I don't have a problem admitting there are songs on my HD that are NOT from albums I own. Quite a few are, either from my own rips, or from downloads off of Napster before I found a good mp3 ripper. There are also plenty of remixes of songs, rarities, etc, that I either didn't even know existed, or that I don't know where to get. And sure, some are single songs that I don't want the entire album.
One of the advantages of Napster is that it allows spur-of-the-moment searches of artists that I wouldn't bother digging around for on the web. It allows me to search, say, for remakes of songs by a certain artist, without knowing who might have done them. And all sorts of other things that I could not possibly do by checking out artist web sites, or a store that lets me listen to the music first (though I don't know of any that do that anymore). I can tell you that without Napster, I wouldn't have accidentally discovered Kinnie Starr, and bought both her CD's from her independent label. I wouldn't have stumbled across Rachel Sage while doing a search on "Lilith Fair", and bought her three.
My music purchases have went up by maybe a factor of five since I found Napster. I am not exaggerating here, as you suggest I am. Because I don't listen to the radio that much, so don't get a lot of exposure to new stuff, and I don't care for most of what I do hear.
It took my SO and I two years to fill the last 50 slots in our 200-disc CD changer. That's with both of our purchases, gifts, etc. That was before Napster. Since then, maybe 6 months, we've bought at least that many more. With a list of 20-30 we still want to buy.
I know what I'm doing is technically illegal, and I know the reasons behind it being that way. I don't have a drop of guilt about it though because I'm getting more music I like, and they're getting more money from me. ---
Wow, I didn't realize people were still using the official Napster service. I thought they had all long gone to OpenNap, like I have, to get around all that annoying filtering stuff. (Actually, like I was doing before Northpoint when belly-up and I found myself without net access at home)
The official Napster service itself is becoming more and more irrelevant, little more than a symbol of where people are taking the music industry as it tries to fight back unsuccessfully.
I had to go to opennap to find the songs I wanted to DL so I could decide I liked them enough to buy the CD's... next thing you know they're going to have guards at music stores and require you to give proof you didn't download any mp3's off an album before they let you buy it. After all, they do seem to be doing everything they can to discourage people to enjoy music more. ---
Yes, what I wrote was definately NOT insightful. Especially not to get modded up twice as insightful. It was only meant to be funny.
However, I think you didn't quite get it all. Perhaps it had a touch of flamebait, but it was not meant to be a bash against Christians in general. Just the American Family Association (and similar insane groups, such as Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalation, etc) for always trying to shove their issues into places they're not meant. It was only at the end where I mentioned Christianity, and in the context of that group.
So please, DON'T take it the way you did, because that's not how it was meant.
(Yes, I know in some areas, the strongly religious have it bad also - not just Christians. But other areas of the US have the Christians in charge, harassing others - such as small towns in the Bible belt region, where attempts to keep religion from being taught as truth in public schools can cause a family to be run out of town) ---
No kidding. When I tell people I'm an athiest, they gasp as though I said devil worshiper!
That's probably because to many people, they're equivalent in their mind. You're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or a virgin-sacrificing devil worshipper. ---
Christians are probably the largest group of homeschool kids because they are the #1 targeted group. Try and do a report or make a graduation speech mentioning Christ and see how far you get.
Oh no, not more whining about how "Christians are so badly discriminated against." I haven't seen any... unless you count being unable to coat the schools in Bible quotes/ten commandments plaques, preventing forced Christian prayers in schools, eliminating classes that teach the Bible as pure fact, and other attempts to get a preferred status in schools as discrimination. I know some people believe that freedom of religion gives them the right to force their beliefs on others.
I'll make you a deal. You can complain about the mistreatment of Christians when: the general public has a lower opinion of your beliefs than homosexuality, when not a single politician in office has Christian beliefs, when most people believe eliminating your beliefs is a good thing, and when people are willing to vote someone else of a despised minority over a candidate with your beliefs.
Yes, all of the above happen to those like me who are atheist. Surveys show atheism to be LESS acceptable to people than homosexuality. Most people feel that eliminating atheism is a good thing. And there aren't any polticians that are atheist - or at least none that don't pretend to be religious - heck, there was a local election where an atheist candidate lost to a transsexual candidate!
Oh, and do you think the large Christian groups complaing about students not being able to preach in their graduation speeches would happily sit by if someone was up there talking about their Wiccan beliefs and how much it helped them? They'd throw everything in their power at the school to stop it. (And there is LOTS of precedent to believe this would be the case)
It would be interesting in these cases if the family could actually mount a case against the school authorities for not protecting their son from protracted bullying, citing what he said as a result of mental trauma.... I can't believe an authority can have an unconstitutional right to exclude a pupil for the simple crime of trying to cope with harassment....
I believe they can do just that. I know there have been a couple of cases where people have come back and sued their school district because they were being harassed for being gay during school (regardless of whether it was true or not), and the staff/administration of the school was fully away of the harassment and never lifted a finger to stop it.
I don't see how a case like this is any different - once again, students being harassed by other students for perceived differences, and the staff is fully aware yet does nothing to remedy the situation.
Yes, I'm as tired of all the lawsuits today as the next person, but sometimes they do serve legitimate purposes. Teaching schools to treat all kids as being equal and deserving of the same treatment is definately far from frivilous. ---
(MORONVILLE, TX) - Today a ceremony was held at the local high school to give a group of children Medals of Honor for enforcing conformity. The medals, donated by AOL-Time Warner, McDonalds, PepsiCo. and other global megacorps, were for their efforts to expose fellow student Sean Seeley as a psychopath who was prepared to blow up the entire school.
"It took years of harassment and torture to finally get the student to show his true self, but these children refused to back away from their horrible treatment of Sean to get to the truth," stated principal Dorf McMoron. "We need to make it clear to these kids that they are here to learn skills to make them happy little workers and consumers for society, and that individualism leads down a bad road to original thought and questioning of our basic Family Values, and we can't have that."
There was an incredibly huge amount of support for the children from the community for their effort. "We can't have kids like Sean in schools. They'll ruin the educational conformity system that we so love", stated one parent. Said another, "bullying is a way of life. I bullied many many kids around in my day, and I make sure my son beats up on some faggot wimp every week, or I kick him with my spurs a few times. Those little wimps need to learn to suck it up, deal with it, like the ones I beat on. Guns are only to defend yourself against criminals, not good ol' red-blooded American bullies, and that's why I have my 350 guns and NRA membership."
The American Family Association was present, accusing the American culture of violent pedophilic homosexual atheist liberals of ruining society, and they are "happy to see one of the horribly persecuted Christians standing up for family values against Satan." When someone pointed out that this had absolutely nothing to do with any of those issues, they responded "See? They're trying to censor us! They're evil, they're evil!" ---
Could some people be kind enough to point us to some web sites for independent media? Whether for TV or Radio stations, magazines, newspapers, or just independent web news sites - any would be fine.
What better way to combat this this eventual conglomeration into the International OneMedia Corp than to start spreading the word about the small independent media? ---
Americans don't need to work harder. They need a break. They need a good night sleep, an extra hour for a familly dinner. They need to stress a little less about whether they can afford to pay emergency medical bills. An extra two hours a day and a longer vacation will do wonders to such problems as school shooting, drugs, gun, etc.
Why do Americans stress about things such as whether they can affort to pay emergency medical bills? Because when your SO goes into the ER for chest pain, and you get a bill for $2000 after they were there about 5 hours and found out nothing was wrong, you DO get stressed.
Americans work so hard because of rampant run-away capitalism. We're stuck in the middle of a society that's all about money, and you don't have the option to opt-out. You want to go live like people did 5000 or 10000 years ago? Want to try the hunter-gatherer type life? Not a chance. You can't even find the land to live on, let alone start picking fruit that someone else owns, or go hunting for your food.
Heck, if you get downright technical, none of us have the right to exist. All the land on this planet is claimed by someone, and from the moment you're born, you're only allowed to exist by others.
So there isn't truly any way to leave the system. And in my opinion, the hyper-capitalism of the US is stressing people out in their attempts to stay in the system, at least those people who aren't living the easy life at the top (you know, the ones with enough money that it grows faster than they can spend it due). And I suspect more and more people are going to collapse from exhaustion trying to keep up, kind of like a huge treadmill that goes faster and faster, and people continue to drop and get thrown off the end.
Unfortunately, too many people are still cheering on this system. But they're the ones in the front, the ones that think that the system works for the best, the ones that, because they have to keep looking forward, don't see all the people that can't keep up anymore.
I just wonder how long until the system breaks, and whether it's before or after it destroys democracy. (I vote for after) ---
Are you stupid?
Don't you realize that we are not dealing with democratically elected government but with bunch of tyrants who would do anything to keep their power (and they proved that.)
Don't you realize that this "nationalism" is what stands between your freedom and regime like China?
Umm... there is a world of difference between people fighting for their freedom and rights, and people fighting for a flag (a piece of cloth) and a name.
"Nationalism" isn't what gets people to go out and fight to gain/protect their freedom. OK, maybe it does to some people, but I sure hope not all.
Nationalism is the equivalent to the person cheering on their favorite sports team, claiming "we're number 1" and all that as their team finishes last place. For sports, I suppose it's ok, since it has no real effect on things (except to generate a lot of money for a few people). But that blind cheering should NOT be ok when looking at a nation.
Nationalism would be people saying how great the US is and loving it regardless of how many freedoms they take away, how far it gets from what it was intended to be at the beginning.
"It's a huge game of chicken to satisfy a few male egos"
This is sad. If it weren't for these "egos" what would stand between your freedom and bunch of Chinese dictating your every way of life.
Well gee, I didn't realize there were all these Chinese troops ready to invade the US. You might want to share your information with the military so they can head off this obviously immediate threat.
On a more serious note... I was referring to both countries. Two groups of people more interested in saving face than coming together to figure out what really happened and working everything out. They're willing to increase tensions to show how "strong" they are.
Are you really saying that's a good thing, and I should be proud of our leadership as they, together with the Chinese, act like two little kids going "yes you did" "no I didn't" back and forth over and over again? ---
Nationalism is outdated, and rather illogical in the first place. And that's what this all boils down to. A few leaders that need to stroke their egos, and the egos of those people still sounding like five-year-old children crying "my country is better than your country".
It's not about honor, like some people suggest. Honor isn't about remaining steadfast and refusing to admit to a mistake at whatever cost.
Both countries made mistakes. The US military was just doing what it loves to do, find any way to push the limits, to get to the edge of what's legal and forget about the intent. That's why the spy planes so close to China's borders. China, on the other hand, sent a pilot who was known to cause trouble, to push things too close, while escorting and harassing the spy plane.
I find these "I'd rather do it my way than the right way" ideas to be downright pathetic. Sadly, they seem to be common. The voters who put people into office here in the US still have this belief that we should be fiercly defending the country, that we should be loyal to the flag no matter what. Therefore we have leaders that also follow such blind nationalism. Heck, it is any wonder that so many people find a piece of cloth more important than the freedoms it's supposed to stand for?
The whole crisis makes me sick. It's a huge game of chicken to satisfy a few male egos, with no regard or concern for what the result is. The real crisis should be for the citizens of both countries, with the realization of how poor and clueless their leaders really are. ---
You'd think that the best you can do is 50% correct, since there's that chance for your hat being blue or red.
However, if you look at the possibilities for three people, the hats can be :
rrr
rrb
rbr
brr
bbr
brb
rbb
bbb
If you count, 6 out of the 8 possibilities have two hats of one color, and one hat of the other. Therefore, as the article said, you improve your odds of guessing correctly if you see two hats of the same color. It's all a matter of perspective, as to whether you look at the individual random item, or the full set of random items.
I agree, at first appearance it does seem to defy what we're taught about odds/probability and the like. I won't pretend to be quite comfortable with it... ---
Congratulations, Theonomist, on an impressive troll. Not because it wasn't clearly a troll, because it was - it's so far over the line that anyone paying attention can't help but realize it. But that you did it so well that you really did manage to convince a few people that you were serious.
Heck, you even got moderated up as insightful! (probably by one of those people that actually vote for Jesse Helms) You've done well, as now we'll get the chance to meta-moderate out at least one more bad moderator, and perhaps more should other people bite.
You should never have wasted your time trying to troll on E2, when you can do it so much better here, with so much better results, due to the Slashdot crowd. ---
've no scientific background in this area, but if there as many other intelligent life forms outthere as people keep telling us, then we probably would have received many signals by now.
So either intelligence is really rare in the universe, or noone beside us uses radio waves to communicate, or there is some yet unknown physical effect on radio waves which lets them degenerate faster than we thought...
Go do a web search on The Fermi Paradox for some interesting discussions on this. Essentially, given the age of the universe, and the rate at which technology advances, if there are other civiliazations in the universe, why haven't we seen any signs of any? Even a slow rate of technological advance (compared to us) would still result in a rather quick spread of that civilization around the universe in comparison to the time taken for evolution and the like. ---
Re:Freedom of expression does not exist in academi
on
Republic.Com
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Sorry, there is no freedom of speech or expression permitted on college campuses these days. Flat out nearly all of them are under the thumb of left-wingers.
Cite examples please. With evidence that a) there is no freedom of speech/expression permitted, and b) this is the fault of left-wing groups. I hear these claims of liberals attacking these freedoms, but I don't see any more instances of them doing it then people on the right.
Just asserting it doesn't make it so.
I still find it amazing that so many conservatives attack the left as being in favor of censorship and all, when the biggest group that fights FOR those first amendment freedoms, the ACLU, is also considered a left-wing group. (The right-wing version, the ACLJ, is notorious for thinking freedom of religion means the ability to force your beliefs on others - that sure isn't freedom)
(BTW, I am a very liberal person, who donates regularly to the ACLU and is a strong supporter of first amendment rights) ---
Sure, why the heck not? The only people who would be pissed about me writing about this are the ones who are reponsible for it, and it's not like I'm going back there anyways. (unfortunately, because I really did enjoy it and met a lot of people who are still important to me)
- I don't remember when, but the first thing seemed to be that editors were getting a little bit "trigger-happy", and writeups and nodes were beind deleted quite a bit, usually without notice to the author, and often without any obvious reason other than the editor seeming to not want the node around. I had quite a few deleted myself, ones that I had written quite a while ago, ones that had been added to by others, ones that had no reason that I, or anyone else I talked to, could see for the nuke.
When a couple of us mentioned it in the chatterbox, we were immediately yelled at by a number of editors and some gods, and told to drop it. Regardless of the fact that we were not doing it for our level/XP or anything like that, but for the good of E2. I, and those others, were borged AFTER we stopped talking about it even.
- There was one god that had an obvious, and thinly-veiled, dislike of me, and had for a while, before he was a god. When he became one, he began to get nasty with me - including a number of downright mean/msgs sent to me in the chatterbox. I noticed that every time I got borged (and that started to become quite often for some reason) he was online. Heck, at least once I was borged having never said a word.
- I had nodes nuked by dem bones also, after he accused me of just trying to get attention...
- I was an editor at one point, and had that taken away from me without being told it was being done, or why.
- When I tried to help clean up things (after noticing my nodes being nuked) by listing some of my poorer writeups that I didn't think were worth keeping around, I got bitched at for submitting lists of node names.
Here I am, unable to delete them myself because of no more editor powers, and doing it for the good of E2 (hunting down the crap they'd delete anyway) and making it easier for everyone, and I was being bitched at.
- I did everything I could to try to bring to peoples' attention that there were things bothering me (and plenty of other people), trying to make the place better, and I was being mistreated for that too. There were a few times I was desperately trying to get someone to LISTEN to me, sitting there in tears hoping someone might realize that I LIKED the place, that I WANTED to stay, but that I couldn't deal with how things were.
And almost none of the gods or admin staff even cared. The few that did were powerless to change things.
I could have stuck it out, stayed around despite the treatment, since I wasn't truly forced out by having my account deleted or anything. But I was on E2 because I wanted to be. Because I enjoyed it. But it became too painful, and I didn't want to remember it that way. Unfortunately, I guess it was too late, cause I guess I still perceive the place the way I left it, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it like this now.
Yes, I am still quite bitter. But I guess that's because it really did mean something to me, quite a lot in fact... and the hurt of being treated badly by people I once thought were my friends.
Don't forget that if the gods and admin dislike you, your writeups will be deleted.
Please don't go saying you only get them deleted for writing bullshit and not reading the FAQ. I'm not the only long-time user that left because of the higher-ups deciding I wasn't welcome anymore.
I still wish I knew what it was that pissed those people off so badly as to be downright mean to me. ---
I was disgusted with even trying to when most noding attempts I made were moderated down, or whatever it's called, by the uber-noder gods.
Ummm... the "moderation", the voting, isn't done by any gods or anyone special... just users that have been noding on there for at least a little while. If you're voted down, then you need to look harder at what you're writing.
For the most part, only bad stuff gets downvoted and stays that way.
Now, writeups getting DELETED, on the other hand, was totally out of control last I knew, getting deleted for any reason whatsoever (or even no reason, just the whim of a god/editor). I had plenty of nodes with good reputation and good content get nuked. ---
Lucky you. I was also through Phoenix. And twice Telocity sent out migration information, saying it would happen within the next few weeks... and twice nothing occured.
I finally got the Telocity "modem" (it's only what, 4x the size of the Copper Rocket?), and wasn't bothering to set it up while my other one still worked. It went out for a day, so I tried setting up the Telocity one, and nothing. Just a nice flashing red "status" light. Fortunately, my old modem started working again.
Well, yesterday, DSL out again. Still no success with the Telocity modem. However, the copper rocket modem DOES have the green connect lights come on. So I don't know what's up anymore.
I'm going to call tonight and figure out what the hell is going on with my service if it's not working. Heck, even if it is working, maybe I'll call just to see where things are.
While I must admit I'm verry happy to see E2 going strong still, and growing as a community, it does remind me how much I was hurt by that place.
I spent a long time as an E2 user, over a year and a half - with, at one point, over 2100 writeups on there. But things like that count for nothing when it comes to the gods and the administration. Somewhere along the line I must have done something to piss off a number of people, and nobody even bothered to let me know what I did so that I'd have a chance to try and repair things.
I found myself taking verbal abuse from at least one god (in the form of nasty/msgs), being informed from a friendly god that there were a few gods who had serious personal dislikes for me, and having writeups seemingly arbitrarily deleted (without notice as to which ones or why. I was quite often borged just because I brought up this issue, and I wasn't the only one who felt this way - apparently they didn't want to hear that not everyone agreed with them. Heck, I was even borged when I wasn't even using the chatterbox.
So, even though I was regularly contributing useful and popular nodes, and was under the impression I was a good user, I was still essentially forced off by the administration.
I miss the place, I really do. I loved writing on there, about just about anything. My writing got a lot better because of it, and I think it even helped me open up a bit more. I met a lot of great friends through the site (that I still regularly talk to on #everything). But I can't put up with the crap, the mistreatment, and the like, that I was subject to there.
So I encourage everyone to check out the site, and become users and noders if they want. But just be warned that if you upset the gods and administrators, for any reason whatsoever, they'll make it hell for you. ---
I don't feel so bad now not knowing what's going on with my service - at least I still have mine.
I signed on to Phoenix Networks back last summer. After the 2 months to finally get it installed, it's been fine. However, Phoenix got bought up by MegaPath and supposedly all the residential customers are being migrated to Telocity (this bugs me, I intentionally avoided them because of negative reviews on DSLreports.com). I'm supposed to receive a new DSL modem, and such.
However, I haven't received my modem, I haven't had responses relating to one of the phoenix e-mail addresses not working, and seem to have been ignored. I don't know if I'm just going to find my DSL not working one of these days, or what is going to happen. (They did take like 4 months to finally start charging me for the service, I need to see if they're still charging or not)
I just want to KNOW where things are going, dang it! ---
I have very ambivalent feelings about the targetted advertising over Napster. I received both the one sent if you had Depeche Mode, and the one if you had Toad the Wet Sprocket (and I own the albums, thank you very much). And I deleted the first, but the one for Glen Phillips made me actually very happy - I was so crushed when Toad split up and haven't been able to follow what's been happening with them.
The IM I received not only pointed to a free unreleased Toad.mp3, but to Glen's site, and I didn't even know he had his own album out. I've since dl'ed some of those tracks to check them out, and might well be buying the album. Sure, just what they want me to do, but along the same lines, it's also what I want to do.
I don't want to be overloaded with constant "ads" at any rate, and the idea of that bugs me. But if someone saw that I had pretty much every Tori Amos song in.mp3 format (and once again, on CD also), and wanted to let me know about her coming in concert, or a new album, then I'd be very very happy. ---
A tiny little nanobot has to be able to break all common chemical bonds for this to become a disaster. If a nanobot normally cannot muster the energy to do so, then it's going to have a bitch of a time self-replicating,so the speed of a GGN colony would be slowed by the time it takes a single GGN to do something useful like break a chemical bond. So it's not like we have a rapid, speed-of-sound conversion of Earth into grey goo.
It's a given that this is going to be a relevant problem to be solved while developing molecular nanotechnology anyways. It's not like they'll only build things out of un-bound atmos (after all, many elements are very difficult to keep in atmoic form), so they'll have to break chemical bonds anyways. There's already been a little evidence that mechanical force at that level won't be too difficult, except for maybe a few that bond very tightly. By the time the black goo scenario is possible this likely won't be a problem.
(Remember, intentional creation is BLACK GOO, grey goo is accidental, and highly unlikely.)
GGNs would in theory still be susceptible to things like heat, electrical charges, and physical shock. If you have a colony of grey goo eating away at a mountain, it wouldn't seem particularly difficult to blow it up, burn it, melt it, or maybe engineer counter-bots to tear the little bastards to shreds.
You'd have to get them all. Every last one of them. If a few, or even just one, are left, they can start multiplying again.
Counter-bots are definately something that will be considered. Drexler covers this in Engines of Creation - some sort of defense system will be necessary to watch for such bots and to fight them off. A "nanobot immune system" for the planet, if you will.
As far as I know, GGNs wouldn't be able to replicate very fast. Yes, I know it would be geometric growth in theory (each bot makes 2, which each make 2 more, etc.), but that's only allowing for infinite surface area of the growing mass. In theory a GGN colony would form into a sphere, growing outward, but it could only disassemble things along the surface of the colony, not the inside.
As far as we know, we know very little about possible replication speeds for assemblers. Remember that because of the smaller scales, things can move a lot faster (compare the wing speed of an eagle vs. a hummingbird vs. a fly vs. a mosquito). I think conservative estimates suggest 1 hour per replication. That's still enough to theoretially (assuming perfect 2^x replication) use up the earth in, what, a week or less?
And I would suspect only a nitwit maniac bent on the goo would bother not giving the bots some means to spread around a little, avoiding the problem with being purely a growing sphere.
I do feel it would be a difficult task, at least difficult enough that it's not that real a threat for a while, and by the time it is, defenses may be set up. But don't discount it entirely - blowing it off could lead to people being too content with the idea it won't happen. ---
That's "grey goo", and it describes a scenario where replicating nanobots start replicating out of control. More general ones that can use materials found in the environment to replicate could theoretically turn the planet into a literal "goo" of assemblers after disassembling everything else on the planet, and the planet itself.
Of course, simple engineering choices can eliminate this possibility from ever occuring. The "black goo" scenario, where it is intentional, is probably more likely than grey goo.
Regardless, it's not really relevant at this time, they're far far away from reaching that point yet. They don't mean "molecular nanotechnology" here, they just mean working at the nanoscale level. "Nanotechnology" has become a buzzword.
It's not molecular nanotechnolgoy until they're creating machines at that level. ---
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have a problem admitting there are songs on my HD that are NOT from albums I own. Quite a few are, either from my own rips, or from downloads off of Napster before I found a good mp3 ripper. There are also plenty of remixes of songs, rarities, etc, that I either didn't even know existed, or that I don't know where to get. And sure, some are single songs that I don't want the entire album.
One of the advantages of Napster is that it allows spur-of-the-moment searches of artists that I wouldn't bother digging around for on the web. It allows me to search, say, for remakes of songs by a certain artist, without knowing who might have done them. And all sorts of other things that I could not possibly do by checking out artist web sites, or a store that lets me listen to the music first (though I don't know of any that do that anymore). I can tell you that without Napster, I wouldn't have accidentally discovered Kinnie Starr, and bought both her CD's from her independent label. I wouldn't have stumbled across Rachel Sage while doing a search on "Lilith Fair", and bought her three.
My music purchases have went up by maybe a factor of five since I found Napster. I am not exaggerating here, as you suggest I am. Because I don't listen to the radio that much, so don't get a lot of exposure to new stuff, and I don't care for most of what I do hear.
It took my SO and I two years to fill the last 50 slots in our 200-disc CD changer. That's with both of our purchases, gifts, etc. That was before Napster. Since then, maybe 6 months, we've bought at least that many more. With a list of 20-30 we still want to buy.
I know what I'm doing is technically illegal, and I know the reasons behind it being that way. I don't have a drop of guilt about it though because I'm getting more music I like, and they're getting more money from me.
---
Umm... what song is that quote in your sig from? I'm a huge Toad fan, but just can't seem to place it and it's bugging me badly...
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Wow, I didn't realize people were still using the official Napster service. I thought they had all long gone to OpenNap, like I have, to get around all that annoying filtering stuff. (Actually, like I was doing before Northpoint when belly-up and I found myself without net access at home)
The official Napster service itself is becoming more and more irrelevant, little more than a symbol of where people are taking the music industry as it tries to fight back unsuccessfully.
I had to go to opennap to find the songs I wanted to DL so I could decide I liked them enough to buy the CD's... next thing you know they're going to have guards at music stores and require you to give proof you didn't download any mp3's off an album before they let you buy it. After all, they do seem to be doing everything they can to discourage people to enjoy music more.
---
Yes, what I wrote was definately NOT insightful. Especially not to get modded up twice as insightful. It was only meant to be funny.
However, I think you didn't quite get it all. Perhaps it had a touch of flamebait, but it was not meant to be a bash against Christians in general. Just the American Family Association (and similar insane groups, such as Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalation, etc) for always trying to shove their issues into places they're not meant. It was only at the end where I mentioned Christianity, and in the context of that group.
So please, DON'T take it the way you did, because that's not how it was meant.
(Yes, I know in some areas, the strongly religious have it bad also - not just Christians. But other areas of the US have the Christians in charge, harassing others - such as small towns in the Bible belt region, where attempts to keep religion from being taught as truth in public schools can cause a family to be run out of town)
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No kidding. When I tell people I'm an athiest, they gasp as though I said devil worshiper!
That's probably because to many people, they're equivalent in their mind. You're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or a virgin-sacrificing devil worshipper.
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Christians are probably the largest group of homeschool kids because they are the #1 targeted group. Try and do a report or make a graduation speech mentioning Christ and see how far you get.
Oh no, not more whining about how "Christians are so badly discriminated against." I haven't seen any... unless you count being unable to coat the schools in Bible quotes/ten commandments plaques, preventing forced Christian prayers in schools, eliminating classes that teach the Bible as pure fact, and other attempts to get a preferred status in schools as discrimination. I know some people believe that freedom of religion gives them the right to force their beliefs on others.
I'll make you a deal. You can complain about the mistreatment of Christians when: the general public has a lower opinion of your beliefs than homosexuality, when not a single politician in office has Christian beliefs, when most people believe eliminating your beliefs is a good thing, and when people are willing to vote someone else of a despised minority over a candidate with your beliefs.
Yes, all of the above happen to those like me who are atheist. Surveys show atheism to be LESS acceptable to people than homosexuality. Most people feel that eliminating atheism is a good thing. And there aren't any polticians that are atheist - or at least none that don't pretend to be religious - heck, there was a local election where an atheist candidate lost to a transsexual candidate!
Oh, and do you think the large Christian groups complaing about students not being able to preach in their graduation speeches would happily sit by if someone was up there talking about their Wiccan beliefs and how much it helped them? They'd throw everything in their power at the school to stop it. (And there is LOTS of precedent to believe this would be the case)
(end of off-topic rant)
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It would be interesting in these cases if the family could actually mount a case against the school authorities for not protecting their son from protracted bullying, citing what he said as a result of mental trauma.... I can't believe an authority can have an unconstitutional right to exclude a pupil for the simple crime of trying to cope with harassment....
I believe they can do just that. I know there have been a couple of cases where people have come back and sued their school district because they were being harassed for being gay during school (regardless of whether it was true or not), and the staff/administration of the school was fully away of the harassment and never lifted a finger to stop it.
I don't see how a case like this is any different - once again, students being harassed by other students for perceived differences, and the staff is fully aware yet does nothing to remedy the situation.
Yes, I'm as tired of all the lawsuits today as the next person, but sometimes they do serve legitimate purposes. Teaching schools to treat all kids as being equal and deserving of the same treatment is definately far from frivilous.
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(MORONVILLE, TX) - Today a ceremony was held at the local high school to give a group of children Medals of Honor for enforcing conformity. The medals, donated by AOL-Time Warner, McDonalds, PepsiCo. and other global megacorps, were for their efforts to expose fellow student Sean Seeley as a psychopath who was prepared to blow up the entire school.
"It took years of harassment and torture to finally get the student to show his true self, but these children refused to back away from their horrible treatment of Sean to get to the truth," stated principal Dorf McMoron. "We need to make it clear to these kids that they are here to learn skills to make them happy little workers and consumers for society, and that individualism leads down a bad road to original thought and questioning of our basic Family Values, and we can't have that."
There was an incredibly huge amount of support for the children from the community for their effort. "We can't have kids like Sean in schools. They'll ruin the educational conformity system that we so love", stated one parent. Said another, "bullying is a way of life. I bullied many many kids around in my day, and I make sure my son beats up on some faggot wimp every week, or I kick him with my spurs a few times. Those little wimps need to learn to suck it up, deal with it, like the ones I beat on. Guns are only to defend yourself against criminals, not good ol' red-blooded American bullies, and that's why I have my 350 guns and NRA membership."
The American Family Association was present, accusing the American culture of violent pedophilic homosexual atheist liberals of ruining society, and they are "happy to see one of the horribly persecuted Christians standing up for family values against Satan." When someone pointed out that this had absolutely nothing to do with any of those issues, they responded "See? They're trying to censor us! They're evil, they're evil!"
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Could some people be kind enough to point us to some web sites for independent media? Whether for TV or Radio stations, magazines, newspapers, or just independent web news sites - any would be fine.
What better way to combat this this eventual conglomeration into the International OneMedia Corp than to start spreading the word about the small independent media?
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Americans don't need to work harder. They need a break. They need a good night sleep, an extra hour for a familly dinner. They need to stress a little less about whether they can afford to pay emergency medical bills. An extra two hours a day and a longer vacation will do wonders to such problems as school shooting, drugs, gun, etc.
Why do Americans stress about things such as whether they can affort to pay emergency medical bills? Because when your SO goes into the ER for chest pain, and you get a bill for $2000 after they were there about 5 hours and found out nothing was wrong, you DO get stressed.
Americans work so hard because of rampant run-away capitalism. We're stuck in the middle of a society that's all about money, and you don't have the option to opt-out. You want to go live like people did 5000 or 10000 years ago? Want to try the hunter-gatherer type life? Not a chance. You can't even find the land to live on, let alone start picking fruit that someone else owns, or go hunting for your food.
Heck, if you get downright technical, none of us have the right to exist. All the land on this planet is claimed by someone, and from the moment you're born, you're only allowed to exist by others.
So there isn't truly any way to leave the system. And in my opinion, the hyper-capitalism of the US is stressing people out in their attempts to stay in the system, at least those people who aren't living the easy life at the top (you know, the ones with enough money that it grows faster than they can spend it due). And I suspect more and more people are going to collapse from exhaustion trying to keep up, kind of like a huge treadmill that goes faster and faster, and people continue to drop and get thrown off the end.
Unfortunately, too many people are still cheering on this system. But they're the ones in the front, the ones that think that the system works for the best, the ones that, because they have to keep looking forward, don't see all the people that can't keep up anymore.
I just wonder how long until the system breaks, and whether it's before or after it destroys democracy. (I vote for after)
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Are you stupid?
Don't you realize that we are not dealing with democratically elected government but with bunch of tyrants who would do anything to keep their power (and they proved that.)
Don't you realize that this "nationalism" is what stands between your freedom and regime like China?
Umm... there is a world of difference between people fighting for their freedom and rights, and people fighting for a flag (a piece of cloth) and a name.
"Nationalism" isn't what gets people to go out and fight to gain/protect their freedom. OK, maybe it does to some people, but I sure hope not all.
Nationalism is the equivalent to the person cheering on their favorite sports team, claiming "we're number 1" and all that as their team finishes last place. For sports, I suppose it's ok, since it has no real effect on things (except to generate a lot of money for a few people). But that blind cheering should NOT be ok when looking at a nation.
Nationalism would be people saying how great the US is and loving it regardless of how many freedoms they take away, how far it gets from what it was intended to be at the beginning.
"It's a huge game of chicken to satisfy a few male egos"
This is sad. If it weren't for these "egos" what would stand between your freedom and bunch of Chinese dictating your every way of life.
Well gee, I didn't realize there were all these Chinese troops ready to invade the US. You might want to share your information with the military so they can head off this obviously immediate threat.
On a more serious note... I was referring to both countries. Two groups of people more interested in saving face than coming together to figure out what really happened and working everything out. They're willing to increase tensions to show how "strong" they are.
Are you really saying that's a good thing, and I should be proud of our leadership as they, together with the Chinese, act like two little kids going "yes you did" "no I didn't" back and forth over and over again?
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Nationalism is outdated, and rather illogical in the first place. And that's what this all boils down to. A few leaders that need to stroke their egos, and the egos of those people still sounding like five-year-old children crying "my country is better than your country".
It's not about honor, like some people suggest. Honor isn't about remaining steadfast and refusing to admit to a mistake at whatever cost.
Both countries made mistakes. The US military was just doing what it loves to do, find any way to push the limits, to get to the edge of what's legal and forget about the intent. That's why the spy planes so close to China's borders. China, on the other hand, sent a pilot who was known to cause trouble, to push things too close, while escorting and harassing the spy plane.
I find these "I'd rather do it my way than the right way" ideas to be downright pathetic. Sadly, they seem to be common. The voters who put people into office here in the US still have this belief that we should be fiercly defending the country, that we should be loyal to the flag no matter what. Therefore we have leaders that also follow such blind nationalism. Heck, it is any wonder that so many people find a piece of cloth more important than the freedoms it's supposed to stand for?
The whole crisis makes me sick. It's a huge game of chicken to satisfy a few male egos, with no regard or concern for what the result is. The real crisis should be for the citizens of both countries, with the realization of how poor and clueless their leaders really are.
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Probability is a funny, funny thing...
You'd think that the best you can do is 50% correct, since there's that chance for your hat being blue or red.
However, if you look at the possibilities for three people, the hats can be :
rrr
rrb
rbr
brr
bbr
brb
rbb
bbb
If you count, 6 out of the 8 possibilities have two hats of one color, and one hat of the other. Therefore, as the article said, you improve your odds of guessing correctly if you see two hats of the same color. It's all a matter of perspective, as to whether you look at the individual random item, or the full set of random items.
I agree, at first appearance it does seem to defy what we're taught about odds/probability and the like. I won't pretend to be quite comfortable with it...
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*Applause*
Congratulations, Theonomist, on an impressive troll. Not because it wasn't clearly a troll, because it was - it's so far over the line that anyone paying attention can't help but realize it. But that you did it so well that you really did manage to convince a few people that you were serious.
Heck, you even got moderated up as insightful! (probably by one of those people that actually vote for Jesse Helms) You've done well, as now we'll get the chance to meta-moderate out at least one more bad moderator, and perhaps more should other people bite.
You should never have wasted your time trying to troll on E2, when you can do it so much better here, with so much better results, due to the Slashdot crowd.
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've no scientific background in this area, but if there as many other intelligent life forms outthere as people keep telling us, then we probably would have received many signals by now.
So either intelligence is really rare in the universe, or noone beside us uses radio waves to communicate, or there is some yet unknown physical effect on radio waves which lets them degenerate faster than we thought...
Go do a web search on The Fermi Paradox for some interesting discussions on this. Essentially, given the age of the universe, and the rate at which technology advances, if there are other civiliazations in the universe, why haven't we seen any signs of any? Even a slow rate of technological advance (compared to us) would still result in a rather quick spread of that civilization around the universe in comparison to the time taken for evolution and the like.
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Sorry, there is no freedom of speech or expression permitted on college campuses these days. Flat out nearly all of them are under the thumb of left-wingers.
Cite examples please. With evidence that a) there is no freedom of speech/expression permitted, and b) this is the fault of left-wing groups. I hear these claims of liberals attacking these freedoms, but I don't see any more instances of them doing it then people on the right.
Just asserting it doesn't make it so.
I still find it amazing that so many conservatives attack the left as being in favor of censorship and all, when the biggest group that fights FOR those first amendment freedoms, the ACLU, is also considered a left-wing group. (The right-wing version, the ACLJ, is notorious for thinking freedom of religion means the ability to force your beliefs on others - that sure isn't freedom)
(BTW, I am a very liberal person, who donates regularly to the ACLU and is a strong supporter of first amendment rights)
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Sure, why the heck not? The only people who would be pissed about me writing about this are the ones who are reponsible for it, and it's not like I'm going back there anyways. (unfortunately, because I really did enjoy it and met a lot of people who are still important to me)
/msgs sent to me in the chatterbox. I noticed that every time I got borged (and that started to become quite often for some reason) he was online. Heck, at least once I was borged having never said a word.
- I don't remember when, but the first thing seemed to be that editors were getting a little bit "trigger-happy", and writeups and nodes were beind deleted quite a bit, usually without notice to the author, and often without any obvious reason other than the editor seeming to not want the node around. I had quite a few deleted myself, ones that I had written quite a while ago, ones that had been added to by others, ones that had no reason that I, or anyone else I talked to, could see for the nuke.
When a couple of us mentioned it in the chatterbox, we were immediately yelled at by a number of editors and some gods, and told to drop it. Regardless of the fact that we were not doing it for our level/XP or anything like that, but for the good of E2. I, and those others, were borged AFTER we stopped talking about it even.
- There was one god that had an obvious, and thinly-veiled, dislike of me, and had for a while, before he was a god. When he became one, he began to get nasty with me - including a number of downright mean
- I had nodes nuked by dem bones also, after he accused me of just trying to get attention...
- I was an editor at one point, and had that taken away from me without being told it was being done, or why.
- When I tried to help clean up things (after noticing my nodes being nuked) by listing some of my poorer writeups that I didn't think were worth keeping around, I got bitched at for submitting lists of node names.
Here I am, unable to delete them myself because of no more editor powers, and doing it for the good of E2 (hunting down the crap they'd delete anyway) and making it easier for everyone, and I was being bitched at.
- I did everything I could to try to bring to peoples' attention that there were things bothering me (and plenty of other people), trying to make the place better, and I was being mistreated for that too. There were a few times I was desperately trying to get someone to LISTEN to me, sitting there in tears hoping someone might realize that I LIKED the place, that I WANTED to stay, but that I couldn't deal with how things were.
And almost none of the gods or admin staff even cared. The few that did were powerless to change things.
I could have stuck it out, stayed around despite the treatment, since I wasn't truly forced out by having my account deleted or anything. But I was on E2 because I wanted to be. Because I enjoyed it. But it became too painful, and I didn't want to remember it that way. Unfortunately, I guess it was too late, cause I guess I still perceive the place the way I left it, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it like this now.
Yes, I am still quite bitter. But I guess that's because it really did mean something to me, quite a lot in fact... and the hurt of being treated badly by people I once thought were my friends.
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*SIGH*
Don't forget that if the gods and admin dislike you, your writeups will be deleted.
Please don't go saying you only get them deleted for writing bullshit and not reading the FAQ. I'm not the only long-time user that left because of the higher-ups deciding I wasn't welcome anymore.
I still wish I knew what it was that pissed those people off so badly as to be downright mean to me.
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I was disgusted with even trying to when most noding attempts I made were moderated down, or whatever it's called, by the uber-noder gods.
Ummm... the "moderation", the voting, isn't done by any gods or anyone special... just users that have been noding on there for at least a little while. If you're voted down, then you need to look harder at what you're writing.
For the most part, only bad stuff gets downvoted and stays that way.
Now, writeups getting DELETED, on the other hand, was totally out of control last I knew, getting deleted for any reason whatsoever (or even no reason, just the whim of a god/editor). I had plenty of nodes with good reputation and good content get nuked.
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Lucky you. I was also through Phoenix. And twice Telocity sent out migration information, saying it would happen within the next few weeks... and twice nothing occured.
I finally got the Telocity "modem" (it's only what, 4x the size of the Copper Rocket?), and wasn't bothering to set it up while my other one still worked. It went out for a day, so I tried setting up the Telocity one, and nothing. Just a nice flashing red "status" light. Fortunately, my old modem started working again.
Well, yesterday, DSL out again. Still no success with the Telocity modem. However, the copper rocket modem DOES have the green connect lights come on. So I don't know what's up anymore.
I'm going to call tonight and figure out what the hell is going on with my service if it's not working. Heck, even if it is working, maybe I'll call just to see where things are.
(Yes, it was Phoenix through Northpoint)
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While I must admit I'm verry happy to see E2 going strong still, and growing as a community, it does remind me how much I was hurt by that place.
/msgs), being informed from a friendly god that there were a few gods who had serious personal dislikes for me, and having writeups seemingly arbitrarily deleted (without notice as to which ones or why. I was quite often borged just because I brought up this issue, and I wasn't the only one who felt this way - apparently they didn't want to hear that not everyone agreed with them. Heck, I was even borged when I wasn't even using the chatterbox.
I spent a long time as an E2 user, over a year and a half - with, at one point, over 2100 writeups on there. But things like that count for nothing when it comes to the gods and the administration. Somewhere along the line I must have done something to piss off a number of people, and nobody even bothered to let me know what I did so that I'd have a chance to try and repair things.
I found myself taking verbal abuse from at least one god (in the form of nasty
So, even though I was regularly contributing useful and popular nodes, and was under the impression I was a good user, I was still essentially forced off by the administration.
I miss the place, I really do. I loved writing on there, about just about anything. My writing got a lot better because of it, and I think it even helped me open up a bit more. I met a lot of great friends through the site (that I still regularly talk to on #everything). But I can't put up with the crap, the mistreatment, and the like, that I was subject to there.
So I encourage everyone to check out the site, and become users and noders if they want. But just be warned that if you upset the gods and administrators, for any reason whatsoever, they'll make it hell for you.
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I don't feel so bad now not knowing what's going on with my service - at least I still have mine.
I signed on to Phoenix Networks back last summer. After the 2 months to finally get it installed, it's been fine. However, Phoenix got bought up by MegaPath and supposedly all the residential customers are being migrated to Telocity (this bugs me, I intentionally avoided them because of negative reviews on DSLreports.com). I'm supposed to receive a new DSL modem, and such.
However, I haven't received my modem, I haven't had responses relating to one of the phoenix e-mail addresses not working, and seem to have been ignored. I don't know if I'm just going to find my DSL not working one of these days, or what is going to happen. (They did take like 4 months to finally start charging me for the service, I need to see if they're still charging or not)
I just want to KNOW where things are going, dang it!
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I have very ambivalent feelings about the targetted advertising over Napster. I received both the one sent if you had Depeche Mode, and the one if you had Toad the Wet Sprocket (and I own the albums, thank you very much). And I deleted the first, but the one for Glen Phillips made me actually very happy - I was so crushed when Toad split up and haven't been able to follow what's been happening with them.
.mp3, but to Glen's site, and I didn't even know he had his own album out. I've since dl'ed some of those tracks to check them out, and might well be buying the album. Sure, just what they want me to do, but along the same lines, it's also what I want to do.
.mp3 format (and once again, on CD also), and wanted to let me know about her coming in concert, or a new album, then I'd be very very happy.
The IM I received not only pointed to a free unreleased Toad
I don't want to be overloaded with constant "ads" at any rate, and the idea of that bugs me. But if someone saw that I had pretty much every Tori Amos song in
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A tiny little nanobot has to be able to break all common chemical bonds for this to become a disaster. If a nanobot normally cannot muster the energy to do so, then it's going to have a bitch of a time self-replicating,so the speed of a GGN colony would be slowed by the time it takes a single GGN to do something useful like break a chemical bond. So it's not like we have a rapid, speed-of-sound conversion of Earth into grey goo.
It's a given that this is going to be a relevant problem to be solved while developing molecular nanotechnology anyways. It's not like they'll only build things out of un-bound atmos (after all, many elements are very difficult to keep in atmoic form), so they'll have to break chemical bonds anyways. There's already been a little evidence that mechanical force at that level won't be too difficult, except for maybe a few that bond very tightly. By the time the black goo scenario is possible this likely won't be a problem.
(Remember, intentional creation is BLACK GOO, grey goo is accidental, and highly unlikely.)
GGNs would in theory still be susceptible to things like heat, electrical charges, and physical shock. If you have a colony of grey goo eating away at a mountain, it wouldn't seem particularly difficult to blow it up, burn it, melt it, or maybe engineer counter-bots to tear the little bastards to shreds.
You'd have to get them all. Every last one of them. If a few, or even just one, are left, they can start multiplying again.
Counter-bots are definately something that will be considered. Drexler covers this in Engines of Creation - some sort of defense system will be necessary to watch for such bots and to fight them off. A "nanobot immune system" for the planet, if you will.
As far as I know, GGNs wouldn't be able to replicate very fast. Yes, I know it would be geometric growth in theory (each bot makes 2, which each make 2 more, etc.), but that's only allowing for infinite surface area of the growing mass. In theory a GGN colony would form into a sphere, growing outward, but it could only disassemble things along the surface of the colony, not the inside.
As far as we know, we know very little about possible replication speeds for assemblers. Remember that because of the smaller scales, things can move a lot faster (compare the wing speed of an eagle vs. a hummingbird vs. a fly vs. a mosquito). I think conservative estimates suggest 1 hour per replication. That's still enough to theoretially (assuming perfect 2^x replication) use up the earth in, what, a week or less?
And I would suspect only a nitwit maniac bent on the goo would bother not giving the bots some means to spread around a little, avoiding the problem with being purely a growing sphere.
I do feel it would be a difficult task, at least difficult enough that it's not that real a threat for a while, and by the time it is, defenses may be set up. But don't discount it entirely - blowing it off could lead to people being too content with the idea it won't happen.
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That's "grey goo", and it describes a scenario where replicating nanobots start replicating out of control. More general ones that can use materials found in the environment to replicate could theoretically turn the planet into a literal "goo" of assemblers after disassembling everything else on the planet, and the planet itself.
Of course, simple engineering choices can eliminate this possibility from ever occuring. The "black goo" scenario, where it is intentional, is probably more likely than grey goo.
Regardless, it's not really relevant at this time, they're far far away from reaching that point yet. They don't mean "molecular nanotechnology" here, they just mean working at the nanoscale level. "Nanotechnology" has become a buzzword.
It's not molecular nanotechnolgoy until they're creating machines at that level.
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