Better yet.... feed the spammer catnip for a week or so beforehand, until he's sweating catnip. Then release the cats...
Disclaimer: Illegal or not, hypothetical or not, it still wouldn't be an adequate punishment...and while I wouldn't dream of committing such an act myself....oh, fuck, who am I kidding?! The hell with domestic cats, smear the spammer with raw meat and release the mountain lions! Then videotape it and sell the tapes!
Oh, I understand your first point. I was just trying to figure out....nay, maybe I was just thinking that they may be rational. Silly me:)
I'll have to read HV sometime. I've heard of it but never cared enough to read it. Thanks for the link.
Hmmm....I wonder... is it possible that the original conception "be fertile and populate the earth" and the sin of "birth control" originated in early myths as a way to explain why pregnancy was nearly always inevitable? It's possible also that the "sin" part was conceived as an excuse for subjugation women; a stretch, but...
Doing it again....postulating logic unto religious concepts. WTF, it's Friday and I've had a couple beers...:)
Hell, an allpowerful God could certainly grant children to childless loving couples easily. Instead it takes human medicine. (Of course religious loonies will argue that it's all part of "God's Plan" - the normal cop-out argument)
I used to install carpet for a living, both techniques are used. A lot of commercial carpet installs (the really thin stuff you see in high traffic areas in some businesses) don't use pad nor do they stretch the carpet, simply glue carpet to floor.
Most home installations use padding even over concrete.
How truly insane. Just the sort of thing I expect from them...I kind of wonder if they didn't get a hold of a Quality Assurance report on condoms or something and spin the occasional defective statistics.
In my original statement I was thinking about how the Vatican IIRC back in the 80s somewhat reversed their position on birth control; my memory is pretty fuzzy on it now, as I haven't cared to pay attention to what Catholics expound for nearly twenty years:)
I'm off to work, but feel free to respond...that was interesting.
Come on, now. Most of the lowlevel people in any filmmaking venture are either temps or local hires (and consider! how much of many movies are filmed overseas; LOTR comes to mind). How does pirating cut into their hiring when they are necessary to production of the movie in the first place? It'd be more accurate to say that the advances in CGI are contributing to fewer hiring of extras! Maybe CGI characters should be banned, neh?
The explosion in film piracy is a market force.
Only overseas - here it's not quite the huge profitable market that it is in say, Bangkok street markets; at least if you are thinking in terms of profits made by pirates. People who share movies are not profiting by their sharing - if I invite a couple dozen people to my house to watch a movie, thereby sharing it, does that make me a market force? Should I be prosecuted for it?
If people who download those movies (expending tons of time and bandwidth) are contributing to the "market force" in the movie industry, perhaps the movie industry (and much more so the music industry!) should start listening to the demographic they are aiming at...
That particular quote (your sig) pisses me off almost as much the Bush quote regarding athiests and patriotism.
Both have me contemplating the old adage about the Blind leading the Blind....around in circles.
Heh.:)
Fucking A Right, they should pay for airtime. The neat irony about TV ads regarding this is... Tivo *grin*; or, more simply, the channel switch on the remote...or the Off button, which I exercise quite a bit.
Glanced at this article while on work break this afternoon, and I had exactly the same thought as you did.:)
Which IMO just makes Valenti look even more foolish, in my eyes. He's not willing to take the time to listen to those who understand that there is no such thing as an encryption format in widely and publically distributed media that cannot and will not eventually be broken. He trusted a company which essentially screwed him (whether or not that company's programmers understood that is really irrelevant; he still got taken, heh *grin* Good)
The old adage, "A fool and his money..." certainly applies here...although remembering some of his comments at certain public Hollywood events last year, I'd amend that to say "A greedy fool..."
The RIAA isn't making enough money off of these settlements to make it worth it. They're doing this for publicity; so when they go to their congresscritters and demand stricter laws/death penalties for these filesharers/pirates/terrorists, they can say "But, look, we tried to pursue them, we filed hundreds of lawsuits, and it didn't stop piracy, so we need laws requiring MS^H^H DRM on every new computer, to protect that business that brought you all this great music! Help help!"
The RIAA's lawyers have to know that eventually one of these cases will be challenged and beaten in such a way that will cripple their ability to file any more like them. What they are doing is no different from the FUD tactics that SCO is using. It's public PR that really counts, here. It's Mob tactics gone semi-legit.
Looks like it's backlashing on them at least to some extent, tho - there are whole legions of law firms taking up the cases against them.:)
Hey, I didn't say that that can look any farther ahead than the next dime; just that they're damnably clever and connected...
Excellent points, but let me respond to a couple of them:
On the other hand, hindsight is 20/20--it is quite likely that staying on was the best decision given the information available at the time.
Given the stubbornness it takes to start a project such as he did, does it surprise you that he stuck it out longer than he should have?:) My grandfolks used to have a saying; "There's stubbornness and then there's bloody stubbornness" - and to be honest, it's the bloody stubborn types that tend to accomplish the most - and make the most enemies.
As an administrator, drobbins had his faults, and they were starting to wear on the project. While a committee is not as focused as an individual, committees scale better. It isn't the end of the line for gentoo, just another step.
Any administrator is going to piss off some fraction of the people they are administrating. *grin*
I'm not so sure about committees. A committee without a strong leader who can cut thru the bullshit in disagreements will not survive; it will fragment or become useless.
I don't think this is the end of Gentoo either. I am almost willing to bet, however, that we see another fork within six months. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing - often I think that any project that *doesn't* get forked may be becoming monolithic and stagnant; and Gentoo is a powerful enough concept that it perhaps *should* be forked in a way similar to the *BSDs so that the various niches it can fill get the best the community can deliver.
In any case, Gentoo is the dist I will continue to use, no matter where it goes...
Those who are running the project are often "disconnected" because they get loaded down with so many responsibilities that are not directly connected with the users/developers that they cannot respond directly anymore.
IMO, Theo's biggest failure is in NOT disconnecting himself with the day to day details. I don't know if it explains his attitude, but it certainly may contribute to it.
IFO suspect that Daniel is leaving the project because it's become such a burden to him that he no longer can spend any time doing anything else. Now, if he'd quit during the early days, a couple years ago, yeah, I'd have a beef with that. But he stuck it out, and now he's turning it over to other people whom he trusts so he can go on to things that are just as important (or maybe more so) to him.
Perhaps he's a PITA to deal with, for you, because you don't realize that he's overloaded. I'm not in his position, but I am in one that is similar (if perpendicular) and I can understand quite well why he's done this.
No offense, but there's a limit to how much one can take before you want to say "fuck this, there's other things I want to do". I reached my limit in that respect several times in the last 18 years in various jobs. Can you say the same?
I'm older than Daniel, I don't have a family, but I've been in that situation enough that I understand why he's doing this. The lesson that Theo hasn't learned is that when you start burning out you should walk away and hand the reins to people you trust, rather than sticking it out and pissing people off.
Sorry for the rant, and maybe I'm wrong but....it had to be said.
The best damned linux forums out there for non-techies, half-techies, and anyone who uses Gentoo, or Linux, for that matter. Let's hope that the new arrangement can keep those forums operating.
That said, isn't what they are keeping is essentially the trademark to the name? Gentoo can still be forked, if necessary, right? ( I don't think it will be necessary, but given the recent XFree mess, one never knows) - however, the great loss would be the forums.
Yes, I run Gentoo - all my boxes do, and will, for the foreseeable future. The reason for that is that in addition to giving me the most control over how I build them, Gentoo is by far the easiest Build From Scratch setup I've encountered yet. I like to know what's in my systems, like to sourcebuild them, yet I don't want to have to keep hundreds of pages of notes on how to do so. Gentoo fills that need more than anything else has so far.
FYI, I'm not a n00b, nor a guru, I fall in between.
Good luck, Daniel, in whatever you do!... and.... thanks. More thanks than I could ever really convey.
SB
Re:My Quest is for an old D&D-themed book... h
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 1
Doh, I should have dropped the spoiler in that first paragraph. Sorry:)
Stupid me.
No gold star for shadowbearer tonite:(*
SB
Re:My Quest is for an old D&D-themed book... h
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 1
Weird coincidence that I read that right now; I recently found Rosenberg's compilation of the first three Guardians of the Flame books in the local library (a bit careworn, it is:); haven't read the series since the fourth, and decided to pick up on them again. I bought the first three books way back when; in the fourth book he 'apparently' killed off the hero (Karl Cullinane); at that point I was into a lot of other things and lost the series, partially because I thought he was ending it. Silly me:)
However, Joel has written quite a few more books in that series. (Wow). You can find a list at the unofficial fan site here. Quite good, even if he has stretched the storyline out a little much, but to someone looking for a great series of fantasy work based loosely off of D&D, they are worth looking into. You can request the books in the series at most libraries if you'd care to sample (even in my rural hamburg I can get them all thru interlibrary loan); I would suggest starting with the original books, however, he builds quite a history, and all the books from the first one are good, and pretty realistic.
Joel seems to be one of the popular-unpopular fantasy writers these days. I rarely see him on the store bookshelf, but he has quite a following. You can also find some chapters of his latest book in the GotF series on Baen's website here.
Enjoy. He's not traditional, but if you are/were into D&D, they can capture you quite effectively.:)
SB
Re:D&D gave me a way out
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 1
I still have all my D&D stuff. It's worth over $3000 in cover price, but I think in actual current value, maybe $600 (and only because I have some first edition stuff, like the "Deities and Demigods" with Melnebonie and Cthulhu mythos in it). I can't bear to part with it because I feel I owe it so much, it's like an old friend... in several boxes... in a closet.
Don't ever part with it, either. You may never play again, but you'll miss it like a old friend.
When I went away to college 18 years ago I gave my dusty D&D books, notes, and whatnot to my brother, because he'd expressed an interest. Stupidest thing I ever did.
I've played little since then, but I'd sure like to have it around, if for no other reason than to look back at good times and remember what it was like to have the leisure time to escape once in a while;)
Changes in rainfall patterns; increased frequency and magnitude of storms; local changes in climate patterns, wider swings in local climate.
We are already seeing a lot of that happening; the major downside of this debate is that it is crippling the preparations we could be making for *ANY* type of climate change.
We can't make any real difference in terms of emissions - that's a decades+ commitment - but we can be making a difference in preparedness of the average ppl - but we could at least prepare for it. Burying our heads in the sand because it's not "proven" is not going to help things - and the preparations we could be doing will help protect us against other types of disasters, be they manmade or not.
The basic idiocy of political necessity is going to kill the human race off. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
Slashdot Mirror
Better yet.... feed the spammer catnip for a week or so beforehand, until he's sweating catnip. Then release the cats...
Disclaimer: Illegal or not, hypothetical or not, it still wouldn't be an adequate punishment...and while I wouldn't dream of committing such an act myself....oh, fuck, who am I kidding?! The hell with domestic cats, smear the spammer with raw meat and release the mountain lions! Then videotape it and sell the tapes!
3.Profit!
SB
Spammer: I'll sue! You've cost me my business!
Cat: Heh. So what? [ starts licking his ass ]
That'll be SCO's next business venture...after all, they're already experienced, neh?
SB
Also, anyone who "purchases" this and starts using the network is likely to get caught up in the sweep. Not that I'd feel all that sorry for them...
SB
Oh, I understand your first point. I was just trying to figure out....nay, maybe I was just thinking that they may be rational. Silly me :)
:)
I'll have to read HV sometime. I've heard of it but never cared enough to read it. Thanks for the link.
Hmmm....I wonder... is it possible that the original conception "be fertile and populate the earth" and the sin of "birth control" originated in early myths as a way to explain why pregnancy was nearly always inevitable? It's possible also that the "sin" part was conceived as an excuse for subjugation women; a stretch, but...
Doing it again....postulating logic unto religious concepts. WTF, it's Friday and I've had a couple beers...
Hell, an allpowerful God could certainly grant children to childless loving couples easily. Instead it takes human medicine. (Of course religious loonies will argue that it's all part of "God's Plan" - the normal cop-out argument)
Cheers!
SB
I used to install carpet for a living, both techniques are used. A lot of commercial carpet installs (the really thin stuff you see in high traffic areas in some businesses) don't use pad nor do they stretch the carpet, simply glue carpet to floor.
Most home installations use padding even over concrete.
Back to lunch...
SB
How truly insane. Just the sort of thing I expect from them...I kind of wonder if they didn't get a hold of a Quality Assurance report on condoms or something and spin the occasional defective statistics.
:)
In my original statement I was thinking about how the Vatican IIRC back in the 80s somewhat reversed their position on birth control; my memory is pretty fuzzy on it now, as I haven't cared to pay attention to what Catholics expound for nearly twenty years
I'm off to work, but feel free to respond...that was interesting.
Cheers
SB
You're not serious, are you?. Got a link to their announcement?
That'd be pretty funny....
SB
Holy Mackeraloni. I hereby bequeath my mod points in this thread to you
That's more detail than I remember seeing even in history of astro class in college. Any modern book(s) you can point me to?
Cheers!
SB
Come on, now. Most of the lowlevel people in any filmmaking venture are either temps or local hires (and consider! how much of many movies are filmed overseas; LOTR comes to mind). How does pirating cut into their hiring when they are necessary to production of the movie in the first place? It'd be more accurate to say that the advances in CGI are contributing to fewer hiring of extras! Maybe CGI characters should be banned, neh?
The explosion in film piracy is a market force.
Only overseas - here it's not quite the huge profitable market that it is in say, Bangkok street markets; at least if you are thinking in terms of profits made by pirates. People who share movies are not profiting by their sharing - if I invite a couple dozen people to my house to watch a movie, thereby sharing it, does that make me a market force? Should I be prosecuted for it?
If people who download those movies (expending tons of time and bandwidth) are contributing to the "market force" in the movie industry, perhaps the movie industry (and much more so the music industry!) should start listening to the demographic they are aiming at...
SB
That particular quote (your sig) pisses me off almost as much the Bush quote regarding athiests and patriotism.
:)
Both have me contemplating the old adage about the Blind leading the Blind....around in circles.
Heh.
Fucking A Right, they should pay for airtime. The neat irony about TV ads regarding this is... Tivo *grin*; or, more simply, the channel switch on the remote...or the Off button, which I exercise quite a bit.
SB
How far we have fallen...
SB
Glanced at this article while on work break this afternoon, and I had exactly the same thought as you did. :)
Which IMO just makes Valenti look even more foolish, in my eyes. He's not willing to take the time to listen to those who understand that there is no such thing as an encryption format in widely and publically distributed media that cannot and will not eventually be broken. He trusted a company which essentially screwed him (whether or not that company's programmers understood that is really irrelevant; he still got taken, heh *grin* Good)
The old adage, "A fool and his money..." certainly applies here...although remembering some of his comments at certain public Hollywood events last year, I'd amend that to say "A greedy fool..."
Cheers!
SB
But... you're missing the big picture.
The RIAA isn't making enough money off of these settlements to make it worth it. They're doing this for publicity; so when they go to their congresscritters and demand stricter laws/death penalties for these filesharers/pirates/terrorists, they can say "But, look, we tried to pursue them, we filed hundreds of lawsuits, and it didn't stop piracy, so we need laws requiring MS^H^H DRM on every new computer, to protect that business that brought you all this great music! Help help!"
The RIAA's lawyers have to know that eventually one of these cases will be challenged and beaten in such a way that will cripple their ability to file any more like them. What they are doing is no different from the FUD tactics that SCO is using. It's public PR that really counts, here. It's Mob tactics gone semi-legit.
Looks like it's backlashing on them at least to some extent, tho - there are whole legions of law firms taking up the cases against them.
Hey, I didn't say that that can look any farther ahead than the next dime; just that they're damnably clever and connected...
Bastards.
SB
Excellent points, but let me respond to a couple of them:
On the other hand, hindsight is 20/20--it is quite likely that staying on was the best decision given the information available at the time.
Given the stubbornness it takes to start a project such as he did, does it surprise you that he stuck it out longer than he should have?
As an administrator, drobbins had his faults, and they were starting to wear on the project. While a committee is not as focused as an individual, committees scale better. It isn't the end of the line for gentoo, just another step.
Any administrator is going to piss off some fraction of the people they are administrating. *grin*
I'm not so sure about committees. A committee without a strong leader who can cut thru the bullshit in disagreements will not survive; it will fragment or become useless.
I don't think this is the end of Gentoo either. I am almost willing to bet, however, that we see another fork within six months. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing - often I think that any project that *doesn't* get forked may be becoming monolithic and stagnant; and Gentoo is a powerful enough concept that it perhaps *should* be forked in a way similar to the *BSDs so that the various niches it can fill get the best the community can deliver.
In any case, Gentoo is the dist I will continue to use, no matter where it goes...
Cheers!
SB
Those who are running the project are often "disconnected" because they get loaded down with so many responsibilities that are not directly connected with the users/developers that they cannot respond directly anymore.
....it had to be said.
IMO, Theo's biggest failure is in NOT disconnecting himself with the day to day details. I don't know if it explains his attitude, but it certainly may contribute to it.
IFO suspect that Daniel is leaving the project because it's become such a burden to him that he no longer can spend any time doing anything else. Now, if he'd quit during the early days, a couple years ago, yeah, I'd have a beef with that. But he stuck it out, and now he's turning it over to other people whom he trusts so he can go on to things that are just as important (or maybe more so) to him.
Perhaps he's a PITA to deal with, for you, because you don't realize that he's overloaded. I'm not in his position, but I am in one that is similar (if perpendicular) and I can understand quite well why he's done this.
No offense, but there's a limit to how much one can take before you want to say "fuck this, there's other things I want to do". I reached my limit in that respect several times in the last 18 years in various jobs. Can you say the same?
I'm older than Daniel, I don't have a family, but I've been in that situation enough that I understand why he's doing this. The lesson that Theo hasn't learned is that when you start burning out you should walk away and hand the reins to people you trust, rather than sticking it out and pissing people off.
Sorry for the rant, and maybe I'm wrong but
SB
munbling incomprehensible things about "precompiled" this or that...
:)
You misspelled GRP
SB
The best damned linux forums out there for non-techies, half-techies, and anyone who uses Gentoo, or Linux, for that matter. Let's hope that the new arrangement can keep those forums operating.
That said, isn't what they are keeping is essentially the trademark to the name? Gentoo can still be forked, if necessary, right? ( I don't think it will be necessary, but given the recent XFree mess, one never knows) - however, the great loss would be the forums.
Yes, I run Gentoo - all my boxes do, and will, for the foreseeable future. The reason for that is that in addition to giving me the most control over how I build them, Gentoo is by far the easiest Build From Scratch setup I've encountered yet. I like to know what's in my systems, like to sourcebuild them, yet I don't want to have to keep hundreds of pages of notes on how to do so. Gentoo fills that need more than anything else has so far.
FYI, I'm not a n00b, nor a guru, I fall in between.
Good luck, Daniel, in whatever you do!
SB
Doh, I should have dropped the spoiler in that first paragraph. Sorry :)
:(*
Stupid me.
No gold star for shadowbearer tonite
SB
Weird coincidence that I read that right now; I recently found Rosenberg's compilation of the first three Guardians of the Flame books in the local library (a bit careworn, it is :); haven't read the series since the fourth, and decided to pick up on them again. I bought the first three books way back when; in the fourth book he 'apparently' killed off the hero (Karl Cullinane); at that point I was into a lot of other things and lost the series, partially because I thought he was ending it. Silly me :)
.
:)
However, Joel has written quite a few more books in that series. (Wow). You can find a list at the unofficial fan site here. Quite good, even if he has stretched the storyline out a little much, but to someone looking for a great series of fantasy work based loosely off of D&D, they are worth looking into. You can request the books in the series at most libraries if you'd care to sample (even in my rural hamburg I can get them all thru interlibrary loan); I would suggest starting with the original books, however, he builds quite a history, and all the books from the first one are good, and pretty realistic.
Joel seems to be one of the popular-unpopular fantasy writers these days. I rarely see him on the store bookshelf, but he has quite a following. You can also find some chapters of his latest book in the GotF series on Baen's website here
Enjoy. He's not traditional, but if you are/were into D&D, they can capture you quite effectively.
SB
I still have all my D&D stuff. It's worth over $3000 in cover price, but I think in actual current value, maybe $600 (and only because I have some first edition stuff, like the "Deities and Demigods" with Melnebonie and Cthulhu mythos in it). I can't bear to part with it because I feel I owe it so much, it's like an old friend ... in several boxes ... in a closet.
;)
Don't ever part with it, either. You may never play again, but you'll miss it like a old friend.
When I went away to college 18 years ago I gave my dusty D&D books, notes, and whatnot to my brother, because he'd expressed an interest. Stupidest thing I ever did.
I've played little since then, but I'd sure like to have it around, if for no other reason than to look back at good times and remember what it was like to have the leisure time to escape once in a while
SB
Changes in rainfall patterns; increased frequency and magnitude of storms; local changes in climate patterns, wider swings in local climate.
We are already seeing a lot of that happening; the major downside of this debate is that it is crippling the preparations we could be making for *ANY* type of climate change.
We can't make any real difference in terms of emissions - that's a decades+ commitment - but we can be making a difference in preparedness of the average ppl - but we could at least prepare for it. Burying our heads in the sand because it's not "proven" is not going to help things - and the preparations we could be doing will help protect us against other types of disasters, be they manmade or not.
The basic idiocy of political necessity is going to kill the human race off. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
SB
...
5) Prophet.
No, it's not funny. It's all too damned likely.
Shock treatment. Well, fuckit, it's worth a try...
SB
Thus we see the limitations of 30 second soundbite news...
and also the limits of information overload...
SB
Smashing the current fictions our economy operates under might not be a bad thing.
In the short term; it'd hurt. In the long term...
SB