> Let me tell you, gerrymanderring was a fact of life in Northern Ireland from 1923 to 1969, most famously in Derry where about 8,000 protestants regularly outvoted 12,000 catholics. That was one factor that led to the civil unrest that resulted in the troubles that brought the state to its knees and killed about 3000 people over 30 years.
And with a 4000-vote spread, what the hell good did killing 3000 people over 30 years do? Now, if they'd been talkin' about killin' 5000 opponents in the same district, and it gets done within the same redistricting cycle, then the tactic has a shot at fighting gerrymandering. Thank heavens the stereotypical Irishman is too drunk to do math; the water of life has indeed saved 2000 lives!
> Moron. You've got it 100% backwards - Boise was on the DOJ teanm for that one.
Guilty as charged. (/slap self silly)
As another poster said, whoever moderated me insightful for that was on crack.
The point I was trying to make - namely that MS managed to antagonize a judge to the point that the judge made public statements that led a higher court to reverse the ruling on the breakup order - still stands.
SCO's most viable strategy may very well be to pull enough wacko stunts in court that the judge tells Darl to get the fuck out of his courtroom until he learns some manners, whereupon Darl can appeal any verdict on the grounds that the judge was somehow "biased" against SCO.
> You can mess around with duplicitous and misleading and slanderous legal briefs all day long if you want. The judge doesn't have to take your crap though. > > Antagonizing the judge means you lose your case.
Incorrect. Insufficiently antagonizing the judge means you lose your case.
Remember another case, in which a rigged demo was presented as "evidence" on behalf of Microsoft? Remember how Boies managed to antagonize the judge so much that the verdict was overturned, and Gates won.
Hey! David Boies was the lawyer in that case, too!
> > A neutron walks into a bar and asks "how much for a beer?" The bartender replies "for you, no charge." > >That's chemistry, not physics. </definitude nazi>
Yeah, if it were physics, it would have been a string walking into a bar. Or h-bar.
> With yesterdays creative writing episode by Darl, I can only imagine the "evidence" that will
show up. I am not saying that they will "produce" *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* evidence, but I wouldn't put it past them.
Suggestion for any former SCO employees who happen to have old systems or tapes they brought home from work... old surplus PCs they picked up when the machine rooms got cleaned out... old backup tapes laying around from the weekend you took your work home with you... that sorta media.
If you have such media, keep that media somewhere safe. When and if SCO produces its "evidence" and its changelogs, compare the evidence against your memories of what went into the code, when it went in, and against what you have on your known-to-be-unaltered media.
> Actually, the judge ordered specifically with specificity.
Against a legitimate plaintiff, that'd be the end of it.
This is SCO we're talking about. They make demonstrably false statements. Their press releases are full of self-contradictions. They haven't shown one whit of givashitness for the facts up to this point, what on earth makes you think they'll actually comply with a judge's order?
> Oh yeah, and Shuttle/ISS are perfect examples of space policy management. > >Building one part in each district is FISCAL INSANITY. See my posts re: lousy stewardship
of my tax dollars.
*grin* - we're in violent agreement here. My point was simply that the porkbelly nature of a moon mission wouldn't guarantee that it got cut. Indeed, the more pork, the less likely it would be to get cut.
I, too, would prefer a space programme whose objective was the advancement of science and technology, rather than the distribution of pork. But if the only alternative to "no pork" is "no space programme", then bring on the ham hocks, in the hopes that there'll still be a space programme when some amateur astronomer finds a 100m-wide rock headed straight for us with only 2 years' warning.
> Needing to send a huge rocket to the Moon each year to sustain that base gives Congress an
excellent opportunity, every year, to kill that base. If there is no plan for self-sufficiency, it's only a
matter of time before Congress turns the budget into pork belly price supports.
You contradict yourself.
Needing to build a huge rocket, at least one piece of which is built in each of several hundred Congressional districts, gives Congress a tremendous incentive, every year, to keep the thing going, even if it blows up on the launch pad every 6 years, and/or if there's not enough space in the moon base to do any science.
> Dummy questions are not the same as control questions, because the answer to a dummy question is obvious - even Harry cannot lie. But with the control questions, the "wrong" answer is less obvious. But even Jane must have lost her temper at some stage. Harry is obviously lying. A lie in response to a dummy question will be found out straight away.
The problem is, what do you do if your answer to the dummy question is itself deceptive?
I'm a white-collar professional, all of my friends are white-collar professionals, and I'm still the only person I know (apart from the author of the article) who hasn't done illegal drugs!
(My answer: "No, really, I haven't done drugs, because even if there weren't a War On Some Drugs that was so ineffective that 'have you smoked pot' is more likely to be a Control Question than a Test Question, I still never bothered with the shit, because I enjoy alcohol and caffeine too much, and I've got better things to do with my lungs than throw smoke into them, regardless of whether that smoke contains nicotine or THC!":)
"NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas
of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new
research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and
ask for one."
And whatever you do, don't read the blacked-out-by-stupid-software parts of the PDF when a good PDF reader skips over the blacked-out parts!
(This public service message brought to you through a web browser compromised by the Committee for the Preservation of the Pointy Haired Boss in Intelligence and Law Enforcement Environments.)
And to bring it back on topic, Battle Beyond the Stars features a starship with large breasts (and another starship shaped like a razor blade), and you'll recognize many of the sound effects and even few of the explosions as the same ones used in Battlestar Galactica.
> Are you even still in the room? We totally forgot about Osama (a real live admitted terrorist)
*blink*
Does anyone but you think that piece of camel shit is still alive? I'm still sticking to my "Buried under tons of rubble the day we dropped three daisycutters in Afghanistan in late 2001".
A transcript concerning a day on which one such weapon was dropped, reads as follows:
Q: Mr. Secretary, the other day, the United States took the extraordinary step of dropping a daisy cutter somewhere up in Tora Bora. You folks apparently had a pretty good idea of where someone you thought was. Have you found intelligence to borne out (sic) your hunch?
Rumsfeld: Well, there are not a lot of those, [daisycutters in the inventory] so they don't use them frivolously. There's no question that when that was used, I thought it was yesterday -- was it yesterday?
[...discussion on "when"... ]
Rumsfeld: Well, very recently. That they felt they had good reason to use it in that location. Yes.
Myers: And --
Q: Mr. Secretary --
Myers: And I just -- let me just add, Mr. Secretary, it was effective.
I mean, we've been on the ground and it had the desired effect.
Q: Which was what? What was the desired effect?
Q: Can you describe to us anecdotally what the --
Myers: The desired effect was to kill al Qaeda.
Q: What sort of results are you aware of?
What did your people on the ground see?
Myers: Dead al Qaeda.
(Laughter.)
It's convenient for foreign and domestic policy reasons to pretend the camelfucker's still alive, but if we 'adn't nailed 'im to the media, 'e'd be pushing up the daisy cutters. 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! OSAMA... *thump thump thump*...IS AN EX-TERRORIST!
> In short, I don't think it's the right response, but theres certainly plenty of motivation to do so. I'm not going to cry over it if someone takes a baseball bat to [a noted spammer's] head.
Agreed. I don't advocate extralegal violence against spammers, but were such a thing to happen, and were I asked to sit on the jury of the person charged with the offence, I would return a verdict of not guilty. Assault and/or homicide are crimes against human beings. In my system of values, spammers ceased to qualify as such several years ago.
If asked for my views on spammers during jury selection (DAs in spammer-infested areas take note, I'm by no means the only one), I would admit as such and would likely be removed from the pool of eligible jurors. If not asked during jury selection, I would simply stick to my guns during deliberations and demand a verdict of not guilty on the grounds that neither an assault nor a homicide was committed.
My beliefs would most likely result in a hung jury and a retrial, or, (in the extremely improbable event that I sway the other 11), jury nullfication -- the setting of a precedent that in that court's jurisdiction, and unless/until the verdict is overturned by a higher court, spammers are no longer protected by laws intended to protect human beings. Let hilarity ensue.
> There's a term for a coalition engaged in the act of making money through the use of intimidation and illegal acts: organized crime.
I'd actually go one step further. A Racketeering-Influenced Corrupt Organization.
> The spammers are exactly the same as the mafia.
But on that, I must dissent. The Mafia has a long and storied history of providing everything from illicit booze, prostitution, sports gambling, lotteries with better payouts than the government-run lotteries, duty-free liquor and cigarettes, financial assistance to those with whom banks will not deal, as well as a full range of soft and hard drugs.
Unlike spammers, the mafia provides things that people actually want.
> I didn't think that it was possible for me to hate spammers more than I already do. > > Turns out I was wrong.
As of last night, when I read the Groklaw article about how SCO is suing IBM for software that SCO knowingly inserted into the Linux codebase, I decided I hated Darl McBride and his band of barratrous bastards even more than I hated spammers.
Now I gotta retract that. Until Darl's next press release tops his most recent one, spammers are back in the lead.
> The question he asked "Does Microsoft have a back door" is stupid. Nobody serious believes that Palladium contains a backdoor so that MS can take over the computer. They believe the point with Palladium's design is that software can be installed with restrictions that the user cannot circumvent, and that people will be forced into installing such software, hostile to themselves, on their own PCs, in order to exchange data and connect to the Internet.
I'm not sure where you grew up. Where I grew up, that was the very definition of "back door".
Slashdot Mirror
And with a 4000-vote spread, what the hell good did killing 3000 people over 30 years do? Now, if they'd been talkin' about killin' 5000 opponents in the same district, and it gets done within the same redistricting cycle, then the tactic has a shot at fighting gerrymandering. Thank heavens the stereotypical Irishman is too drunk to do math; the water of life has indeed saved 2000 lives!
Guilty as charged. (/slap self silly) As another poster said, whoever moderated me insightful for that was on crack.
The point I was trying to make - namely that MS managed to antagonize a judge to the point that the judge made public statements that led a higher court to reverse the ruling on the breakup order - still stands.
SCO's most viable strategy may very well be to pull enough wacko stunts in court that the judge tells Darl to get the fuck out of his courtroom until he learns some manners, whereupon Darl can appeal any verdict on the grounds that the judge was somehow "biased" against SCO.
>
> Antagonizing the judge means you lose your case.
Incorrect. Insufficiently antagonizing the judge means you lose your case.
Remember another case, in which a rigged demo was presented as "evidence" on behalf of Microsoft? Remember how Boies managed to antagonize the judge so much that the verdict was overturned, and Gates won .
Hey! David Boies was the lawyer in that case, too!
> A: Constance
But "Variables aren't. Constance won't" doesn't make any sense!
>
>That's chemistry, not physics. </definitude nazi>
Yeah, if it were physics, it would have been a string walking into a bar. Or h-bar.
Suggestion for any former SCO employees who happen to have old systems or tapes they brought home from work... old surplus PCs they picked up when the machine rooms got cleaned out... old backup tapes laying around from the weekend you took your work home with you... that sorta media.
If you have such media, keep that media somewhere safe. When and if SCO produces its "evidence" and its changelogs, compare the evidence against your memories of what went into the code, when it went in, and against what you have on your known-to-be-unaltered media.
Let's see if further hilarity ensues.
I have more respect for my own spit than that.
And if you wanna s/spit/shit/g, go for it. Still true.
Against a legitimate plaintiff, that'd be the end of it.
This is SCO we're talking about. They make demonstrably false statements. Their press releases are full of self-contradictions. They haven't shown one whit of givashitness for the facts up to this point, what on earth makes you think they'll actually comply with a judge's order?
>
>Building one part in each district is FISCAL INSANITY. See my posts re: lousy stewardship of my tax dollars.
*grin* - we're in violent agreement here. My point was simply that the porkbelly nature of a moon mission wouldn't guarantee that it got cut. Indeed, the more pork, the less likely it would be to get cut.
I, too, would prefer a space programme whose objective was the advancement of science and technology, rather than the distribution of pork. But if the only alternative to "no pork" is "no space programme", then bring on the ham hocks, in the hopes that there'll still be a space programme when some amateur astronomer finds a 100m-wide rock headed straight for us with only 2 years' warning.
You contradict yourself.
Needing to build a huge rocket, at least one piece of which is built in each of several hundred Congressional districts, gives Congress a tremendous incentive, every year, to keep the thing going, even if it blows up on the launch pad every 6 years, and/or if there's not enough space in the moon base to do any science.
Case in point: Shuttle/ISS.
L4 and L5 are stable. That means dust and rocks tend to get stuck there, or orbit around/through there.
L1, L2, and L3 are unstable. The only stuff there is the stuff you put there and that you choose to keep there with the occasional thruster puff.
Given the relative velocities of even the slowest stuff, I'd rather be at L1 than L4.
You forgot to add the score for today's article and the fact that it's Friday:
NSA: 31337
CIA: w00t!
FBI: pwn3d
The problem is, what do you do if your answer to the dummy question is itself deceptive?
I'm a white-collar professional, all of my friends are white-collar professionals, and I'm still the only person I know (apart from the author of the article) who hasn't done illegal drugs!
(My answer: "No, really, I haven't done drugs, because even if there weren't a War On Some Drugs that was so ineffective that 'have you smoked pot' is more likely to be a Control Question than a Test Question, I still never bothered with the shit, because I enjoy alcohol and caffeine too much, and I've got better things to do with my lungs than throw smoke into them, regardless of whether that smoke contains nicotine or THC!" :)
"NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one."
And whatever you do, don't read the blacked-out-by-stupid-software parts of the PDF when a good PDF reader skips over the blacked-out parts!
(This public service message brought to you through a web browser compromised by the Committee for the Preservation of the Pointy Haired Boss in Intelligence and Law Enforcement Environments.)
Battle Beyond the Stars, aka Seven Samurai in Space
And to bring it back on topic, Battle Beyond the Stars features a starship with large breasts (and another starship shaped like a razor blade), and you'll recognize many of the sound effects and even few of the explosions as the same ones used in Battlestar Galactica.
If we scrapped the shuttle and ISS, however, we'd have plenty of funding to go to the moon, even NASA-style.
*blink*
Does anyone but you think that piece of camel shit is still alive? I'm still sticking to my "Buried under tons of rubble the day we dropped three daisycutters in Afghanistan in late 2001".
A transcript concerning a day on which one such weapon was dropped, reads as follows:
It's convenient for foreign and domestic policy reasons to pretend the camelfucker's still alive, but if we 'adn't nailed 'im to the media, 'e'd be pushing up the daisy cutters. 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! OSAMA... *thump thump thump* ...IS AN EX-TERRORIST!
Ahem. In Soviet LA, it happened when you had your CDRom in Comrade Mode on the second IDE port with a Comrade HD.
Mersenne #40: "Almost one of your base are belong to me!"
While we're at it, can we call this new pill "Skniwimmel"?
Agreed. I don't advocate extralegal violence against spammers, but were such a thing to happen, and were I asked to sit on the jury of the person charged with the offence, I would return a verdict of not guilty. Assault and/or homicide are crimes against human beings. In my system of values, spammers ceased to qualify as such several years ago.
If asked for my views on spammers during jury selection (DAs in spammer-infested areas take note, I'm by no means the only one), I would admit as such and would likely be removed from the pool of eligible jurors. If not asked during jury selection, I would simply stick to my guns during deliberations and demand a verdict of not guilty on the grounds that neither an assault nor a homicide was committed.
My beliefs would most likely result in a hung jury and a retrial, or, (in the extremely improbable event that I sway the other 11), jury nullfication -- the setting of a precedent that in that court's jurisdiction, and unless/until the verdict is overturned by a higher court, spammers are no longer protected by laws intended to protect human beings. Let hilarity ensue.
I'd actually go one step further. A Racketeering-Influenced Corrupt Organization.
> The spammers are exactly the same as the mafia.
But on that, I must dissent. The Mafia has a long and storied history of providing everything from illicit booze, prostitution, sports gambling, lotteries with better payouts than the government-run lotteries, duty-free liquor and cigarettes, financial assistance to those with whom banks will not deal, as well as a full range of soft and hard drugs.
Unlike spammers, the mafia provides things that people actually want.
>
> Turns out I was wrong.
As of last night, when I read the Groklaw article about how SCO is suing IBM for software that SCO knowingly inserted into the Linux codebase, I decided I hated Darl McBride and his band of barratrous bastards even more than I hated spammers.
Now I gotta retract that. Until Darl's next press release tops his most recent one, spammers are back in the lead.
I'm not sure where you grew up. Where I grew up, that was the very definition of "back door".