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User: SetupWeasel

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  1. Anonymous travel a right? on Your Right to Travel Anonymously: Not Dead Yet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Last I checked, every car I've ever driven or ridden in has had plate identifying it, and many blacks in this country have dealt with cops pulling them over IN CARS for no reason other than their skin color for many years. They ask for ID every time they do, but the car had some form of ID on it anyway.

    This isn't new, it's just happening on planes to white people. You are about 100 years too late to stop it.

  2. Umm... why would you bother to defend this. on Free Can Mean Big Money - The Open Source Economy · · Score: 1

    First, why would you bother to defend yourself against this "accusation?" Bush has nearly 50% in the polls these days, so you can be sure that at least half of the US believes that "Patriotism" means "Agreeing with the government at all times, and never speaking out against it."

    It is this basic mindset that allows jerks to call people Communists when they have a different business model. I think that limiting trading when stocks are falling is VERY anti-Capitalist and government bailouts of business is rather Communist myself, because you are protecting certain people by limiting free trade and government controlling businesses.

    In short, they are wrong, and anyone with half a brain knows this. People use words like "Communist" to turn others who don't like to read instantly against another idea. It is still a powerful word, and can still be used in effective propaganda campaigns.

    The way to counteract this effect is to prove your idea works. If employees are paid and good software is made, everyone will come around.

    What you don't want to do is make complex arguments against it. It is a waste of time. Money talks more eloquently than people in business matters.

    Second, a piece of advice: the word "meme" is arrogant and easily replaced with "idea," or if you are writing a song and need another one syllable word, "thought". Never use it unless you want a toaster thrown at you. I carry toasters around for this purpose.

  3. unproven technology bad for nasa on NASA Boosts AI For Planetary Rovers · · Score: 4, Funny

    They have trouble with proven technology like calculators.

    1 inch = 2.54 cm

  4. Re:I won't take their money on Have you Received Your $13 from the RIAA? · · Score: 1

    Yes, I do know that. Don't you think it is strange that you opt-in to collect your claim, but opt-out to retain the right to sue.

    What did you think I was talking about? You must know about the suit you didn't bring, AND opt-out to retain your right to sue. Even then you may not get your "claim" if you don't opt-out from the suit. Sounds like a system that favors the lawyers and the defendants if you ask me.

    Of course I wouldn't win if I brought a lawsuit. The system is far to corrupt to allow me to collect on damages from a major company by myself, but I would like a fucking system that doesn't forfit my rights without MY FUCKING SIGNATURE. This is infinitely worse than a "shrink-wrap" contract, because I did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AND RECIEVED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

    How the fucking hell, in this supposed free fucking country, can this be allowed to fucking happen.

    But I know one thing, if I did recieve that $13 dollars, I would have volunteered to lose my rights. So if someone in the future brings a suit to challenge the class-action lawsuit laws, I, unlike you, can contribute.

    But then again, I live in a fantasy world where justice can be... just.

  5. Re:I went to a catholic high school on British Schoolkids Get Copyright Education · · Score: 1

    You were a tool. You are a tool. You will continue to be a tool well after this post.

  6. I went to a catholic high school on British Schoolkids Get Copyright Education · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My theology teacher once described in class what happened at a Sunday school she teached at.

    She would sit the children down and repeatedly ask them "Who loves you?" and the children were to reply "God loves me," every time.

    I was horrified, but I was the only one.

    That was the very moment I realized that I was not one of these people.

  7. I won't take their money on Have you Received Your $13 from the RIAA? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If they are guilty of the charge they settled, they owe me much more than 13 dollars. The class action suit represented me, so I guess I have no claims on them ad infinitum for all the CDs in the box behind me.

    I will say that I do not care. If the justice system ever gets fixed and the corporate corruption eliminated, I may have a claim again. Like that will happen, but I don't believe in any system where you have a lawyer that you don't hire in a case you did not file decide the amount of your claim that you may or may not know about to collect on an opt-out basis.

    I get no settlement, I have no legal right to sue, and I never signed a single contract.

    God Bless America

  8. I can't type and it hurts me on Is Typing a Necessary Skill? · · Score: 1

    I can't touch type. This is a horrible detriment to my career. I am a highly skilled computer user, though I am not a programmer. I wish that I could have been taught touch typing in school so that I didn't have so much frustration today. Computers can be learned by using them. For me touch typing is something that does not come as naturally.

  9. Maybe prayer will help, laws don't seem to. on Does Your Employer Own Your Thoughts? · · Score: 1

    We have no protection from our employers anymore. Corporations hate their employees for their pay and free time.

    I'm unemployed now. I fear being poor, but I also fear becoming a slave. I can't stand making money for people and getting nothing in return.

    We live in a society where it is advantageous to do as little as possible at work. If you work as hard as you can for $10/hr, they will assume you always will. You won't get promoted or recieve raises, because they see no reason to. They got your best for next to nothing, and they are not in the business of paying more for what they already have.

    If our government would enforce the laws on the books, this wouldn't happen. But why would they? What is in it for them.

    I can honestly say that I fear the future. I'm 26, B.S. in Astrophysics, and I'm thinking about truck driving. Something is horribly, horribly wrong with the world.

  10. Re:Microsoft cant take Nintendo on Ballmer - Xbox 'Can Take Sony' In Next Generation · · Score: 1

    15 Million XBOX consoles have been sold. That means a whole 7% have active XBOX live. Wow, THAT's what I call market share.

  11. Microsoft cant take Nintendo on Ballmer - Xbox 'Can Take Sony' In Next Generation · · Score: 1

    Microsoft is losing money hand and fist on XBOX. Nintendo is outselling them AND making money, even though they suffered the same time disadvantage that Nintendo did.

    Exactly what is going to change that? Nintendo's next system should be out in a year and a half to 2 years. They have better first party development teams, and seem to be winning over developers in spite of Sony's dominance. How are they going to beat Nintendo?

    Online gameplay is not as important as people seem to think. Xbox live allows no one to join games in progress (essential for team style games), costs an arm and a leg, and is riddled with sore losers that pull the network cable when they start losing. How will they gain users?

  12. Answer: on The Good Old Patent Law - Revisited · · Score: 1

    "Do you think that any of these has chances being heard by the big wigs?"

    Answer this question: Does it make more money for the businesses that line the pocket of our government?

    If the answer is "Yes," then the chance for these ideas being heard by 'the big wigs' is very good indeed.

    If the answer is "No," then welcome to the land of irrelevance, my friend.

    That reminds me. VOTE!

  13. Do not neglect the rise of "Infotainment" on Americans Read Fewer Books · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Along with the internet, a separate beast arose: News Entertainment. Between the OJ Simpson trial, the Bill Clinton scandal, and all the rest of the yellow journalism of the 1990 the need for harlequin romances has diminished.

    Here you have things that appear pressing, dramatic, and interesting that also are kind of real as well. Why read fake dirt about fake people when you can have real dirt on a public figure?

    I'm sure the internet has had something to do with the reduced book reading, because everyone who uses the internet reads and writes a hell of a lot more than they used to. That cuts into the desire to "read for fun," as they say. But for my money the rise of programming for every demographic possible and the horrible yellow journalism of today have satisfied our need for fiction.

  14. Re:Sony is playing both sides on New Walkman-Branded Hard Disk Player · · Score: 1

    I don't own any one of them. If I can buy a generic portable CD player that can play burned mp3 discs for $20, what the hell is the point in spending $200?

    Before your Sony-loving panties get all in a bunch, might I suggest some psychotherapy. Maybe even a lobotomy. They are easy to perform.

  15. Re:Hate to break it to you all... on AOL Employee Arrested in Spam Scheme · · Score: 1

    then I get time and a half baby!

  16. Sony is playing both sides on New Walkman-Branded Hard Disk Player · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hasn't anyone else noticed this?

    Look at a Sony branded CD-R drive. It says "Make audio CDs" right on it as one of the features. What good is a mini-disc player if you can't copy music to it? (or a tape playing Walkman for that matter) Now a hard drive based music player? This is all part of the plan I think.

    Sony knows the score. They want money, and they know that the type of piracy that takes place over the internet helps sales.

    So for the music or game industry they create an illusion that they are tough on piracy. They make a lot of angry press releases and "Digital Rights Management," to appease the industry, but they leave their copy protected media very easy to circumvent. They would lose money if they didn't.

    And if they get some money from lawsuit against a 15-year-old... BONUS!

    That is what upsets me so much about Sony. They'll prosecute piracy, then reap the rewards by helping it to continue, and they don't care who pays.

  17. Doom... 3? on Doom 3's Release Date; Quake Turns 8 · · Score: 1

    Last I checked we were up to Doom 6. I fail to see how Quake 1-3 are not sequels to the same damned game.

    I really can't wait for another space/horror/arcade style FPS. We haven't completely exhausted the genre over and over and over again like beating a texan oil reserve that may contain the remains of a horse.

    Maybe Id should aquire the Tomb Raider franchise. Then they would be on the cutting edge of INNOVATION once more!

    Message to software developers: Too many games with numbers at the end. If you are going to exploit a franchise, make an entirely new game with the same characters and setting. Making the same game with better graphics is a cop-out.

  18. Hate to break it to you all... on AOL Employee Arrested in Spam Scheme · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But you can be sure that if a major company has your information, many employees that are making very little have access to that information.

    At MCI, where I used to work, I would see the personal information including name, address, phone numbers, credit card numbers, birthdays, and email addresses of hundreds of customers a week. Not only that, but every employee was identified in the system by his or her SS#, and your SS# was stamped on every note you placed in the system.

    I earned $8.47 (American) per hour, and the call center contractor had a less than rigorous screening process. I did have a pulse, so I was hired. I have more ethics than the company I worked for, and I would never do such a thing.

    But you have to ask yourself, if a company is willing to hire employees for next to nothing, and hand these employees access to information that they can sell for 3 times what they earn in a year, how long untill the SS# you give the company is compromised?

    Do not give truely sensitive information to companies. If they do not have legal authorization to demand a SS#, they are using it for identification purposes only. Give them a fake one.

    On another note: Anyone want to hire an aspiring writer? Seriously, $8.47/hr is still better than the $0/hr I'm making now. Please! ::sniff::

    Be strong!

  19. It is time for the idiocy to end (but it won't) on Open Source Life? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I mean what the hell is going on here? In my opinion, COPYRIGHTS for scientific information goes against the whole concept of science. Furthermore, there is no possible justification for the exclusive use of ANY scientific information or patents for any scientific discovery or engineering feat that accepts ANY public funding. I paid for that. I should be able to use it.

    You heard me pharmacutical industry.

    This idea that genes can somehow be patented is ludacrous. I'm fine with patenting a way to see the genes or a way to make the genes. I may not be able to see my own genes or the genes of a stalk of wheat. That doesn't mean they belong exclusively to you if you can. Even if you create a plant or animal entirely from scratch, the genes belong to that plant or animal first.

    Hey Mr. Wheat Stalk, do you have any objections to the free distribution of your genetic code? Speak now, or forever hold your piece.

    You should not be able to patent a concept or any generic product, but how can you defend patenting anything that exists in the wild.

    Take an example of rubber. You can patent a machine that extracts the rubber from a tree, and I'm fine with that. You shoud not be able to patent the idea of extracting rubber from a tree. Now people think you should be able to patent the tree's rubber.

    What are we coming to? Why are we allowing this to happen?

  20. Backwards compatibility is important on Next-Gen Xbox To Lack Backwards Compatibility? · · Score: 1

    when the previous system breaks.

    that's it. Sony needs to have backwards compatibility, because they make bad hardware. Nintendo has never had it in their home consoles, because their systems don't break.

    Otherwise, backwards compatibility only serves to drive the price up.

    Mobile systems are different, because asking a consumer to carry 3 systems hurts the mobile aspect.

  21. Booo! on Lauren Weinstein: If MTV Calls, Hang Up · · Score: 0

    Give it a rest. It is not billed as a legitimate news show, and I would be shocked if a "legitimate" smart person like Ms. Weinstein wouldn't actually demand to know what she was getting herself into before signing anything.

    Get upset at CNN for showing pictures of tortured Iraqis constantly for ratings. Get upset at FOX News for lying about everything for ratings. Get upset at every reporter that agrees to pull punches to get that "exclusive interview."

    Oooh! The scourage of spam! Is there any more important news topic? Yes, almost every single story you can think of. The Weather Channel airs more important news 24 hours a day. How damaged could your reputation be? Unless you said something like, 'All that spam is the fault of those dirty (insert ethnicity, gender, or race here)!' you're fine.

    I would love for the chance to have fun with a couple of comedians. One of them used to be a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade. I would have turned off the serious, turned on the charm, and tried my best to add to the funny. I'd do it for nothing, and you were going to get $200?

    It sounds to me like she passed up a chance on a good time.

  22. The economics of genius on Japanese Anime Industry In Danger Of Fragmentation · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you are a genius, and by that I mean an actual creator of fine art, you will always be in demand. Simply put anyone can rip off one idea, but if people want more, they'll come crawling back.

    This article sounds more like the whining of an executive not getting his cut than the plight of the animator itself. I'm not saying that animators aren't being treated unfairly. I'm saying that the president of any company generally cares more about what's in his wallet than some paeon animator's.

    Anyone following baseball should know the senario. If George Steinbrenner wants the city of New York to give anything to the Yankees he says, "Oh, if I don't get it, the cost of business will increase SO much that I'll have to move the team to New Jersey." Then he goes back to sleep on his bed of mint $10,000 bills.

    Let's take a look at a key sentence in this article.

    "Yet an animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen a month."

    The important word here is "might." This implies that the author does not know what an animator makes. Without any sources for that figure other than a nameless 26 year-old animator, you have to conclude that the statement is at best suspect, at worst a lie.

    From what I have read and heard about Japan, they face the same problem we have here. The cost of living is higher in Japan than in nearby countries. However, has cheap Mexican labor ruined CARS? No. Even the Fords made in the good old US of A will flip over and explode.

    If Japanese production companies are so important to Anime, they can demand more money. Anime is far too lucrative to die out. What is more likely, however, is that these are Anime stripmines, churning out series like Harlequin churns out romance novels, or that these are just a bunch of guys who have a knack for tracing.

    Like I said, maybe I'm wrong about the "Oh Productions" that the article speaks of, but you can't have it both ways. If you are the genius behind the anime, than you will be able to command the money. If you are just some guys who copy and color, then you are probably a dime a dozen in Japan and a dime for 2 dozen in Korea.

    Either way, Anime itself is not ruined. At least, not by ink and paint jobs leaving Japan.

    SW

  23. Re:Nintendo changed zelda before on E3 - Nintendo Shows DS Details, Realistic Zelda · · Score: 1

    do you remember the best Zelda ever made?

    oh yeah that was the same game.

  24. MOD THIS DOWN! on Ask the Egyptian Installfest Organizers · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    This isn't a question for the Egyptian install fest people. I don't know what they were trying to do, but I'm proud of them for doing it. KUDOS!

    My question is for Slashdot:

    WHO FUCKING CARES?

    If you could get back to me on that one, it would be appreciated.

    Ooooh! I've got an idea for the next Slashdot interview. There's this guy I know who got 1000 people to turn on their computers. I mean holy shit. What a sight!

    Or you could interview my mom, who, for the first time ever, checked her email WITHOUT SUPERVISION! How did she do this? SLASHDOT READERS WANT TO KNOW!

    SW

  25. And still every SW game will be crap on Cinematic Game Graphics · · Score: 1

    that's all I wanted to say really.

    Yes I know Factor 5 did a good job, but they are the only ones. Don't you DARE bring up Knights of the Fucking Shitty Plot and Uninspired Gameplay. Game of the year my ass. More like game Microsoft paid Gamespy to say it was game of the year.

    SW