It isn't so much that they would FAKE an intrusion. Why would they need to fake an intrusion when there must be crackers banging on their sites 24 hours a day?
More likely, once a particularly skilled group of crackers had already gained access, they'd simply let them continue on their merry way for three months and then announce, to everyone's horror, that these vile criminals have been plundering their IP, and use the case as evidence to support cracking the whip.
Does it make sense? Maybe, maybe not.
I'll tell you one thing, though -- it's absolutely true that admitting a security breach like this does seem completely out of character for MS. It's just downright eerie, actually. They clearly stand to gain from this in one way or another, or else you'd be seeing more typical spin coming out of Redmond.
Hey, cool! I think this is a better page anyway. Besides being Evil, B&N's site just plain old stinks. Anyway, I'll take a look!
If you're curious, BTW, there are lots of reasons to hate B&N... Spider Robinson, the mid-list sci-fi author, wrote a real nice piece a few years ago about how their marketing practices are destroying the market for mid-list authors. The commoditization of books that results from B&N's practices puts real pressure on books to be hits or misses without much room for steady but not high-volume sellers.
Plus, of course, the corporate colonialism that occurs in particular with B&N... books are low-margin and most towns don't support a whole bunch of bookstores in the first place. When a B&N moves in, though, they steamroll the local/independent booksellers, kill them and suck the profits out of the community and back to Corporate HQ.
As a natural part of this process, they also destroy the real book-lover's environment. B&N's are book warehouses, devoid of personality, charm and intimacy. The architecture is atrocious with no regard to sound issues and a patronizing, cloying attempt at making the store "cozy". There's no room for the individual quirks that make independent bookstores interesting, and no room for an individual merchant to "push" the books he's discovered. In this environment, a small cadre of B&N buyers choose which books become their "picks" - and given the near-monopoly power of this chain in many markets, these few people wield an inordinate amount of power over what we read, even down to indirectly (and sometimes directly) deciding which books get published.
And toss in the Wired article about bn.com that ran a few years back where it was shown pretty conclusively, I think, that the guys running the show over there are stupid, arrogant, evil fucks, and well, everything just adds up to a big pile of bad juju. I appreciate your changing the link, especially given that my post wasn't as polite as it probably should've been. Thanks!
For everyone who couldn't be there, I bring you the magic of the pants-cam via the chat application built-in to the pants-cam site. IP addresses deleted to protect the perverts in the audience... otherwise raw and uncensored, baby! This is about a half-dozen people at any given time commenting on the erratic performance and general blackness of the pants-cam, except towards the end when Alison (or someone) pulled it out and stuck her tongue out at us.
Good god, I REALLY can't believe I don't have anything better to do than this.
Connecting to www.pantscam.com:15127... connected.
i think/. has crashed another server;)
fun fun fun
anyone see anything?
show me some nekkid babes
Heed! Pants! Now!
cool... i see something
i can't believe i don't have anything better to do than this
show me nakedness
um... hello... it's pretty dark inside one's pants...
forecast calls for grey cloudy pants
bye bye
I seem to have misplaced my pants
how many of you came here from/.?
[raises hand]
probably all of us
yeah, probably a dumb question
nah, what's dumb is that we're actually HERE.
heh yeah, looking at a black blob, woohoo
say, my view of the pants is gone... anyone got pants right now?
this suck
no pants here
i see no nakedness
oh wait
i got the pants
hmmm its dark
the magic 8 ball page wasn't working for me, either =P
this sucks
i see movement
ooo! I got pants again, too.... ooooo sexxxy
wtf is this
im not sure what im looking at
where is the lense pointed?
oh yeah, they should make this a pay site....
lol
hmmm this nakedness is lacking
/list what else is here?
:q!
enjoy the pants everyone
yeah, i'm appalled at the lack of nudity here...
now why is this suposed to be cool again?
but if you use your imagine, it's actually kinda hot
imagination
i think
I think we need to add a flashlight to this equation
more like a brighter light or something...
whoa
nice
what is that
yeah what are we looking at??
what'd you see?
i see feet!
ahh theres something
i think..
i think im sticking out of a fly
woo-hoo! feet!
this is beyond wierd
i see pants
I had bad dreams about something like this once...
i can't wait until we ALL have pants-cams
i see brown pants and a foot
except rosanne barr... i don't want her to have a pants-cam
surprisingly un-slashdotted
seems to have froze
bring my nakedness back
slashdot effect?
ok where's the image
lol that's what i get
seems to be working pretty well considering the load
i swear i saw pussy 10 mins ago...
don't know about that
darn
whoa.
hmm thats this
what was that?
damnit, keeps going black
woah is that a breast?
is she moving us?
its a tease!!
she keeps moving it arond
maybe shes having sex
lol
hmmm there she is
WOAH!
there she is!
shes moving us
The Age old question "Where does this thing go?!?!"
ITS A GUY!
arrrghhh.....
put us back in your pants
better yet, put us in a hit chicks pants
hello.
with a flashlight...
this is about to get interesting
this is so strangely amusing
so bizzare
attendance is up
I'll never leave the house again.
Actually I was thinking "utterly wrong but fascinating"
that's a good phrase
I can't see a damn thing.
works for me
move damnit
What's the refresh rate set to?
for some reason I really, really want a pants-cam
-1
brings new meaning to touch it, touch my monkey?
eeeeeeeeeeew
mokeys... plural
damnit the pictures not updating
dang... offline maybe?
hey I never got a picture in the first place.
fucking a, fuck this
oh, dude, you missed out.
i want a refund
touch it, touch my monkey...
it was amazing!
yay more black
actually, this little java app is pretty darn cool.
was it good for you?
be even cooler if there was something to watch!!!
Methinks this should be patented.
ok, that's true, but still...
fuck this
Mothers everywhere will get one for their kids.
show's over, methinks
man.. looks like show over..
im going back to slashdot
Some people around these parts don't like Amazon, but I'll take Amazon any day over Barnes and Noble. And I'll take a good old-fashioned independent bookseller over either of them. But linking to B&N means I won't even go and look at your book.
That's just my opinion, and no, you're probably not shooting yourself in the foot by linking to B&N, but if I were in your position I'd link to somewhere else. At least, arguably, Amazon has a fairly reasonable position about holding dumb patents... Barnes & Noble is just plain old snarling evil on a stick.
Hmmm... so, it turns out US special forces didn't use chemical weapons, and hey, it turns out, maybe the CIA didn't import crack.
Oh, and then one reporter made her superiors - and pretty much the entire profession - look like dickheads, so they 86'd her.
So... anything on this list a retraction *against* the people in power? You ever see a retraction in the NYT that reads something like, "For the past 10 years, this news organization has neglected to mention the seriousness of the use of highly toxic depleted uranium shells by coalition forces during the Gulf War. These shells may or may not be causing, as we speak, untold ecological damage and human suffering, and frankly, because the people in charge of this lamebrain idea are still in power, we won't get around to winning our Pulitzer on this story until most of them are long retired or six feet under. Sorry. Hope this wasn't important to you."
Or how about: "This news organization has, for the past year, repeatedly characterized the WTO protests in Seattle last year as 'violent', blatantly insinuating that those dirty protesters were to blame, and blithely absolving the police of their rioting, abusive practices, and constitutional trampling. The fact is, there were tens of thousands of people out there trying to illuminate some important issues, and all we did was make them look like stupid, violent thugs. Sorry 'bout that."
Or: "We should never have made Ollie North look like some kind of hero. In truth, he was a lying, treasonous scumbag, he sold weapons to our worst enemies, and we should have strung him up like Wen Ho Lee. Dunno why we didn't. Just didn't feel like it, I guess."
Or: "Hey, as it turns out, KAL Flight 007 really WAS on a spy mission while carrying civilians. Huh. Imagine that, the government LIED to us. We're sorry, we must have had our heads up our collective ass."
Or: "As it turns out, George Bush Sr. had a mistress for many, many years, and we almost totally ignored it. Let's face it, she wasn't a little white-trash hottie like Jennifer Flowers... it just didn't play as well on camera, and it was a wee bit disingenous of us to go on and on and on about "character" while letting that sneaky motherfucker Bush completely off the hook."
Or: "Attention all readers: it's true that G. W. Bush is a complete moron. No, really, he's dumber than Quayle. But he's supposed to win this election, so we're going to keep it toned down a little until after he wins. We hope this doesn't inconvience anyone... and yeah, we're talking to you, Jay Leno."
Or: "The Gulf War was a sham. We're sorry we lied to you. Saddam's a nasty guy, all right, but he's OUR nasty guy, and the whole thing was a shameless play for regional power on behalf of the US economy. Oh, heck, never mind... it's too complex for you folks. Now go back to supporting those troops, people!"
and so on
and so on and so on...
They'll print retractions, all right. Just as long as it satifies their agenda. Good luck finding stuff in the mainstream media that doesn't...
I remember very clearly before Iraq invaded Kuwait seeing articles and news video that very clearly showed that the U.S. was tacitly encouraging Iraq to invade Kuwait. I remember at the time thinking, geez, that seems a little odd. And then the day Iraq went ahead and did it and Bush turned around and called Hussein a "Hitler" I was wondering what the hell was going on.
Just recently I saw a pretty good film that did a good job of putting together the whole scenario. We encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait in order to assert ourselves in the region, and we've been punishing the people of Iraq for 10 years now simply in order to maintain our dominant position in the area. Why? Because we're totally dependent on cheap oil.
The sanctions there do nothing but help keep Saddam Hussein in power while directly killing a lot of innocent people. It's a nasty proposition, but, logically, one that makes a sick sort of sense for the U.S. - if we didn't have cheap oil, we might very well see a similar kind of suffering here that we're currently inflicting on the people of Iraq. But it certainly goes to show who's the bully in the global schoolyard. Gee, makes ya wonder why some people in the Middle East might be a little pissed off, huh? Oh, that's right, we're the good guys, and they're just pissed off because they're a bunch of religious lunatics... that's right, thank you, CNN...
The funny thing is, this is all totally obvious to anyone who bothers to look into the situation. All of the evidence is in plain sight and the principles involved are barely even bothering to deny it. Madeline Albright even fessed up to a CBS camera crew. I don't remember the exact quote, but when asked about the needless suffering inflicted on Iraqi civilians by our sanctions, her reply was, basically, it's all worth it.
That footage, however, has been censored by CBS. They will not allow that quote to be shown anywhere at any time for any reason.
Even though all the cards are on the table in plain sight, the spin from the major media is unanimous. Americans were told "Saddam was a Hitler" and the media fell right in step. You'll never see the real, full story, with all its attendant complexities, in widespread print in this country. You'll never see the story that should have come out of the Gulf War: "For Fuck's Sake, Let's Work Like Crazy to Develop Alternative Energy Sources So We Can Stop Killing All These Innocent People Over Stupid Goddamn Oil". Nope, all you'll see are the same old easy lies. And who the hell are they accountable to? No one but whoever signs the paychecks.
And this is just one example. How many more are there, going all the way back? This is the way it's always been - the people with money and power write the news. They decide how history is written, they pick the agenda, and if it involves killing little people like you and me in order to advance their investments, then so be it. The internet is the first time that we have a chance to change those rules. It's the first time in history we don't have to accept the lies force-fed to us by those in power. We can educate ourselves and each other and leave behind the pervasive influence of the modern corporate media, the bastard mutated offspring of Hearst. OK, a little melodramatic, but c'mon...
And you're asking if we should hold online news to the same standard of integrity as those old, paid-for, toadying media dinosaurs?!?
Why, back in my day, we had 8k and cassette storage devices, and we LIKED it! We LOVED it! Sure, you had to burn your own EPROM every now and then, but who didn't back in those days? And who didn't love the POKE command?
Oh, yeah... you can keep your Vic20s and C64s... gimme a Commodore PET any day.
My dad still has a few of these at the old homestead. Got the first one when I was 7 or 8, a real step up from dad's homebuilt computer that used these funky routered wooden cards for storage. I wish I remembered more about that one. Good blinkenlights... impressive when I was 6, anyway.
Oh, sure, we got into Vics and 64s, too... my favorite machine was the Executive 64. That was a class act. Had some Sinclairs, Osbornes, and an Amiga for a little while before settling comfortably into the clone PCs.
But there's nothing quite like the first one... ours was the original 2001, with the chiclet keyboard and the built-in datasette.
Man, I'd love to get my hands on some of those great old PET cases...
If you recall, during the Reagan/Bush administration, the buildup was to make the military strong (I quote the 600 ship Navy and SDI).
Oh, yeah, that's right... the rest of the government shrank during that administration, it was just the military that grew. I don't know what I was thinking.
The percieved strength of our military forced the Soviet Union to overextend themselves. Eventually, communism in the SU failed and the "wall came tumbling down".
Yeah, I read all about this in one of Rush's books (so you know it's true). It's fascinating how we can just build a couple more ships and an entire nation just... poof! Collapses! It's amazing to me that no one ever thought of it until Reagan. Boy, if Eisenhower knew it was that easy, he'd sure be red in the face. So what I wanna know is, when does this effect go to work on France?
You have some good stuff to say here, but there's one thing that really sticks in my craw. You wanna vote for Bush because you think you agree with him on the issues, that's one thing, but to pretend that he's got some kind of superior character is just... just... well, it's just mind-blowing to me. Do you know anything at all about the guy?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Gore or Clinton are some kind of saints over Bush, either. Far as I'm concerned they're all a pack of weasels. But geez, saying "character counts" and pointing to Bush as the positive example is like saying "security counts" and pointing to Microsoft.
I am appalled at how many people here on/. take these candidates seriously. Listen, first of all, politicians lie. Bush and Gore say things that they don't mean in order to get you to vote for them.
Dubya wants to get elected because he CAN. The people who want to put him in power want to do so so that they can get richer and more powerful, probably at YOUR expense.
Gore want to get elected because he really wants to get elected. He doesn't hold strong convictions, he doesn't believe in things... he just wants to get elected and he'll say and do and believe whatever it takes.
This ain't rocket science, kids. I am baffled as to why people continue to debate these candidates based on "issues" or "principles" or "character". Hello, it's showbiz!
If you want to vote for a real candidate you'll have to look elsewhere. There are lots of choices. Browne, Nader, Buchanan, etc. It'll only take about five minutes to find one that holds similar beliefs as your own, and chances are, these people believe in it. I suggest you do it, and convince your friends, family and neighbors to do so as well. True, your candidate won't win this year, but you have to keep trying. Things will only get worse if you keep voting for the same schmucks year after year after year.
OK, maybe I'm an idiot here, but I don't know what the hell this comment has to do with David Brin's letter. And why is it marked up insightful? Insightful?!? Insightful about WHAT?
Sweet Jeebus, this is what I find so depressing about politics. Every time someone tries to talk about something interesting they get drowned out by a flood of the same old, same old BS. It's the same shit as trying to talk about religion or (good luck) paranormal experiences... so many people have such a deeply ingrained (and, most likely, BORING) belief system they can't even HEAR what the other person is saying, let alone actually be thoughtful about it.
So anyway, what, this guy is saying a vote for Bush is a vote to limit the Federal government's power? I don't get it. If that's what he means, I gotta say, it's really, honestly, truly too depressing to even bother commenting on any further.
If anyone needs me, I'll be out looking for the nearest suicide booth.
Well, I've had an intranet and file server running on a VPN between two offices using DSL for the past two years, and we only had one half-day of downtime early on when US West did some upgrading. It's been a consistent 640k ever since. If the connection ever drops or gets reset, I've sure never noticed it... and my server is just a plain ol' RedHat box, nothing fancy. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I don't think DSL should be so quickly dismissed as too unreliable.
Hmmm... you're at least partially right about my attitude. I suppose I need to work on being a little more specific. For example, there's a difference between a Rush Limbaugh fan and a PJ O'Rourke fan (I count myself as one of the latter, actually), and a further difference between a highly-educated Republican and the good Reverend Phelps, for example. But for practicality's sake, it'd be a little cumbersome to split hairs and differentiate between all these various categories of "Republicans". Although not entirely accurate by any means, it's still generally true that most people in the public eye and most people I have met personally who staunchly identify themselves as "Republican" are stupid fucks. Notice I did not say most people who identify themselves as "conservative", which is a different thing. I can debate a conservative. Conservative does not automatically mean moron. However, I wouldn't waste my time trying to debate a Republican.
I hope that makes it a little more clear. I don't have any problem with people who hold different opinions from mine. There are lots of people out there who liked "The Thomas Crown Affair" - that's fine if you do. I think it's a celluloid abomination. That doesn't make you stupid if you enjoyed it, that just means you and I probably won't be watching a whole lot of movies together. But if you're a Rush Limbaugh fan, I do think you are a fuckin' moron... not because I have a different opinion, but because I'm really pretty sure you're obnoxiously stupid and you deserve to be called out on all the outrageously wrong and asinine things you say and believe in. It's no different than calling the Rev. Phelps out for his evil ways, or Pat Robertson for the sick things he says and believes in. Why shouldn't I? If they're going to be so obnoxiously wrong, I reserve the right to make fun of them.
And believe me, anyone who wants to make fun of my opinions/candidates can feel free. Chances are I'm going to think they're wrong and stupid for doing so, unless they have some well-considered and backed-up opinions, or are at least entertaining, and we can agree to politely disagree. But chances are they will think I'm wrong and stupid, too.
Which is just fine by me. Some people long for purely civil discourse, polite and scholarly... I do too. But it isn't always called for. Some people disagree with that (hi mom!). Some people also think there are "bad words" and think nudity in films is a bad thing. I don't truck with them cats. I say what I mean and mean what I say... and sometimes that's "geez, what a stupid bastard."
Annnnyway... I hear what you're saying about people beating up Bush and rooting for the other guy. I feel the same way about people who bash Clinton on his "character" and cheer for Bush... as if stealing millions from S&Ls and doing coke and so on is some kind of moral high ground over getting an Oval Office hummer. I hear ya. All these candidates are trash of some kind, you just gotta pick your poison.
And good point about Carville. I forgot about him. For some reason I always think of him as more mercenary than idealogue... which isn't necessarily an accurate perception, but there you go. I tend to think of Democrats as kind of sad-sack underdogs in the race to be most evil, but Carville is certainly the outlier there.
And...? My post was directed at Republicans specifically. You wanna identify yourself as conservative, that's fine by me. Everyone's entitled to their own fragile ego-based belief system, including me, so go for it.
your post is complete inflammatory tripe
Inflammatory, yeah, but I'll need to look up the definition of tripe before I can agree there. If by "tripe" you mean "ca-ca", well, I wouldn't call it complete ca-ca.
There is SOOO much anti-Bush and anti-Republican crap on this site
Yup. That's because they're morons, and Slashdot users lean more toward the non-moron side of the scale... such people don't tend to look kindly upon morons.
Al Gore is no better a man than GW Bush...
No kidding. Oh, well, except if by "better" you mean "not as stupid" or "doesn't seem to take pleasure in killing people". Minor quibbles - they are both poor examples of human potential.
I'm voting for neither
Then you and I got no beef. I don't care if you vote Browne, Buchanan, Nader, the Natural Law candidate, or write yourself in, I won't make fun of you for it. Those are honest votes. And a passive vote for Gore or Bush is a chump vote, and that's just kind of sad and not really deserving of scorn. But anyone standing up and rooting for either team deserves to be heckled for it. And let's face it, heckling Democrats is nowhere near as much fun because the Democrats tend to be... I dunno, except for Gore sighing loudly during the debate, nicer about things. It's the Republicans that seem to come across so often as obnoxious, ignorant assholes (a certain "funny" talk-radio host springs to mind, for example, or practically the entire Christian right, or your stereotypical garden-variety redneck). And there may be things about Nader that aren't so great, but man, you gotta give the guy credit for at least trying to bring real issues to the table instead of the constant stream of bullshit the republicrats put out. I'm surprised anyone would lump Gore and Nader into the same category.
This post is, I believe, an excellent example of the average Republican mentality... either drunk and barely intelligible or just plain stupid and barely intelligible.
Not that Democrats are much better, but with the exception of Gore's debate performance, at least they're not quite as obnoxious.
If you're talking politics and what you say isn't funny or insightful or informative, it's probably just flamebait.
For the record, I don't think the post deserved a flame of any kind, but if you feel you must flame, well, I commend your use of the word "fuckwad" (speaking of middle-school level diction...). This is a word that doesn't get the level of usage it deserves. Wouldn't CNN be better if they threw in a "fuckwad" every now and then? If there was even the slightest chance that "fuckwad" would be used in the presidential debates, I'd actually watch 'em. Show me the church where the clergy tosses out the occasional "fuckwad" during services, and I'm there.
Color me easily amused, but a well-placed "fuckwad" goes a long ways in my book.
"Asshead", too.
... 'course, it'd be better if it wasn't always ME being referred to by those words, but hey, ya can't have everything.
See, you THINK that dream makes no sense, but your brain is trying to tell you something, man.
Picture this: a tray that fits into a 5 1/4 drive bay... probably two bays, actually, but that's OK, everyone needs a full-tower case anyway. You drop a potato into the tray, wait ten minutes or so while your hash brown program does its thing, and voila... gnu browns!
This is such an amazing idea. I'm telling you, your brain is goddamn smart. I bet we can get some VCs interested in this. I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't love a pile of fresh hash browns right about now...
(This is what happens when I don't get enough sleep and I skip breakfast...)
I'm not too concerned about Joe Tinker being able to launch a whole lot of material to Mars at this point.
But this suddenly becomes a more interesting question fifty years or so up the road. What if I program a nanite to reproduce and muck about with the Martian atmosphere? I wouldn't even have to launch it myself, just get near enough to a Mars-bound spacecraft component to let the nanite hitch a ride. Who's going to have jurisdiction to fix the problem I created - if I indeed created a problem? The United Nations space task force or something? Could be cool and everyone gets together to work it out, or it could just be a huge interplanetary mess.
Man... are nanites the ultimate super-villain tool or what? Forget Death Stars. The real Darth Vader will just walk around with a real nasty piece of navel lint, just waiting to be activated at his command to reproduce and grey goo a planet. Not quite as dramatic, though... what does he do for an awesome display of his destructive power, wear a tight little half-shirt? But on the other hand, at least a plucky band of rebels couldn't just fly a bunch of X-wings into his belly button and render him powerless.
Yeah, these are the thoughts I have when I don't get enough sleep.
Well, OK, but seriously, would Mars be improved by a Union Carbide plant? A couple Wal-Marts? Some fast food joints, a Gap and a Planet Hollywood Mars?
I just hope that when we do colonize Mars we don't end up building the same stupid-ass crap we polluted our Earth landscape with. Or maybe that should be stupid ass-crap. Whatever. Call me an aesthetic environmentalist, fine, but I don't want to share another planet with polluting megacorps, chain stores, and obnoxious developers.
I agree there's nothing wrong with changing an environment per se, but suggesting that everything is equal under the eyes of God... er, I mean, science... is a little disingenuous. It suggests that living next to a nuke plant (which I'm told is actually perfectly safe as long as mean old Mr. Radiation stays in the reactor where he's supposed to be) should be just as desirable as living next to a national park, and that we should revere our strip malls like we do our old-growth forests. I mean, if you feel that way, cool, go for it... but I'm not buying it as part of some kind of superior, logical argument.
First time I saw one of those hands-free mobile phones, I was in the toy store looking at Legos and it slowly dawned on me that the other twenty-something guy browsing Legos was - goddamn! - talking to himself. I remember thinking, man, it's bad enough we're well into adulthood and still geeked out over Legos, but now you gotta stand there and make like a real obvious crazy person. Way to go.
Then when he hung up I made him show me his phone. Cool enough to almost make me want a mobile phone. Almost, but not quite.
What is this thing you call "libberish"? Someone else used this word today and, based on the context, I figured it was just some Limbaughism, "liberal" and "gibberish" smushed together in that Clever manner that Limbaugh has. Is that an accurate guess or not? What's the deal?
OK, looking back at this again, yeah, I know I wrote all high-and-mighty about how the written piece allows for more fact-checking and thoughtful debate and so on, and then went on to justify flaming. Sloppy editing on my part and I know it makes me look like a hypocritical wanker. Whaddaya gonna do.
My point was that face-to-face debates are rarely productive and that a written debate has a lot more potential for genuinely thoughtful discussion. AND it has a lot more potential for rudeness. I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive - although I'd agree that generally they are, I think it's possible to point out a logically inconsistent or factually inaccurate Rush Limbaughism while at the same time pointing out what an enormous pusbag he is (was? is he dead yet?). True, the pusbag part isn't going to help change a Dittohead's mind, but then again, what would? I say, nothing short of full-on deprogramming, and I am not qualified for that.
Anyway, maybe I'm wrong on this one. Maybe every time you say "asshole" in a debate you've lost. All I know is, if I'm going to waste my time spouting off my opinions, I'm going to make it entertaining for myself... and I hope if someone else wastes their time reading the crap I write, at least maybe they'll find it amusing. Better to be entertaining and wrong than dull and right? Maybe, maybe... worked for Rush, I guess...
Several years ago my sister got online, and in one of her early emails to me she started in with the Clinton-hating routine. She is (or was) a big Limbaugh fan, like a few other members of my family. Like I explained to her, I flamed her for it because in writing I can say all the things I can't say at the dinner table.
Here's an sample of the flame I sent her:
... I think playing partisan politics as if it means anything more than sports is extremely naive. It's amusing, however, that many people who identify themselves as right-wing generally
support their home team in committing acts of murder, violence and war, but don't support helping local communities, small business, education, the poor, the sick, the environment (both natural and man-made)... and then call
themselves good Christians, typically justifying their own predetermined prejudices by pulling obscure references from a dubious religious document out of context. It's especially fun when they then conveniently ignore whatever parts of the same document contradict their bizarre opinions. Irony is fun. The left-wing team is nowhere near as entertaining... but just
as irritating and irrelevant.
Pretty harsh for a close family member. Here's part of the justification for it I sent her:
-----
If I hear extremist rhetoric in face-to-face contact, I'll shrug my shoulders and leave the scene. No point in wasting my time debating. Debates of this nature are usually pointless, because typically neither party is actually listening and critically analyzing what the other party is saying; more often, the listener is busy formulating their next attack or emotionally looking to defend their own ego or fragile belief system.
But usually, the average advocate of any extremist viewpoint is not capable of holding an interesting debate because they have not invested the time to research and analyze their subjects, instead merely taking at face value whatever data is foisted at them by whatever propoganda outlet already suits their emotionally-charged opinions. They are rarely interested in meaningful discussion, but rather merely looking for an outlet to regurgitate the same venom they've consumed. I find this annoying.
I can write a decent piece. I can write better than I can speak. And as opposed to spoken discussions, the written debate carries a lot more weight... there's more time for careful deliberation, fact-checking, references, etc. There is also a lack of inhibition. I'll write things that I wouldn't say, because there is a lack of repercussions -- there's no screaming or crying or hitting or even icy glares. Even a "fuck you, you're an asshole" doesn't carry the same emotional weight in writing that it does in the real world.
So email and the internet is like a blank check for me, a license to say what I really want to say. When the subject of Rush Limbaugh comes up at Christmas dinner, what I'd love to say is something like: "Rush Limbaugh is the most disgusting, degenerate, asinine, moronic pile of shit that human genetics has ever conspired to assemble, and his little wanker army of Dittoheads is the sorryest assemblage of ignorant twits, racist and sexist scumbags, general assholes and obnoxiously stupid fuckheads this country has ever seen. He is probably one of the most defective human beings on the planet at this point in time, and it's hard for me to believe there's anyone who isn't at least half-retarded who actually listens to him."
Yeah, that's what I'd like to say, but I won't, because a) what's the point, b) I'm not Johnny-on-the-spot with that kind of verbal rant, and c) it'd just ruin Christmas dinner. But I think it's only fair that if I have to listen to your wrongheaded opinions then you should have to listen to my wrongheaded opinions, and this is my forum of choice. If I'm rude about it it may just be that I'm on a roll, that I feel strongly about the subject, that I'm not intending to be rude and it's accidental, and/or that I just happen to think of a clever turn of an insulting phrase. Whatever the case, you should be aware that I'll feel free to speak my mind in writing - the whole truth as I see it and nothing but the truth. If you're comfortable with that, great, if not, it's probably best if we just call a truce right now and not bring up politics or religion in email.
-----
Strangely enough, politics and religion have not only not come up in email ever since, they seem to have been banished from the dinner table, too. Yeah, I'm a dick, but it worked out pretty darn well for me.
I recently bought a pair of 60gig Maxtor IDEs and the Promise FastSwap kit to use as backup for my office. One drive is mounted in a PC and making network backups every hour, with multiple versions of important files, and then every couple days I bring in the removable hard drive from offsite, pop it in and blam, practically instantaneous backup. Best of all I don't have to worry that a few years down the line, if the office burns down, that I won't be able to find some goofy proprietary tape backup system to work with my backup tape... instead I can always pull the hard drive out of its case and throw it into any old PC that's sitting around and I have instant access to all my Precious Stuff.
You can pick up the drives for just over two bills each, and the FastSwap for about $150, so for roughly half the price of a good tape system (apparently) you'll have a much better setup (imho). Plus you won't have to listen to that damn tape drive...
Slashdot Mirror
Why, the answer to your question lies, as always, with the great sage:
To alcohol... the cause of, and solution to, most of life's problems. -H.J. Simpson [paraphrased]
So there you go. Your answer is: yes, and therefore you should drink more.
It isn't so much that they would FAKE an intrusion. Why would they need to fake an intrusion when there must be crackers banging on their sites 24 hours a day?
More likely, once a particularly skilled group of crackers had already gained access, they'd simply let them continue on their merry way for three months and then announce, to everyone's horror, that these vile criminals have been plundering their IP, and use the case as evidence to support cracking the whip.
Does it make sense? Maybe, maybe not.
I'll tell you one thing, though -- it's absolutely true that admitting a security breach like this does seem completely out of character for MS. It's just downright eerie, actually. They clearly stand to gain from this in one way or another, or else you'd be seeing more typical spin coming out of Redmond.
Hey, cool! I think this is a better page anyway. Besides being Evil, B&N's site just plain old stinks. Anyway, I'll take a look!
If you're curious, BTW, there are lots of reasons to hate B&N... Spider Robinson, the mid-list sci-fi author, wrote a real nice piece a few years ago about how their marketing practices are destroying the market for mid-list authors. The commoditization of books that results from B&N's practices puts real pressure on books to be hits or misses without much room for steady but not high-volume sellers.
Plus, of course, the corporate colonialism that occurs in particular with B&N... books are low-margin and most towns don't support a whole bunch of bookstores in the first place. When a B&N moves in, though, they steamroll the local/independent booksellers, kill them and suck the profits out of the community and back to Corporate HQ.
As a natural part of this process, they also destroy the real book-lover's environment. B&N's are book warehouses, devoid of personality, charm and intimacy. The architecture is atrocious with no regard to sound issues and a patronizing, cloying attempt at making the store "cozy". There's no room for the individual quirks that make independent bookstores interesting, and no room for an individual merchant to "push" the books he's discovered. In this environment, a small cadre of B&N buyers choose which books become their "picks" - and given the near-monopoly power of this chain in many markets, these few people wield an inordinate amount of power over what we read, even down to indirectly (and sometimes directly) deciding which books get published.
And toss in the Wired article about bn.com that ran a few years back where it was shown pretty conclusively, I think, that the guys running the show over there are stupid, arrogant, evil fucks, and well, everything just adds up to a big pile of bad juju. I appreciate your changing the link, especially given that my post wasn't as polite as it probably should've been. Thanks!
For everyone who couldn't be there, I bring you the magic of the pants-cam via the chat application built-in to the pants-cam site. IP addresses deleted to protect the perverts in the audience... otherwise raw and uncensored, baby! This is about a half-dozen people at any given time commenting on the erratic performance and general blackness of the pants-cam, except towards the end when Alison (or someone) pulled it out and stuck her tongue out at us.
/. has crashed another server ;)
/.?
Good god, I REALLY can't believe I don't have anything better to do than this.
Connecting to www.pantscam.com:15127... connected.
i think
fun fun fun
anyone see anything?
show me some nekkid babes
Heed! Pants! Now!
cool... i see something
i can't believe i don't have anything better to do than this
show me nakedness
um... hello... it's pretty dark inside one's pants...
forecast calls for grey cloudy pants
bye bye
I seem to have misplaced my pants
how many of you came here from
[raises hand]
probably all of us
yeah, probably a dumb question
nah, what's dumb is that we're actually HERE.
heh yeah, looking at a black blob, woohoo
say, my view of the pants is gone... anyone got pants right now?
this suck
no pants here
i see no nakedness
oh wait
i got the pants
hmmm its dark
the magic 8 ball page wasn't working for me, either =P
this sucks
i see movement
ooo! I got pants again, too.... ooooo sexxxy
wtf is this
im not sure what im looking at
where is the lense pointed?
oh yeah, they should make this a pay site....
lol
hmmm this nakedness is lacking
/list what else is here?
:q!
enjoy the pants everyone
yeah, i'm appalled at the lack of nudity here...
now why is this suposed to be cool again?
but if you use your imagine, it's actually kinda hot
imagination
i think
I think we need to add a flashlight to this equation
more like a brighter light or something...
whoa
nice
what is that
yeah what are we looking at??
what'd you see?
i see feet!
ahh theres something
i think..
i think im sticking out of a fly
woo-hoo! feet!
this is beyond wierd
i see pants
I had bad dreams about something like this once...
i can't wait until we ALL have pants-cams
i see brown pants and a foot
except rosanne barr... i don't want her to have a pants-cam
surprisingly un-slashdotted
seems to have froze
bring my nakedness back
slashdot effect?
ok where's the image
lol that's what i get
seems to be working pretty well considering the load
i swear i saw pussy 10 mins ago...
don't know about that
darn
whoa.
hmm thats this
what was that?
damnit, keeps going black
woah is that a breast?
is she moving us?
its a tease!!
she keeps moving it arond
maybe shes having sex
lol
hmmm there she is
WOAH!
there she is!
shes moving us
The Age old question "Where does this thing go?!?!"
ITS A GUY!
arrrghhh.....
put us back in your pants
better yet, put us in a hit chicks pants
hello.
with a flashlight...
this is about to get interesting
this is so strangely amusing
so bizzare
attendance is up
I'll never leave the house again.
Actually I was thinking "utterly wrong but fascinating"
that's a good phrase
I can't see a damn thing.
works for me
move damnit
What's the refresh rate set to?
for some reason I really, really want a pants-cam
-1
brings new meaning to touch it, touch my monkey?
eeeeeeeeeeew
mokeys... plural
damnit the pictures not updating
dang... offline maybe?
hey I never got a picture in the first place.
fucking a, fuck this
oh, dude, you missed out.
i want a refund
touch it, touch my monkey...
it was amazing!
yay more black
actually, this little java app is pretty darn cool.
was it good for you?
be even cooler if there was something to watch!!!
Methinks this should be patented.
ok, that's true, but still...
fuck this
Mothers everywhere will get one for their kids.
show's over, methinks
man.. looks like show over..
im going back to slashdot
Some people around these parts don't like Amazon, but I'll take Amazon any day over Barnes and Noble. And I'll take a good old-fashioned independent bookseller over either of them. But linking to B&N means I won't even go and look at your book.
That's just my opinion, and no, you're probably not shooting yourself in the foot by linking to B&N, but if I were in your position I'd link to somewhere else. At least, arguably, Amazon has a fairly reasonable position about holding dumb patents... Barnes & Noble is just plain old snarling evil on a stick.
Notice what you DON'T see on this list, though?
Hmmm... so, it turns out US special forces didn't use chemical weapons, and hey, it turns out, maybe the CIA didn't import crack.
Oh, and then one reporter made her superiors - and pretty much the entire profession - look like dickheads, so they 86'd her.
So... anything on this list a retraction *against* the people in power? You ever see a retraction in the NYT that reads something like, "For the past 10 years, this news organization has neglected to mention the seriousness of the use of highly toxic depleted uranium shells by coalition forces during the Gulf War. These shells may or may not be causing, as we speak, untold ecological damage and human suffering, and frankly, because the people in charge of this lamebrain idea are still in power, we won't get around to winning our Pulitzer on this story until most of them are long retired or six feet under. Sorry. Hope this wasn't important to you."
Or how about: "This news organization has, for the past year, repeatedly characterized the WTO protests in Seattle last year as 'violent', blatantly insinuating that those dirty protesters were to blame, and blithely absolving the police of their rioting, abusive practices, and constitutional trampling. The fact is, there were tens of thousands of people out there trying to illuminate some important issues, and all we did was make them look like stupid, violent thugs. Sorry 'bout that."
Or: "We should never have made Ollie North look like some kind of hero. In truth, he was a lying, treasonous scumbag, he sold weapons to our worst enemies, and we should have strung him up like Wen Ho Lee. Dunno why we didn't. Just didn't feel like it, I guess."
Or: "Hey, as it turns out, KAL Flight 007 really WAS on a spy mission while carrying civilians. Huh. Imagine that, the government LIED to us. We're sorry, we must have had our heads up our collective ass."
Or: "As it turns out, George Bush Sr. had a mistress for many, many years, and we almost totally ignored it. Let's face it, she wasn't a little white-trash hottie like Jennifer Flowers... it just didn't play as well on camera, and it was a wee bit disingenous of us to go on and on and on about "character" while letting that sneaky motherfucker Bush completely off the hook."
Or: "Attention all readers: it's true that G. W. Bush is a complete moron. No, really, he's dumber than Quayle. But he's supposed to win this election, so we're going to keep it toned down a little until after he wins. We hope this doesn't inconvience anyone... and yeah, we're talking to you, Jay Leno."
Or: "The Gulf War was a sham. We're sorry we lied to you. Saddam's a nasty guy, all right, but he's OUR nasty guy, and the whole thing was a shameless play for regional power on behalf of the US economy. Oh, heck, never mind... it's too complex for you folks. Now go back to supporting those troops, people!"
and so on
and so on and so on...
They'll print retractions, all right. Just as long as it satifies their agenda. Good luck finding stuff in the mainstream media that doesn't...
I remember very clearly before Iraq invaded Kuwait seeing articles and news video that very clearly showed that the U.S. was tacitly encouraging Iraq to invade Kuwait. I remember at the time thinking, geez, that seems a little odd. And then the day Iraq went ahead and did it and Bush turned around and called Hussein a "Hitler" I was wondering what the hell was going on.
Just recently I saw a pretty good film that did a good job of putting together the whole scenario. We encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait in order to assert ourselves in the region, and we've been punishing the people of Iraq for 10 years now simply in order to maintain our dominant position in the area. Why? Because we're totally dependent on cheap oil.
The sanctions there do nothing but help keep Saddam Hussein in power while directly killing a lot of innocent people. It's a nasty proposition, but, logically, one that makes a sick sort of sense for the U.S. - if we didn't have cheap oil, we might very well see a similar kind of suffering here that we're currently inflicting on the people of Iraq. But it certainly goes to show who's the bully in the global schoolyard. Gee, makes ya wonder why some people in the Middle East might be a little pissed off, huh? Oh, that's right, we're the good guys, and they're just pissed off because they're a bunch of religious lunatics... that's right, thank you, CNN...
The funny thing is, this is all totally obvious to anyone who bothers to look into the situation. All of the evidence is in plain sight and the principles involved are barely even bothering to deny it. Madeline Albright even fessed up to a CBS camera crew. I don't remember the exact quote, but when asked about the needless suffering inflicted on Iraqi civilians by our sanctions, her reply was, basically, it's all worth it.
That footage, however, has been censored by CBS. They will not allow that quote to be shown anywhere at any time for any reason.
Even though all the cards are on the table in plain sight, the spin from the major media is unanimous. Americans were told "Saddam was a Hitler" and the media fell right in step. You'll never see the real, full story, with all its attendant complexities, in widespread print in this country. You'll never see the story that should have come out of the Gulf War: "For Fuck's Sake, Let's Work Like Crazy to Develop Alternative Energy Sources So We Can Stop Killing All These Innocent People Over Stupid Goddamn Oil". Nope, all you'll see are the same old easy lies. And who the hell are they accountable to? No one but whoever signs the paychecks.
And this is just one example. How many more are there, going all the way back? This is the way it's always been - the people with money and power write the news. They decide how history is written, they pick the agenda, and if it involves killing little people like you and me in order to advance their investments, then so be it. The internet is the first time that we have a chance to change those rules. It's the first time in history we don't have to accept the lies force-fed to us by those in power. We can educate ourselves and each other and leave behind the pervasive influence of the modern corporate media, the bastard mutated offspring of Hearst. OK, a little melodramatic, but c'mon...
And you're asking if we should hold online news to the same standard of integrity as those old, paid-for, toadying media dinosaurs?!?
For the love o' God, I sure hope not.
*WARNING* Aimless old-fogie babbling ahead!
Why, back in my day, we had 8k and cassette storage devices, and we LIKED it! We LOVED it! Sure, you had to burn your own EPROM every now and then, but who didn't back in those days? And who didn't love the POKE command?
Oh, yeah... you can keep your Vic20s and C64s... gimme a Commodore PET any day.
My dad still has a few of these at the old homestead. Got the first one when I was 7 or 8, a real step up from dad's homebuilt computer that used these funky routered wooden cards for storage. I wish I remembered more about that one. Good blinkenlights... impressive when I was 6, anyway.
Oh, sure, we got into Vics and 64s, too... my favorite machine was the Executive 64. That was a class act. Had some Sinclairs, Osbornes, and an Amiga for a little while before settling comfortably into the clone PCs.
But there's nothing quite like the first one... ours was the original 2001, with the chiclet keyboard and the built-in datasette.
Man, I'd love to get my hands on some of those great old PET cases...
If you recall, during the Reagan/Bush administration, the buildup was to make the military strong (I quote the 600 ship Navy and SDI).
Oh, yeah, that's right... the rest of the government shrank during that administration, it was just the military that grew. I don't know what I was thinking.
The percieved strength of our military forced the Soviet Union to overextend themselves. Eventually, communism in the SU failed and the "wall came tumbling down".
Yeah, I read all about this in one of Rush's books (so you know it's true). It's fascinating how we can just build a couple more ships and an entire nation just... poof! Collapses! It's amazing to me that no one ever thought of it until Reagan. Boy, if Eisenhower knew it was that easy, he'd sure be red in the face. So what I wanna know is, when does this effect go to work on France?
You have some good stuff to say here, but there's one thing that really sticks in my craw. You wanna vote for Bush because you think you agree with him on the issues, that's one thing, but to pretend that he's got some kind of superior character is just... just... well, it's just mind-blowing to me. Do you know anything at all about the guy?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Gore or Clinton are some kind of saints over Bush, either. Far as I'm concerned they're all a pack of weasels. But geez, saying "character counts" and pointing to Bush as the positive example is like saying "security counts" and pointing to Microsoft.
I am appalled at how many people here on /. take these candidates seriously. Listen, first of all, politicians lie. Bush and Gore say things that they don't mean in order to get you to vote for them.
Dubya wants to get elected because he CAN. The people who want to put him in power want to do so so that they can get richer and more powerful, probably at YOUR expense.
Gore want to get elected because he really wants to get elected. He doesn't hold strong convictions, he doesn't believe in things... he just wants to get elected and he'll say and do and believe whatever it takes.
This ain't rocket science, kids. I am baffled as to why people continue to debate these candidates based on "issues" or "principles" or "character". Hello, it's showbiz!
If you want to vote for a real candidate you'll have to look elsewhere. There are lots of choices. Browne, Nader, Buchanan, etc. It'll only take about five minutes to find one that holds similar beliefs as your own, and chances are, these people believe in it. I suggest you do it, and convince your friends, family and neighbors to do so as well. True, your candidate won't win this year, but you have to keep trying. Things will only get worse if you keep voting for the same schmucks year after year after year.
Don't vote for people who don't represent YOU!!!
OK, maybe I'm an idiot here, but I don't know what the hell this comment has to do with David Brin's letter. And why is it marked up insightful? Insightful?!? Insightful about WHAT?
Sweet Jeebus, this is what I find so depressing about politics. Every time someone tries to talk about something interesting they get drowned out by a flood of the same old, same old BS. It's the same shit as trying to talk about religion or (good luck) paranormal experiences... so many people have such a deeply ingrained (and, most likely, BORING) belief system they can't even HEAR what the other person is saying, let alone actually be thoughtful about it.
So anyway, what, this guy is saying a vote for Bush is a vote to limit the Federal government's power? I don't get it. If that's what he means, I gotta say, it's really, honestly, truly too depressing to even bother commenting on any further.
If anyone needs me, I'll be out looking for the nearest suicide booth.
Well, I've had an intranet and file server running on a VPN between two offices using DSL for the past two years, and we only had one half-day of downtime early on when US West did some upgrading. It's been a consistent 640k ever since. If the connection ever drops or gets reset, I've sure never noticed it... and my server is just a plain ol' RedHat box, nothing fancy. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I don't think DSL should be so quickly dismissed as too unreliable.
Hmmm... you're at least partially right about my attitude. I suppose I need to work on being a little more specific. For example, there's a difference between a Rush Limbaugh fan and a PJ O'Rourke fan (I count myself as one of the latter, actually), and a further difference between a highly-educated Republican and the good Reverend Phelps, for example. But for practicality's sake, it'd be a little cumbersome to split hairs and differentiate between all these various categories of "Republicans". Although not entirely accurate by any means, it's still generally true that most people in the public eye and most people I have met personally who staunchly identify themselves as "Republican" are stupid fucks. Notice I did not say most people who identify themselves as "conservative", which is a different thing. I can debate a conservative. Conservative does not automatically mean moron. However, I wouldn't waste my time trying to debate a Republican.
I hope that makes it a little more clear. I don't have any problem with people who hold different opinions from mine. There are lots of people out there who liked "The Thomas Crown Affair" - that's fine if you do. I think it's a celluloid abomination. That doesn't make you stupid if you enjoyed it, that just means you and I probably won't be watching a whole lot of movies together. But if you're a Rush Limbaugh fan, I do think you are a fuckin' moron... not because I have a different opinion, but because I'm really pretty sure you're obnoxiously stupid and you deserve to be called out on all the outrageously wrong and asinine things you say and believe in. It's no different than calling the Rev. Phelps out for his evil ways, or Pat Robertson for the sick things he says and believes in. Why shouldn't I? If they're going to be so obnoxiously wrong, I reserve the right to make fun of them.
And believe me, anyone who wants to make fun of my opinions/candidates can feel free. Chances are I'm going to think they're wrong and stupid for doing so, unless they have some well-considered and backed-up opinions, or are at least entertaining, and we can agree to politely disagree. But chances are they will think I'm wrong and stupid, too.
Which is just fine by me. Some people long for purely civil discourse, polite and scholarly... I do too. But it isn't always called for. Some people disagree with that (hi mom!). Some people also think there are "bad words" and think nudity in films is a bad thing. I don't truck with them cats. I say what I mean and mean what I say... and sometimes that's "geez, what a stupid bastard."
Annnnyway... I hear what you're saying about people beating up Bush and rooting for the other guy. I feel the same way about people who bash Clinton on his "character" and cheer for Bush... as if stealing millions from S&Ls and doing coke and so on is some kind of moral high ground over getting an Oval Office hummer. I hear ya. All these candidates are trash of some kind, you just gotta pick your poison.
And good point about Carville. I forgot about him. For some reason I always think of him as more mercenary than idealogue... which isn't necessarily an accurate perception, but there you go. I tend to think of Democrats as kind of sad-sack underdogs in the race to be most evil, but Carville is certainly the outlier there.
Oh please, I am a conservative
And...? My post was directed at Republicans specifically. You wanna identify yourself as conservative, that's fine by me. Everyone's entitled to their own fragile ego-based belief system, including me, so go for it.
your post is complete inflammatory tripe
Inflammatory, yeah, but I'll need to look up the definition of tripe before I can agree there. If by "tripe" you mean "ca-ca", well, I wouldn't call it complete ca-ca.
There is SOOO much anti-Bush and anti-Republican crap on this site
Yup. That's because they're morons, and Slashdot users lean more toward the non-moron side of the scale... such people don't tend to look kindly upon morons.
Al Gore is no better a man than GW Bush...
No kidding. Oh, well, except if by "better" you mean "not as stupid" or "doesn't seem to take pleasure in killing people". Minor quibbles - they are both poor examples of human potential.
I'm voting for neither
Then you and I got no beef. I don't care if you vote Browne, Buchanan, Nader, the Natural Law candidate, or write yourself in, I won't make fun of you for it. Those are honest votes. And a passive vote for Gore or Bush is a chump vote, and that's just kind of sad and not really deserving of scorn. But anyone standing up and rooting for either team deserves to be heckled for it. And let's face it, heckling Democrats is nowhere near as much fun because the Democrats tend to be... I dunno, except for Gore sighing loudly during the debate, nicer about things. It's the Republicans that seem to come across so often as obnoxious, ignorant assholes (a certain "funny" talk-radio host springs to mind, for example, or practically the entire Christian right, or your stereotypical garden-variety redneck). And there may be things about Nader that aren't so great, but man, you gotta give the guy credit for at least trying to bring real issues to the table instead of the constant stream of bullshit the republicrats put out. I'm surprised anyone would lump Gore and Nader into the same category.
Sure it's great to insult Bush
It sure is, Kevin... it sure is.
This post is, I believe, an excellent example of the average Republican mentality... either drunk and barely intelligible or just plain stupid and barely intelligible.
Not that Democrats are much better, but with the exception of Gore's debate performance, at least they're not quite as obnoxious.
If you're talking politics and what you say isn't funny or insightful or informative, it's probably just flamebait.
Like this post.
For the record, I don't think the post deserved a flame of any kind, but if you feel you must flame, well, I commend your use of the word "fuckwad" (speaking of middle-school level diction...). This is a word that doesn't get the level of usage it deserves. Wouldn't CNN be better if they threw in a "fuckwad" every now and then? If there was even the slightest chance that "fuckwad" would be used in the presidential debates, I'd actually watch 'em. Show me the church where the clergy tosses out the occasional "fuckwad" during services, and I'm there.
Color me easily amused, but a well-placed "fuckwad" goes a long ways in my book.
"Asshead", too.
... 'course, it'd be better if it wasn't always ME being referred to by those words, but hey, ya can't have everything.
See, you THINK that dream makes no sense, but your brain is trying to tell you something, man.
Picture this: a tray that fits into a 5 1/4 drive bay... probably two bays, actually, but that's OK, everyone needs a full-tower case anyway. You drop a potato into the tray, wait ten minutes or so while your hash brown program does its thing, and voila... gnu browns!
This is such an amazing idea. I'm telling you, your brain is goddamn smart. I bet we can get some VCs interested in this. I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't love a pile of fresh hash browns right about now...
(This is what happens when I don't get enough sleep and I skip breakfast...)
I'm not too concerned about Joe Tinker being able to launch a whole lot of material to Mars at this point.
But this suddenly becomes a more interesting question fifty years or so up the road. What if I program a nanite to reproduce and muck about with the Martian atmosphere? I wouldn't even have to launch it myself, just get near enough to a Mars-bound spacecraft component to let the nanite hitch a ride. Who's going to have jurisdiction to fix the problem I created - if I indeed created a problem? The United Nations space task force or something? Could be cool and everyone gets together to work it out, or it could just be a huge interplanetary mess.
Man... are nanites the ultimate super-villain tool or what? Forget Death Stars. The real Darth Vader will just walk around with a real nasty piece of navel lint, just waiting to be activated at his command to reproduce and grey goo a planet. Not quite as dramatic, though... what does he do for an awesome display of his destructive power, wear a tight little half-shirt? But on the other hand, at least a plucky band of rebels couldn't just fly a bunch of X-wings into his belly button and render him powerless.
Yeah, these are the thoughts I have when I don't get enough sleep.
Well, OK, but seriously, would Mars be improved by a Union Carbide plant? A couple Wal-Marts? Some fast food joints, a Gap and a Planet Hollywood Mars?
I just hope that when we do colonize Mars we don't end up building the same stupid-ass crap we polluted our Earth landscape with. Or maybe that should be stupid ass-crap. Whatever. Call me an aesthetic environmentalist, fine, but I don't want to share another planet with polluting megacorps, chain stores, and obnoxious developers.
I agree there's nothing wrong with changing an environment per se, but suggesting that everything is equal under the eyes of God... er, I mean, science... is a little disingenuous. It suggests that living next to a nuke plant (which I'm told is actually perfectly safe as long as mean old Mr. Radiation stays in the reactor where he's supposed to be) should be just as desirable as living next to a national park, and that we should revere our strip malls like we do our old-growth forests. I mean, if you feel that way, cool, go for it... but I'm not buying it as part of some kind of superior, logical argument.
First time I saw one of those hands-free mobile phones, I was in the toy store looking at Legos and it slowly dawned on me that the other twenty-something guy browsing Legos was - goddamn! - talking to himself. I remember thinking, man, it's bad enough we're well into adulthood and still geeked out over Legos, but now you gotta stand there and make like a real obvious crazy person. Way to go.
Then when he hung up I made him show me his phone. Cool enough to almost make me want a mobile phone. Almost, but not quite.
What is this thing you call "libberish"? Someone else used this word today and, based on the context, I figured it was just some Limbaughism, "liberal" and "gibberish" smushed together in that Clever manner that Limbaugh has. Is that an accurate guess or not? What's the deal?
OK, looking back at this again, yeah, I know I wrote all high-and-mighty about how the written piece allows for more fact-checking and thoughtful debate and so on, and then went on to justify flaming. Sloppy editing on my part and I know it makes me look like a hypocritical wanker. Whaddaya gonna do.
My point was that face-to-face debates are rarely productive and that a written debate has a lot more potential for genuinely thoughtful discussion. AND it has a lot more potential for rudeness. I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive - although I'd agree that generally they are, I think it's possible to point out a logically inconsistent or factually inaccurate Rush Limbaughism while at the same time pointing out what an enormous pusbag he is (was? is he dead yet?). True, the pusbag part isn't going to help change a Dittohead's mind, but then again, what would? I say, nothing short of full-on deprogramming, and I am not qualified for that.
Anyway, maybe I'm wrong on this one. Maybe every time you say "asshole" in a debate you've lost. All I know is, if I'm going to waste my time spouting off my opinions, I'm going to make it entertaining for myself... and I hope if someone else wastes their time reading the crap I write, at least maybe they'll find it amusing. Better to be entertaining and wrong than dull and right? Maybe, maybe... worked for Rush, I guess...
Several years ago my sister got online, and in one of her early emails to me she started in with the Clinton-hating routine. She is (or was) a big Limbaugh fan, like a few other members of my family. Like I explained to her, I flamed her for it because in writing I can say all the things I can't say at the dinner table.
... I think playing partisan politics as if it means anything more than sports is extremely naive. It's amusing, however, that many people who identify themselves as right-wing generally
support their home team in committing acts of murder, violence and war, but don't support helping local communities, small business, education, the poor, the sick, the environment (both natural and man-made)... and then call
themselves good Christians, typically justifying their own predetermined prejudices by pulling obscure references from a dubious religious document out of context. It's especially fun when they then conveniently ignore whatever parts of the same document contradict their bizarre opinions. Irony is fun. The left-wing team is nowhere near as entertaining... but just
as irritating and irrelevant.
Here's an sample of the flame I sent her:
Pretty harsh for a close family member. Here's part of the justification for it I sent her:
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If I hear extremist rhetoric in face-to-face contact, I'll shrug my shoulders and leave the scene. No point in wasting my time debating. Debates of this nature are usually pointless, because typically neither party is actually listening and critically analyzing what the other party is saying; more often, the listener is busy formulating their next attack or emotionally looking to defend their own ego or fragile belief system.
But usually, the average advocate of any extremist viewpoint is not capable of holding an interesting debate because they have not invested the time to research and analyze their subjects, instead merely taking at face value whatever data is foisted at them by whatever propoganda outlet already suits their emotionally-charged opinions. They are rarely interested in meaningful discussion, but rather merely looking for an outlet to regurgitate the same venom they've consumed. I find this annoying.
I can write a decent piece. I can write better than I can speak. And as opposed to spoken discussions, the written debate carries a lot more weight... there's more time for careful deliberation, fact-checking, references, etc. There is also a lack of inhibition. I'll write things that I wouldn't say, because there is a lack of repercussions -- there's no screaming or crying or hitting or even icy glares. Even a "fuck you, you're an asshole" doesn't carry the same emotional weight in writing that it does in the real world.
So email and the internet is like a blank check for me, a license to say what I really want to say. When the subject of Rush Limbaugh comes up at Christmas dinner, what I'd love to say is something like: "Rush Limbaugh is the most disgusting, degenerate, asinine, moronic pile of shit that human genetics has ever conspired to assemble, and his little wanker army of Dittoheads is the sorryest assemblage of ignorant twits, racist and sexist scumbags, general assholes and obnoxiously stupid fuckheads this country has ever seen. He is probably one of the most defective human beings on the planet at this point in time, and it's hard for me to believe there's anyone who isn't at least half-retarded who actually listens to him."
Yeah, that's what I'd like to say, but I won't, because a) what's the point, b) I'm not Johnny-on-the-spot with that kind of verbal rant, and c) it'd just ruin Christmas dinner. But I think it's only fair that if I have to listen to your wrongheaded opinions then you should have to listen to my wrongheaded opinions, and this is my forum of choice. If I'm rude about it it may just be that I'm on a roll, that I feel strongly about the subject, that I'm not intending to be rude and it's accidental, and/or that I just happen to think of a clever turn of an insulting phrase. Whatever the case, you should be aware that I'll feel free to speak my mind in writing - the whole truth as I see it and nothing but the truth. If you're comfortable with that, great, if not, it's probably best if we just call a truce right now and not bring up politics or religion in email.
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Strangely enough, politics and religion have not only not come up in email ever since, they seem to have been banished from the dinner table, too. Yeah, I'm a dick, but it worked out pretty darn well for me.
I recently bought a pair of 60gig Maxtor IDEs and the Promise FastSwap kit to use as backup for my office. One drive is mounted in a PC and making network backups every hour, with multiple versions of important files, and then every couple days I bring in the removable hard drive from offsite, pop it in and blam, practically instantaneous backup. Best of all I don't have to worry that a few years down the line, if the office burns down, that I won't be able to find some goofy proprietary tape backup system to work with my backup tape... instead I can always pull the hard drive out of its case and throw it into any old PC that's sitting around and I have instant access to all my Precious Stuff.
You can pick up the drives for just over two bills each, and the FastSwap for about $150, so for roughly half the price of a good tape system (apparently) you'll have a much better setup (imho). Plus you won't have to listen to that damn tape drive...