> Yes, its made of rock.
> >
Now wheres the damn aliens we were promised.
We're right here, you ugly bag of mostly-water. Your master of psychotropically-voyaging primates is presently unavailable, and the Council has temporarily deigned to occupy waterbag 54550 to answer your pathetic cries.
Once more, panic swept across the beaches of Low Ridge Haven
during the Late Autumn Festivals. K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, stressed that there was no cause for alarm:
"The evil blue planet continues to attempt to make war against us.
They think that by depriving our wonderful, finely-layered bedrock outcrops of warmth and light during the winter, they will secure some measure of thermal victory.
Let me assure you, that is far from the truth.
I laugh at the pathetic solar siphoning techniques employed
by the armored vehicles of the evil blue planet!"
When asked if rumors were true that blue-planet-inhabitants' armored vehicle was just catching some sweet rays over the winter,
K'Breel denounced him as a traitor and wrapped his gelsac duct around
each of the five remaining functional drive motors of the invaders'
vehicle.
> > IRS Leaves Taxpayer Data Largely Unprotected
> >This story acts as we should be surprised. The government serves the people. The IRS, on the other hand, serves the government. I let you figure out where the disconnect is.
Remember, remember, the Fifteenth of April,
Congress, Corruption, and Rot,
I see no reason, why taxpaying season,
Should ever be forgot.
"The IRS should not be afraid of the people. The people should be afraid of the IRS." -A for AMT.
About the same as a Doubleclick hack (Nuala O'Connor Kelly, Chief "Privacy" Officer of Doubleclick) advising HomeSec on privacy.
Or the Gator/Claria hack (D. Reed Freeman, former Gator/Claria Chief "Privacy" Officer) sitting on HomeSec's Data "Privacy" and "Integrity" Advisory Committee.
Maybe we should be thankful. Based on precedent, the BSA guy should be put in charge of the Copyright office, or perhaps hired by NSA to... adjust its priorities when it comes to what sort of traffic is worthy of further investigation.
Anyone taking bets on when Jeff Bezos gets picked to head USPTO?
> But ranting about it gives the readers of this fine website an excuse to feel important, as if the government is going to crack down on them for calling the POTUS a chimp.
The past 100 years have seen governments kill
100,000,000 people. Even in times of war (heh, especially in times of war!), it's far more likely you'll get killed by your own government than an enemy soldier.
I agree that the current regime isn't going to bust down anyone's doors for making fun of the Prez.
But given the track record of the past century, what gives you such faith in the regimes that will win the elections of 2008? 2012? 2016? 2020? 2024? 2028? 2032? 2036?
I'd ask what you're smoking, but warn you that answering could get you in big trouble in 2015, when civil war breaks out between the tobacco-producers of the Old Virginia Coalition and the pot-farmers of the Neo-Cascadian Alliance, and the winners of the 2016 election ("Let the OVC/NCA wars never happen again!") trawl the database to purge society of the losers.
> It may not be always obvious what the right thing is to do when you're in a situation like Ghyslain's.
Well, we can thank him for this much. Next time any of us is in a situation where we're dancing around playing "air lightsaber" (or even just air guitar), at least we can safely scratch "videotape it" off the list of "right things to do".
Schadenfreude: The joy of learning from other people's mistakes.
> That is unquestionably the most incomprehensible article summary I've ever read. What?
Hey, it comes from a guy at BusinessWeek.
His target audience probably doesn't even know these ad-serving networks exist... a list of corporate entities is probably as comprehensible as he can make it.
> > The average user simply sees the pop-up, unaware of how many networks it traversed beforehand."
Meanwhile, the average Slashdot user simply sees a grey box, red "X", broken link icon, or grey-and-white checkerboard, unaware of which link in the chain of tracking networks, ad servers, or regular expressions in his adblocking proxy prevented it from showing up.
So if it's any consolation, I haven't a clue what the article means either, because it'd take me at least an hour to break my adblocking tech badly enough to figure it out!
> > ID can take the complexity of life and the structure of the universe itself and explain it in terms anybody who has ever been to church can understand. Biology can't. Which is sad. > >
No, what's sad is the plethora of churchgoers who apparently can't be bothered with an explanation more complex than "Humans are humans and dogs are dogs because jebus said so."
Yes, but what's saddest of all is that unlike my ape-descended friends who haven't caught onto the scientific method, the difference between dogs and humans is that dogs learn from their mistakes.
I had to re-read that sentence three or four times before I realized that
Beginning SQL Server 2005 Express Database Applications
with Visual Basic Express and Visual Web Developer Express
from Novice to Professional
was indeed the title of the book in question.
Afterwards, the fact that it consists of two parts, namely
"Working with SQL Server Express" and
"Working with Visual Basic Express and Visual Web Developer Express"
came as little surprise...
The title is reminiscent of the technique of putting every programming language, OS, and application you've used since third grade into one's resume, just to make sure that HR department gets a "hit" on your resume when they search the internal database for prospects.
Has the field of technical literature become so saturated that publishers/editors (probably more so than authors) are resorting to spamming their own book titles with buzzwords and acronyms... in order to show up better on Amazon search queries?
> "We believe the Fair Competition Act was established to provide safeguards for private industry," Grabert said. "Efforts to repeal it do raise concerns."
Even as a free-market kind of guy, the doublespeak here really makes my head spin. In the name of fair competition... we have to eliminate anything that might outcompete with $5.99/minute pay-card-based WiFi providers.
Then again, welcome to Newspeak verb conjugation 101:
I am erotic. You are kinky. They are perverts.
We protect. Our allies enforce. Our enemies oppress.
Government appropriates. Telecoms lobby. WiFi users steal.
> So much for "Photos and a video clip included.", the article has no links!
The photos were originally in.GIF format, and the poster didn't fear the Slashdot effect so much as he feared the wrath of Unisys' patent lawyers modding him (+1, Flamebait)?
>...this year's sampling of asinine non-jokes, made-up stories, and time wasters.
<VOICE FAMILY=tinklingglass,natalieportmanshairbeingshave doff>
Ah, you seek meaning. Then listen to the music, not the song.
<VOICE FAMILY=gritsbeingpouredovernatalie,marmosetbeingth rownoutanairlock>
We, for one, welcome our Vorlon overlords. We are all Taco.
> I understand the reasons why people don't take to MMORPG's (d00dz, kiddies, time, etc.), but it's many of those very reasons that are compelling to me. To me, grown up and a programmer, single-player CRPG's fail in that important "suspension of disbelief" aspect that I need to feel immersed in a game.
Odd. Those are exactly the same reasons why I take to CRPGs over MMORPGs.
Morrowind and Oblivion are like MMORPGS, except that the other "players" are smarter, have a better grasp of English, and are all-around more fun to be with than most MMORPG players.
Actual MMORPG example from my gaming history:
Me: "Yo, just on my way to do Quest X"
Player: "Yeah, just on my way back."
Me: "Cool, it's not bugged!"
Player: "Yeah, when the guy asks you for AAA, you say BBB, then CCC, and the answer to his puzzle question is XYZ. Thats the only part that requires thinking, now you don't have to worry about it."
I know he was just trying to be helpful, but it's the only hour of content added to the game in weeks, and he ruined the only part of it that wasn't FedEx.
"'Impossible to predict', my 4vrI, you insensitive CS6!"
You forgot that the LcYxkN (who live in the disc, at a 90-degree angle from the jet of 3C273, and who escaped the blast) have developed faster-than-light communication.
> The person responsible for the first post has been outsourced....I guess they didn't read the article. > >
***** We apologize for the faults in the comments. Those responsible have been outsourced. *****
(Pleased to be reminding you, m00se vindal00 can be veryvery spicy...)
***** We apologize again for the fault in the posts. Those
responsible for outsourcing the people who have just been outsourced
have been outsourced. *****
(Hot-gritted m00se on the left half side of the screen in the third post from the top, given a thorough grounding in Slashbotese, 31337, and "O" Level Trollery by Pradeep Portman)
****** The managers of the contracting firm hired to continue the posting after the other people had been outsourced, wish it to be known that they have just been outsourced. *******
The postings have been completed in an entirely different style at
great expense and at the last minute.
6 VENEZUELAN RED LLAMAS
142 MEXICAN WHOOPING LLAMAS
14 NORTH CHILEAN GUANACOS
(CLOSELY RELATED TO THE LLAMA)
REG LLAMA OF BRIXTON
76000 BATTERY LLAMAS
FROM "LLAMA-FRESH" FARMS LTD. NEAR PARAGUAY
and
CMDRTACO and ZONK.
> Clearly, we need to get some Republicans into power so they can cut down on all this extraneous spending and balance the budget.
While we're on the subject - there are lots of publicly-traded small defense contractors out there, so making money has been pretty easy in this environment, even if you're not politically-connected.
What publicly-traded companies/industries stand to make easy money when the Democrats get their turn at the pork barrel in late-06, and particularly if they have the House/Senate/Presidency in '08?
About the only thing that comes to mind is small-cap biotechs doing stem cell research, and there aren't too many of those. (Small-cap biotechs doing germ/chemical warfare detection have already gone up, as have health care stocks due to Medicare reform.)
> So we have special key words we use so he knows when I am becoming bored or angry. > >
He will say something like >
"We need to achieve synergy across our departmental endeavour so we can proactively engage any challenges the business may face" > >
I will then respond >
"You are a fucking wanker"
Naaw. Just smile, nod, and shake your boss's hand.
If the wearer seems to be failing to engage his or her listener, the software makes the hand-held computer vibrate.
That's OK, theater owners. (In Soviet America...) DVD users are unhappy about Theater Releases.
For the one or two movies a year when you're willing to put up with cell phone ringtones and screaming babies in order to see/hear/feel the explosions (and the jiggling body parts) louder/bigger/better than your home theather can provides, the theaters provide a useful service.
And in probably the one or two times a year when I'll sympathize with MPAA: Faster DVD releases are essential. Movies these days are so nondescript (even the ones with body parts either jiggling or being blown up) that if I don't see it in the theater within the first couple of weeks, I'll have forgotten I ever wanted to see it by the time the DVD comes out.
I'd like to see the theater-vs-DVD delay measured in weeks, not months. Seriously, by the time a movie's been out for two weeks, it's either no longer playing, or it's playing in the "seats 20 comfortably" back halls of the Megaplex 21 where the screen's not much bigger than a TV anyways.
The ironic part is that the theaters brought it on themselves. Remember when a movie theater had 2 (nice, big!) screens at most? The theater manager cycled content in and out of those screens quickly enough to keep the money rolling in. When a theater has 20 screens, the expenses for the content go up by a factor of 10 -- but the net effect is "20 channels and nothin' on", and it's a lot harder to keep 20 theaters full than it is to keep 2.
Slashdot Mirror
>
> Now wheres the damn aliens we were promised.
We're right here, you ugly bag of mostly-water. Your master of psychotropically-voyaging primates is presently unavailable, and the Council has temporarily deigned to occupy waterbag 54550 to answer your pathetic cries.
Once more, panic swept across the beaches of Low Ridge Haven during the Late Autumn Festivals. K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, stressed that there was no cause for alarm:
When asked if rumors were true that blue-planet-inhabitants' armored vehicle was just catching some sweet rays over the winter, K'Breel denounced him as a traitor and wrapped his gelsac duct around each of the five remaining functional drive motors of the invaders' vehicle.Aight. I put on my robe and wizard hat.
"Hard like a rhino..."
- Vanilla Ice
>
>This story acts as we should be surprised. The government serves the people. The IRS, on the other hand, serves the government. I let you figure out where the disconnect is.
Remember, remember, the Fifteenth of April,
Congress, Corruption, and Rot,
I see no reason, why taxpaying season,
Should ever be forgot.
"The IRS should not be afraid of the people. The people should be afraid of the IRS."
-A for AMT.
Sounds like par for the course to me.
About the same as a Doubleclick hack (Nuala O'Connor Kelly, Chief "Privacy" Officer of Doubleclick) advising HomeSec on privacy.
Or the Gator/Claria hack (D. Reed Freeman, former Gator/Claria Chief "Privacy" Officer) sitting on HomeSec's Data "Privacy" and "Integrity" Advisory Committee.
Maybe we should be thankful. Based on precedent, the BSA guy should be put in charge of the Copyright office, or perhaps hired by NSA to... adjust its priorities when it comes to what sort of traffic is worthy of further investigation.
Anyone taking bets on when Jeff Bezos gets picked to head USPTO?
The past 100 years have seen governments kill 100,000,000 people. Even in times of war (heh, especially in times of war!), it's far more likely you'll get killed by your own government than an enemy soldier.
I agree that the current regime isn't going to bust down anyone's doors for making fun of the Prez.
But given the track record of the past century, what gives you such faith in the regimes that will win the elections of 2008? 2012? 2016? 2020? 2024? 2028? 2032? 2036?
I'd ask what you're smoking, but warn you that answering could get you in big trouble in 2015, when civil war breaks out between the tobacco-producers of the Old Virginia Coalition and the pot-farmers of the Neo-Cascadian Alliance, and the winners of the 2016 election ("Let the OVC/NCA wars never happen again!") trawl the database to purge society of the losers.
>
> Anyone that thinks a two-party system is a democracy is a fucking idiot.
Anyone that thinks that Unistat is governed under a two-party system is an even bigger fucking idiot.
Well, we can thank him for this much. Next time any of us is in a situation where we're dancing around playing "air lightsaber" (or even just air guitar), at least we can safely scratch "videotape it" off the list of "right things to do".
Schadenfreude: The joy of learning from other people's mistakes.
Hey, it comes from a guy at BusinessWeek.
His target audience probably doesn't even know these ad-serving networks exist... a list of corporate entities is probably as comprehensible as he can make it.
> > The average user simply sees the pop-up, unaware of how many networks it traversed beforehand."
Meanwhile, the average Slashdot user simply sees a grey box, red "X", broken link icon, or grey-and-white checkerboard, unaware of which link in the chain of tracking networks, ad servers, or regular expressions in his adblocking proxy prevented it from showing up.
So if it's any consolation, I haven't a clue what the article means either, because it'd take me at least an hour to break my adblocking tech badly enough to figure it out!
>
> No, what's sad is the plethora of churchgoers who apparently can't be bothered with an explanation more complex than "Humans are humans and dogs are dogs because jebus said so."
Yes, but what's saddest of all is that unlike my ape-descended friends who haven't caught onto the scientific method, the difference between dogs and humans is that dogs learn from their mistakes.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of...
Please move along at least every hour or two before you add deep vein thrombosis to your list of troubles.
I had to re-read that sentence three or four times before I realized that
was indeed the title of the book in question.Afterwards, the fact that it consists of two parts, namely
"Working with SQL Server Express" and
"Working with Visual Basic Express and Visual Web Developer Express"
came as little surprise...
The title is reminiscent of the technique of putting every programming language, OS, and application you've used since third grade into one's resume, just to make sure that HR department gets a "hit" on your resume when they search the internal database for prospects.
Has the field of technical literature become so saturated that publishers/editors (probably more so than authors) are resorting to spamming their own book titles with buzzwords and acronyms... in order to show up better on Amazon search queries?
Even as a free-market kind of guy, the doublespeak here really makes my head spin. In the name of fair competition... we have to eliminate anything that might outcompete with $5.99/minute pay-card-based WiFi providers.
Then again, welcome to Newspeak verb conjugation 101:
I am erotic. You are kinky. They are perverts.
We protect. Our allies enforce. Our enemies oppress.
Government appropriates. Telecoms lobby. WiFi users steal.
The photos were originally in .GIF format, and the poster didn't fear the Slashdot effect so much as he feared the wrath of Unisys' patent lawyers modding him (+1, Flamebait)?
>
>
It's better because you have to pay IBM consultants for it.
"IBM Consulting: Or you'll regret that you had only one Asterisk when the boss put you in charge of the company's VOIP rollout!"
<VOICE FAMILY=tinklingglass,natalieportmanshairbeingshave doff>
Ah, you seek meaning. Then listen to the music, not the song.
<VOICE FAMILY=gritsbeingpouredovernatalie,marmosetbeingth rownoutanairlock>
We, for one, welcome our Vorlon overlords. We are all Taco.
Odd. Those are exactly the same reasons why I take to CRPGs over MMORPGs.
Morrowind and Oblivion are like MMORPGS, except that the other "players" are smarter, have a better grasp of English, and are all-around more fun to be with than most MMORPG players.
Actual MMORPG example from my gaming history:
Me: "Yo, just on my way to do Quest X"
Player: "Yeah, just on my way back."
Me: "Cool, it's not bugged!"
Player: "Yeah, when the guy asks you for AAA, you say BBB, then CCC, and the answer to his puzzle question is XYZ. Thats the only part that requires thinking, now you don't have to worry about it."
I know he was just trying to be helpful, but it's the only hour of content added to the game in weeks, and he ruined the only part of it that wasn't FedEx.
>but remember, It's Casual Friday here in the states
That'd be a Mao Suit. In the People's Republic, the proletariatarian revolution demands that every day be Casual Friday!
You forgot that the LcYxkN (who live in the disc, at a 90-degree angle from the jet of 3C273, and who escaped the blast) have developed faster-than-light communication.
>
>
***** We apologize for the faults in the comments. Those responsible have been outsourced. *****
(Pleased to be reminding you, m00se vindal00 can be veryvery spicy...)
***** We apologize again for the fault in the posts. Those responsible for outsourcing the people who have just been outsourced have been outsourced. *****
(Hot-gritted m00se on the left half side of the screen in the third post from the top, given a thorough grounding in Slashbotese, 31337, and "O" Level Trollery by Pradeep Portman)
****** The managers of the contracting firm hired to continue the posting after the other people had been outsourced, wish it to be known that they have just been outsourced. *******
The postings have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.
6 VENEZUELAN RED LLAMAS
142 MEXICAN WHOOPING LLAMAS
14 NORTH CHILEAN GUANACOS
(CLOSELY RELATED TO THE LLAMA)
REG LLAMA OF BRIXTON
76000 BATTERY LLAMAS
FROM "LLAMA-FRESH" FARMS LTD. NEAR PARAGUAY
and CMDRTACO and ZONK.
While we're on the subject - there are lots of publicly-traded small defense contractors out there, so making money has been pretty easy in this environment, even if you're not politically-connected.
What publicly-traded companies/industries stand to make easy money when the Democrats get their turn at the pork barrel in late-06, and particularly if they have the House/Senate/Presidency in '08?
About the only thing that comes to mind is small-cap biotechs doing stem cell research, and there aren't too many of those. (Small-cap biotechs doing germ/chemical warfare detection have already gone up, as have health care stocks due to Medicare reform.)
>
> He will say something like
> "We need to achieve synergy across our departmental endeavour so we can proactively engage any challenges the business may face"
>
> I will then respond
> "You are a fucking wanker"
Naaw. Just smile, nod, and shake your boss's hand.
He'll get the message.
That's OK, theater owners. (In Soviet America...) DVD users are unhappy about Theater Releases.
For the one or two movies a year when you're willing to put up with cell phone ringtones and screaming babies in order to see/hear/feel the explosions (and the jiggling body parts) louder/bigger/better than your home theather can provides, the theaters provide a useful service.
And in probably the one or two times a year when I'll sympathize with MPAA: Faster DVD releases are essential. Movies these days are so nondescript (even the ones with body parts either jiggling or being blown up) that if I don't see it in the theater within the first couple of weeks, I'll have forgotten I ever wanted to see it by the time the DVD comes out.
I'd like to see the theater-vs-DVD delay measured in weeks, not months. Seriously, by the time a movie's been out for two weeks, it's either no longer playing, or it's playing in the "seats 20 comfortably" back halls of the Megaplex 21 where the screen's not much bigger than a TV anyways.
The ironic part is that the theaters brought it on themselves. Remember when a movie theater had 2 (nice, big!) screens at most? The theater manager cycled content in and out of those screens quickly enough to keep the money rolling in. When a theater has 20 screens, the expenses for the content go up by a factor of 10 -- but the net effect is "20 channels and nothin' on", and it's a lot harder to keep 20 theaters full than it is to keep 2.