Every single technology profession I have EVER communicated with, does not think electronic voting machines are a good idea. If EVERYONE is in agreement this is a BAD idea, why the FUCK are we still making these things?
Because neither politicians nor voters understand the concept of experimental error.
And because in 2000, a Presidential election's electoral vote count was close enough that the entire contest depended upon the poopular vote count of a single state, which was itself close enough to fall within the experimental error of the measuring apparatus. (Hanging chads, ballots with improperly marked "X"s, scantron errors, etc.)
After that, of course, the usual political process took care of itself, to wit:
Ignorant public: "Something must be done to eliminate all experimental error!"
Ignorant politicians: "Computers are something!"
Frustrated techies: "Just because the computer always reports an unambiguous tally, doesn't mean that the tally reflects the will of the voters..."
They were, of course, drowned out by a chorus of...
Contractors and Lobbyists: "Hey, you politicians look like you want a whole lot of voting machines, and we happen to know some people who can build them... for a price."
Most people (with the exception of politicians and rabid hyperpartisans, and in 2000, they were the minority of the electorate), whether they voted Jackass or Elephant, were willing to accept that it was possible that their candidate lost.
But nobody - and I mean nobody - wanted to accept the possibility that there was insufficient data to discern the actual will of Florida's voters because the margin of victory was within the expected error of a voting process.
The recorded vote count in Florida was 2,912,790 to 2,912,253. Even ignoring the experimental error associated with the voting process, a traffic accident on a highway leading to/from a Democratic- or Republican-leaning neighborhood (or a bad rainstorm, or any number of a thousand random occurrences) could have changed the outcome by making enough people stay home, delay voters' arrival at the polling stations after closing time, etc., to have changed the outcome. No matter what technology you use, 269 votes out of almost six million isn't signal, it's noise.
Spokesman for NASA, David Weaver said that, just like the rest of the federal government, the space agency has to make 'tough choices and live within our means.' [... ] NASA is reassessing its current Mars exploration initiatives to maximize what can be achieved.
Today marks a glorious day of initiative reassessment! Rejoice, Democrats, Republicrats, and Bureaucrats alike, for today, NASA embarks on a new mission - the maximization of the achievable through the reassessment of initiatives! ONWARDS TO RE-ELECTION! VICTORY IN 2012!
When a former associate administrator for science named Edward Weiler, suggested that the cuts were "totally irrational and unjustified. We are the only country on this planet that has the demonstrated ability to land on another planet, namely Mars. It is a national prestige issue", Speaker Weaver reminded him that "having one's title removed was a dignified means of ending a career, certainly less painful than having one's gelsac.... no, wait, you call them something different here... what's the word... nerds, narf, na-- ah, there we go!...less painful than having one's national prestige fall to the floor", other members of the press corps stared in blank confusion, and omitted the mysterious comment from the CBS news report.
(And when a junior reporter from Slashdot realized he forgot to uncheck the "Post Anonymously" button one Saturday morning, he blamed it upon invaders from Mars stealthily occupying positions of high import within the Terran economy, including a range of positions from his local bartender to high-ranking positions within the NASA bureaucracy. Seems the most likely hypothesis these days, doesn't it?)
I think what perhaps critics donâ(TM)t appreciate is that there is a lot of luck in getting a good sound. It's not all about the equipment, spectral response and compressing. It's all about the quality of the musicianship, the songwriting and the sound reaching the microphone... that's crucial. It's often been said, "garbage in means garbage out," so if that's the case you wonâ(TM)t get a good sound.
All true, Mr. Parsons, and entirely beside the point. Music lovers care about the music, but they're listening to you because you're exceptionally talented. They love your music so much they're even willing listen to put up with crappy 128kbps encodes on YouTube.
But we're not talking about music lovers here, we're talking about audiophiles.
Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.
But what the Google and Wikipedia blackout showed is that itâ(TM)s the platforms that exercise the real power. Get enough of them to espouse Silicon Valleyâ(TM)s perspective, and tens of millions of Americans will get a one-sided view of whatever the issue may be, drowning out the other side.
Cary Sherman still thinks this is a battle between "Google and Wikipedia" vs "Media Companies". And that the only reason his companies lost is because the other companies had better PR.
He still doesn't get that what happened was the people who consume the content - content linked to by GOOG, content distributed by Wikipedia, and content licensed by RIAA and MPAA - who finally got off their duffs and exercised their rights as citizens to demand that their elected representatives actually represent them.
I can't be too hard on him. When I ask "Who does Sen. or Rep. X represent", my answer is typically a company or group of companies that funded his/her campaign, and/or hired the lobbyists to write the bills that the politicians sponsor.
To put it in language that Sherman can understand, it's not that Rep./Sen. X changed from (R/D - MPAA) to (R/D - GOOG). It's that, this being an election year, and there being tens of millions of active internet users who are also eligible voters, Rep./Sen X represented (R/D - wishes of their constituents as tallied by their staffers, regardless of donation size).
Fellow Citizens, as we draw close to the Fourth Anniversary of the Invasion of the Twins and the ensuing Battle for the Plains, let us not forget the words of K'Breel, Speaker for the Council:
The last remnant of the invading force sickens us with its decadent, passive, lackadaisical attitude. Even as one of its bastard progeny spirals inward to a fiery doom in the toxic atmosphere of the blue world, and its nuclear-powered cousin bakes in the radiation of a solar flare, the last so-called warrior still actually infesting our world sits idle, with an apparent intention to spend the entire winter sunbathing.
If sunbathing is what passes for war amongst these blueworlders, so be it. Rejoice with your podmates! Wriggle your gelsacs in gleeful anticipation! If the enemy wishes to sunbathe, we shall give this newest inbound invader a sunburn it shall not soon forget!
When a junior reporter inquired as to the absence of gleeful wriggling from the general direction of Citizen #64226, K'Breel had only this to say: "...and would that be nuked or fried?"
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, was on his way from a late (as opposed to late-breaking) Council Meeting to his domicile, where he intended to consume nutrients. While exiting the Council Hall, an enthusiastic Citizen beseeched him thus:
Our gelsacs hunger for the words of the mighty K'Breel on the battle against the invaders from the blue world.
Always willing to place the needs of his Citizens before his own, the Speaker replied: "What more needs be said? One invader lies immobile and frozen in the plains. A second lies buried in a slowly-accumulating layer of carbox at the northern pole, a third never left the blue world's gravity well and spirals ever inward to a fiery doom (our analysts suggest a 75% probability of any surviving parts being condemned to dissolve in the toxic blue soup!), and although a fourth may have recently escaped the blue world's gravity well, it is destined to spend the next season squarely in the crosshairs of our Orbital Defense Forces, and yet you still require a progress report against this - this last struggling holdout?"
"Let me reassure you personally, dear Citizen: as surely as dust continues to be distributed over the invader's solar panels, the Council sees no crisis, and barely an Opportunity. But even the dimmest of opportunities is worth seizing!"
Having delayed a hungry Speaker from his return home after a Council meeting, it is reported that the equally hungry gelsacs of enthusiastic citizen #64226 were seized, freeze-dried, ground into powder, and then tossed into the winds as part of the DDoS (Distributed Dusting of Solarpanels) attack still being conducted by our brave forces against the remaining invader at Devaur's End.
"A shining example to all who live on our fair world, this enthusiastic Citizen took advantage of a rare Opportunity to take the battle directly to the enemy, and he shall be remembered fondly! EVER ONWARD TO VICTORY!" (Oh, and thank you for the excuse, Citizen. Don't worry too much. Sometimes they grow back!)
] CALL -151
300:A9 xx 20 ED FD AD 30 C0 4C 00 03
300G
That's a loop which clicks the speak while filling the screen with random characters. The xx was a zero page location with a random (or randomish) contents. I don't remember the exact location anymore, sigh.
The frightening thing is that I can still read that without a disassembler.
$4E, low-byte of the 16-bit keyboard idle time stored in $4E and $4F, commonly used as a random number generator/seed.
I recall a couple of years back this came up on Slashdot before, and someone mentioned that apparently you could simply AD 30 C0 (LDA $C030) to both click the speaker and get a random byte, but I don't think I was aware of that, Back In The Day
Yes, $C030 toggled the speaker cone "in" or "out". (and I forget what, if anything, it returned.) Every sound that came out of that machine did so as the result of the program doing a busy-wait (or a very carefully-timed bit of computation, say, while writing a few bytes to graphics memory) while toggling the speaker cone in or out. Crazy, but awesome.
This being a C64 thread, I have to tip my had to the Apple programmers for doing what they did with what they had, but having a SID was awesome, without the crazy.
Can it convert imperial measurements to metric measurements?
Dispelling rumors of the threat posed by a nuclear-powered, laser-armed robotic invader, K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, said:
Already one invader flails haplessly in low orbit, while its successor sits on the pad, its launch delayed for yet another four days.
The denizens of the Evil Blue Planet call them by many names - Newtons, Pounds - but what the blueworlders fail to understand that the only force that can do meaningful work is a unified force.
Our strength is their weakness: we are one species, we live on one world, we use one system of measurement. We are one force. A red planet, united, to never be divided!
Current intelligence reports suggests that denizens of the Evil Blue Planet have taken note of our effective planetary defense, but seem unaware of the extent to which their activities have made us angry. We are not hurt; we are angry. Very, very angry indeed.
Having been reminded that the gelsacs of many metrication consultants were punctured to bring them this information, there were no questions from the press corps.
And Mars continues to give Russia a big, fat middle finger. No Russian/Soviet probe has successfully completed a mission to the Red Planet...
What are these "fingers" of which you speak, denizen of the Blue World?
Planetary celebrations have been extended for a third day in the light of the latest victory of our special forces team.
K'breel, speaker for the Council, declared:
Our world grunts in united gleeful mockery over the pathetic invader's busted attempts to escape the Blue World's gravity well! Eight of our fallen warriors are remembered this day, their ichor still thick and gooey in the works of this invader's highly-charged exhaust!
When a junior blogger for the Red Planetary Society suggested that the only ichor present on the stranded invader consisted of biological samples from the Blue World itself (as part of an experiment in xenobiology), K'Breel had the blogger's gelsacs sealed up in tiny canisters and fired into orbit for three days, and incinerated upon re-entry.
Further rumors that despite the successful defense of Z'treem, the Blue World was prepared to launch a second invader - more mobile, powered by Pew-238, and armed with a glarbin' photonic ampradstim unit on its head, and that the Blue World was prepared to launch this invader within fifteen days - were not raised, and therefore did not need to be addressed by the Council at this time.
I felt a song coming on three years ago, and I suppose it's time for an update.
Are you suggesting there's an unlimited supply?
That there's no reason why?
$1.9 billion for their name,
Why, any longer, care for fame?
(Who?)
EMI! EMI! EMI!
M&A lawyers make a fuss,
For gigabucks they acquired us,
Not quite unlimited amount,
Let the shareholders scream and shout.
Mp3.com was crucified,
For business models that had died,
It was a website that was rivaled by none,
(never ever never...)
And you thought that they were faking?
That it was all just money-making?
You don't think EMI will steal?
Even if they lose their last appeal?
Oh, don't judge a band by its cover,
Unless another you discover,
And blind acceptance is a sign,
of RIAA fools who stand in line
(like)
EMI! EMI! EMI!
Unlimited edition,
With an unlimited supply,
That was the only reason,
MP3.com said goodbye,
Unlimited supply (EMI!)
And there is no reason why! (EMI!)
One point nine billion for a name,(EMI!)
The business model still so lame!
From four to three, UMG rules (EMI!)
The big three are still useless fools (EMI!)
Unlimited supply.
Hello, Universal. Goodbye, EMI.
- With apologies to the Sex Pistols, and you should still be grateful I can't sing, or I'd have dubbed it onto the original track and uploaded the result to MP3.com as a parody.
34 years after the Sex Pistols, it was Universal who would carry out Sigue Sigue Sputnik's 25-year-old threat to Buy EMI!
"Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters,
when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a
phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would
never be applied in that way' - they're *lying*. They intend to
use the law that way as early and as often as possible."
Your car's keys are in your mating partner's personal storage accessory.
As we prepare for the defense of our world against a new invader bearing lasers and powered by Pew-238 terror, the logistical difficulties of one of the invader's individual organic symbiotes are generally of little concern to the Council, but the Council is not completely without mercy.
Organic symbiotes of the mechanized invaders, heed the words of the Council. As soon as your host organism leaves the gravity well of your pathetic blue world on a path which intersects with the gravity well of our fair red world, it becomes a valid target for our Air Defense Force. Our mercy is not without an accompanying warning: "Get your invader's ass to Mars? Symbiotes lose keys to their cars."
When a junior translator suggested that an examination of the storage compartments of its mating partner was a logical impossibility for an invader-symbiote participating in the communications nexus known as "Slashdot", K'Breel had the translator's gelsacs surgically removed, placed into a planetary protection environmental chamber, where they were alternately heated, warmed, cooled, and finally exposed to a broad spectrum of ionizing radiation, whereupon their leathery husks could safely be repurposed as portable storage accessories for the mating partners of worthy Council members.
I vaguely understand the economic theory that says this is good in the long run. However, I have always wondered what we will do as a society when there is nothing left to do...
Marshall Brain's science fiction novella, Manna, is based on this premise.
Manna is an AI that was developed to replace middle "manna"gement at fast food restaurants. As its usefulness expands, workplace norms change, and the progression ends with... well, that'd be a spoiler. Suffice it to say that the end state of an economy driven by rotework to an economy driven by AIs isn't a function of what technology you use, but a function of other variables.
~Translation of Intercepted Broadcast from Blue Planet~
~CLASSIFIED: FOR COUNCIL EYESTALKS ONLY~
~Begin Translation~
EPIC! NASA reports that the seemingly-unstoppable robotic geologist Opportunity is finding things at Endeavour crater that it has never seen before, adding new life to a mission that has already been epic.
L'avery, Executive for the Program, announced thus:
"This is like having a brand-new beachhead for our battle-hardened juggernaut of steel; a remarkable bonus that comes from being able to rove with imputiny and utterly dominate the Martian surface."
Another Member of the Program was quoted as saying "This is different from any rock ever seen on Mars", describing the presence of numerous sac-like pockets of zinc and bromine mineralization associated with less-acidic and potentially gelatinous conditions.
When a project manager reminded the NASA delegation that after having exceeded its design lifetime by a factor of 30, and suggested that "at any time, we could lose a critical component on an essential rover system, and the mission would be over", L'avery had the project manager's testicles crushed and used as robotic wheel lubricant.
~End Translation of Intercepted Broadcast~
~For Victory, For Mars, For K'Breel~
Hopefully in before the usual comparisons to Jobs' resignation - but I'll argue that Slashdot did for social media what Jobs did for Apple.
No, not Web 2.0's social media, but Web 1.0's social media: a place that was pseudonymous, but still reputation-based. A place where pseudonyms stood alone - no "like" or "+1" buttons. Not a place for 140-character tweets, but a place for paragraph- and essay-length commentary.
To stretch the analogy, in the first incarnation of Jobs' Apple, users bought Macintoshes not to show off their respective bling, but to get work done. (No, not coding work, office work - but it was work nonetheless, and it was work that couldn't be done nearly as easily, nor as well, under the Wintel equivalents of the mid-80s.)
Likewise, Slashdot - and the rest of Social Media 1.0 - were not built so much as place in which to speak, but as place in which to listen. I've learned far more in the comments from the past 12 years of Slashdot posts than I could ever have learned from the agglomerated mewlings of marketroids and demagogues alike.
At any rate, so long, CmdrTaco, and thanks for all the fish.
And thanks for having what was by far the coolest booth at the 1999 LinuxWorld Conference and Expo at Javits/NYC.
Both enterprise and embedded systems in particular need a longer horizon of kernel stability, which prompted Greg Kroah-Hartman, then at SuSE, to establish a -longterm kernel, which will remain stable for up to two years.
Have you ever taken a Kroah-Hartman test? It's a test designed to provoke an emotional response.
Hartman: You're in a repository, compiling a kernel,
when all of a sudden you look down. Dotzler: What version? Hartman: What? Dotzler: What version? Hartman: It doesn't make any difference what version -
it's completely hypothetical. Dotzler: That's what I've been trying to convince the world all week! Hartman: Maybe you're fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself.
Who knows? You look down at the screen and see the codebase in TortoiseGIT.
It's crawling toward release. Dotzler: TortoiseGIT? What's that? Hartman: You know what TortoiseSVN was? Dotzler: Of course! Hartman: Same thing. Dotzler: I've never seen a stable UI. But I understand what you mean. Hartman: You merge some code down, change the UI, and increment the release number just for the hell of it, Asa. Dotzler: Do you make up these questions Mr. Hartman?
Or do Slashdotters just write cheap pop culture parodies instead of working? Hartman: The project lays on its back, its belly baking in the
white-hot flames of a thousand angry users, beating its legs trying to make itself stable but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Dotzler: What do you mean I'm not helping? Hartman: I mean you're not helping! Why is that, Asa? (pause) They're just questions, Asa. In answer to your query, it was either this or a filk based on a Rob Zombie song. It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response.
Shall we continue? Dotzler: Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch! Hartman: Describe in single words only the good things that come into
your mind about your mother. Dotzler: My mother? Hartman: Yeah. Dotzler: Let me tell you about my mother... *BLAM BLAM BLAM*
Whether you like to go on a cruise or hike across the backcountry, the experienced traveler always carries a length of fiber-optic cable. Whether you end up shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island, or lost in the wilderness, all you have to do is bury the cable in the sand, snow, or dirt.
A few hours later, a guy driving a backhoe will be along to dig up the fiber. Hitch a ride with him back to civilization.
K'breel, speaker for the Council, emphasized that preparations for
the final battle were complete.
"Citizens, the last of the two mechanical invaders that first touched
down on our red soil, has reached its ultimate destination. Intelligence reports from the blue world confirm that the alien fiend will likely peer over the rim of its ultimate destination this week, the huge End-Devaur crater."
K'Breel confirmed that the source of this intelligence leak was a communications node of the blue world's so-called
"Planetary Society" has been neutralized. Its data flows as sluggishly as the brine that oozes forth from beneath the summer soil. Soon, the invading force whose activities it purports to document, shall be neutralized along with it! ONWARD TO VICTORY!
When a junior reporter speculated that the reason for the temporary downtime of the communications node might be related to a surge of network traffic from blue-worlders whose only interest was peaceful exploration, K'Breel had the junior reporter's gelsacs effectively slashed .
Can't wait to see how the bugger up the UI on that one now. Of course, it probably won't compile until version 43 though.
The Mozilla team has heard the complaints from Firefox users, and now we're pleased to annouce that Mozillaroid 43 For Tablets now features a full desktop-style UI, featuring seven toolbars at the top of the screen, and not one, but two status bars at the bottom of each screen.
Users unhappy with the changes in Mozillaroid 43 For Tablets are free to install "1080p4evar", "minimalism", and "toolbarbgone" extensions as soon as compatibility updates have been completed. (Note that Mozilla is not responsible for any memory leakage behaviors associated with third-party plug-ins, add-ons, and extensions.)
Users who find Mozillaroid 43 For Tablets unsuitable, even with minimalist UX extensions, are encouraged to try Firefox 9 For Desktops, for which the status bar, menu bar, URL bar, search box, window borders, and scroll bar have been removed since Firefox 8. In fact, the only things left in Firefox's desktop browser UI are four icons: the Google logo, the Firefox logo, a musical note, and a pair of boobs.
WARNING! Late-breaking news from the Council!
on
NASA's Next Mars Rover
·
· Score: 5, Funny
The Council of Elders has confirmed an alarming increase in
threatening chatter originating from the blue world.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, addressed the planet thus:
AT LAST, the denizens of the blue planet expose their true intentions! No mere "explorers", these foul robotic beings. Despite their deceptive
code names, these invaders from the blue world are no innocent space-mariners; they're Vikings! All they seek is an
opportunity to wipe not only us from the world, but the spirit of our world itself
from the solar system.
I have in my tentacle one particularly threatening communications intercept; hear the enemy in their own words.
Oh goody! My explosive space modulator has finally been delivered!
Now I can blow up Mars. Because it's obstructing my view of Jupiter!
Despite what you may have heard from certain circles of subversives, their own words betray them. They are not
just here for the sake of curiosity!
K'Breel went on to confirm reports that the expected invader would indeed by powered by an advanced Pew-238 power source to extend its range and lifespan, K'Breel reminded all citizens that its expected capabilities would still be vastly inferior compared to their own recreational vehicles: "Our hot rods get a million klorbs to the frelpor; the blue planet ain't just across a minor tributary from Valles Marineris!"
When a junior intelligence analyst suggested that the intercepted transmission
in question was merely referring to an animated cartoon that was more than thirty years old, there was a gelsac-shattering kaboom. (It was
described as "lovely".)
A small robot dutifully removed the dust from the remains of the Speaker's disintegrating pistol and performed a short piece of traditional music while the Speaker exited the stage via an iris-shaped door after concluding his address with a brief "That is all, citizens."
The most Illustrious Council of Elders reports that last remaining mechanized invader from the blue world inexplicably refuses to yield as its brother did, and that our campaign against the invaders must therefore continue onwards.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, spake thus:
"Our red planet still basks in the warm afterglow of its recent V-S Day celebrations. V-S day marked the most recent victory in our campaign, but there still remains work to be done. Despite its wounds, the last remaining mechanized invader from the blue world continues to mark our red soils with tracks left by its foul wheels of terror."
When a junior tech guru for the Sacdot news service meditated on the fact that the campaign against the second invader has taken 29 times longer than the initial campaign estimates, and that during this time, the invader had 1.2 times the distance from the plains to the peak of our world's tallest and most sacred volcanic peak, K'Breel, in his mercy, had the guru's gelsacs - as well as the gelsacs of 503 of the tech guru's podmates - rendered unavailable for service.
(Speaking ex-councillo, K'breel was heard to have murmured "Connection reset? Meditate on THIS!" while applying varnish to the freshly-pierced gelsac of a junior cache server administrator.)
The Council of Elders formally accepts the Articles of Surrender as ratified by the representatives of the blue planet. and hereby proclaims a day of planetary celebration: VS Day.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, spake thus:
"Long have we fought, long have we labored, but at least we have triumphed. It was half a year ago that the mechanized invader was finally defeated - half a year that the blue planet's oxygen-poisoned denizens dithered and denied, but at least, they have seen the truth for what it is. Rejoice, podmates! Wiggle your gelsacs in celebration! We proclaim today VS Day - Victory over Spirit!"
When a rather plump intelligence analyst suggested that today's victory was merely the result of normal seasonal changes, and that there still remained the issue of the second - still operational - invader, and furthermore, that code names gleaned from transmissions from the blue planet indicated the imminent launch of an even more powerful foe with a power source not subject to seasonal weather changes, K'Breel ordered that the analyst's gelsacs be frozen solid, irradiated, and thrown into the Planetary Trench. "Curiosity," said K'Breel, "felled the fat."
Slashdot Mirror
Because neither politicians nor voters understand the concept of experimental error.
And because in 2000, a Presidential election's electoral vote count was close enough that the entire contest depended upon the poopular vote count of a single state, which was itself close enough to fall within the experimental error of the measuring apparatus. (Hanging chads, ballots with improperly marked "X"s, scantron errors, etc.)
After that, of course, the usual political process took care of itself, to wit:
Ignorant public: "Something must be done to eliminate all experimental error!"
Ignorant politicians: "Computers are something!"
Frustrated techies: "Just because the computer always reports an unambiguous tally, doesn't mean that the tally reflects the will of the voters..."
They were, of course, drowned out by a chorus of...
Contractors and Lobbyists: "Hey, you politicians look like you want a whole lot of voting machines, and we happen to know some people who can build them... for a price."
Most people (with the exception of politicians and rabid hyperpartisans, and in 2000, they were the minority of the electorate), whether they voted Jackass or Elephant, were willing to accept that it was possible that their candidate lost.
But nobody - and I mean nobody - wanted to accept the possibility that there was insufficient data to discern the actual will of Florida's voters because the margin of victory was within the expected error of a voting process.
The recorded vote count in Florida was 2,912,790 to 2,912,253. Even ignoring the experimental error associated with the voting process, a traffic accident on a highway leading to/from a Democratic- or Republican-leaning neighborhood (or a bad rainstorm, or any number of a thousand random occurrences) could have changed the outcome by making enough people stay home, delay voters' arrival at the polling stations after closing time, etc., to have changed the outcome. No matter what technology you use, 269 votes out of almost six million isn't signal, it's noise.
In years past, we defeated them on our soil. Now, the fight to starve the robotic invaders of funding advances to the blue world itself:
KBREEL: Kay Bailey (R)'s Expensive Electoral Largesse
Today marks a glorious day of initiative reassessment! Rejoice, Democrats, Republicrats, and Bureaucrats alike, for today, NASA embarks on a new mission - the maximization of the achievable through the reassessment of initiatives! ONWARDS TO RE-ELECTION! VICTORY IN 2012!
When a former associate administrator for science named Edward Weiler, suggested that the cuts were "totally irrational and unjustified. We are the only country on this planet that has the demonstrated ability to land on another planet, namely Mars. It is a national prestige issue", Speaker Weaver reminded him that "having one's title removed was a dignified means of ending a career, certainly less painful than having one's gelsac.... no, wait, you call them something different here... what's the word... nerds, narf, na-- ah, there we go! ...less painful than having one's national prestige fall to the floor", other members of the press corps stared in blank confusion, and omitted the mysterious comment from the CBS news report.
(And when a junior reporter from Slashdot realized he forgot to uncheck the "Post Anonymously" button one Saturday morning, he blamed it upon invaders from Mars stealthily occupying positions of high import within the Terran economy, including a range of positions from his local bartender to high-ranking positions within the NASA bureaucracy. Seems the most likely hypothesis these days, doesn't it?)
All true, Mr. Parsons, and entirely beside the point. Music lovers care about the music, but they're listening to you because you're exceptionally talented. They love your music so much they're even willing listen to put up with crappy 128kbps encodes on YouTube.
But we're not talking about music lovers here, we're talking about audiophiles.
Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.
Cary Sherman still thinks this is a battle between "Google and Wikipedia" vs "Media Companies". And that the only reason his companies lost is because the other companies had better PR.
He still doesn't get that what happened was the people who consume the content - content linked to by GOOG, content distributed by Wikipedia, and content licensed by RIAA and MPAA - who finally got off their duffs and exercised their rights as citizens to demand that their elected representatives actually represent them.
I can't be too hard on him. When I ask "Who does Sen. or Rep. X represent", my answer is typically a company or group of companies that funded his/her campaign, and/or hired the lobbyists to write the bills that the politicians sponsor.
To put it in language that Sherman can understand, it's not that Rep./Sen. X changed from (R/D - MPAA) to (R/D - GOOG). It's that, this being an election year, and there being tens of millions of active internet users who are also eligible voters, Rep./Sen X represented (R/D - wishes of their constituents as tallied by their staffers, regardless of donation size).
When a junior reporter inquired as to the absence of gleeful wriggling from the general direction of Citizen #64226, K'Breel had only this to say: "...and would that be nuked or fried?"
Always willing to place the needs of his Citizens before his own, the Speaker replied: "What more needs be said? One invader lies immobile and frozen in the plains. A second lies buried in a slowly-accumulating layer of carbox at the northern pole, a third never left the blue world's gravity well and spirals ever inward to a fiery doom (our analysts suggest a 75% probability of any surviving parts being condemned to dissolve in the toxic blue soup!), and although a fourth may have recently escaped the blue world's gravity well, it is destined to spend the next season squarely in the crosshairs of our Orbital Defense Forces, and yet you still require a progress report against this - this last struggling holdout?"
"Let me reassure you personally, dear Citizen: as surely as dust continues to be distributed over the invader's solar panels, the Council sees no crisis, and barely an Opportunity. But even the dimmest of opportunities is worth seizing!"
~``~ideo~`ransmission fr`m news ~eport~~`~`hecksum mismatc~~``~~``
Having delayed a hungry Speaker from his return home after a Council meeting, it is reported that the equally hungry gelsacs of enthusiastic citizen #64226 were seized, freeze-dried, ground into powder, and then tossed into the winds as part of the DDoS (Distributed Dusting of Solarpanels) attack still being conducted by our brave forces against the remaining invader at Devaur's End.
"A shining example to all who live on our fair world, this enthusiastic Citizen took advantage of a rare Opportunity to take the battle directly to the enemy, and he shall be remembered fondly! EVER ONWARD TO VICTORY!" (Oh, and thank you for the excuse, Citizen. Don't worry too much. Sometimes they grow back!)
It's an entirely different kind of flying!
The frightening thing is that I can still read that without a disassembler.
$4E, low-byte of the 16-bit keyboard idle time stored in $4E and $4F, commonly used as a random number generator/seed.
Yes, $C030 toggled the speaker cone "in" or "out". (and I forget what, if anything, it returned.) Every sound that came out of that machine did so as the result of the program doing a busy-wait (or a very carefully-timed bit of computation, say, while writing a few bytes to graphics memory) while toggling the speaker cone in or out. Crazy, but awesome.
This being a C64 thread, I have to tip my had to the Apple programmers for doing what they did with what they had, but having a SID was awesome, without the crazy.
Dispelling rumors of the threat posed by a nuclear-powered, laser-armed robotic invader, K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, said:
Having been reminded that the gelsacs of many metrication consultants were punctured to bring them this information, there were no questions from the press corps.
What are these "fingers" of which you speak, denizen of the Blue World?
Planetary celebrations have been extended for a third day in the light of the latest victory of our special forces team.
K'breel, speaker for the Council, declared:
When a junior blogger for the Red Planetary Society suggested that the only ichor present on the stranded invader consisted of biological samples from the Blue World itself (as part of an experiment in xenobiology), K'Breel had the blogger's gelsacs sealed up in tiny canisters and fired into orbit for three days, and incinerated upon re-entry.
Further rumors that despite the successful defense of Z'treem, the Blue World was prepared to launch a second invader - more mobile, powered by Pew-238, and armed with a glarbin' photonic ampradstim unit on its head, and that the Blue World was prepared to launch this invader within fifteen days - were not raised, and therefore did not need to be addressed by the Council at this time.
I felt a song coming on three years ago, and I suppose it's time for an update.
Are you suggesting there's an unlimited supply?
That there's no reason why?
$1.9 billion for their name,
Why, any longer, care for fame?
(Who?)
EMI! EMI! EMI!
M&A lawyers make a fuss,
For gigabucks they acquired us,
Not quite unlimited amount,
Let the shareholders scream and shout.
Mp3.com was crucified,
For business models that had died,
It was a website that was rivaled by none,
(never ever never...)
And you thought that they were faking?
That it was all just money-making?
You don't think EMI will steal?
Even if they lose their last appeal?
Oh, don't judge a band by its cover,
Unless another you discover,
And blind acceptance is a sign,
of RIAA fools who stand in line
(like)
EMI! EMI! EMI!
Unlimited edition,
With an unlimited supply,
That was the only reason,
MP3.com said goodbye,
Unlimited supply (EMI!)
And there is no reason why! (EMI!)
One point nine billion for a name,(EMI!)
The business model still so lame!
From four to three, UMG rules (EMI!)
The big three are still useless fools (EMI!)
Unlimited supply.
Hello, Universal. Goodbye, EMI.
- With apologies to the Sex Pistols, and you should still be grateful I can't sing, or I'd have dubbed it onto the original track and uploaded the result to MP3.com as a parody.
34 years after the Sex Pistols, it was Universal who would carry out Sigue Sigue Sputnik's 25-year-old threat to Buy EMI!
Compared to the thread on that bug, even the Firefox UI team's hostility to its userbase is but a pale imitation of Chrome.
But at least now we know where the Fx developers got the idea.
- meringuoid, Nov 24, 2005.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, spoke thus:
When a junior translator suggested that an examination of the storage compartments of its mating partner was a logical impossibility for an invader-symbiote participating in the communications nexus known as "Slashdot", K'Breel had the translator's gelsacs surgically removed, placed into a planetary protection environmental chamber, where they were alternately heated, warmed, cooled, and finally exposed to a broad spectrum of ionizing radiation, whereupon their leathery husks could safely be repurposed as portable storage accessories for the mating partners of worthy Council members.
Marshall Brain's science fiction novella, Manna, is based on this premise.
Manna is an AI that was developed to replace middle "manna"gement at fast food restaurants. As its usefulness expands, workplace norms change, and the progression ends with... well, that'd be a spoiler. Suffice it to say that the end state of an economy driven by rotework to an economy driven by AIs isn't a function of what technology you use, but a function of other variables.
~CLASSIFIED: FOR COUNCIL EYESTALKS ONLY~
~Begin Translation~
EPIC! NASA reports that the seemingly-unstoppable robotic geologist Opportunity is finding things at Endeavour crater that it has never seen before, adding new life to a mission that has already been epic.
L'avery, Executive for the Program, announced thus:
Another Member of the Program was quoted as saying "This is different from any rock ever seen on Mars", describing the presence of numerous sac-like pockets of zinc and bromine mineralization associated with less-acidic and potentially gelatinous conditions.
When a project manager reminded the NASA delegation that after having exceeded its design lifetime by a factor of 30, and suggested that "at any time, we could lose a critical component on an essential rover system, and the mission would be over", L'avery had the project manager's testicles crushed and used as robotic wheel lubricant.
~End Translation of Intercepted Broadcast~
~For Victory, For Mars, For K'Breel~
No, not Web 2.0's social media, but Web 1.0's social media: a place that was pseudonymous, but still reputation-based. A place where pseudonyms stood alone - no "like" or "+1" buttons. Not a place for 140-character tweets, but a place for paragraph- and essay-length commentary.
To stretch the analogy, in the first incarnation of Jobs' Apple, users bought Macintoshes not to show off their respective bling, but to get work done. (No, not coding work, office work - but it was work nonetheless, and it was work that couldn't be done nearly as easily, nor as well, under the Wintel equivalents of the mid-80s.)
Likewise, Slashdot - and the rest of Social Media 1.0 - were not built so much as place in which to speak, but as place in which to listen. I've learned far more in the comments from the past 12 years of Slashdot posts than I could ever have learned from the agglomerated mewlings of marketroids and demagogues alike.
At any rate, so long, CmdrTaco, and thanks for all the fish.
And thanks for having what was by far the coolest booth at the 1999 LinuxWorld Conference and Expo at Javits/NYC.
Have you ever taken a Kroah-Hartman test? It's a test designed to provoke an emotional response.
Hartman: You're in a repository, compiling a kernel, when all of a sudden you look down.
Dotzler: What version?
Hartman: What?
Dotzler: What version?
Hartman: It doesn't make any difference what version - it's completely hypothetical.
Dotzler: That's what I've been trying to convince the world all week!
Hartman: Maybe you're fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself. Who knows? You look down at the screen and see the codebase in TortoiseGIT. It's crawling toward release.
Dotzler: TortoiseGIT? What's that?
Hartman: You know what TortoiseSVN was?
Dotzler: Of course!
Hartman: Same thing.
Dotzler: I've never seen a stable UI. But I understand what you mean.
Hartman: You merge some code down, change the UI, and increment the release number just for the hell of it, Asa.
Dotzler: Do you make up these questions Mr. Hartman? Or do Slashdotters just write cheap pop culture parodies instead of working?
Hartman: The project lays on its back, its belly baking in the white-hot flames of a thousand angry users, beating its legs trying to make itself stable but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
Dotzler: What do you mean I'm not helping?
Hartman: I mean you're not helping! Why is that, Asa? (pause) They're just questions, Asa. In answer to your query, it was either this or a filk based on a Rob Zombie song. It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response. Shall we continue?
Dotzler: Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!
Hartman: Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
Dotzler: My mother?
Hartman: Yeah.
Dotzler: Let me tell you about my mother... *BLAM BLAM BLAM*
"More stable than -stable", that's our motto.
Whether you like to go on a cruise or hike across the backcountry, the experienced traveler always carries a length of fiber-optic cable. Whether you end up shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island, or lost in the wilderness, all you have to do is bury the cable in the sand, snow, or dirt.
A few hours later, a guy driving a backhoe will be along to dig up the fiber. Hitch a ride with him back to civilization.
K'Breel confirmed that the source of this intelligence leak was a communications node of the blue world's so-called "Planetary Society" has been neutralized. Its data flows as sluggishly as the brine that oozes forth from beneath the summer soil. Soon, the invading force whose activities it purports to document, shall be neutralized along with it! ONWARD TO VICTORY!
When a junior reporter speculated that the reason for the temporary downtime of the communications node might be related to a surge of network traffic from blue-worlders whose only interest was peaceful exploration, K'Breel had the junior reporter's gelsacs effectively slashed .
The Mozilla team has heard the complaints from Firefox users, and now we're pleased to annouce that Mozillaroid 43 For Tablets now features a full desktop-style UI, featuring seven toolbars at the top of the screen, and not one, but two status bars at the bottom of each screen.
Users unhappy with the changes in Mozillaroid 43 For Tablets are free to install "1080p4evar", "minimalism", and "toolbarbgone" extensions as soon as compatibility updates have been completed. (Note that Mozilla is not responsible for any memory leakage behaviors associated with third-party plug-ins, add-ons, and extensions.)
Users who find Mozillaroid 43 For Tablets unsuitable, even with minimalist UX extensions, are encouraged to try Firefox 9 For Desktops, for which the status bar, menu bar, URL bar, search box, window borders, and scroll bar have been removed since Firefox 8. In fact, the only things left in Firefox's desktop browser UI are four icons: the Google logo, the Firefox logo, a musical note, and a pair of boobs.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, addressed the planet thus:
AT LAST, the denizens of the blue planet expose their true intentions! No mere "explorers", these foul robotic beings. Despite their deceptive code names, these invaders from the blue world are no innocent space-mariners; they're Vikings! All they seek is an opportunity to wipe not only us from the world, but the spirit of our world itself from the solar system.
I have in my tentacle one particularly threatening communications intercept; hear the enemy in their own words.
Despite what you may have heard from certain circles of subversives, their own words betray them. They are not just here for the sake of curiosity!
K'Breel went on to confirm reports that the expected invader would indeed by powered by an advanced Pew-238 power source to extend its range and lifespan, K'Breel reminded all citizens that its expected capabilities would still be vastly inferior compared to their own recreational vehicles: "Our hot rods get a million klorbs to the frelpor; the blue planet ain't just across a minor tributary from Valles Marineris!"
When a junior intelligence analyst suggested that the intercepted transmission in question was merely referring to an animated cartoon that was more than thirty years old, there was a gelsac-shattering kaboom. (It was described as "lovely".)
A small robot dutifully removed the dust from the remains of the Speaker's disintegrating pistol and performed a short piece of traditional music while the Speaker exited the stage via an iris-shaped door after concluding his address with a brief "That is all, citizens."
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, spake thus:
"Our red planet still basks in the warm afterglow of its recent V-S Day celebrations. V-S day marked the most recent victory in our campaign, but there still remains work to be done. Despite its wounds, the last remaining mechanized invader from the blue world continues to mark our red soils with tracks left by its foul wheels of terror."
When a junior tech guru for the Sacdot news service meditated on the fact that the campaign against the second invader has taken 29 times longer than the initial campaign estimates, and that during this time, the invader had 1.2 times the distance from the plains to the peak of our world's tallest and most sacred volcanic peak, K'Breel, in his mercy, had the guru's gelsacs - as well as the gelsacs of 503 of the tech guru's podmates - rendered unavailable for service.
(Speaking ex-councillo, K'breel was heard to have murmured "Connection reset? Meditate on THIS!" while applying varnish to the freshly-pierced gelsac of a junior cache server administrator.)
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, spake thus:
When a rather plump intelligence analyst suggested that today's victory was merely the result of normal seasonal changes, and that there still remained the issue of the second - still operational - invader, and furthermore, that code names gleaned from transmissions from the blue planet indicated the imminent launch of an even more powerful foe with a power source not subject to seasonal weather changes, K'Breel ordered that the analyst's gelsacs be frozen solid, irradiated, and thrown into the Planetary Trench. "Curiosity," said K'Breel, "felled the fat."