> This measure is supported by the RIAA but opposed by the tech industry at large. Why does Congress let the tail wag the dog when it comes to copyright legislation? Does Intel just not give enough money to politicians?
"Because snorting a line of cocaine between a pair of flesh lumps is a lot more fun when they're Titney's Spears, rather than Andy's Grove."
> Funny, I remember Orrin Hatch was actually a SUPPORTER of the original P2P Napster, to the extent that he actually put some of his own amateur works on there. > >
See, for instance here > >
Why the change of heart? I guess sticking to one's original convictions is too much to ask.
And that's the problem with Hatch. He's not an honest politician. And yes, there is such a thing.
An honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought.
> Or maybe they already have filled up the galaxy and are just tiptoeing around our little corner of the universe saying, "Shh, we don't want to bother the primitive monkey-people."
Which reminds me. My SETI client just emitted a weird twinkling sound like an aardvark being pressed through a screen door, and a voice that sounded kinda like "The avalance has already started. It is too late for pebbles to vote." Then it rambled on a bit about teaching us "to fight legends" while playing the Star Wars Imperial March as performed by someone using ostrich feathers and a xylophone.
> > After the technology had earned the trust of once highly skeptical customers, an amazing transformation began to take place: Face-to-face business became face-to-interface, and it changed the way people consumed. > >
Ironically, the same thing happened with sex around the same time.
So either the story of the erect Macaque is a dupe, or that a crippled monkey invented the ATM. There's a Diebold alpha-male-selection machine joke in there too, I'll bet!
> The "internment camp", oops, I mean, "free speech zone", which is a fenced-in pen topped with barbed wire. Yeah, great idea- let's put right-wing nutjobs(Christian Coalition) in with extreme left fruitcakes into a TINY little box, with ONE entrance and ONE exit.
Personally, I think this is where the WiFi laptops belong. With webcams. And live pay-per-view feeds. And a betting pool. Oh yeah:)
"Two men enter! One man leaves! Who run Freedomtown? Master Blaster run Freedomtown!"
> Isn't this a bit moronic? Find things that make economies more efficient and help spread information and tax them? It's not like wireless costs the government anything to allow.
You forget the attitude of the bureaucrat towards anything that "makes an economy more efficient" or "helps spread information". First, a flush of raw trembling fear. Then apply The Rules:
If it doesn't move, tax it.
If it moves, regulate it until it stops moving. Then tax it.
Remember, anything not nailed down belongs to the government. Anything that can be pried loose by a legislative body is not nailed down.
And my "D'oh" was directed at myself for failing to describe the context of the speech in my earlier post. Double d'oh for making the target of first "D'oh" ambiguous.:)
D'oh. The context was the income tax cuts. The audience was wealthy Democrats, who also benefited from the cuts. The final sentence was perhaps a little more honest than Hillary intended: it goes directly to the core of the Democratic party, that that it's OK to "take things" from people "for the common good". Some animals are more equal than others 'n' all that:)
> > It's really not worth arguing about on slashdot, or how much evidence you might have to the contrary (or how much evidence you have showing many democrats actually fit that description), you're not going to change any minds here. > >
Nope, but it sure is a fun way to pass the time..:D
On that, we agree! Cheers:)
> > It goes right along with all republicans being: racist, cheap, uncaring, greedy, selfish, white, good old boy, stupid, misled, uniformed sheep.
> >
And Democrats being liberal tree hugging, latee drinking, elite, volvo driving, tax and spending, etc. Don't try to imply that only Democrats do the name calling.
Besides, I'll bet you don't drive a volvo. And I'm not a good-ol-boy, why, I've never even seen the Appalacians!
> You're right, 'give' and 'take' are not synonyms, and when you apply them to the right subjects and objects, the phrases make sense. Logically, me 'giving' is the same thing as the government 'taking'.
*blink*
Maybe I'm just weird, but to me, "giving" involves me choosing to give money away, under no threat of violence or forcible confinment, and "taking" involves precisely the opposite.
Have you ever been mugged, blackmailed, or had funds extorted from you? If so, would you consider it "logical" to claim a tax deduction as a "charitable donation" on the funds taken from you?
> If you want to boil it down to simple terms, Republicans would rather keep all of their money, while Democrats don't mind giving up a bit to help the less fortunate.
We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going
to cut that short and NOT give it to you. We're going to take things away
from you on behalf of the common good.
- Hillary Clinton
Last time I checked, "give" and "take" were not synonyms. Not even in Newspeak.
> It means that the campaign changed the way campaigning will be done. If you RTFA (yeah, I know), the Internet is becoming a way of connecting more personally, of allowing Joe Blow to participate in the campaign; of getting people to communicate with their leaders and potential leaders, rather than just listening to them.
And because the candidate lost, and because his Party has its leaders lined up until 2012 (Kerry '04. If he wins, Kerry-08, Clinton-12. If he loses, Clinton-08, Clinton-12), I'd really like to know how the fuck Trippi came to this conclusion. Because despite his name, I don't see any LSD crystals encrusting his lips.
> kudos on the obscure (?) reference. Forced me to learn. =)
Yeah, the papers are fascinating. There was a/. thread on it a year or two ago, so we've come full circle.
Some of the concept art was amazing. The problem's highly nontrivial, because no matter how ominous you make the thing look, sooner or later somebody's going to get curious. ("Yeah, yeah, King Tut's curse on the Pyramids, what-ever! Let's dig and see what these guys were burying out here!")
OTOH, by the time a society's advanced enough to start digging for the sake of archaeology instead of grave-robbing, they're hopefully within a century or two of being able to measure the danger for themselves. The tricky part is the preceding few centuries, during which technology's good enough to "substantially disturb", but not good enough to understand why everyone within a few miles of the "grave-robbing dig" is getting sick.
<evilbastard> I wonder how long a bunch of geeks could collectively delay the rebooting of civilization by adding the following to our wills: "To future generations, I bequeath my spite! Please inscribe the following message on my tombstone, and seal a second copy inscribed on metal/plastic within my coffin..."
</evilbastard>
"<sarcasm>Me tooo. I don't understand these people who use <bold>XML</bold>! It does not add any value to <italics>traditional</italics> ASCII. People are so <red>bloody</red> ignorant. XML is so <dripping>blase</dripping>!!!!</sarcasm>"
That's not a sarcastic response about XML. This is a sarcastic response about XML!
<XML> <POSTING type=SLASHDOT> <PARAGRAPH> <SENTENCE> <WORD type=ACRONYM> <CHARACTER set=ASCII>
W </CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ASCII>
T </CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ASCII>
F </CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ASCII> </WORD> <PUNCTUATION_MARK type=WORD_SEPARATOR>
%20 </PUNCTUATION_MARK> <WORD type=PRONOUN> </CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ISO-31337>
D </CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ISO-31337>
0 </CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ISO-31337>
0 </CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ISO-31337>
D </CHARACTER></WORD> <PUNCTUATION_MARK type=INTERROGATIVE> ? </PUNCTUATION_MARK> </SEN TENCE> </PARAGRAPH> </POSTING> </XML>
> 10,000 years from now, when we are hopefully spread across the galaxy, what historial event will stand out? A revolution in country X, a war in country Y? The raize and fall of empire Z? No, it will be the first steps off our home planet.
I wish I could share your optimism.
My bet? Ten thousand years from now, the most important historical event will be when our descendants understand the meaning behind the following mysterious inscription:
This is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us.
We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us.
This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location. It increases towards a center.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place
physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
On the bright side, at least they'll have a ready supply of refined materials with which to work. Perhaps they'll put them to better use than we will.
> >...And in an apparent act of copycat terrorism, the Polish Terrorist Organization has hijacked the Goodyear blimp. They have been bouncing off buildings in downtown Manhatten for the past 2 hours. >
>Newsflash!
>The Belgian Terrorist Organization just attacked the French Eiffel Tower on a ultraglide.
>
One person is reported to be seriously injured.
...but President Chirac is expected to be released from the hospital tomorrow, having waved a white flag so furiously he broke his right arm in three places. *rimshot*
> But on the other hand, it wouldn't make sense for them to blow all of their reserves on dividends and buybacks.
If, however, you're not sure whether President Bush will continue to tax long-term capital gains and qualified dividends at 15%, or President Kerry will demand that Congress undo the tax cuts, resulting in marginal tax rates on long-term capital gains of 20%, and all dividents at up to 39%, blowing some of those reserves on one-time dividends and buybacks over the next 12 months is a pretty good idea.
Google for "special dividends", and you'll see that a lot of companies are doing this sort of thing (one-time "special" dividends of 5-10%, rather than merely raising their dividend by a few cents per share indefinitely) these days. You'll also notice that the trend started in the past six months -- right about the time people realized that the election is shaping up to be a statistical dead heat.
> I haven't seen such great "duckspeak" since I gm'd "Paranoia" for a group of suitable victims. I had a couple pages of the stuff for some NPC's to yell at the players whenever they did something stupid. Took me a long time to get it right.
Was wondering where you'd picked it up from. I grew up on Paranoia too, first as a player, and then as a GM. The hardest part for my obligatory "1984" Paranoia campaign was coming up with Newspeak equivalents for "conspiracy" or "because" - because both Citizen and Computer are always honest and trustworthy, and the Computer doesn't have to explain "reasons" for its orders, and Troubleshooters who want to live very long should know better than to ask "why":)
/plays Steve Jackson card.
Doubleplusgood misdirection from operation devilsun! Game from Stevecorp takes hit for being "manual for cybercrime" to ensure fullwise attendeflect bb/minitrue from Paranoia, which is real prepschool text for 21cen!:)
> Of course I could have responded to his last post by saying that "freedom is a dish best served cold", but that would be trolling.;)
('Scuse me. That's not a troll.)
"Yes, freedom is a dish best served cold. What's the temperature in Gitmo these days? And the temperature in - wait, it's probably hotter in Boston and NYC than it is in Gitmo right now.
But just wait'll November and see who's freezing their collective ass off in glorious freedom! Hah! USA! USA! USA!"
> Slashdot is so fullwise duckspeak and oldthought. This space is doubleplusungood even for the Pornosec, it's such prolefeed. This article isn't even goodsource for two-minute-hate, but should be enough for the ThinkPol to identify crimethinkers.
ORGON! 156675-demo9-orgon!
Orgon post doubleplusungood refs project "slashdot honeypot". Project "slashdot honeypot" classified overlevel orgon-authorization. Suggestion of orgon post verging crimethink - minrecommend orgon unpost, maxrecommend orgon unperson.
> Instead, ask the first government whistle-blower who is caught and vanished while trying to meet a reporter, because the FBI could use face-recognition software and a vast network of cameras to find him.
Never mind the logistics of "how" one would question your hypothetical whistleblower, after said vanishing, I'm still stuck on "why".
If a threat to national security is noticed by the system, and the threat is subsequently disappeared, it's not like the threat really existed in the first place. There's nobody to question, and therefore nobody was harmed. Q.E.D.
> To this day, no other rapper has been able to match him in the complexity of his or her rhymes.
Street music? Streets are just roads, right?
Well from there on down it just wasn't real pretty
It was hairpin county and switchback city
One of 'em looked like a can full of worms
Another one looked like malaria germs
Right in the middle of the whole damn show
Was a real nice tunnel now wouldn't you know
Sign says clearance to the twelve foot line
But them chickens was stacked to thirteen nine
Well we shot that tunnel at a hundred an' ten
Like gas through a funnel an' eggs through a hen
An' we took that top row of chickens off
Slicker 'n the scum off a Louisiana swamp
Went down an' around an' around an' down
An' we run outta ground at the edge of town
An' bashed on into the side of a feed store...
For an even better mindfuck, take advantage of the fact that most rap lyrics are in iambic pentameter. Start a backbeat, put it on loop, and see how far you can get through Macbeth (or any other Shakespearian play) before you collapse in hysterics.
Slashdot Mirror
"Because snorting a line of cocaine between a pair of flesh lumps is a lot more fun when they're Titney's Spears, rather than Andy's Grove."
>
> See, for instance here
>
> Why the change of heart? I guess sticking to one's original convictions is too much to ask.
And that's the problem with Hatch. He's not an honest politician. And yes, there is such a thing.
An honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought.
Which reminds me. My SETI client just emitted a weird twinkling sound like an aardvark being pressed through a screen door, and a voice that sounded kinda like "The avalance has already started. It is too late for pebbles to vote." Then it rambled on a bit about teaching us "to fight legends" while playing the Star Wars Imperial March as performed by someone using ostrich feathers and a xylophone.
So I think we're safe. For now. What do you want?
>
> Ironically, the same thing happened with sex around the same time.
So either the story of the erect Macaque is a dupe, or that a crippled monkey invented the ATM. There's a Diebold alpha-male-selection machine joke in there too, I'll bet!
Personally, I think this is where the WiFi laptops belong. With webcams. And live pay-per-view feeds. And a betting pool. Oh yeah :)
"Two men enter! One man leaves! Who run Freedomtown? Master Blaster run Freedomtown!"
You forget the attitude of the bureaucrat towards anything that "makes an economy more efficient" or "helps spread information". First, a flush of raw trembling fear. Then apply The Rules:
If it doesn't move, tax it.
If it moves, regulate it until it stops moving.
Then tax it.
Remember, anything not nailed down belongs to the government. Anything that can be pried loose by a legislative body is not nailed down.
And my "D'oh" was directed at myself for failing to describe the context of the speech in my earlier post. Double d'oh for making the target of first "D'oh" ambiguous. :)
D'oh. The context was the income tax cuts. The audience was wealthy Democrats, who also benefited from the cuts. The final sentence was perhaps a little more honest than Hillary intended: it goes directly to the core of the Democratic party, that that it's OK to "take things" from people "for the common good". Some animals are more equal than others 'n' all that :)
>
> Nope, but it sure is a fun way to pass the time..
On that, we agree! Cheers :)
> > It goes right along with all republicans being: racist, cheap, uncaring, greedy, selfish, white, good old boy, stupid, misled, uniformed sheep.
>
> And Democrats being liberal tree hugging, latee drinking, elite, volvo driving, tax and spending, etc. Don't try to imply that only Democrats do the name calling.
Besides, I'll bet you don't drive a volvo. And I'm not a good-ol-boy, why, I've never even seen the Appalacians!
*blink*
Maybe I'm just weird, but to me, "giving" involves me choosing to give money away, under no threat of violence or forcible confinment, and "taking" involves precisely the opposite.
Have you ever been mugged, blackmailed, or had funds extorted from you? If so, would you consider it "logical" to claim a tax deduction as a "charitable donation" on the funds taken from you?
Last time I checked, "give" and "take" were not synonyms. Not even in Newspeak.
And because the candidate lost, and because his Party has its leaders lined up until 2012 (Kerry '04. If he wins, Kerry-08, Clinton-12. If he loses, Clinton-08, Clinton-12), I'd really like to know how the fuck Trippi came to this conclusion. Because despite his name, I don't see any LSD crystals encrusting his lips.
"So where does the thinking happen? Where is the memory stored?"
"Globules of protein in the intestines of cows."
"Bullshit!"
"Yes, precisely! You're getting it!"
Yeah, the papers are fascinating. There was a /. thread on it a year or two ago, so we've come full circle.
Some of the concept art was amazing. The problem's highly nontrivial, because no matter how ominous you make the thing look, sooner or later somebody's going to get curious. ("Yeah, yeah, King Tut's curse on the Pyramids, what-ever! Let's dig and see what these guys were burying out here!")
OTOH, by the time a society's advanced enough to start digging for the sake of archaeology instead of grave-robbing, they're hopefully within a century or two of being able to measure the danger for themselves. The tricky part is the preceding few centuries, during which technology's good enough to "substantially disturb", but not good enough to understand why everyone within a few miles of the "grave-robbing dig" is getting sick.
<evilbastard> I wonder how long a bunch of geeks could collectively delay the rebooting of civilization by adding the following to our wills: "To future generations, I bequeath my spite! Please inscribe the following message on my tombstone, and seal a second copy inscribed on metal/plastic within my coffin..." </evilbastard>
The original poster wrote:
N TENCE>
"<sarcasm>Me tooo. I don't understand these people who use <bold>XML</bold>! It does not add any value to <italics>traditional</italics> ASCII. People are so <red>bloody</red> ignorant. XML is so <dripping>blase</dripping>!!!!</sarcasm>"
That's not a sarcastic response about XML. This is a sarcastic response about XML!
<XML>
<POSTING type=SLASHDOT>
<PARAGRAPH>
<SENTENCE>
<WORD type=ACRONYM>
<CHARACTER set=ASCII>
W
</CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ASCII>
T
</CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ASCII>
F
</CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ASCII>
</WORD>
<PUNCTUATION_MARK type=WORD_SEPARATOR>
%20
</PUNCTUATION_MARK>
<WORD type=PRONOUN>
</CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ISO-31337>
D
</CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ISO-31337>
0
</CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ISO-31337>
0
</CHARACTER><CHARACTER set=ISO-31337>
D
</CHARACTER></WORD>
<PUNCTUATION_MARK type=INTERROGATIVE>
?
</PUNCTUATION_MARK>
</SE
</PARAGRAPH>
</POSTING>
</XML>
I wish I could share your optimism.
My bet? Ten thousand years from now, the most important historical event will be when our descendants understand the meaning behind the following mysterious inscription:
On the bright side, at least they'll have a ready supply of refined materials with which to work. Perhaps they'll put them to better use than we will.
>
>Newsflash!
>The Belgian Terrorist Organization just attacked the French Eiffel Tower on a ultraglide.
> One person is reported to be seriously injured.
If, however, you're not sure whether President Bush will continue to tax long-term capital gains and qualified dividends at 15%, or President Kerry will demand that Congress undo the tax cuts, resulting in marginal tax rates on long-term capital gains of 20%, and all dividents at up to 39%, blowing some of those reserves on one-time dividends and buybacks over the next 12 months is a pretty good idea.
Google for "special dividends", and you'll see that a lot of companies are doing this sort of thing (one-time "special" dividends of 5-10%, rather than merely raising their dividend by a few cents per share indefinitely) these days. You'll also notice that the trend started in the past six months -- right about the time people realized that the election is shaping up to be a statistical dead heat.
You must surf... in Russian!
(In Soviet Russia, you must surf?)
Hey! That's GNU/Freedom to you, sir!
Was wondering where you'd picked it up from. I grew up on Paranoia too, first as a player, and then as a GM. The hardest part for my obligatory "1984" Paranoia campaign was coming up with Newspeak equivalents for "conspiracy" or "because" - because both Citizen and Computer are always honest and trustworthy, and the Computer doesn't have to explain "reasons" for its orders, and Troubleshooters who want to live very long should know better than to ask "why" :)
Doubleplusgood misdirection from operation devilsun! Game from Stevecorp takes hit for being "manual for cybercrime" to ensure fullwise attendeflect bb/minitrue from Paranoia, which is real prepschool text for 21cen! :)
('Scuse me. That's not a troll.)
"Yes, freedom is a dish best served cold. What's the temperature in Gitmo these days? And the temperature in - wait, it's probably hotter in Boston and NYC than it is in Gitmo right now.
But just wait'll November and see who's freezing their collective ass off in glorious freedom! Hah! USA! USA! USA!"
(Now that's a troll.)
ORGON! 156675-demo9-orgon!
Orgon post doubleplusungood refs project "slashdot honeypot". Project "slashdot honeypot" classified overlevel orgon-authorization. Suggestion of orgon post verging crimethink - minrecommend orgon unpost, maxrecommend orgon unperson.
Never mind the logistics of "how" one would question your hypothetical whistleblower, after said vanishing, I'm still stuck on "why".
If a threat to national security is noticed by the system, and the threat is subsequently disappeared, it's not like the threat really existed in the first place. There's nobody to question, and therefore nobody was harmed. Q.E.D.
Street music? Streets are just roads, right?
For an even better mindfuck, take advantage of the fact that most rap lyrics are in iambic pentameter. Start a backbeat, put it on loop, and see how far you can get through Macbeth (or any other Shakespearian play) before you collapse in hysterics.