting targets in our solar system at the same time. These would include Mars, most of Jovian moons (and yes, there are many) not forgetting about Io or Europa which might even support some kind of life. 3. Immediate serious planning for high speed manned and unmanned interstellar space travel to Alpha Centauri and all other star systems less than 10 light years away making use of whatever current or near future tech we need to get us there. This may include such proposals as pulsed fission bomb propulsion such as The Orion Project. Unmanned missions might also make use of Jovian planet slingshotting to get an initial boost. 4. And obviously we're going to be needing more than just a few of those new space elevators. Time to get cracking. Those people working on medical cures can keep right on working but everyone else should start thinking about what they can contribute to the War Effort, err, I mean, Space Effort. Our entire economy should revolve around it. If the Russkies had never launched Sputnik maybe we'd all still think the moon was made of cheese. (Although didn't I read that those videos were faked?:))
This all reminds me so much of Contact (the book not the movie that I never saw). Sagan's dream of one world cooperating. Finding out that we are not alone in the galaxy by pooling the worlds' resources and finally building such a large radiotelescope that SETI actually works and we get The Message. Of course, it's terrestrial based, which has its limitations. That book was the reason that I stopped by the VLA once when driving from the left coast to the right coast. Pretty spectacular. I liked the fact that Sagan's descriptions of the area were accurate. All those rabbits everywhere. What do they all eat? Maybe the radioastronomers feed them. Kind of made me want to move to New Mexico. The question I'm asking myself is that if we can do a 1 sq km array why not a 2 sq km array? How big would the radiotelescope have to be to see the "edge" of the universe?
Try a comparison between your Klipsch speakers and a pair of Castles, Mordaunt-Shorts, or (high end) B&Ws. I think you'll find the Klipschs wanting. It's tough to beat British speakers. I would recommend a headphone test but you really need a headphone amp and a real pair of headphones (Senn HD600, Etys...) to do that. I think you'll find that from 160kbps to 320kbps MPC will rule the day right up until lossless ape or flac compression.
Are you not guilty of "harmful" speech just by discussing this in a forum where thousands of people can read it. Perhaps a homosexual who has never heard of NAMBLA will find out about the group and be encouraged to rape someone. Can that someone now sue you for even mentioning the name in public? If not, why not? There is no such thing as "harmless" or "harmful" speech. Speech is speech. Even young children understand this. It's too bad adults like you have so much trouble with the concept.
I don't believe in your right to talk about your "tastes" in a public forum. Time to see the inside of a small prison cell. Why don't you just admit that the only reason you are against the DMCA is because you want to steal the work of others, personally. That it's a practical issue, just for you. Perhaps the US should pass a law allowing only you to speak freely. Everyone else has no right to say anything except what you want to hear. To be truly fair, we need a law making any speech that you "feel" is bad or harmful illegal. Of course as an athiest, I will have to be put to death. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but it's speech that can really kill you. Let's pass the Hemlock Amendment to the constitution. What happened to Galileo and Socrates was just. It was a moral imperative. Heresy must not be tolerated in any form. Death to the infidels, and to all Heretics!
It's not the same as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater (which also should be "protected" speech IMHO). Anyone who thinks like that definitely does not belong in the ACLU.
Free speech is a principle. Speech either is or is not free. Either you can go to jail for saying something or you can't. Period. It's because of people like you that we need the ACLU and Libertarians in general.
I look forward to the day when you have to worry about what you say in public for fear of being reported by others to the state. Remember that someone has to decide what speech is legal and what is not. And, that someone is not going to be you.
Perhaps one day it will be illegal to spell Microsoft with a "$", or to even speak the word with a negative tone of voice.
The details of NAMBLA's beliefs are completely irrelevant to this discussion. I don't care even the slightest what they believe. I don't care if they're advocating immediate (meaning right now, before I can even finish writing this sentence) thermonuclear war to fight world hunger, or the release of Ebola-Marburg-Smallpox-Lassa superviruses into the wild to save the rainforests, or having kittens for breakfast to promote healthy skin. The more unpopular and offensive the belief, the more important its defense. Popular beliefs don't need a constitution or a bill of rights to protect them. The Nazis didn't seize power. They were voted in.
Just because he can't figure out the methods of 1 out of 5 circles doesn't mean he's stupid. If someone finally shows him how to do it, he might think "Wow, that was clever", regardless of how obvious it might seem to the pranksters. It just means that 20% of the "artists" are smarter than he is.
What are they waiting for? I can see it now. Osama simultaneously blows up 10 major cities with suitcase hydrogen bombs. We catch him and there's plenty of evidence, but we have to let him walk because congress never passed a law against "blowing up 10 cities with suitcase hydrogen bombs". They'd better pass a law before the first person in history actually commits such a crime. And don't forget the new law about flying large planes into tall buildings.
You might want to check out Freenet or Blocks. They can't contact your ISP if they don't have your IP address.
But you can use someone else's computer as a proxy address, especially if they leave their computer on all night connected with broadband. Many businesses do this, of course. It's not easy, but it can be done and could theoretically get the proxy computer kicked from their ISP even if they've never even heard of P2P.
Good idea, but hard to implement. I can't stop buying DVDs because there is no alternative.
Already, I don't buy Hollywood DVDs because they don't have any lasting value anyway and are a big waste of money.
Already, I don't buy CDs because I can't listen to them before I buy them (how am I supposed to know if I like it or not). Although if I do manage to find music that I like through P2P networks or (soon to be dead) internet radio, I have no choice but to buy the CD if I want uncompressed quality. I try to buy used CDs though, just on principle, so that the RIAA doesn't get any of my money.
I have to see the good films projected. There is simply no substitute for this. But these films are rare and almost never come from Hollywood, and usually not even from the US. The last decent film I saw, played for a whole 2 days in a local "art" theater. I missed Claire Denis's last film, some kind of interesting vampire flick, because the damn thing only played for a few days in one theatre. If it doesn't come out on video I'll probably never get to see it. So the good films don't help them anyway.
Oh yeah, if the MPAA starts losing large amounts of money to a boycott due to their unpopular tactics and bad PR, they will (obviously) just blame it on piracy and P2P, and buy even more Draconian laws (P2P sharing death penalty perhaps) from our congress critters, and raise their prices. They will not die easily, not without a serious scorched earth policy. And, anyway it's not going to happen. He who has the gold makes the rules.
I don't have any hard statistics, but it was a "well known fact" in the laserdisc industry for years, alleged to be the main reason why laserdiscs never really took off in popularity.
Virtually all Hollywood movies are only made to be seen once, or at the most twice. They are not works of art, they are just supposed to be "fun", or a "wild ride", something like that. They are mostly just advertisements for themselves, filmed to supply lots of exciting looking shots for the trailers. This is why many trailers are much better than the movies themselves, Godzilla and The Blair Witch Project (yes, non-Hollywood but making use of the same principle) being two very notable examples. Most people I've talked to about this consider the idea of actually owning a movie to be a complete waste of time and money.
Now, it's possible that the huge marketing campaign and the "coolness" factor in being able to store a movie on compact disc sized media has encouraged more people to go out and buy them, but I still think it's an insignificant amount and the vast majority of movie downloaders would never have even considered buying the movie in the first place.
Hell, I have a decent collection of laserdiscs, each which cost me between $20 and $50, but I almost never watch them. They just sit there in storage, representing many hundreds of dollars of spending. Of course, some of them are out of print in every format including tape. These are the ones I treasure the most and am somewhat afraid to play for fear of scratching them etc. Many of the best movies never even came out on LD and will certainly never be released on DVD. I collect these movies because they are works of art and I want to own them and preserve them for the future. Even I don't see the point of buying the newest mainstream movie. How many times am I going to watch it? It's still cheaper to just rent the DVD, which I can do for $1.75 at a local store. How else are you going to try a movie you haven't seen before anyway? The vast majority of films are not worth watching twice and were never intended to be. It's that simple. The MPAA/Hollywood does not see films as an art form but rather as a revenue stream, just a business like anything else. They don't want their movies to have lasting value or "meaning" because that doesn't sell $9.00 movie tickets to the masses. They'd rather leave that task to those other countries (ones whose masses also queue up to watch this trash badly translated into their own languages).