The SEC also went after Rice, the guy that hired her. Everything got covered.
I've seen attempts to sue spammers, to complain to them, to flood their phones, to complain to local police/attorney general. Nothing does much...except this.
Seems that the first effective clean sweep against a spammer that I've ever seen -- and it was done by a black hat. Frankly, I'm quite pleased.
Actually, not quite the first clean sweep...
The first clean sweep I am aware of, or rather clue-by-fouring en masse, was of a particularly notorious spammer (both Usenet and email) by name of "Krazy" Kevin Lipsitz (notation in the Spam Timeline here: http://keithlynch.net/spamline.html).
Krazy Kevin was one of the parties that directly lead to confirmation of accounts--he used to use Compuserve throwaway accounts in particular, as I recall, to promote his magazine scheme.
It came out after a while on many net.abuse forums that not only was he spamming, but he also failed to deliver magazines...
This all happened around '96 or '97...Krazy Kev was busted around 1997ish.
"Krazy Kevin" no longer is spamming, and apparently makes much of his living now being a professional gourmand (he apparently holds a world's record for consuming the most amount of pickles in a five-minute span, and is a regular contestant at the Nathan's hot-dog eating contest)...at least it's a bit more honest a way of life than spamming, I suppose.:) (More about Krazy Kev going honest, in a sense: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/WolfFiles/wolffi les204.html) Still selling magazines too, but hopefully people get them now:)
Sanford, aka "Spamford", Wallace also was whacked into sense between being sued by both AOL *and* Compuserve (pre-merger) and getting ordered not to spam them (info on that lawsuit here: http://www.netlitigation.com/netlitigation/cases/c ompucase.htm)--and having literally been nearly banned from the Internet entirely and causing one of the major "backbone" sites of the Internet to be nearly universally shunned as well (the Agis.net UDP around 1996--Wallace and the nancy.com spammers were almost completely responsible) after it ended up being the last site on the Internet to deal with him...
In fact, Sanford Wallace has the rather dubious distinction of not only having been the reason behind many states' proposed antispam statutes, not only does he have the dubious distinction of having also been a junk faxer before he went into spamming and being almost singlehandedly responsible for the US law prohibiting junk faxing, but is singlehandedly responsible for much if not most of the early case law in regards to spamming...
(Now, mind, I've just included the first two cases I can recall off the top of my head involving people being sued directly for stuff related to spamming...)
Game Designer's Workshop: I don't even see them on the shelves anymore. Does anyone know what happened to them after the Gygax Disaster?
Pretty much thanks to Gygax, came very close to being sued into oblivion, eventually going out of business (pretty much after the whole Gygax fiasco they ended up folding).
AFAIK, there's only one or two properties of the former GDW even around--the creators of Dark Conspiracy ended up buying the rights back and as of late is being published by Dynasty Presentations (and in fact is about to go into Dark Conspiracy v2.5), and if memory serves there's still a company selling supplements for Traveller. (In direct relation to FASA going out of business--it appears the exact same thing is happening with Shadowrun and which ended up happening with Earthdawn--pretty much gamers and creators buying the rights, and keeping the game going.)
Of course, it's also slightly ironic that TSR itself ended up nearly going bankrupt, got bought out by WotC, and promptly went from being the sue-happiest RPG manufacturer on the planet (I remember when TSR would file cease-and-desists on folks for posting their own campaigns with their own created worlds, gods, etc.) to not only open-sourcing the game system but having supplements for a game using D&D rules published by White Wolf (!!!), of all companies.:)
Re:This ship didn't really sink
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FASA Dies
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· Score: 3
Burnon dun said:
It's interesting to note, though, that FASA only mentioned two of their product lines by name - Shadowrun and Battletech. To be sure, those are their most profitable products, but there's a lot of smaller market, but still very good, product lines that are being left in limbo...
I know that at least some of their earlier games have been sold off for some time (around one-two years ago). Earthdawn, for example (which was actually a fairly decent fantasy game which could be argued to have been a "twin" game to Shadowrun--(spoiler) Earthdawn having been set in the Fourth World), was cancelled around a year or so ago, when Shadowrun went 3rd Ed (it was felt Earthdawn wasn't "profitable") and the rights have been bought by Living Room Games who are now releasing supplements for Earthdawn and will be releasing Earthdawn 2nd Edition sometime this spring. (Admittedly, I do have some bias there--a close friend of mine is doing arts for the Earthdawn 2nd Ed main book;)
I'd not be surprised if they might've done the same for some of the other properties they own or are planning to do so (they did sell the rights for a fair amount of stuff a year ago, when they were starting to become fasa.fuckedcompany.com).
(Warning: If you actually play AD&D, watching this may not be such a good idea. Not because of insult...no...just the titters that will happen from then onward whenever someone states they're going to cast Magic Missile...:)
(Then again, most of the AD&D games I've been into invariably seem to transmogrify themselves into episodes of (insert X series of) Slayers.;) So one character in a D&D game I was in bore an uncanny resemblance to Gourry Gabriev...the guy who rolled it (my husband) really WASN'T trying for Gourry. It just happened.:)
you cannot install hidden cameras (as a security system)
Reference? As far as I know, that is not illegal, unless you're using them to spy on others (like, recording movies of having sex with someone, and then selling the movie).
Actually, certain types of hidden cameras are generally not allowed to be sold to the public, or if they are allowed to be sold at all, require special licensing. Certain types of security cameras (smaller than, say, around an 8mm movie camera) are not allowed to be sold to persons other than "qualified" law enforcement and to licensed private investigators because they are considered "surveillance equipment".
New York State, in particular, has passed several laws on the books banning personal security cameras below a certain size (in an attempt to shut down "spy shops"), and many localities have similar laws.
some places certain activities with your spouce are not legal.
Well, first of all, that's not at the state or federal level
In a word: Wrongo.
Up until fairly recently, literally all sex outside of the missionary position was illegal in Kentucky (our sodomy law has recently been overturned in KY Supreme Court as unconstitutional, as it was used largely to target the state's homosexual population). In Alabama, not only is everything but the missionary position flatly illegal (yes, people have actually been prosecuted for sodomy for consentual oral sex in Alabama, and yes, there have been convictions even in the past two years) but in fact all sexual activity between unmarried persons is illegal. The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled this legal, by the way.
A rather surprising number of states (often in the Southeast US, but a few other states have similar laws--Utah and Colorado are biggies) have laws that criminalise even consentual anal or oral sex. Most of these laws have not yet been ruled unconstitutional, and by and large, these laws are used to target homosexuals and/or teens "doing it"; they have been used to harass even straight, married couples in some cases, however. (Some good info on what is and isn't illegal is here; while the link deals more with statutory rape laws, it does have info regarding sodomy laws as well).
For that matter, a surprising number of states still have laws against adultery on the books. These are rarely enforced, but are sometimes used in divorce proceedings and the like.
Yes, there are going to be wacky local laws, but 1) they are not enforced, and 2) if they were, they would be struck down by higher courts.
A recent appeal to get Texas' sodomy law overturned has failed--and this was to the US Supreme Court. (Kentucky's sodomy law DID get overturned by the state Supreme Court, but this was because it was found it was used to blatantly harass homosexuals and that the definition of sodomy was overbroad--not on the merits of having a sodomy law in the first place.) Alabama's law, which (as noted previously) literally prohibits all sexual activity besides the missionary position between married adults, has not as of yet been overturned. (Incidentially--Alabama also has a law prohibiting gays from marrying, and (up until it was recently revoked after discovering it was still on the books) also had laws against interracial marriage. Some states still have these laws on the books, even though US Supreme Court decisions have overruled them.
There are court challenges to sodomy laws, but their success in part depends on state challenges and in part also to what happens with US Presidential elections. (If Dubya gets elected, it is likely that any Supreme Court nominees he picks are substantially more likely to rule sodomy statutes that even prohibit consentual anal/oral sex are constitutional.)
In any case, I'd say it would be quite inadvisable to, say, come into a small, rural Alabama town at night, going to Lover's Lane, being of one race and having a partner of another race--even if you ARE married (God help you if you're gay) and go through the entire Kama Sutra
in the back of one's car. These are areas where the Kama Sutra is often banned for being considered obscene; doing such is probably a VERY good way to find one's self convicted under Alabama's sodomy laws. (Chances go up even more if your spouse or partner happens to be the same sex.)
(I'll note, as an aside, that Alabama is all but a fundamentalist Christian theocracy nowadays. One of the major judges posts and preaches Christian scripture before trials, has stated flat out that "Hindus and Muslims and pagans" are "not worth protecting". The Governor of the fine state of Alabama flat out stated (when he was warned by authorities that this was stepping over the bounds of the First Amendment's separation of church and state) that if the judge was ordered to leave he'd send in the National Guard to prevent the judge being disbarred. If it weren't for the Supreme Court, they'd be as much of a theocracy as Taliban Afghanistan (and no, I am not making this up--the Southern Baptist Convention [which has become increasingly fundamentalist and coercive to the point that their own seminary may now be defined to be a coercive group--destroyed the world's only college of social works in the process of a fundy purge] and other fundy groups and denominations [most notably the American Family Association, the UnChristian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and the Assemblies of God] have an incredible amount of influence on both the common folk of Alabama and on its legislature--one almost cannot get elected there without the approval of the Religious Reich, especially in more rural areas [read: most of the damn state]).
Sure OK, you just get a big ol' bottle of CO2 and open the tap in a enclosed space. HAppy trails!
Well, yes, if you're bloody stupid enough to go huffing it. For that matter, paint thinner and White-Out can also kill you by huffing them, and they take considerably less amounts to do so. For that matter, breathing water will kill you like that, because lungs aren't quite as efficient at gas exchange in water as gills are.
You can't see it or smell it; but it keeps O2 from entering your bloodstream. Kinda like its friend Carbon Monoxide--you've heard of that one right?
Warning: slight technical discussion ahead. Please skip if not interested in mechanics of suffocation.;)
Actually, carbon monoxide takes a hell of a lot less to kill you than carbon dioxide does, and it kills largely by a somewhat different mechanism. Specifically, carbon monoxide actually binds more tightly to hemoglobin than oxygen does, forming methemoglobin (which accounts for the bright cherry red skin that light-skinned folks who get carbon monoxide poisoning get). One can reverse this either by sticking the parties in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber (exactly as is used for people with the bends or nitrogen narcosis) to forcibly replace CO with oxygen, or (in the days before hyperbaric medicine was widely available) by giving one methylene blue (which also has the fun effect of turning one's urine blue).
About the only one can suffocate from carbon dioxide is by being in such concentrations of it that it displaces oxygen to the point one would suffocate. It is pretty darn hard to do so; you either have to be practically huffing the stuff, in such deep depths that gas exchange of ANY sort is hard, or be on a planet such as Mars with almost no oxygen. (Dry ice is sufficiently safe that people have put hunks of it in coolers for food products, and even for organs meant for transplant. You have to have an awful lot of dry ice and a well-sealed room to successfully suffocate someone, and even then it isn't by displacing oxygen in the blood; rather, it's by displacing all other gases including oxygen in the air--in other words, instead of replacing oxygen in the blood, there's no oxygen to get to in the first place.)
One of the rare cases of carbon dioxide suffocation that does occur--some cases of SIDS or "crib death"--occurs largely in infants under six months old who roll onto pillows or on their stomachs (and often have some miswiring or under-maturity in the "oxygen sensor" part of their brains that tell them to roll over or gasp for air); this is why nearly every baby-care group nowadays promotes "back to sleep"--putting babies on their backs to rest. SIDS generally does not occur in infants over six months of age (in those cases that do, it is either a case of something drastically wrong with baby's neural wiring or something wrong with the parents mentally [sometimes Munchausen's by proxy] where the parents actually have suffocated the kid).
About the only way you'd die from carbon dioxide poisoning (in the amounts of dry ice it would take to cool a motherboard and processor--less than it takes to make "swamp gas" in a 55-gallon cooler) is by directly standing over the motherboard, having the computer sealed up and a tube leading out, and huffing the fumes from the tube. If you do that, you bloody well deserve a Darwin Award--please, get the hell out of the gene pool now, because you're making it skanky for the rest of us.:) With reasonable precautions (that do NOT include hazmat gear--mostly good ventilation such as computers should have anyways and heavy gloves if you don't want a nasty case of frostbite from handling dry ice) you should be OK. You've enough brains to know how to overclock the darn thing; surely we don't have to put "DO NOT EAT. CAUSES SEVERE FROSTBITE IF HANDLED WITH BARE HANDS. KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN." somebody-has-been-just-stupid-enough-to-have-done- this-and-sued-successfully warnings that most of the United States's population seems to require these days.:P
Where do you get frozen Carbon Dioxide? And isn't that a little dangerous to handle?
Actually, frozen Carbon Dioxide (as you so quaintly put it) is fairly readily available and mostly requires thick gloves to handle. It's otherwise known as "dry ice".;)
My father, who used to work for the water company here in town, could get it fairly easily; that plus water plus some flashing strobe lights added up to spooky cauldrons on Halloween for the kiddies.:)
You can prolly get it at packing companies and the like. It's also what is commonly used to keep stuff like hearts for transplant (and biological samples) cold till they get where they need to be; the stuff is common enough that researchers in remote parts of Africa can get it to freeze samples of stuff like blood samples of Ebola patients.
What happens if somehow it malfunctions and you get deadly carbon dioxide released into your room?
Nothing, unless you've got a ton of carbon dioxide, in which case you MIGHT suffocate...but you'd have to have an awful lot of dry ice to ever get enough to suffocate yourself. (I think maybe you're confusing carbon dioxide (which is just good old dry ice, might give a freeze-burn but nothing serious) with carbon monoxide (which is a deadly killer since it replaces oxygen in your blood)...carbon dioxide is not poisonous, even the amount of dry ice to make a big cooler put out a lot of "smoke" isn't deadly (in fact, that's largely what they use for "smoke" effects in movies--dry ice in water!:) and your plants would love you (since they breathe carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen).:)
Really, I'd love to overclock a Celeron 300a to 1000 MHz, but I don't want to have to be in a Hazmat suite to do it...
No hazmat suit needed. Mostly some good, thick gloves if you're going to be handling amounts sufficient to cool a motherboard (seriously--that much is not enough to suffocate or cause any more harm than a nasty case of frostbite if you handle the stuff with bare hands). You may want to make sure you're in a well-ventilated room just to be safe, but that's pretty much true with any stuff that cold, not to mention computer equipment.
(Chairman Kaga mode on) If memory serves me right (Chairman Kaga mode off) one of the competitors on "Iron Chefs" even used dry ice to freeze immature salmon to make sashimi. If the stuff is safe enough to pack hearts for transplant in and to freeze fish, it's safe enough to use on your computer. I've even used it before (along with glow-sticks in Ziploc baggies and a goodly amount of liquor and Mountain Dew:) to make a well drink called "swamp gas" in a cooler for Halloween parties (the carbon dioxide makes "smoke" effects from the water as well as bubbles--it's directly sublimating--and it freezes the alcohol into slush).
Literally the only thing I've ever seen that classified dry ice as hazmat was in shipping papers for truckers, and they literally classify almost everything as hazmat (including paint, empty barrels, tires, etc.).:) Don't worry. Putting dry ice on your motherboard is not going to kill you unless you're in a very enclosed space (if that's the case, don't eat chili, as your own farts might well kill you in just such a case much as it did one infamous Darwin Award nominee:). You will probably see a lot of neat smoke-like stuff coming from the computer (no, it's not broken--that's just the dry ice sublimating and freezing the water particles in the air). Put plants nearby and they'll make lots of oxygen and probably grow really well. No harm done, save maybe to the motherboard and your budget.:)
I also believe in speciation to some degree. If animals have tendencies only to mate with others that look similar to themselves, eventually they'll segregate, and a "species", by definition of the term, will be born. However, this does not explain for the addition of entire chromosomes and these chromosomes actually making sense and so on. Not one mammal descended from the first mammalian species has lost any of the five fingers.
To be honest, on reading this I'm smelling a furry critter with horns who lives under bridges and has a strange craving for Cuban cabra sandwiches:). If so, good job. You got me.:)
If this is NOT a troll, though...well, it seems someone has never been to a farm or a livestock show.:)
There is an entire class of mammals--the Arctiodactylia or "even-hooved" animals--that has lost one, and sometimes three, of the original five toes mammals had. Probably the most common member of the order in the US right now is the common cow; just to to a farm or a petting zoo, and count the number of toes on a cow. (Or deer, or any such critters. It's only the largest order of herbivorous animals on the planet; I'm sure you can find a member or two.)
For that matter, the second-largest order of herbivorous mammals has a large family that actually has lost two to four toes in its history. (I'm talking about the equines. In fact, we have one of the better fossil records that detail how they've lost toes throughout their evolution--they went from five to three to one toe. In fact, you occasionally have the rare "throwback" horse born with three toes; the loss of the last two toes occured fairly late in horse evolution. At least one "cousin" of the equines, the tapir, has three toes, and rhinos have five. If you want to see examples, just look at a zoo or at a horse-farm or go down to the track. Heck, watch the Kentucky Derby if you want.:)
For that matter, the entire "felid" branch of the Carnivora (which includes cats, "civet cats" and "genet cats", hyenas, and some older forms like Smilodon) has lost the fifth toe on its hind feet, and their front first toe is reduced to a dewclaw (which is the state of fifth toes in canids such as wolves, dogs and foxes, too; expect them to lose the hind dewclaws in a few million years). The main reason cats still have dewclaws on their front toes is that kitties can use them fairly well as thumbs, especially if not declawed (if you want them to demonstrate, get a can of cat-treats and let kitty fetch her own out). I will leave out the obvious joke about what will happen when cats evolve opposable thumbs and thus no longer need humans as their thralls for world dominance.:)
For that matter...we'll take it beyond mammals. The other major group besides the synapsids (one of the two great lineages of land animals besides amphibians; synapsids include mammals, theraspids or "proto-mammals", and "mammal-like reptiles" like Dimetrodon) happens to be the same group that reptiles and archosaurs belong to, including birds. They, too, have a fairly extensive history of digit-loss:
Last toe digit (our equivalent of our pinkies) lost sometime near when archosaurs first evolved; even modern crocs, which are the modern representatives of one of two branches of the archosaurs (the other being the bird/dino branch), only have four toes
Fourth toe (rough equivalent of ring finger turns non-functional in theropod dinosaurs during early evolution (about the time they separated from hererrasaurs, in the late Triassic)
Fourth finger lost in most theropod dinosaurs around evolution of the Maniraptora (the subclass of theropods that includes birds, as well as most of the meat-eating cast of the Jurassic Park movies besides dilophosaurs and compys), around early-mid Jurassic
Third finger (equivalent to the "flip the bird" finger) lost in tyrannosaurs
Fourth toe lost entirely in ornithomimosaurs
Sometime during development of powered flight (late Jurassic-early Cretaceous) finger claws lost and second and third fingers fuse while thumb develops as alula
In surviving theropod dinosaurs (aka birds) all have lost except thumb and first two fingers on front limbs and first two fingers were fused (there may have been a reversal in phorusracoid birds, which largely hunted as large land predators in the Americas until 2 million BC to 100,000 years ago); many, if not most, ground-running birds have lost the fourth toe entirely, in most birds it is a dewclaw, and only a very few birds (perching birds) use the fourth toe at all as a functional digit
I won't get into snakes. There is recent evidence they evolved from mosasaurs (a type of swimming reptile), and they not only lost digits but limbs altogether (the only snakes with limbs today are boids, which have claws used for mating attached to very tiny legs; early snakes have more substantial limbs, but nothing huge).
But perhaps, well, mere synapsid/reptilian split critters aren't enough. Let's throw amphibians in, too.:)
At least one sub-branch of amphibians has lost limbs as well (caecilans); there are several branches of frogs that have reduced digits to four per limb, too.
For that matter...the main reason most animals have five limbs is that five limbs is an incredibly ancient structure--literally coming about before land animals (we are now starting to find fossils of animals at around this time--we now know they evolved as swimmers first and evolved limbs to scoot about on bottom, and early "tetrapods" had varying numbers of digits per limb (some with five, some with seven or even eight digits per limb).
For more info on this, including some good lineages, you might want to go here or here.
As for Pascal's Wager...well, the wager relies on five very big assumptions:
that such a thing as God exists
that such a thing as Hell exists
that a God would be enough of a ratbastard as to throw someone into a place of eternal torment just because the poor sot hadn't ever heard of aforementioned God and/or disagreed with the "official" account based on empirical evidence
that what folks see as God might not be the processes of Nature, or that God may well have created stuff by evolution
that people are meant to blindly follow a leader instead of use the brains that God and/or evolution gave them in the first place so as to better understand the mysteries of life:)
Myself, well...if there is a God (which...if there is one, I think it might be Nature, but that's only my viewpoint) Sie either honestly doesn't give a damn one way or the other (in which case God is basically Nature, and the whole idea of appealing to a God is moot unless you mean something like apologising to cows before you eat them), or isn't enough of a ratbastard to chuck someone into a pit because the fossils pretty much show not only that horses evolved from tapir-like critters but that birds evolved from very close cousins of Deinonychus and we all came eventually from fishy-looking critters. If Sie is such a ratbastard, I'm not afraid to say that not only would I gladly burn in Hell in such a case, but such a ratbastard neither deserves my worship nor my respect.:) (And no, I don't buy the whole "Fossils were there to test us" crap, either...that makes God out not only to be a complete ratbastard, but a troll and a cruel ratbastard who gets his jollies off sending people to Hell for basically his idea of a practical joke. In which case, He can go straight to Hell, if you pardon the expression.)
Anybody with half a brain can type "napster" into a search engine and find Napigator etc. The problem is that Napster users are increasingly the great unwashed masses, who *CAN'T* figure out how to use a search engine
Actually...you'd be surprised at how many folks could find it...I told my sister (who knows enough about how to install Win98 without help, but whom I still wouldn't trust to know how to use Alta Vista) about it...two day later, Win98 goes south and has to be reinstalled. She calls later, proudly announcing she's reinstalled both Win98 and her main programs including Napster and Napigator.
Her literal comment regarding the latter: "I actually remembered that one--just had to remember the 'gator' bit.":)
In some states, it's illegal for telemarketers to simply drop the line after someone picks up. After all, it can be quite threatening for someone's phone to ring and then to suddenly drop the connection. For all you know, it might be someone checking to see if you're in before deciding to break into your house.....
ObDisclaimer: IANAL. I do not even pretend to be a lawyer on the Internet. Your mileage may vary considerably.
At least here in Kentucky, this type of sillybuggers would be illegal on at least two counts:
possible telephone harassment (as in calling, and as soon as a live human picks up, disconnecting--this is different from "predictive dialing" which is the cause of most hangups with telemarketers (basically, nobody available to take the call when your phone number gets rang)
A nifty provision in Kentucky's telemarketing law that prohibits nearly all recorded telemarketing announcements (you have to put a live human on the phone within ten seconds if the company doesn't have a prior business relationship with you, and in all cases you have to provide a number that may be called to be added to a do-not-call list).
Conceivably, you could prolly even get them on federal telemarketing laws for providing no easy way to be added to a do-not-call list and in fact doing everything they can to avoid do-not-call requests (many courts would be likely to see the fact they hang up the snecking phone when a live human picks it up as a deliberate attempt to avoid following federal telemarketing regs, and may even see it as prima facie evidence of "willful" disregard--read: $1500 per offence if you sue in small claims court).
Re:caffeine puts me to sleep
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Caffeine Vault
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· Score: 2
WKiernan dun said:
First thing in the morning I always drink one cup of coffee, and it clears away the cobwebs. (For all I know that could be the effect of the sugar - I sweeten my coffee with honey at home.) But then any time in the day after that, whenever I drink a cup of coffee, rather than getting me all tensed up, it has the paradoxical effect of making me want to put my head down on my desk and take a nap. So where I used to dose myself with coffee to stay alert at work, now that technique doesn't work at all anymore. And where some people, after having drunk a cup of coffee late at night, find it difficult to go to sleep soon afterwards, for me, if it's late, a cup of coffee sends me right off to dreamland. For me, caffeine is a more effective sleep-inducer than an alcoholic drink. A while back I had to drive home from one of my company's branch offices at 3:00 AM and I made the mistake of drinking a cup of coffee from a vending machine at a rest stop en route. I was tired but OK until then, but immediately after drinking the coffee I started drifting off while driving and being awakened by the vibration from running over the reflectors on the lane stripe - if I hadn't given up and pulled over to the side of the road for a quick nap in the driver's seat, I think I'd have wrecked my car. Am I the only one who experiences this effect?
Actually, no, you aren't.
Myself...well, I'm of the type that was referred to in less politically correct days as "being hyper" and known more in these days as ADHD, aka "Ritalin Prescription On A Stick". (I grew up largely before the days of dosing kids with Ritalin. I just got antihistamines that had the interesting side effect of being tranquilisers.:)
With a lot of people who run towards being "hyper", stimulants (including speed, Ritalin (which just metabolises to speed) and caffeine) actually tend to mellow one out. You're running on overdrive as it is--it's now thought that stimulants overload the brain just enough to mellow one out.
Myself, I'm not crazy about Ritalin. And yet I drink coffee--actually preferring the strong stuff (espresso, "trucker coffee" (regular coffee brewed approximately double strength--most folks see it as drinkable as battery acid, and my husband has to remind me to make coffee "half your usual strength" if he's to drink it:), etc.). I will probably have no stomach lining by the time I'm thirty, thanks to having literally grown up on trucker's-coffee.:)
I also tend to drink coffee not just to wake up, but often to unwind after a stressful day--the stuff actually calms me down, especially if I put a bit of flavouring into it or make cappuccino...I'll be awake, yes, but relaxed. Prolly has to do with the funky wiring that's in hyper folks in general...
For that matter, the same goes with chocolate...the more bitter, the better. I honestly wish I could find a good recipe to make it like the old Aztecs did (no sugar, black as night, bitter enough to put hair on your chest, and even with the occasional chili pepper added for flavour!).;) Not much on milk chocolate...not strong enough. Gimme the bittersweet stuff:)
(Hmmm...this prolly counts as a form of self-medication, I expect. Ah well. Somewhat cheaper than Ritalin and a hell of a lot more enjoyable.)
Now, admittedly, OD'ing on caffeine is a Bad Thing. Trucker's-coffee is prolly the maximum you want to take the liquid stuff...and I honestly do think trucker's-coffee is prolly stronger than espresso, to be honest:) I can testify that taking several Vivarin on top of a pot of coffee is a Bad Thing (my sister made the mistake of doing this during cramming for spring exams in college, and literally could not sleep for four days straight--luckily, she had enough body mass to keep from the nastier effects like arrythmias and puking blood and the like, but to this day she avoids Vivarin like the plague)...then again, one can't make cappuccino with Vivarin, or add amaretto flavouring to Vivarin, or experiment in making one's own amaretto or hazelnut Vivarin (well, I guess you could, but it ain't like grinding coffee beans).:)
It is perfectly legal to go through a neighborhood and knock on doors to see who answers. In fact, it's called market research. Most state laws consider this a right of easement
Actually, this can vary from not only state to state but from county to county and even city to city or township to township.
Most notably, here in Kentucky if anyone goes knocking on all the doors in an area where it is marked "POSTED NO TRESSPASSING" (yes, there is actually a legal status to a "posted" No Tresspassing sign--you actually register it with the county courthouse) or in areas with "No Soliciting" ordinances, they can quickly find themselves taken to the county jail and charged with tresspassing. Yes, this even applies to Girl Scouts/Girl Guides, Jehovah's Witnesses, those annoying folks selling magazines, etc. Literally the ONLY things that "No Soliciting" ordinances don't cover are census workers and police with warrants; I'm not entirely sure that even census workers are allowed on posted property (I think they may have to actually get police escort or a warrant to perform census to legally go on the land without permission of the landowner).
For the record, yes, I not only am part owner of property that is "posted" but live in an apartment complex with a "No Soliciting" rule. Yes, I do have people removed who are tresspassing and/or soliciting without my permission (as it is, in my area the Girl Scouts generally don't go door-to-door both out of safety concerns and because a lot of apartments and even entire communities have "No Soliciting" ordinances--they sell outside grocery stores and to family members and friends of family).:)=
Consider the following situation: A large corporation is killing babies by giving baby formula to mothers in third-world countries until breastfeeding is no-longer an option, then they start selling it. The mothers can afford it for a little while, but soon, the money is used up and their babies starve.
Considering the multinational who owned, spun off, and just recently rebought Nestle, you're honestly shocked at this?
(For those who don't know--Nestle was for some time, and is again now thanks to a reaquisition, a subsidiary of Phillip-Morris. Yup, the big cigarette company. One of those that laughably tried to claim that they didn't dope cigarettes with nicotine, even though literally anyone who works or has worked in a Phillip-Morris tobacco plant can tell you that there are certain tanks you Do Not Touch lest you be rushed straightaway to the hospital because aforementioned tanks sweat nicotine. (Yes, I've had family members who worked at Phillip-Morris, and one that had to sue for worker's comp due to their chopper damn near cleaving her hand into Marlboro additives. Let's just say I've a fair amount of knowledge on the subject.) They aren't exactly the most ethical of companies to begin with--getting people hooked on cigs, on formula, it's all money to them:P)
Actually...it's not surprising that the US is friendly to megacorps. In fact, it could be argued the entire US started as a megacorp...
The Virginia Company (of which many of the "patriots" of the American Revolution were stockholders, including Benjamin Franklin) wanted to do surveys of the land west of the Appalachians for land claims and settlement. The British, who had signed treaties with most of the Native American nations along the Appalachians (including the Cherokee, Creek and Delaware nations) to the effect that everything west of the Appalachian Mountains was "Indian Country" (a minor note--much of what was then Virginia (including Kentucke County, which eventually became Kentucky), was west of the mountains and about the only white folks living there at the time were refugees from the failed uprising of Bonnie Prince Charlie--bet you didn't know there were Scottish and Irish settlers in the early 1700's, eh?) said no because in large part they didn't want to piss off the Native American nations OR the French (many of the Nations had alliances with France).
In 1776, the Colonies declared independence. Literally almost one of the first acts the United States did as a nation was to sign a treaty with the Cherokee Nation ceding the biggest part of non-Jackson-Purchase Kentucky to the state of Virginia. Shortly thereafter Dan'l Boone and others came to take the lands and survey them (and ran promptly into the Shawano, who had not signed a treaty giving THEIR chunk of Kentucky over, but that's another story).
The treaty in question also ceded a fair chunk of the state of Tennessee; in fact, eastern Tennessee set itself up as the short-lived "State of Franklin" (not uncoincidentially named after one of the big stockholders in the Virginia Company--kinda like how Hudson Bay got named) for about a year and a half until the Articles of Confederation were superceded by the Constitution. (There are articles on this on the 'net, and on historical markers all through eastern Tennesseee--outside of Bristol there is actually a "historical community" set up as a reenactment of lifestyles around the time the State of Franklin existed.)
For that matter, literally until the Constitution was ratified, darn near all land west of the Appalachians was effectively owned by the Virginia Company. (After this, the US tended to take big chunks of land by buying them from other countries who never owned the land in the first place and setting them up as "territories".:)
Needless to say, at least some of us have been screwed by US-based megacorps since day 1:P
To continue the thread of embedded games and easter-eggs in console games:
In the "Making of Lunar: Silver Star Complete" CD (in the full Playstation limited edition version) there is an easter-egg that--with a combination of button presses--starts up a multiplayer game of Pong.
In "Tales of Destiny" (a Namco RPG for Playstation) there is a section in one of the towns that has the complete arcade version of "Tower of Druuaga". (Then again, Namco is downright infamous for in-references, and especially in "Tales of Destiny"--there are many super-deformed versions of characters from various Namco games in the background (chibi Jack2 (Tekken 3), chibi Heihachi (the Tekken series), a few other assorted characters from the Tekken series and Soul Edge) as well as some decidedly more obscure (to non-Japanese) sources--like the kitty from Namjatown (an amusement park Namco runs in Japan). For that matter, in Tekken 3 itself there is an in-reference to their amusement park chain--Xiao Yu's stage is in the middle of the Wonder Eggs amusement park (yes, Namco runs an entire CHAIN of amusement parks in Japan, rather like Paramount owns Kings Island and Carowinds and whatnot here in the States).:)
Refrag dun said (in regards to a thread on donors and stuff like frats):
This sounds like a campus legend. In other words, it sounds like BS. It's very similar to a similar legend about why my university didn't have a football team.
It may not be as large of an "urban legend" as you think. Cumberland College (a Baptist college in Williamsburg, KY) did not have a football team for some fifty years because one of the major donors to the college fund stipulated as a condition of her donations that the college NOT have a football team (her son had been killed in a football accident).
Upon her death, the first thing Cumberland College did was set up a football team.:)
(Yes, the college had other sports (basketball, among other things); yes, this can actually be confirmed by asking the college officials themselves. I know of it because my sister attended college there both before and after the college had a football team.)
Especially at private, small schools, such conditions on donations are NOT entirely unusual. For that matter, our own government in the US puts conditions on funding all the time (there's a standing rule that all funds to international health organisations like WHO and UN health programs cannot be put to use for abortion or family planning programs, among other things)...in the case of universities, a big one is that they cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, race, etc. if they are to get federal funding (yes, this includes Stafford loans and Pell grants, among other things). Why is it so unlikely that private donors can put strings in such as "Funding will continue as long as there are no fraternal organisations on campus"?
(Don't even get me started on corporate sponsorships--my uni will probably end up having Papa John's as the only food outlet on campus, thanks to them paying for a multi-million-dollar football stadium. Many, if not most, big unis now are Coke-only or Pepsi-only establishments (hell, for all I know, small unis in rural Kentucky and Tennessee might go to being RC-only establishments:). If a donor is going to dump a large enough sum of money in a university's lap, they WILL whore themselves--this also goes for public and even private schools now [don't think you're going to get out of Coke-only schools by going Catholic or private--some of THESE are getting corporate sponsorship, too, and if you do NOT want a school that forces religious views down yer kid's throats you are quite literally SOL in large parts of the country--out of over 100 private schools in the Louisville metro area, all of four are non-denominational, one of these is a traditional school, and the other three are specialty schools for persons with various physical or mental handicaps such as the Deaf-Oral school or schools for kids with "emotional disorders"--also, keep in mind that private schools can literally reject a kid for ANY reason--the biggest reason they have "better" schools is they can literally cherrypick students).
Seriously, this borders on silly. At the least it would be a Really Bad Idea...
1) As many have stated before, the main rule on subs is Be Quiet. I would imagine it would be rather a sort of Bad Thing to be able to be found by 2400bps whine.:)
1a) As of right now, needless to say, there is not a huge market in civilian oceangoing subs.:) The military already has its OWN system of getting in contact--namely, basically ELF pages sent at very slow rates (we're talking less than five words a minute--probably more like five CHARACTERS a minute--in Morse) telling them to come to periscope depth to pick up their messages.:)
2) As many others have noted, this is probably not a Terribly Healthy Thing for other forms of life that depend on sound for echolocation and communication in deep-water environments, namely, cetaceans (whales and dolphins). As it is, scientists are concerned about the noise levels that ALREADY exist, to the point of diverting ships away from breeding areas of whales (momma whales aren't terribly crazy about the sounds of motors from cruise ships).
3) Whales and dolphins aside, I'd imagine the humans at depth would be going minorly batty, and by voyage's end would be ready for the psychiatric ward of your local VA hospital:) There is a reason why most modem manufacturers disconnect the speaker after a successful connection--namely, modem sounds are damned annoying to most people.:)
4) I don't want to THINK of all the natural sources of noise that'd cause literal "line noise" (earthquakes, ELF pages, other subs, boats, whales humping/telling the metal whale to shut up that infernal racket, etc.).:)
Re:It's D&D Jim, but not as we know it
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· Score: 2
Before anyone gets any ideas...
Trolls be warned: The first of y'all that posts "Zelgadis Greywards Naked and Petrified" is going to get a Dragon Slave Enema.;)
Especially since I claim dibs on Zelgadis.;)
(Seriously, though...yes, the whole casting sequence is just...pretty.:) Though the take on it in (I think episode 2? of) Slayers: Next was quite funny...Gourry, Zel, and Amelia cranking air-raid sirens shouting "THIS IS A DRAGON SLAVE ALERT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" *chuckle*)
(And yes, you'd have to have seen Slayers to get both the joke re Zelgadis and why one would need to issue a duck-and-cover warning for a Dragon Slave. See this as your order to go rent or buy or borrow the series Right Now, before we send Naga the Serpent after you.;)
Re:Grave of the Fireflies / Hotaru no haka
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Essential Anime
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· Score: 2
Robotech Master dun said:
Ironic that you should mention Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro in the same post; they were originally shown together in Japan as a double-feature.
O_o *double-takes the above*
That...gods...that is just asking for a wee bit of a nervous breakdown, no? (Mind, both are great movies. "Grave of the Fireflies" is possibly one of the most depressing movies (forget just anime) ever made, hands down, though...made even worse by the fact you know it's historically accurate. Trust me when I say that you want a good amount of your antidepressant of choice, and you want no sharp or even dull objects capable of causing puncture wounds nearby--by the first 45 minutes you'll be wanting to off yourself to end the emotional pain of it all.)
I just hope that they showed "My Neighbor Totoro" after "Grave of the Fireflies". I don't want to think how much the suicide rate in Japan must have gone up if they showed "Totoro" first...light-n-airy, then, *boom* Pain Au Grautin...gah.:P
(Did I mention that "Grave of the Fireflies" is quite possibly the most depressing film ever made, more so even than Bill Gates' testimony in the Monopoly Trial Of The Century, and you really shouldn't watch it "on a whim" or because you're bored or unless you're read for a good stiff dose of condensed misery? Not that it's a bad film for it--it's actually a damned good film...it would also cause suicidal depression in someone in the manic phase of being bipolar while he was hopped up on pot and amphetamines.:P Just so you know what depth of pain you're getting into.:)
Re:Tenchi Muyo - it's never that simple...
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· Score: 2
The good Cpt. Kangarooski dun said:
Yes but OTOH Pretty Sammy also has her fighting computer mogul and would-be world conquerer Billy Standards. Perhaps the best informed magical girl anime ever;)
That's Biff Standard...but yes, "Revenge of the Electronic Brain" has to be the funniest pisstake I've ever seen of Micros~1, hands down. From the whole "world standardisation" bit to Tenchi furtively hunting down an illegal copy of a rather MacOS-like program to Biff Standard's real plan being revealed...it's just friggin' hilarious. Though I have my doubts we are EVER going to get the good Judge Jackson to dress up a la Sailor Moon shouting "Pretty Mutation"...:)
If you think Pretty Sammy is scary by itself, though...think of this...the lady who's the seiyuu for Sasami is apparently a big-league singer in Japan. And apparently Pretty Sammy is popular enough in Japan they've not only spun off a TV series, but spun off a series of Pretty Sammy radio plays on NHK Radio. (I've heard of radio plays of, say, Star Wars, but Pretty Sammy?!?)
Speaking of Mac-like devices...am I the only one who thinks Washu-chan has grounds to sue the everloving hell out of Steve Jobs?;) Seriously...look at her notebook in "Revenge of the Electronic Brain", plus the artwork that came in the videotape...now compare it to a certain little product called the iBook...they look VERY similar, no? If I remember right, even the NAMES are similar...Washu-chan's box is called the i-Heart or something like that. I swear to Goddess (Tsunami?) that it's an iBook, though.;)
CN has announced air date as June 5 (that's right, this Monday). However, I've also heard that Tenchi has been delayed to July 3...from Hollywood Reporter, search for Tenchi. (You'll only get an abstract from the article; the full thing would require a paying subscription). I'm inclined to believe the bit about the delay until July, because CN is pretty good about advertising what they have and I haven't seen any Tenchi ads yet. Only bad part is that Tenchi is not one, but at least 3 series (plus spin-offs, plus...). Of the three, CN is going to air them in the following order, IIRC: 1.Tenchi Universe (aka Tenchi TV1) 2.Shin Tenchi (aka Tenchi TV2; the least-liked of the three) 3.Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki (aka Tenchi OAV; the series that started it all and that many fans seem to think is the best...except that it isn't finished, yet).
Alas, I can't exactly say I'm looking forward to this:
a) Shin Tenchi Blows Goats (sorry, but that is my opinion and I stick to it, even though I do like the ending...and no, I'm not going to spoil it). Damn near anyone who likes Tenchi Muyo and has seen the other two series or even so much as the second Tenchi movie will tell you Shin Tenchi Blows Goats. About the only thing I can think of worse to show is the dubbed Sailor Moon. Or maybe the gawdawful Bubblegum Crisis dub with the songs dubbed (please, anyone, hunt down and kill the parties who made the decision to translate the songs to English...it's bad enough they did that, but the person they have singing carries a tune about as well as the Japanese actress for Ayeka--that is, she can't sing at all).
b) I'd have put the OAV's first then the TV series; there is a fairly major spoiler in Shin Tenchi unless one remembers these are essentially three different universes.
c) You know for a freakin' fact that the series will likely be butchered to Hell and back to satisfy the Censorship Boreds here in the States...just like Sailor Moon got totally ruined...just like Dragonball Z got ki--ki--ki--sent to another dimension:). Gods forbid we show our little friend Washu-chan in her full horror, much less Ryoko's tits, much less the entire scene in the hot-springs resort in the OVA...trust me, it's going to be positively BUTCHERED if they show it on Cartoon Network. I don't CARE that John Kricfalusi did a Yogi Bear cartoon--they showed it exactly TWICE, at 10 pm and 1 am at night, and unfortunately what with this being America (land of prudes who still, in the age of Mononoke Hime and even intelligent US animation like Titan A.E. and Iron Giant, are NOT going to be able to handle double entendres much less Nurse Washu) they have to deal with Censorship Boreds.:P
Now, what I REALLY wish is that the US had some equivalent to Anime X (an all-anime digital satellite channel run by TV Tokyo, the network that airs the vast majority of anime on Japanese TV)...a dedicated all-anime channel. Barring that, I'd be happy if the eastern US could start getting anime shown on public TV (where it is far less likely to be butchered to acceptability for folks Sasami's approximate physical age)--if one lives in the Western US, it's fairly common to see anime on public TV on weekends (much like it's common to see Britcoms like Red Dwarf in the eastern US). Perhaps we should start pestering public TV that we'll donate on the condition they start showing Rurouni Kenshin.;)
Anyhoos...if you're going to watch Tenchi Muyo, start with the OVA's. Seriously. IMHO (and in the HO's of many others) that series was the best of all, though the first TV series isn't TOO bad. Avoid the movie "Tenchi Forever" like the Black Plague.
If you like Tenchi, you'll probably like El Hazard--done by the same folks. Coming from watching Tenchi, I'd recommend the TV series; if not, watch the OVA first then the TV series (sold as El Hazard: The Alternative World).
If one likes Tenchi + massive pisstaking of Sailor Moon (among other things), Pretty Sammy (also in two series--the Pretty Sammy OVAs and the Magical Project S TV series) is good if kawaii to the point it induces tooth decay.:) Anti-Microsoft types will especially enjoy Episode 2 of the OVAs ("Revenge of the Electric Brain")--quite possibly the most savage pisstake I have EVER seen of Microsoft. EVER.:)
If one is REALLY into Tenchi and/or Pretty Sammy, and can understand Japanese, there are supposedly radio airplays that have been done (this should give you an idea of the popularity). I do not speak Japanese well enough to understand them, alas.:)
Some fanfic is available at Gensao's Tenchi Muyo Fan-Fiction Archive, including some MSTings of fanfics. The archive does include some hentai (adult) material, but in a different section; the writing goes from very good ("Aikan Muyo" is actually a fairly good bit of fanfic) to the bad (avoid anything on the archive listed as being from "Tank Cop") to the...downright strange and probably more appropriate for alt.tasteless ("Tenchi on a Plate of Sashimi"--that's all I'll say on that...it'd be a good work on alt.tasteless, but tends to make most people physically ill at best...yes, it really IS that bad; do not read un-MSTed and with food in stomach).
Other picks of mine:
Must see Evangelion. Be forewarned: the "alternate" Episodes 25 and 26 (sold as "End of Evangelion"--the reason I heard was different--the original 25 and 26 were the real eps, folks weren't satisfied, so he created "End of Eva") are rather a mindfuck. For that matter, so is the entire series.:) But not bad at all, and one actually starts to enjoy it. (BTW, Asuka is annoying in English OR Japanese. Asuka Needs To Die. [Then again, I always rooted for Rei, so there.:)])
Must see Vision of Escaflowne. Fortunately, the series IS out officially Stateside (I've seen the fansub, haven't had the chance to see the official version yet). VERY pretty, a bit of a mindfuck in places but not to an extreme...one of the few crossovers between "shonen" anime (boy anime, like Rurouni Kenshin) and "shoujo" or girly anime (like Sailor Moon or Tenchi Muyo). Did I mention I probably like it more than Evangelion?;)
You've seen Trigun and Cowboy Bebop; otherwise, I'd mention those. I'd recommend Slayers (again, avoid the movies like the plague, but up to Slayers Try is screamingly funny--imagine a Dungeons and Dragons game, gone horribly wrong.:) and Ranma 1/2 (werepigs, transsexuality, fighting, pandas and painty-raiding hentai old men...what else could you ask for?;)
Roujin Z, if you can find it. All I will say on this is but one word: GEEZERTRON.;) (Yes, you will have to find the joke behind this by yourself.:)
Bakuretsu Hunters, if you can find it. Another screamingly funny one (have you noticed I tend to stick towards comedies and shonen anime?;).
Lost Universe is another must-see. Done by the same folks who did Slayers, so if you like Slayers you'll probably like this one.:)
Must see Nadeisco, if you've ever seen anything like Macross (yes, this includes the take-three-series-and-frappe mess known as Robotech in the US). Injokes all around, including a number of anime injokes (one character is a seiyuu or voice-actress; another is an otaku (fanboy) over a series known as Gekki Ganger;).
Revolutionary Girl Utena is pretty darn good, at least what I've seen of it...even if it DOES go weird in parts.:) Not at all bad for borderline shoujo anime.
Card Captor Sakura, if you can find it (you will probably have to go with fansubs--it's not supposed to be out officially till later this year, possibly as Captor Sakura). VERY cute, VERY shoujo, but has enough dark bits I can watch without insulin shots.:) I'm REALLY surprised that Cartoon Network isn't talking of picking this up--there wouldn't even need to be much bobbitting (not like Tenchi Muyo, anyways;). One of the few anime series NOT done by TV Tokyo (this is done by NHK, the main TV and radio network in Japan).
Rurouni Kenshin, if you can find it. I've not seen too many of the OVAs, mostly the TV series. Supposedly is shown out west as "Samurai X" and supposedly Sony is releasing it on video soon; you are probably going to have a hell of a time finding it from fansub groups as a result (as it's not officially out yet)--best bet is from someone who already has a fansub or lives out west and can tape the show off public TV for you. Should you find a fansub, try to avoid the HECTO fansub if possible (you almost need to be able to read Cantonese to understand it--it's that bad). Shinsen Gumi fansub is better (at least in semi-understandable English;); supposedly a third fansub exists that is far better than the two groups mentioned. (Also, Sony execs, if you are reading this--Please hurry the hell up and bring the damn series over.:) My fourth-generation tapes are starting to wear thin, and I'd actually like to be able to watch without having a large red blob on the screen with Sanosuke-sama in the middle. Me like Sanosuke-sama.;9)
Lupin isn't too bad...only seen a bit of it, but not bad at all...funny in the sort of Trigun/Cowboy Bebop vein.
Azakuzin Cha-Cha, if you can find it. Supposedly shown on Cartoon Network Asia (which does exactly Jack for us Stateside except give hope it may show up on Cartoon Network US)...another hyper-kawaii show in the vein of Card Captor Sakura but has its own twists. Not at all bad if you like the cute stuff.
Any Miazaki. Trust me when I say you cannot go wrong with Miazaki. You have to admire the guy for being the one artist whom Michael Eisner has NOT butchered his work in a distribution deal (most Miazaki work is distributed by Dizzney now; the first two being "Kiki's Delivery Service" and Mononoke Hime). You should be at least able to find Kiki's, and Mononoke Hime should be out on video in a few months. Only bad thing is that pretty much it's dub-only (though not bad dubs at all--I'm a purist and like the OPTION of getting a subtitled version, though)...if you want a subtitled version so badly, you might check out the fansub circuits (there was a fansub of Mononoke Hime floating about some months ago). Don't be offended if nobody wants you to tape them, though (most fansubbers put that condition on the fansubs when the Dizzney version was released--would YOU want to be sued for "piracy" by a company that has such a pack of lawyers and lobbyists that we will probably be listening to Radio Free Mars before Mickey Mouse ever goes into the public domain? Neither do they.:). There are also some Miazaki films that have NOT gone into Dizzney hell, most notably "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind", which is a damned good anime.
Gatchaman (aka G-Force) is still a sentimental favourite of mine. Get the Japanese-language versions if possible--gives whole new life into the series.:) And besides, it's done by Amano-sama. Thou Shalt Not Say Ill About Amano-sama Or Else A Pack Of Sex-Crazed Kitsune Shall Infest Thy Underwear.;)
Nazca, if you can find it. Very interesting anime about warriors reincarinated from Inca times...forget Incas didn't have katanas, and it's quite enjoyable.:) (Then again, if "Mysterious Cities of Gold" could get away with Mayans having freaking solar-powered AIRPLANES, they can get away with Incas using katanas.:)
Fushigi Yuugi (English dub sold as "Mysterious Play"--very nice they did that, no confusion there:) is pretty good, at least from what I've seen. I have also heard that, up until the very very end, it descends into being possibly the most depressing anime written since "Grave of the Fireflies" (more on that in a minute). Two tips from friends of mine who have seen this: 1) Do not get overly attached to ANY character. 2) Watch PAST the credits of the last episode, and keep any sharp objects away from you until you do so.:)
Record of Lodoss War is also fairly good, at least what I've seen. Interesting history behind it--reportedly, it's based off a Japanese RPG which in itself was loosely based off AD&D (so the real argument can be made that it's an animated D&D series, only done properly;). At least one spinoff series, which I've not seen yet, exists.
Dragon Half, if you can find it. You will probably have to resort to fansubs. Damned hilarious series...laughed till I cried:)
Akira isn't that bad. Probably would be more understandable if they'd made it from the entire manga instead of the two graphic novels in the middle of the series, but not bad. Warning: UNLESS you have read the entire manga series, do NOT attempt to explain the plot of the movie--my husband made that mistake on a local anime BBS, and for the next fifteen months got spontaneous migraines whenever someone so much as MENTIONED the word "Akira".:)
Bubblegum Crisis/Crash isn't bad--try to view the original series first, and AVOID THE GODDAMN DUBS LIKE THE PLAGUE. They BUTCHER "Konya Wa Hurricane" which is one of the better J-rock songs in anime by having SOMEONE WHO CAN'T FRIGGING SING SING IT IN ENGLISH! Pure blasphemy.
I have heard good and bad about the "alternate universe" BCG series, "Bubblegum Crisis 2040". Uses a bit too much CGI eye-candy, but the four eps I saw weren't too bad as long as you remember that it is an alternate universe (just like the three Tenchi series;). I miss the lesbian references, though...we all know Sylia Stingray and especially Nene are flaming. Out of the closet, girls;)
And now for the hentai section (yes, I am hentai. I am not ashamed to state that I am mildly hentai.;) But this is funny hentai, so I may be excused.:)...both of these probably count as "adult comedy"...
F-Cubed, especially "Night of the F-Cubed". Adult, yet screamingly funny...probably only funny if you think risque situations are funny, but I thought it was hilarious.:)
Ogenki Clinic--Imagine a sex counselor clinic run by Tenchi Muyo's own Noboyuki. (Read: Dirty Middle-Aged Man.:) The whole damn series is a riot...quite adult, but screamingly funny.:)
This should be enough to get you shopping for now.;)
I've actually worked in telemarketing The only way you ever take someone's name off (for any type of financial telemarketing) is if they are a pensioner i.e. we couldn't sell them anything. In addition, if we determined from a few houses that this was a low income area we would write that down. So if you don't want to be rung, tell them you're 80 with no money. However, since the CD's with everyones phone numbers on them are sold from company to company, only one company will ever cross you off their list.
Dear Mickonline:
I would be extremely interested to know which telemarketing firm you worked for.
I would like to know this, because if they ever call me I want to be able to nail their balls to the wall. >:)=
You see...your company engaged in two flatly illegal practices.
Firstly...if someome requests that they be placed on your "do not call" list, by law you must maintain that list for ten years. Furthermore, if they also request that you send them your "do not call" policy, you are again required by law to send that to them. (FWIW--you are required to have a "do not call" policy--it's quite illegal to operate without one.)
More info on the law and legal requirements for telemarketers here. Please note that should you violate the law and you run into someone sufficiently pissy (such as myself), such fsck-ups as NOT adding my name to your do-not-call list can be expensive (victims are entitled to sue for $500 per offense, $1500 per "willful" offense [i.e. you knew damn well what you were doing was wrong]...in most states you may sue for up to $1500 in small claims court (no lawyers required), most courts will give summary judgement in favour of the plaintiff if nobody from the telemarketing firm shows up, the court can send a summons to pay the fine Or Else, and court judgements in your favour look very nice in formal complaints to the FCC asking them to Please Shut The Mother-Fsckers Down.:)
The second illegal practice is redlining--purposely blocking out low-income or minority neighbourhoods. (Yes, if you are dealing with finances at all, redlining is illegal in the US. Same if you're dealing in real estate, insurance, etc.--a bank here in Kentucky just got smacked rather hard because it was found that it was redlining low-income minority communities in terms of house loans.) Trust me that if it is ever found out by the feds your former company does this, they might end up not being able to so much as loan a homeless person two bucks for a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20.:) Redlining is still unfortunately common, but the authorities (such as HUD, federal banking regulators, etc.) are becoming far less tolerant of it.
(As an aside--just FWIW, I'm merely writing as a Private Joe who has little tolerance for discrimination (I grew up in a low-income part of the Louisville metro area that was constantly being shat on by the city--literally being used as their dumping grounds for garbage and minimalls and the airport because they figured "the poor hicks in the south part ain't gonna bitch") and little to no tolerance for telemarketers (I literally don't accept calls from telemarketers and survey agencies unless it is from a survey agency that I have called first and who will give me stuff like free food, etc. for my time and trouble:)--even political surveys, I will deliberately give BS answers just to skew their statistics), not to mention junk mailers (I freely admit to using spamtrap names and/or addresses if I must give personal info out--both for email AND snail-mail). Unless you REALLY make it worth my time, don't bother contacting me--if I want to get a service from you, I'll contact you, thank you.:)
(Part of why I am so pissy on this is I've had to deal with Bad Telemarketers like Chemlawn, who literally refused to get off the phone even after I had told them five times that I was not interested, I wanted on their do-not-call list, and I actually WANTED weeds to grow in my yard because I was setting up a nature sanctuary (!). AND they had the audacity to call back a week later, upon which I asked to speak to their supervisor and gave them an earful. They have not called back since.)
It's rather easy to keep from getting telemarketing calls:
1) Use the magic words "Please put me on your do not call list, please remove me from any lists you may sell to other telemarketing agencies, and please mail me a copy of your do not call policy." (The last two are important, because they show you aren't fscking about and it gives the telemarketers more rope to hang themselves by.:)
2) If they get pissy or call you afterwards, ask to speak to the manager (after getting the telemarketer's name, of course). Explain the law to the manager, and ask him at each point if he is aware that:
He must maintain a do-not-call list for 10 years
He must maintain a do-not-call policy and send it on request
He must remove your name from lists sold to other telemarketing agencies on request
He must not call before 9 am local time or after 9 pm local time
If they do not do the above, they are liable under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for $500 per offense, $1500 per "willful" offense (they knew what they were doing).
Then state, clearly, the spiel in 1) above and state that you are putting them on notice that if they don't send the do-not-call policy and/or they call you at ALL in the next ten years, you will be taking them to small claims court for willful violation of the TCPA. Document all this info including time of the call, etc.
3) If they are the least bit naughty to you (i.e. they call again, fail to mail a do-not- call policy, etc.) then sue the bastards.:) Most telemarketers won't show up in court, it costs anywhere from free to around fifty dollars to file a case in small claims court, and you get anywhere from $500 to $1500 per offense--in a way, it really IS a way to "make money fast".:) Courts will handle collections, by the way--if they don't pay, they suddenly become more in trouble (read: contempt of court--in the worst case, the CEOs can be jailed till they pay up).
4) Investigate your state's telemarketing laws and see if there's even MORE stuff you can use against them. (In Kentucky, for instance, there are actual CRIMINAL penalties for violating the laws--we also have stricter time-of-day requirements (no calls before 10 am), a statewide "do-not-call" list maintained by the Attorney-General that uses "asterisked-numbers" listed in the phone book, and it is illegal to telemarket using a recording (you MUST speak to a live human within five seconds of the call, or they just broke Kentucky law).) Check with your Attorney-General's office, or look under your state's name and "consumer protection".
5) There are some phone services very useful in avoiding telemarketers (and in some cases, tracing just WHERE they got your name). Availability varies from state to state--check with your telco. Among them:
Having your phone listing under an obviously false pseudonym (Joe Dredd, Fred Flintstone, George Jetson, etc.)
Unpublished numbers--more expensive but invaluable in not only avoiding a lot of telemarketing calls but also in tracing the sellers of numbers--some telemarketers actually buy their number lists from the phone company. (It is a good idea in general to explicitly inform the phone company that you want on their do-not-call list and you want your name removed from all lists they sell to other parties.)
Various Caller ID packages such as Anonymous Call Block (in some areas it DOES block telemarketers--in Kentucky, for instance, they have to provide a number on Caller ID by law), Unknown Number Verification (dial a number before you can talk to the person), etc.
In some states, like Florida and Kentucky, there are statewide do-not-call lists. Call your telco or Attorney-General's office for more info.
6) Junkbuster's Telemarketer's Script is invaluable for documenting telemarketing calls (among other things, it lists the questions you need to ask if you want to "make money fast" from telemarketers if/when they misbehave;). For that matter, the entire telemarketing section is invaluable IMHO. (A wee note--I'm not entirely unbiased. I've had very good results, even at my old place, with their tips--I happen to be the client they're quoting.;) This was at a residence that'd get 4-10 telemarketing calls a DAY, mind--getting them whittled to one or two a week was a major accomplishment, one done largely through Junkbuster's tips. Oh, and BTW, their script IS GPL'd--you can tweak it to your liking (to include state laws, etc.) as long as you give 'em credit.)
7) There are actual devices, such as one sold by Public Citizen, that basically have a button one can press to automagically give the "add my number to your do not call list" spiel. (By Grud, they use machines like predictive dialers--why shouldn't you?;) Most of these are around $30 US or so--links here (for Phone Butler) or here (for Phone Filter. There are several devices of this type around, some even being sold at stores like Service Merchandise and Sears--shop around.
8) If you've got Winblows (or Wine--I see no real reason why it couldn't work unde Wine) you might take a look at Engima, which is a nice little proggie to let you fill out the script on computer. (There is a Mac version linked from the site; I see no reason why a Linux version couldn't possibly be developed somehow.)
9) The ultimate in deterrance of telemarketers (at least if you've got ADSL or cable-modem service) is probably doing away with the landline and getting a cell phone. Telemarketing calls to cell phones are illegal in the US, and most areas give cell phones their own exchanges so that telemarketers can filter them out.
Again--these are just tactics (well, besides 7-9; I run Linux, like the pleasure of bitching out the telemarketers myself, and neither Insight@Home nor Hellsouth ADSL are much of options--I'm waiting for more competition in Louisville's ADSL market because I can get it cheaper than through Hellsouth) I've used, and quite successfully--if you start these at the moment you get a phone line, and adopt a "zero tolerance" policy towards telemarketers, you CAN eventually wipe out telemarketing calls from your lines altogether. (No, I am not making this up. On my (unpublished, Caller-ID-enabled, anon-call-blocked, statewide-do-not-call-listed, with-me-leading-the-war-on-telemarketers on the other end armed with Junkbusters script in hand should they get through THAT flotilla of "leave me alone" deterrance) I've actually succeeded in making it where I don't get telemarketing calls. It helps a lot that Kentucky does have additional laws; it also helps that the numbers are unpublished (they can't even get them through Directory Assistance--the only way they get them is if Hellsouth sells the numbers) and the three companies that have had the audacity to telemarket these numbers in the year I've had them got it made COMPLETELY plain that I do not want calls, EVER, and I entirely mean to clue-by-four them into submission should they ever forget that.;) It IS possible to live free from Telemarketing Hell, though. (One must sometimes be a bitch, yes. Sometimes bitchiness is necessary. Most get the point with just 1), though. The later steps are for if they have proven themselves Naughty, like Chemlawn or the company mickonline apparently worked for.;)
On Computers in the Classroom * Whenever I point out the dubious value of computers in the schools. I hear, 'Look, computers are everywhere, so we have to bring them into the classroom.' Well, automobiles are everywhere, too. They play a damned important part in our society, and it's hard to get a job if you can't drive. In fact, cars count for more of our economy than do computers. But we don't teach automotive literacy.
Actually, it depends on what state you live in. In Kentucky, for instance, not only is Driver's Ed a required credit in school, but is actually a requirement to get a driver's license or even a permit if you are under 18. (Folks over 18 are exempted only because, well, it is next to impossible to get a free Driver's Ed course once out of high school--the cheapest courses I've been able to find run over $100:P)
Pretty much, if you are still in high school, you HAVE to take some kind of Driver's Ed before being allowed behind the wheel at all.:P If you don't, you are essentially farged till you hit 18 and can get a course through Yellow Cab or the like (there are some schools here that--even for gifted/talented or higher-level high-school work or most electives--are ALREADY having to ship kids out to other schools; those kids are positively screwed unless the state gives vouchers for Driver's Ed...then again, at least one school for which this applies is a school for the "emotionally disturbed" (read: those kids unlucky enough to get "geek profiled" or having bad probs with their folks), another is (perversely) the major gifted/taltented magnet school here (!)...
Then again, Kentucky has downright strict laws regarding teen driving, period...you must keep a permit for six months, you cannot drive after sundown if on a permit (this screws a lot of kids over, especially with magnet schools--it was originally meant to keep kids from "cruising", but some kids in HIGH SCHOOL don't get home till almost 6 pm anyways due to multiple bus transfers--yes, this is regular yellow school bus transfers, folks--there are bits about nearly the entire high school system being made up of magnet schools that sucks), the person who must ride in the front seat with you must be someone over 21 who has been licensed for at least two years, there is "zero tolerance" for ANY alcohol (if you take communion and then drive--and are stopped by a cop and alcohol is found in your bloodstream--you can lose the right to get a permit or license in Kentucky till age 21), if you have been placed in juvenile hall you can lose the right to drive till age 18/21, and Kentucky has "no pass/no drive" (basically, if you make below a C on any report cards or progress reports your license or permit is revoked until either you get all grades with a C or better or you hit the age of 18, whichever comes first). I'm really surprised they just don't up the driving age to 18 and be done with it...:P
Kentucky's teen driving laws are supposedly among the strictest in the US according to both MADD and AAA, though (I think only New York has more severe requirements, and their driving age is 18 in NYC), so I don't expect most of you have it QUITE that bad:)
t's not even for saving money on power bills. Where this thing is useful, is for charging batteries in a location where there is NO power available. Think being at a remote cabin, where you leave the charging unit in a sunny window all day, to afford yourself a couple hours of hacking in the afternoon.
Thanks a ton for bringing this up (I was about to if you didn't)...this isn't really meant for sitting between classes or out on a nice day playing with a laptop (besides, if the day is so nice you're going to brave the Daystar to go out, what the hell are you bringing a laptop along for anyways?;).
The perfect application for something like this, IMHO, is for RV travellers (a fair number of folks do actually live in their RVs and go cross country in them--for those who are curious, mail is done by maildrops or forwarding). As it is, a lot of RV catalogues sell solar-panel packages for charging one's batteries during the day in areas where there aren't power hookups (running a generator, especially if someone doesn't have a 34-foot RV or motor coach, can get expensive (especially with today's gas prices); this also works nicely with RVs as most RV equipment uses 12-volt DC or is dual-power anyways--in any case, it certainly saves on using the loud-arse generator:).
Hell, if I had money to burn, I'd be sore tempted to get one of these setups--as it is, I tend to take two vacations a year in an RV where no external power hookups are available (Bristol, TN during the car races...ok, you can stop giving me that look--it's downright FUNNY to hear the car racers cuss each other out, even if I feel like an old hag seeing all the dot-com adverts all over the place:). A little solar-power array would be right handy for charging batteries for use at night (hell, for that matter, if someone wanted to set up live webcams from car races--the vast majority of superspeedways, including Indy, do allow camping in the infield but don't have facilities for power hookups), because I'd really not like to have to fire up the generator just to run a PC and keep caught up on email:)
(Then again, RV living would include other specialisations for one's computer...like cell modems or DirectPC service (a positively OBSCENE number of people at car races have DirectTV dishes on their RV's, and a fair number of them tend to be tuned to ESPN...which never made sense to me seeing as they're going to watch the darned race in person;)...but it IS possible.:)
Slashdot Mirror
0x0d0a didst speak thusly:
Actually, not quite the first clean sweep...
The first clean sweep I am aware of, or rather clue-by-fouring en masse, was of a particularly notorious spammer (both Usenet and email) by name of "Krazy" Kevin Lipsitz (notation in the Spam Timeline here: http://keithlynch.net/spamline.html).
Krazy Kevin was one of the parties that directly lead to confirmation of accounts--he used to use Compuserve throwaway accounts in particular, as I recall, to promote his magazine scheme.
It came out after a while on many net.abuse forums that not only was he spamming, but he also failed to deliver magazines...
Eventually the State of New York spanked him in probably one of the first court precedents in regards to spam. (Reference here: http://www.oag.state.ny.us/internet/litigation/leb edeff.html)
This all happened around '96 or '97...Krazy Kev was busted around 1997ish.
"Krazy Kevin" no longer is spamming, and apparently makes much of his living now being a professional gourmand (he apparently holds a world's record for consuming the most amount of pickles in a five-minute span, and is a regular contestant at the Nathan's hot-dog eating contest)...at least it's a bit more honest a way of life than spamming, I suppose. :) (More about Krazy Kev going honest, in a sense: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/WolfFiles/wolffi les204.html) Still selling magazines too, but hopefully people get them now :)
Sanford, aka "Spamford", Wallace also was whacked into sense between being sued by both AOL *and* Compuserve (pre-merger) and getting ordered not to spam them (info on that lawsuit here: http://www.netlitigation.com/netlitigation/cases/c ompucase.htm)--and having literally been nearly banned from the Internet entirely and causing one of the major "backbone" sites of the Internet to be nearly universally shunned as well (the Agis.net UDP around 1996--Wallace and the nancy.com spammers were almost completely responsible) after it ended up being the last site on the Internet to deal with him...
In fact, Sanford Wallace has the rather dubious distinction of not only having been the reason behind many states' proposed antispam statutes, not only does he have the dubious distinction of having also been a junk faxer before he went into spamming and being almost singlehandedly responsible for the US law prohibiting junk faxing, but is singlehandedly responsible for much if not most of the early case law in regards to spamming...
After having realised the errors of his ways around 1998 or so, he started running an opt-in mail service for a while and (in a theme that seems to recur among reformed spammers) also apparently does entertainment, specifically, he's a DJ (more info here: http://www.canismajor.demon.co.uk/antispam/sanford .htm; info regarding his present company here: http://www.annonline.com/interviews/970522/biograp hy.html)...
(Now, mind, I've just included the first two cases I can recall off the top of my head involving people being sued directly for stuff related to spamming...)
Martin Blank dun said:
Pretty much thanks to Gygax, came very close to being sued into oblivion, eventually going out of business (pretty much after the whole Gygax fiasco they ended up folding).
AFAIK, there's only one or two properties of the former GDW even around--the creators of Dark Conspiracy ended up buying the rights back and as of late is being published by Dynasty Presentations (and in fact is about to go into Dark Conspiracy v2.5), and if memory serves there's still a company selling supplements for Traveller. (In direct relation to FASA going out of business--it appears the exact same thing is happening with Shadowrun and which ended up happening with Earthdawn--pretty much gamers and creators buying the rights, and keeping the game going.)
Of course, it's also slightly ironic that TSR itself ended up nearly going bankrupt, got bought out by WotC, and promptly went from being the sue-happiest RPG manufacturer on the planet (I remember when TSR would file cease-and-desists on folks for posting their own campaigns with their own created worlds, gods, etc.) to not only open-sourcing the game system but having supplements for a game using D&D rules published by White Wolf (!!!), of all companies. :)
Burnon dun said:
I know that at least some of their earlier games have been sold off for some time (around one-two years ago). Earthdawn, for example (which was actually a fairly decent fantasy game which could be argued to have been a "twin" game to Shadowrun--(spoiler) Earthdawn having been set in the Fourth World), was cancelled around a year or so ago, when Shadowrun went 3rd Ed (it was felt Earthdawn wasn't "profitable") and the rights have been bought by Living Room Games who are now releasing supplements for Earthdawn and will be releasing Earthdawn 2nd Edition sometime this spring. (Admittedly, I do have some bias there--a close friend of mine is doing arts for the Earthdawn 2nd Ed main book ;)
I'd not be surprised if they might've done the same for some of the other properties they own or are planning to do so (they did sell the rights for a fair amount of stuff a year ago, when they were starting to become fasa.fuckedcompany.com).
Or the way I always remembered it:
Kris Price Called On Friday--Great Sex!
(OK, so I went to a school fulla hentai. But by the gods, it works to remember that...)
Xdaemon dun said:
Better yet, why not check outthe original sketch in MP3 format over at The Dead Alewives' website, seeing as this is where the (screamingly funny) Summoner Geeks skit came from originally :)
(Warning: If you actually play AD&D, watching this may not be such a good idea. Not because of insult...no...just the titters that will happen from then onward whenever someone states they're going to cast Magic Missile... :)
(Then again, most of the AD&D games I've been into invariably seem to transmogrify themselves into episodes of (insert X series of) Slayers. ;) So one character in a D&D game I was in bore an uncanny resemblance to Gourry Gabriev...the guy who rolled it (my husband) really WASN'T trying for Gourry. It just happened. :)
Reality Master dun said:
Actually, certain types of hidden cameras are generally not allowed to be sold to the public, or if they are allowed to be sold at all, require special licensing. Certain types of security cameras (smaller than, say, around an 8mm movie camera) are not allowed to be sold to persons other than "qualified" law enforcement and to licensed private investigators because they are considered "surveillance equipment".
New York State, in particular, has passed several laws on the books banning personal security cameras below a certain size (in an attempt to shut down "spy shops"), and many localities have similar laws.
In a word: Wrongo.
Up until fairly recently, literally all sex outside of the missionary position was illegal in Kentucky (our sodomy law has recently been overturned in KY Supreme Court as unconstitutional, as it was used largely to target the state's homosexual population). In Alabama, not only is everything but the missionary position flatly illegal (yes, people have actually been prosecuted for sodomy for consentual oral sex in Alabama, and yes, there have been convictions even in the past two years) but in fact all sexual activity between unmarried persons is illegal. The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled this legal, by the way.
A rather surprising number of states (often in the Southeast US, but a few other states have similar laws--Utah and Colorado are biggies) have laws that criminalise even consentual anal or oral sex. Most of these laws have not yet been ruled unconstitutional, and by and large, these laws are used to target homosexuals and/or teens "doing it"; they have been used to harass even straight, married couples in some cases, however. (Some good info on what is and isn't illegal is here; while the link deals more with statutory rape laws, it does have info regarding sodomy laws as well).
For that matter, a surprising number of states still have laws against adultery on the books. These are rarely enforced, but are sometimes used in divorce proceedings and the like.
A recent appeal to get Texas' sodomy law overturned has failed--and this was to the US Supreme Court. (Kentucky's sodomy law DID get overturned by the state Supreme Court, but this was because it was found it was used to blatantly harass homosexuals and that the definition of sodomy was overbroad--not on the merits of having a sodomy law in the first place.) Alabama's law, which (as noted previously) literally prohibits all sexual activity besides the missionary position between married adults, has not as of yet been overturned. (Incidentially--Alabama also has a law prohibiting gays from marrying, and (up until it was recently revoked after discovering it was still on the books) also had laws against interracial marriage. Some states still have these laws on the books, even though US Supreme Court decisions have overruled them.
There are court challenges to sodomy laws, but their success in part depends on state challenges and in part also to what happens with US Presidential elections. (If Dubya gets elected, it is likely that any Supreme Court nominees he picks are substantially more likely to rule sodomy statutes that even prohibit consentual anal/oral sex are constitutional.)
In any case, I'd say it would be quite inadvisable to, say, come into a small, rural Alabama town at night, going to Lover's Lane, being of one race and having a partner of another race--even if you ARE married (God help you if you're gay) and go through the entire Kama Sutra in the back of one's car. These are areas where the Kama Sutra is often banned for being considered obscene; doing such is probably a VERY good way to find one's self convicted under Alabama's sodomy laws. (Chances go up even more if your spouse or partner happens to be the same sex.)
(I'll note, as an aside, that Alabama is all but a fundamentalist Christian theocracy nowadays. One of the major judges posts and preaches Christian scripture before trials, has stated flat out that "Hindus and Muslims and pagans" are "not worth protecting". The Governor of the fine state of Alabama flat out stated (when he was warned by authorities that this was stepping over the bounds of the First Amendment's separation of church and state) that if the judge was ordered to leave he'd send in the National Guard to prevent the judge being disbarred. If it weren't for the Supreme Court, they'd be as much of a theocracy as Taliban Afghanistan (and no, I am not making this up--the Southern Baptist Convention [which has become increasingly fundamentalist and coercive to the point that their own seminary may now be defined to be a coercive group--destroyed the world's only college of social works in the process of a fundy purge] and other fundy groups and denominations [most notably the American Family Association, the UnChristian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and the Assemblies of God] have an incredible amount of influence on both the common folk of Alabama and on its legislature--one almost cannot get elected there without the approval of the Religious Reich, especially in more rural areas [read: most of the damn state]).
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Well, yes, if you're bloody stupid enough to go huffing it. For that matter, paint thinner and White-Out can also kill you by huffing them, and they take considerably less amounts to do so. For that matter, breathing water will kill you like that, because lungs aren't quite as efficient at gas exchange in water as gills are.
Warning: slight technical discussion ahead. Please skip if not interested in mechanics of suffocation. ;)
Actually, carbon monoxide takes a hell of a lot less to kill you than carbon dioxide does, and it kills largely by a somewhat different mechanism. Specifically, carbon monoxide actually binds more tightly to hemoglobin than oxygen does, forming methemoglobin (which accounts for the bright cherry red skin that light-skinned folks who get carbon monoxide poisoning get). One can reverse this either by sticking the parties in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber (exactly as is used for people with the bends or nitrogen narcosis) to forcibly replace CO with oxygen, or (in the days before hyperbaric medicine was widely available) by giving one methylene blue (which also has the fun effect of turning one's urine blue).
About the only one can suffocate from carbon dioxide is by being in such concentrations of it that it displaces oxygen to the point one would suffocate. It is pretty darn hard to do so; you either have to be practically huffing the stuff, in such deep depths that gas exchange of ANY sort is hard, or be on a planet such as Mars with almost no oxygen. (Dry ice is sufficiently safe that people have put hunks of it in coolers for food products, and even for organs meant for transplant. You have to have an awful lot of dry ice and a well-sealed room to successfully suffocate someone, and even then it isn't by displacing oxygen in the blood; rather, it's by displacing all other gases including oxygen in the air--in other words, instead of replacing oxygen in the blood, there's no oxygen to get to in the first place.)
One of the rare cases of carbon dioxide suffocation that does occur--some cases of SIDS or "crib death"--occurs largely in infants under six months old who roll onto pillows or on their stomachs (and often have some miswiring or under-maturity in the "oxygen sensor" part of their brains that tell them to roll over or gasp for air); this is why nearly every baby-care group nowadays promotes "back to sleep"--putting babies on their backs to rest. SIDS generally does not occur in infants over six months of age (in those cases that do, it is either a case of something drastically wrong with baby's neural wiring or something wrong with the parents mentally [sometimes Munchausen's by proxy] where the parents actually have suffocated the kid).
About the only way you'd die from carbon dioxide poisoning (in the amounts of dry ice it would take to cool a motherboard and processor--less than it takes to make "swamp gas" in a 55-gallon cooler) is by directly standing over the motherboard, having the computer sealed up and a tube leading out, and huffing the fumes from the tube. If you do that, you bloody well deserve a Darwin Award--please, get the hell out of the gene pool now, because you're making it skanky for the rest of us. :) With reasonable precautions (that do NOT include hazmat gear--mostly good ventilation such as computers should have anyways and heavy gloves if you don't want a nasty case of frostbite from handling dry ice) you should be OK. You've enough brains to know how to overclock the darn thing; surely we don't have to put "DO NOT EAT. CAUSES SEVERE FROSTBITE IF HANDLED WITH BARE HANDS. KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN." somebody-has-been-just-stupid-enough-to-have-done- this-and-sued-successfully warnings that most of the United States's population seems to require these days. :P
kwsNI dun said:
Actually, frozen Carbon Dioxide (as you so quaintly put it) is fairly readily available and mostly requires thick gloves to handle. It's otherwise known as "dry ice". ;)
My father, who used to work for the water company here in town, could get it fairly easily; that plus water plus some flashing strobe lights added up to spooky cauldrons on Halloween for the kiddies. :)
You can prolly get it at packing companies and the like. It's also what is commonly used to keep stuff like hearts for transplant (and biological samples) cold till they get where they need to be; the stuff is common enough that researchers in remote parts of Africa can get it to freeze samples of stuff like blood samples of Ebola patients.
Nothing, unless you've got a ton of carbon dioxide, in which case you MIGHT suffocate...but you'd have to have an awful lot of dry ice to ever get enough to suffocate yourself. (I think maybe you're confusing carbon dioxide (which is just good old dry ice, might give a freeze-burn but nothing serious) with carbon monoxide (which is a deadly killer since it replaces oxygen in your blood)...carbon dioxide is not poisonous, even the amount of dry ice to make a big cooler put out a lot of "smoke" isn't deadly (in fact, that's largely what they use for "smoke" effects in movies--dry ice in water! :) and your plants would love you (since they breathe carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen). :)
No hazmat suit needed. Mostly some good, thick gloves if you're going to be handling amounts sufficient to cool a motherboard (seriously--that much is not enough to suffocate or cause any more harm than a nasty case of frostbite if you handle the stuff with bare hands). You may want to make sure you're in a well-ventilated room just to be safe, but that's pretty much true with any stuff that cold, not to mention computer equipment.
(Chairman Kaga mode on) If memory serves me right (Chairman Kaga mode off) one of the competitors on "Iron Chefs" even used dry ice to freeze immature salmon to make sashimi. If the stuff is safe enough to pack hearts for transplant in and to freeze fish, it's safe enough to use on your computer. I've even used it before (along with glow-sticks in Ziploc baggies and a goodly amount of liquor and Mountain Dew :) to make a well drink called "swamp gas" in a cooler for Halloween parties (the carbon dioxide makes "smoke" effects from the water as well as bubbles--it's directly sublimating--and it freezes the alcohol into slush).
Literally the only thing I've ever seen that classified dry ice as hazmat was in shipping papers for truckers, and they literally classify almost everything as hazmat (including paint, empty barrels, tires, etc.). :) Don't worry. Putting dry ice on your motherboard is not going to kill you unless you're in a very enclosed space (if that's the case, don't eat chili, as your own farts might well kill you in just such a case much as it did one infamous Darwin Award nominee :). You will probably see a lot of neat smoke-like stuff coming from the computer (no, it's not broken--that's just the dry ice sublimating and freezing the water particles in the air). Put plants nearby and they'll make lots of oxygen and probably grow really well. No harm done, save maybe to the motherboard and your budget. :)
Canar dun said:
To be honest, on reading this I'm smelling a furry critter with horns who lives under bridges and has a strange craving for Cuban cabra sandwiches :). If so, good job. You got me. :)
If this is NOT a troll, though...well, it seems someone has never been to a farm or a livestock show. :)
There is an entire class of mammals--the Arctiodactylia or "even-hooved" animals--that has lost one, and sometimes three, of the original five toes mammals had. Probably the most common member of the order in the US right now is the common cow; just to to a farm or a petting zoo, and count the number of toes on a cow. (Or deer, or any such critters. It's only the largest order of herbivorous animals on the planet; I'm sure you can find a member or two.)
For that matter, the second-largest order of herbivorous mammals has a large family that actually has lost two to four toes in its history. (I'm talking about the equines. In fact, we have one of the better fossil records that detail how they've lost toes throughout their evolution--they went from five to three to one toe. In fact, you occasionally have the rare "throwback" horse born with three toes; the loss of the last two toes occured fairly late in horse evolution. At least one "cousin" of the equines, the tapir, has three toes, and rhinos have five. If you want to see examples, just look at a zoo or at a horse-farm or go down to the track. Heck, watch the Kentucky Derby if you want. :)
For that matter, the entire "felid" branch of the Carnivora (which includes cats, "civet cats" and "genet cats", hyenas, and some older forms like Smilodon) has lost the fifth toe on its hind feet, and their front first toe is reduced to a dewclaw (which is the state of fifth toes in canids such as wolves, dogs and foxes, too; expect them to lose the hind dewclaws in a few million years). The main reason cats still have dewclaws on their front toes is that kitties can use them fairly well as thumbs, especially if not declawed (if you want them to demonstrate, get a can of cat-treats and let kitty fetch her own out). I will leave out the obvious joke about what will happen when cats evolve opposable thumbs and thus no longer need humans as their thralls for world dominance. :)
For that matter...we'll take it beyond mammals. The other major group besides the synapsids (one of the two great lineages of land animals besides amphibians; synapsids include mammals, theraspids or "proto-mammals", and "mammal-like reptiles" like Dimetrodon) happens to be the same group that reptiles and archosaurs belong to, including birds. They, too, have a fairly extensive history of digit-loss:
Last toe digit (our equivalent of our pinkies) lost sometime near when archosaurs first evolved; even modern crocs, which are the modern representatives of one of two branches of the archosaurs (the other being the bird/dino branch), only have four toes
Fourth toe (rough equivalent of ring finger turns non-functional in theropod dinosaurs during early evolution (about the time they separated from hererrasaurs, in the late Triassic)
Fourth finger lost in most theropod dinosaurs around evolution of the Maniraptora (the subclass of theropods that includes birds, as well as most of the meat-eating cast of the Jurassic Park movies besides dilophosaurs and compys), around early-mid Jurassic
Third finger (equivalent to the "flip the bird" finger) lost in tyrannosaurs
Fourth toe lost entirely in ornithomimosaurs
Sometime during development of powered flight (late Jurassic-early Cretaceous) finger claws lost and second and third fingers fuse while thumb develops as alula
In surviving theropod dinosaurs (aka birds) all have lost except thumb and first two fingers on front limbs and first two fingers were fused (there may have been a reversal in phorusracoid birds, which largely hunted as large land predators in the Americas until 2 million BC to 100,000 years ago); many, if not most, ground-running birds have lost the fourth toe entirely, in most birds it is a dewclaw, and only a very few birds (perching birds) use the fourth toe at all as a functional digit
I won't get into snakes. There is recent evidence they evolved from mosasaurs (a type of swimming reptile), and they not only lost digits but limbs altogether (the only snakes with limbs today are boids, which have claws used for mating attached to very tiny legs; early snakes have more substantial limbs, but nothing huge).
But perhaps, well, mere synapsid/reptilian split critters aren't enough. Let's throw amphibians in, too. :)
At least one sub-branch of amphibians has lost limbs as well (caecilans); there are several branches of frogs that have reduced digits to four per limb, too.
For that matter...the main reason most animals have five limbs is that five limbs is an incredibly ancient structure--literally coming about before land animals (we are now starting to find fossils of animals at around this time--we now know they evolved as swimmers first and evolved limbs to scoot about on bottom, and early "tetrapods" had varying numbers of digits per limb (some with five, some with seven or even eight digits per limb).
For more info on this, including some good lineages, you might want to go here or here.
As for Pascal's Wager...well, the wager relies on five very big assumptions:
that such a thing as God exists
that such a thing as Hell exists
that a God would be enough of a ratbastard as to throw someone into a place of eternal torment just because the poor sot hadn't ever heard of aforementioned God and/or disagreed with the "official" account based on empirical evidence
that what folks see as God might not be the processes of Nature, or that God may well have created stuff by evolution
that people are meant to blindly follow a leader instead of use the brains that God and/or evolution gave them in the first place so as to better understand the mysteries of life :)
Myself, well...if there is a God (which...if there is one, I think it might be Nature, but that's only my viewpoint) Sie either honestly doesn't give a damn one way or the other (in which case God is basically Nature, and the whole idea of appealing to a God is moot unless you mean something like apologising to cows before you eat them), or isn't enough of a ratbastard to chuck someone into a pit because the fossils pretty much show not only that horses evolved from tapir-like critters but that birds evolved from very close cousins of Deinonychus and we all came eventually from fishy-looking critters. If Sie is such a ratbastard, I'm not afraid to say that not only would I gladly burn in Hell in such a case, but such a ratbastard neither deserves my worship nor my respect. :) (And no, I don't buy the whole "Fossils were there to test us" crap, either...that makes God out not only to be a complete ratbastard, but a troll and a cruel ratbastard who gets his jollies off sending people to Hell for basically his idea of a practical joke. In which case, He can go straight to Hell, if you pardon the expression.)
Syberghost dun said:
Actually...you'd be surprised at how many folks could find it...I told my sister (who knows enough about how to install Win98 without help, but whom I still wouldn't trust to know how to use Alta Vista) about it...two day later, Win98 goes south and has to be reinstalled. She calls later, proudly announcing she's reinstalled both Win98 and her main programs including Napster and Napigator.
Her literal comment regarding the latter: "I actually remembered that one--just had to remember the 'gator' bit." :)
Tytso dun said:
ObDisclaimer: IANAL. I do not even pretend to be a lawyer on the Internet. Your mileage may vary considerably.
At least here in Kentucky, this type of sillybuggers would be illegal on at least two counts:
possible telephone harassment (as in calling, and as soon as a live human picks up, disconnecting--this is different from "predictive dialing" which is the cause of most hangups with telemarketers (basically, nobody available to take the call when your phone number gets rang)
A nifty provision in Kentucky's telemarketing law that prohibits nearly all recorded telemarketing announcements (you have to put a live human on the phone within ten seconds if the company doesn't have a prior business relationship with you, and in all cases you have to provide a number that may be called to be added to a do-not-call list).
Conceivably, you could prolly even get them on federal telemarketing laws for providing no easy way to be added to a do-not-call list and in fact doing everything they can to avoid do-not-call requests (many courts would be likely to see the fact they hang up the snecking phone when a live human picks it up as a deliberate attempt to avoid following federal telemarketing regs, and may even see it as prima facie evidence of "willful" disregard--read: $1500 per offence if you sue in small claims court).
WKiernan dun said:
Actually, no, you aren't.
Myself...well, I'm of the type that was referred to in less politically correct days as "being hyper" and known more in these days as ADHD, aka "Ritalin Prescription On A Stick". (I grew up largely before the days of dosing kids with Ritalin. I just got antihistamines that had the interesting side effect of being tranquilisers. :)
With a lot of people who run towards being "hyper", stimulants (including speed, Ritalin (which just metabolises to speed) and caffeine) actually tend to mellow one out. You're running on overdrive as it is--it's now thought that stimulants overload the brain just enough to mellow one out.
Myself, I'm not crazy about Ritalin. And yet I drink coffee--actually preferring the strong stuff (espresso, "trucker coffee" (regular coffee brewed approximately double strength--most folks see it as drinkable as battery acid, and my husband has to remind me to make coffee "half your usual strength" if he's to drink it :), etc.). I will probably have no stomach lining by the time I'm thirty, thanks to having literally grown up on trucker's-coffee. :)
I also tend to drink coffee not just to wake up, but often to unwind after a stressful day--the stuff actually calms me down, especially if I put a bit of flavouring into it or make cappuccino...I'll be awake, yes, but relaxed. Prolly has to do with the funky wiring that's in hyper folks in general...
For that matter, the same goes with chocolate...the more bitter, the better. I honestly wish I could find a good recipe to make it like the old Aztecs did (no sugar, black as night, bitter enough to put hair on your chest, and even with the occasional chili pepper added for flavour!). ;) Not much on milk chocolate...not strong enough. Gimme the bittersweet stuff :)
(Hmmm...this prolly counts as a form of self-medication, I expect. Ah well. Somewhat cheaper than Ritalin and a hell of a lot more enjoyable.)
Now, admittedly, OD'ing on caffeine is a Bad Thing. Trucker's-coffee is prolly the maximum you want to take the liquid stuff...and I honestly do think trucker's-coffee is prolly stronger than espresso, to be honest :) I can testify that taking several Vivarin on top of a pot of coffee is a Bad Thing (my sister made the mistake of doing this during cramming for spring exams in college, and literally could not sleep for four days straight--luckily, she had enough body mass to keep from the nastier effects like arrythmias and puking blood and the like, but to this day she avoids Vivarin like the plague)...then again, one can't make cappuccino with Vivarin, or add amaretto flavouring to Vivarin, or experiment in making one's own amaretto or hazelnut Vivarin (well, I guess you could, but it ain't like grinding coffee beans). :)
Babykong dun said:
Actually, this can vary from not only state to state but from county to county and even city to city or township to township.
Most notably, here in Kentucky if anyone goes knocking on all the doors in an area where it is marked "POSTED NO TRESSPASSING" (yes, there is actually a legal status to a "posted" No Tresspassing sign--you actually register it with the county courthouse) or in areas with "No Soliciting" ordinances, they can quickly find themselves taken to the county jail and charged with tresspassing. Yes, this even applies to Girl Scouts/Girl Guides, Jehovah's Witnesses, those annoying folks selling magazines, etc. Literally the ONLY things that "No Soliciting" ordinances don't cover are census workers and police with warrants; I'm not entirely sure that even census workers are allowed on posted property (I think they may have to actually get police escort or a warrant to perform census to legally go on the land without permission of the landowner).
For the record, yes, I not only am part owner of property that is "posted" but live in an apartment complex with a "No Soliciting" rule. Yes, I do have people removed who are tresspassing and/or soliciting without my permission (as it is, in my area the Girl Scouts generally don't go door-to-door both out of safety concerns and because a lot of apartments and even entire communities have "No Soliciting" ordinances--they sell outside grocery stores and to family members and friends of family). :)=
Bolverk dun said:
Considering the multinational who owned, spun off, and just recently rebought Nestle, you're honestly shocked at this?
(For those who don't know--Nestle was for some time, and is again now thanks to a reaquisition, a subsidiary of Phillip-Morris. Yup, the big cigarette company. One of those that laughably tried to claim that they didn't dope cigarettes with nicotine, even though literally anyone who works or has worked in a Phillip-Morris tobacco plant can tell you that there are certain tanks you Do Not Touch lest you be rushed straightaway to the hospital because aforementioned tanks sweat nicotine. (Yes, I've had family members who worked at Phillip-Morris, and one that had to sue for worker's comp due to their chopper damn near cleaving her hand into Marlboro additives. Let's just say I've a fair amount of knowledge on the subject.) They aren't exactly the most ethical of companies to begin with--getting people hooked on cigs, on formula, it's all money to them :P)
Actually...it's not surprising that the US is friendly to megacorps. In fact, it could be argued the entire US started as a megacorp...
The Virginia Company (of which many of the "patriots" of the American Revolution were stockholders, including Benjamin Franklin) wanted to do surveys of the land west of the Appalachians for land claims and settlement. The British, who had signed treaties with most of the Native American nations along the Appalachians (including the Cherokee, Creek and Delaware nations) to the effect that everything west of the Appalachian Mountains was "Indian Country" (a minor note--much of what was then Virginia (including Kentucke County, which eventually became Kentucky), was west of the mountains and about the only white folks living there at the time were refugees from the failed uprising of Bonnie Prince Charlie--bet you didn't know there were Scottish and Irish settlers in the early 1700's, eh?) said no because in large part they didn't want to piss off the Native American nations OR the French (many of the Nations had alliances with France).
In 1776, the Colonies declared independence. Literally almost one of the first acts the United States did as a nation was to sign a treaty with the Cherokee Nation ceding the biggest part of non-Jackson-Purchase Kentucky to the state of Virginia. Shortly thereafter Dan'l Boone and others came to take the lands and survey them (and ran promptly into the Shawano, who had not signed a treaty giving THEIR chunk of Kentucky over, but that's another story).
The treaty in question also ceded a fair chunk of the state of Tennessee; in fact, eastern Tennessee set itself up as the short-lived "State of Franklin" (not uncoincidentially named after one of the big stockholders in the Virginia Company--kinda like how Hudson Bay got named) for about a year and a half until the Articles of Confederation were superceded by the Constitution. (There are articles on this on the 'net, and on historical markers all through eastern Tennesseee--outside of Bristol there is actually a "historical community" set up as a reenactment of lifestyles around the time the State of Franklin existed.)
For that matter, literally until the Constitution was ratified, darn near all land west of the Appalachians was effectively owned by the Virginia Company. (After this, the US tended to take big chunks of land by buying them from other countries who never owned the land in the first place and setting them up as "territories". :)
Needless to say, at least some of us have been screwed by US-based megacorps since day 1 :P
To continue the thread of embedded games and easter-eggs in console games:
In the "Making of Lunar: Silver Star Complete" CD (in the full Playstation limited edition version) there is an easter-egg that--with a combination of button presses--starts up a multiplayer game of Pong.
In "Tales of Destiny" (a Namco RPG for Playstation) there is a section in one of the towns that has the complete arcade version of "Tower of Druuaga". (Then again, Namco is downright infamous for in-references, and especially in "Tales of Destiny"--there are many super-deformed versions of characters from various Namco games in the background (chibi Jack2 (Tekken 3), chibi Heihachi (the Tekken series), a few other assorted characters from the Tekken series and Soul Edge) as well as some decidedly more obscure (to non-Japanese) sources--like the kitty from Namjatown (an amusement park Namco runs in Japan). For that matter, in Tekken 3 itself there is an in-reference to their amusement park chain--Xiao Yu's stage is in the middle of the Wonder Eggs amusement park (yes, Namco runs an entire CHAIN of amusement parks in Japan, rather like Paramount owns Kings Island and Carowinds and whatnot here in the States). :)
Refrag dun said (in regards to a thread on donors and stuff like frats):
It may not be as large of an "urban legend" as you think. Cumberland College (a Baptist college in Williamsburg, KY) did not have a football team for some fifty years because one of the major donors to the college fund stipulated as a condition of her donations that the college NOT have a football team (her son had been killed in a football accident).
Upon her death, the first thing Cumberland College did was set up a football team. :)
(Yes, the college had other sports (basketball, among other things); yes, this can actually be confirmed by asking the college officials themselves. I know of it because my sister attended college there both before and after the college had a football team.)
Especially at private, small schools, such conditions on donations are NOT entirely unusual. For that matter, our own government in the US puts conditions on funding all the time (there's a standing rule that all funds to international health organisations like WHO and UN health programs cannot be put to use for abortion or family planning programs, among other things)...in the case of universities, a big one is that they cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, religion, race, etc. if they are to get federal funding (yes, this includes Stafford loans and Pell grants, among other things). Why is it so unlikely that private donors can put strings in such as "Funding will continue as long as there are no fraternal organisations on campus"?
(Don't even get me started on corporate sponsorships--my uni will probably end up having Papa John's as the only food outlet on campus, thanks to them paying for a multi-million-dollar football stadium. Many, if not most, big unis now are Coke-only or Pepsi-only establishments (hell, for all I know, small unis in rural Kentucky and Tennessee might go to being RC-only establishments :). If a donor is going to dump a large enough sum of money in a university's lap, they WILL whore themselves--this also goes for public and even private schools now [don't think you're going to get out of Coke-only schools by going Catholic or private--some of THESE are getting corporate sponsorship, too, and if you do NOT want a school that forces religious views down yer kid's throats you are quite literally SOL in large parts of the country--out of over 100 private schools in the Louisville metro area, all of four are non-denominational, one of these is a traditional school, and the other three are specialty schools for persons with various physical or mental handicaps such as the Deaf-Oral school or schools for kids with "emotional disorders"--also, keep in mind that private schools can literally reject a kid for ANY reason--the biggest reason they have "better" schools is they can literally cherrypick students).
Seriously, this borders on silly. At the least it would be a Really Bad Idea...
1) As many have stated before, the main rule on subs is Be Quiet. I would imagine it would be rather a sort of Bad Thing to be able to be found by 2400bps whine. :)
1a) As of right now, needless to say, there is not a huge market in civilian oceangoing subs. :) The military already has its OWN system of getting in contact--namely, basically ELF pages sent at very slow rates (we're talking less than five words a minute--probably more like five CHARACTERS a minute--in Morse) telling them to come to periscope depth to pick up their messages. :)
2) As many others have noted, this is probably not a Terribly Healthy Thing for other forms of life that depend on sound for echolocation and communication in deep-water environments, namely, cetaceans (whales and dolphins). As it is, scientists are concerned about the noise levels that ALREADY exist, to the point of diverting ships away from breeding areas of whales (momma whales aren't terribly crazy about the sounds of motors from cruise ships).
3) Whales and dolphins aside, I'd imagine the humans at depth would be going minorly batty, and by voyage's end would be ready for the psychiatric ward of your local VA hospital :) There is a reason why most modem manufacturers disconnect the speaker after a successful connection--namely, modem sounds are damned annoying to most people. :)
4) I don't want to THINK of all the natural sources of noise that'd cause literal "line noise" (earthquakes, ELF pages, other subs, boats, whales humping/telling the metal whale to shut up that infernal racket, etc.). :)
Before anyone gets any ideas...
Trolls be warned: The first of y'all that posts "Zelgadis Greywards Naked and Petrified" is going to get a Dragon Slave Enema. ;)
Especially since I claim dibs on Zelgadis. ;)
(Seriously, though...yes, the whole casting sequence is just...pretty. :) Though the take on it in (I think episode 2? of) Slayers: Next was quite funny...Gourry, Zel, and Amelia cranking air-raid sirens shouting "THIS IS A DRAGON SLAVE ALERT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" *chuckle*)
(And yes, you'd have to have seen Slayers to get both the joke re Zelgadis and why one would need to issue a duck-and-cover warning for a Dragon Slave. See this as your order to go rent or buy or borrow the series Right Now, before we send Naga the Serpent after you. ;)
Robotech Master dun said:
O_o *double-takes the above*
That...gods...that is just asking for a wee bit of a nervous breakdown, no? (Mind, both are great movies. "Grave of the Fireflies" is possibly one of the most depressing movies (forget just anime) ever made, hands down, though...made even worse by the fact you know it's historically accurate. Trust me when I say that you want a good amount of your antidepressant of choice, and you want no sharp or even dull objects capable of causing puncture wounds nearby--by the first 45 minutes you'll be wanting to off yourself to end the emotional pain of it all.)
I just hope that they showed "My Neighbor Totoro" after "Grave of the Fireflies". I don't want to think how much the suicide rate in Japan must have gone up if they showed "Totoro" first...light-n-airy, then, *boom* Pain Au Grautin...gah. :P
(Did I mention that "Grave of the Fireflies" is quite possibly the most depressing film ever made, more so even than Bill Gates' testimony in the Monopoly Trial Of The Century, and you really shouldn't watch it "on a whim" or because you're bored or unless you're read for a good stiff dose of condensed misery? Not that it's a bad film for it--it's actually a damned good film...it would also cause suicidal depression in someone in the manic phase of being bipolar while he was hopped up on pot and amphetamines. :P Just so you know what depth of pain you're getting into. :)
The good Cpt. Kangarooski dun said:
That's Biff Standard...but yes, "Revenge of the Electronic Brain" has to be the funniest pisstake I've ever seen of Micros~1, hands down. From the whole "world standardisation" bit to Tenchi furtively hunting down an illegal copy of a rather MacOS-like program to Biff Standard's real plan being revealed...it's just friggin' hilarious. Though I have my doubts we are EVER going to get the good Judge Jackson to dress up a la Sailor Moon shouting "Pretty Mutation"... :)
If you think Pretty Sammy is scary by itself, though...think of this...the lady who's the seiyuu for Sasami is apparently a big-league singer in Japan. And apparently Pretty Sammy is popular enough in Japan they've not only spun off a TV series, but spun off a series of Pretty Sammy radio plays on NHK Radio. (I've heard of radio plays of, say, Star Wars, but Pretty Sammy?!?)
Speaking of Mac-like devices...am I the only one who thinks Washu-chan has grounds to sue the everloving hell out of Steve Jobs? ;) Seriously...look at her notebook in "Revenge of the Electronic Brain", plus the artwork that came in the videotape...now compare it to a certain little product called the iBook...they look VERY similar, no? If I remember right, even the NAMES are similar...Washu-chan's box is called the i-Heart or something like that. I swear to Goddess (Tsunami?) that it's an iBook, though. ;)
Methinks that either Steve Jobs is a bit of a fan of Pretty Sammy (possible--that whole episode was a sort of salute to Apple anyways ;) or a certain exec is about to be turned into a kappa. ;) (Washu-chan wouldn't sue. She has more style than that. All hail Washu-chan, for she is Goddess (well, a goddess at least, at least in one continuity of Tenchi Muyo), and she haveth the iBook of Power, and she writeth her own OS blindfolded, and she knoweth verily when someone has been naughty on the Internet, for she is Washu-Chan, Goddess of Science And True Inventor Of The Internet, And Thou Shalt Not Fuck With Her Nor Call Her Anything Besides Washu-Chan Lest One Be Turned Into A Kappa. ;) (OK, so I like Washu-chan. ;)
Some anonymous coward named Alan :) dun said:
Alas, I can't exactly say I'm looking forward to this:
a) Shin Tenchi Blows Goats (sorry, but that is my opinion and I stick to it, even though I do like the ending...and no, I'm not going to spoil it). Damn near anyone who likes Tenchi Muyo and has seen the other two series or even so much as the second Tenchi movie will tell you Shin Tenchi Blows Goats. About the only thing I can think of worse to show is the dubbed Sailor Moon. Or maybe the gawdawful Bubblegum Crisis dub with the songs dubbed (please, anyone, hunt down and kill the parties who made the decision to translate the songs to English...it's bad enough they did that, but the person they have singing carries a tune about as well as the Japanese actress for Ayeka--that is, she can't sing at all).
b) I'd have put the OAV's first then the TV series; there is a fairly major spoiler in Shin Tenchi unless one remembers these are essentially three different universes.
c) You know for a freakin' fact that the series will likely be butchered to Hell and back to satisfy the Censorship Boreds here in the States...just like Sailor Moon got totally ruined...just like Dragonball Z got ki--ki--ki--sent to another dimension :). Gods forbid we show our little friend Washu-chan in her full horror, much less Ryoko's tits, much less the entire scene in the hot-springs resort in the OVA...trust me, it's going to be positively BUTCHERED if they show it on Cartoon Network. I don't CARE that John Kricfalusi did a Yogi Bear cartoon--they showed it exactly TWICE, at 10 pm and 1 am at night, and unfortunately what with this being America (land of prudes who still, in the age of Mononoke Hime and even intelligent US animation like Titan A.E. and Iron Giant, are NOT going to be able to handle double entendres much less Nurse Washu) they have to deal with Censorship Boreds. :P
Now, what I REALLY wish is that the US had some equivalent to Anime X (an all-anime digital satellite channel run by TV Tokyo, the network that airs the vast majority of anime on Japanese TV)...a dedicated all-anime channel. Barring that, I'd be happy if the eastern US could start getting anime shown on public TV (where it is far less likely to be butchered to acceptability for folks Sasami's approximate physical age)--if one lives in the Western US, it's fairly common to see anime on public TV on weekends (much like it's common to see Britcoms like Red Dwarf in the eastern US). Perhaps we should start pestering public TV that we'll donate on the condition they start showing Rurouni Kenshin. ;)
Anyhoos...if you're going to watch Tenchi Muyo, start with the OVA's. Seriously. IMHO (and in the HO's of many others) that series was the best of all, though the first TV series isn't TOO bad. Avoid the movie "Tenchi Forever" like the Black Plague.
If you like Tenchi, you'll probably like El Hazard--done by the same folks. Coming from watching Tenchi, I'd recommend the TV series; if not, watch the OVA first then the TV series (sold as El Hazard: The Alternative World).
If one likes Tenchi + massive pisstaking of Sailor Moon (among other things), Pretty Sammy (also in two series--the Pretty Sammy OVAs and the Magical Project S TV series) is good if kawaii to the point it induces tooth decay. :) Anti-Microsoft types will especially enjoy Episode 2 of the OVAs ("Revenge of the Electric Brain")--quite possibly the most savage pisstake I have EVER seen of Microsoft. EVER. :)
If one is REALLY into Tenchi and/or Pretty Sammy, and can understand Japanese, there are supposedly radio airplays that have been done (this should give you an idea of the popularity). I do not speak Japanese well enough to understand them, alas. :)
Some fanfic is available at Gensao's Tenchi Muyo Fan-Fiction Archive, including some MSTings of fanfics. The archive does include some hentai (adult) material, but in a different section; the writing goes from very good ("Aikan Muyo" is actually a fairly good bit of fanfic) to the bad (avoid anything on the archive listed as being from "Tank Cop") to the...downright strange and probably more appropriate for alt.tasteless ("Tenchi on a Plate of Sashimi"--that's all I'll say on that...it'd be a good work on alt.tasteless, but tends to make most people physically ill at best...yes, it really IS that bad; do not read un-MSTed and with food in stomach).
Other picks of mine:
Must see Evangelion. Be forewarned: the "alternate" Episodes 25 and 26 (sold as "End of Evangelion"--the reason I heard was different--the original 25 and 26 were the real eps, folks weren't satisfied, so he created "End of Eva") are rather a mindfuck. For that matter, so is the entire series. :) But not bad at all, and one actually starts to enjoy it. (BTW, Asuka is annoying in English OR Japanese. Asuka Needs To Die. [Then again, I always rooted for Rei, so there. :)])
Must see Vision of Escaflowne. Fortunately, the series IS out officially Stateside (I've seen the fansub, haven't had the chance to see the official version yet). VERY pretty, a bit of a mindfuck in places but not to an extreme...one of the few crossovers between "shonen" anime (boy anime, like Rurouni Kenshin) and "shoujo" or girly anime (like Sailor Moon or Tenchi Muyo). Did I mention I probably like it more than Evangelion? ;)
You've seen Trigun and Cowboy Bebop; otherwise, I'd mention those. I'd recommend Slayers (again, avoid the movies like the plague, but up to Slayers Try is screamingly funny--imagine a Dungeons and Dragons game, gone horribly wrong. :) and Ranma 1/2 (werepigs, transsexuality, fighting, pandas and painty-raiding hentai old men...what else could you ask for? ;)
Roujin Z, if you can find it. All I will say on this is but one word: GEEZERTRON. ;) (Yes, you will have to find the joke behind this by yourself. :)
Bakuretsu Hunters, if you can find it. Another screamingly funny one (have you noticed I tend to stick towards comedies and shonen anime? ;).
Lost Universe is another must-see. Done by the same folks who did Slayers, so if you like Slayers you'll probably like this one. :)
Must see Nadeisco, if you've ever seen anything like Macross (yes, this includes the take-three-series-and-frappe mess known as Robotech in the US). Injokes all around, including a number of anime injokes (one character is a seiyuu or voice-actress; another is an otaku (fanboy) over a series known as Gekki Ganger ;).
Revolutionary Girl Utena is pretty darn good, at least what I've seen of it...even if it DOES go weird in parts. :) Not at all bad for borderline shoujo anime.
Card Captor Sakura, if you can find it (you will probably have to go with fansubs--it's not supposed to be out officially till later this year, possibly as Captor Sakura). VERY cute, VERY shoujo, but has enough dark bits I can watch without insulin shots. :) I'm REALLY surprised that Cartoon Network isn't talking of picking this up--there wouldn't even need to be much bobbitting (not like Tenchi Muyo, anyways ;). One of the few anime series NOT done by TV Tokyo (this is done by NHK, the main TV and radio network in Japan).
Rurouni Kenshin, if you can find it. I've not seen too many of the OVAs, mostly the TV series. Supposedly is shown out west as "Samurai X" and supposedly Sony is releasing it on video soon; you are probably going to have a hell of a time finding it from fansub groups as a result (as it's not officially out yet)--best bet is from someone who already has a fansub or lives out west and can tape the show off public TV for you. Should you find a fansub, try to avoid the HECTO fansub if possible (you almost need to be able to read Cantonese to understand it--it's that bad). Shinsen Gumi fansub is better (at least in semi-understandable English ;); supposedly a third fansub exists that is far better than the two groups mentioned. (Also, Sony execs, if you are reading this--Please hurry the hell up and bring the damn series over. :) My fourth-generation tapes are starting to wear thin, and I'd actually like to be able to watch without having a large red blob on the screen with Sanosuke-sama in the middle. Me like Sanosuke-sama. ;9)
Lupin isn't too bad...only seen a bit of it, but not bad at all...funny in the sort of Trigun/Cowboy Bebop vein.
Azakuzin Cha-Cha, if you can find it. Supposedly shown on Cartoon Network Asia (which does exactly Jack for us Stateside except give hope it may show up on Cartoon Network US)...another hyper-kawaii show in the vein of Card Captor Sakura but has its own twists. Not at all bad if you like the cute stuff.
Any Miazaki. Trust me when I say you cannot go wrong with Miazaki. You have to admire the guy for being the one artist whom Michael Eisner has NOT butchered his work in a distribution deal (most Miazaki work is distributed by Dizzney now; the first two being "Kiki's Delivery Service" and Mononoke Hime). You should be at least able to find Kiki's, and Mononoke Hime should be out on video in a few months. Only bad thing is that pretty much it's dub-only (though not bad dubs at all--I'm a purist and like the OPTION of getting a subtitled version, though)...if you want a subtitled version so badly, you might check out the fansub circuits (there was a fansub of Mononoke Hime floating about some months ago). Don't be offended if nobody wants you to tape them, though (most fansubbers put that condition on the fansubs when the Dizzney version was released--would YOU want to be sued for "piracy" by a company that has such a pack of lawyers and lobbyists that we will probably be listening to Radio Free Mars before Mickey Mouse ever goes into the public domain? Neither do they. :). There are also some Miazaki films that have NOT gone into Dizzney hell, most notably "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind", which is a damned good anime.
Gatchaman (aka G-Force) is still a sentimental favourite of mine. Get the Japanese-language versions if possible--gives whole new life into the series. :) And besides, it's done by Amano-sama. Thou Shalt Not Say Ill About Amano-sama Or Else A Pack Of Sex-Crazed Kitsune Shall Infest Thy Underwear. ;)
Nazca, if you can find it. Very interesting anime about warriors reincarinated from Inca times...forget Incas didn't have katanas, and it's quite enjoyable. :) (Then again, if "Mysterious Cities of Gold" could get away with Mayans having freaking solar-powered AIRPLANES, they can get away with Incas using katanas. :)
Fushigi Yuugi (English dub sold as "Mysterious Play"--very nice they did that, no confusion there :) is pretty good, at least from what I've seen. I have also heard that, up until the very very end, it descends into being possibly the most depressing anime written since "Grave of the Fireflies" (more on that in a minute). Two tips from friends of mine who have seen this: 1) Do not get overly attached to ANY character. 2) Watch PAST the credits of the last episode, and keep any sharp objects away from you until you do so. :)
Record of Lodoss War is also fairly good, at least what I've seen. Interesting history behind it--reportedly, it's based off a Japanese RPG which in itself was loosely based off AD&D (so the real argument can be made that it's an animated D&D series, only done properly ;). At least one spinoff series, which I've not seen yet, exists.
Dragon Half, if you can find it. You will probably have to resort to fansubs. Damned hilarious series...laughed till I cried :)
Akira isn't that bad. Probably would be more understandable if they'd made it from the entire manga instead of the two graphic novels in the middle of the series, but not bad. Warning: UNLESS you have read the entire manga series, do NOT attempt to explain the plot of the movie--my husband made that mistake on a local anime BBS, and for the next fifteen months got spontaneous migraines whenever someone so much as MENTIONED the word "Akira". :)
Bubblegum Crisis/Crash isn't bad--try to view the original series first, and AVOID THE GODDAMN DUBS LIKE THE PLAGUE. They BUTCHER "Konya Wa Hurricane" which is one of the better J-rock songs in anime by having SOMEONE WHO CAN'T FRIGGING SING SING IT IN ENGLISH! Pure blasphemy.
I have heard good and bad about the "alternate universe" BCG series, "Bubblegum Crisis 2040". Uses a bit too much CGI eye-candy, but the four eps I saw weren't too bad as long as you remember that it is an alternate universe (just like the three Tenchi series ;). I miss the lesbian references, though...we all know Sylia Stingray and especially Nene are flaming. Out of the closet, girls ;)
And now for the hentai section (yes, I am hentai. I am not ashamed to state that I am mildly hentai. ;) But this is funny hentai, so I may be excused. :)...both of these probably count as "adult comedy"...
F-Cubed, especially "Night of the F-Cubed". Adult, yet screamingly funny...probably only funny if you think risque situations are funny, but I thought it was hilarious. :)
Ogenki Clinic--Imagine a sex counselor clinic run by Tenchi Muyo's own Noboyuki. (Read: Dirty Middle-Aged Man. :) The whole damn series is a riot...quite adult, but screamingly funny. :)
This should be enough to get you shopping for now. ;)
Mickonline dun said:
Dear Mickonline:
I would be extremely interested to know which telemarketing firm you worked for.
I would like to know this, because if they ever call me I want to be able to nail their balls to the wall. >:)=
You see...your company engaged in two flatly illegal practices.
Firstly...if someome requests that they be placed on your "do not call" list, by law you must maintain that list for ten years. Furthermore, if they also request that you send them your "do not call" policy, you are again required by law to send that to them. (FWIW--you are required to have a "do not call" policy--it's quite illegal to operate without one.)
More info on the law and legal requirements for telemarketers here. Please note that should you violate the law and you run into someone sufficiently pissy (such as myself), such fsck-ups as NOT adding my name to your do-not-call list can be expensive (victims are entitled to sue for $500 per offense, $1500 per "willful" offense [i.e. you knew damn well what you were doing was wrong]...in most states you may sue for up to $1500 in small claims court (no lawyers required), most courts will give summary judgement in favour of the plaintiff if nobody from the telemarketing firm shows up, the court can send a summons to pay the fine Or Else, and court judgements in your favour look very nice in formal complaints to the FCC asking them to Please Shut The Mother-Fsckers Down. :)
The second illegal practice is redlining--purposely blocking out low-income or minority neighbourhoods. (Yes, if you are dealing with finances at all, redlining is illegal in the US. Same if you're dealing in real estate, insurance, etc.--a bank here in Kentucky just got smacked rather hard because it was found that it was redlining low-income minority communities in terms of house loans.) Trust me that if it is ever found out by the feds your former company does this, they might end up not being able to so much as loan a homeless person two bucks for a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. :) Redlining is still unfortunately common, but the authorities (such as HUD, federal banking regulators, etc.) are becoming far less tolerant of it.
(As an aside--just FWIW, I'm merely writing as a Private Joe who has little tolerance for discrimination (I grew up in a low-income part of the Louisville metro area that was constantly being shat on by the city--literally being used as their dumping grounds for garbage and minimalls and the airport because they figured "the poor hicks in the south part ain't gonna bitch") and little to no tolerance for telemarketers (I literally don't accept calls from telemarketers and survey agencies unless it is from a survey agency that I have called first and who will give me stuff like free food, etc. for my time and trouble :)--even political surveys, I will deliberately give BS answers just to skew their statistics), not to mention junk mailers (I freely admit to using spamtrap names and/or addresses if I must give personal info out--both for email AND snail-mail). Unless you REALLY make it worth my time, don't bother contacting me--if I want to get a service from you, I'll contact you, thank you. :)
(Part of why I am so pissy on this is I've had to deal with Bad Telemarketers like Chemlawn, who literally refused to get off the phone even after I had told them five times that I was not interested, I wanted on their do-not-call list, and I actually WANTED weeds to grow in my yard because I was setting up a nature sanctuary (!). AND they had the audacity to call back a week later, upon which I asked to speak to their supervisor and gave them an earful. They have not called back since.)
It's rather easy to keep from getting telemarketing calls:
1) Use the magic words "Please put me on your do not call list, please remove me from any lists you may sell to other telemarketing agencies, and please mail me a copy of your do not call policy." (The last two are important, because they show you aren't fscking about and it gives the telemarketers more rope to hang themselves by. :)
2) If they get pissy or call you afterwards, ask to speak to the manager (after getting the telemarketer's name, of course). Explain the law to the manager, and ask him at each point if he is aware that:
He must maintain a do-not-call list for 10 years
He must maintain a do-not-call policy and send it on request
He must remove your name from lists sold to other telemarketing agencies on request
He must not call before 9 am local time or after 9 pm local time
If they do not do the above, they are liable under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for $500 per offense, $1500 per "willful" offense (they knew what they were doing).
Then state, clearly, the spiel in 1) above and state that you are putting them on notice that if they don't send the do-not-call policy and/or they call you at ALL in the next ten years, you will be taking them to small claims court for willful violation of the TCPA. Document all this info including time of the call, etc.
3) If they are the least bit naughty to you (i.e. they call again, fail to mail a do-not- call policy, etc.) then sue the bastards. :) Most telemarketers won't show up in court, it costs anywhere from free to around fifty dollars to file a case in small claims court, and you get anywhere from $500 to $1500 per offense--in a way, it really IS a way to "make money fast". :) Courts will handle collections, by the way--if they don't pay, they suddenly become more in trouble (read: contempt of court--in the worst case, the CEOs can be jailed till they pay up).
4) Investigate your state's telemarketing laws and see if there's even MORE stuff you can use against them. (In Kentucky, for instance, there are actual CRIMINAL penalties for violating the laws--we also have stricter time-of-day requirements (no calls before 10 am), a statewide "do-not-call" list maintained by the Attorney-General that uses "asterisked-numbers" listed in the phone book, and it is illegal to telemarket using a recording (you MUST speak to a live human within five seconds of the call, or they just broke Kentucky law).) Check with your Attorney-General's office, or look under your state's name and "consumer protection".
5) There are some phone services very useful in avoiding telemarketers (and in some cases, tracing just WHERE they got your name). Availability varies from state to state--check with your telco. Among them:
Having your phone listing under an obviously false pseudonym (Joe Dredd, Fred Flintstone, George Jetson, etc.)
Unpublished numbers--more expensive but invaluable in not only avoiding a lot of telemarketing calls but also in tracing the sellers of numbers--some telemarketers actually buy their number lists from the phone company. (It is a good idea in general to explicitly inform the phone company that you want on their do-not-call list and you want your name removed from all lists they sell to other parties.)
Various Caller ID packages such as Anonymous Call Block (in some areas it DOES block telemarketers--in Kentucky, for instance, they have to provide a number on Caller ID by law), Unknown Number Verification (dial a number before you can talk to the person), etc.
In some states, like Florida and Kentucky, there are statewide do-not-call lists. Call your telco or Attorney-General's office for more info.
6) Junkbuster's Telemarketer's Script is invaluable for documenting telemarketing calls (among other things, it lists the questions you need to ask if you want to "make money fast" from telemarketers if/when they misbehave ;). For that matter, the entire telemarketing section is invaluable IMHO. (A wee note--I'm not entirely unbiased. I've had very good results, even at my old place, with their tips--I happen to be the client they're quoting. ;) This was at a residence that'd get 4-10 telemarketing calls a DAY, mind--getting them whittled to one or two a week was a major accomplishment, one done largely through Junkbuster's tips. Oh, and BTW, their script IS GPL'd--you can tweak it to your liking (to include state laws, etc.) as long as you give 'em credit.)
7) There are actual devices, such as one sold by Public Citizen, that basically have a button one can press to automagically give the "add my number to your do not call list" spiel. (By Grud, they use machines like predictive dialers--why shouldn't you? ;) Most of these are around $30 US or so--links here (for Phone Butler) or here (for Phone Filter. There are several devices of this type around, some even being sold at stores like Service Merchandise and Sears--shop around.
8) If you've got Winblows (or Wine--I see no real reason why it couldn't work unde Wine) you might take a look at Engima, which is a nice little proggie to let you fill out the script on computer. (There is a Mac version linked from the site; I see no reason why a Linux version couldn't possibly be developed somehow.)
9) The ultimate in deterrance of telemarketers (at least if you've got ADSL or cable-modem service) is probably doing away with the landline and getting a cell phone. Telemarketing calls to cell phones are illegal in the US, and most areas give cell phones their own exchanges so that telemarketers can filter them out.
Again--these are just tactics (well, besides 7-9; I run Linux, like the pleasure of bitching out the telemarketers myself, and neither Insight@Home nor Hellsouth ADSL are much of options--I'm waiting for more competition in Louisville's ADSL market because I can get it cheaper than through Hellsouth) I've used, and quite successfully--if you start these at the moment you get a phone line, and adopt a "zero tolerance" policy towards telemarketers, you CAN eventually wipe out telemarketing calls from your lines altogether. (No, I am not making this up. On my (unpublished, Caller-ID-enabled, anon-call-blocked, statewide-do-not-call-listed, with-me-leading-the-war-on-telemarketers on the other end armed with Junkbusters script in hand should they get through THAT flotilla of "leave me alone" deterrance) I've actually succeeded in making it where I don't get telemarketing calls. It helps a lot that Kentucky does have additional laws; it also helps that the numbers are unpublished (they can't even get them through Directory Assistance--the only way they get them is if Hellsouth sells the numbers) and the three companies that have had the audacity to telemarket these numbers in the year I've had them got it made COMPLETELY plain that I do not want calls, EVER, and I entirely mean to clue-by-four them into submission should they ever forget that. ;) It IS possible to live free from Telemarketing Hell, though. (One must sometimes be a bitch, yes. Sometimes bitchiness is necessary. Most get the point with just 1), though. The later steps are for if they have proven themselves Naughty, like Chemlawn or the company mickonline apparently worked for. ;)
Dionysius dun said:
Actually, it depends on what state you live in. In Kentucky, for instance, not only is Driver's Ed a required credit in school, but is actually a requirement to get a driver's license or even a permit if you are under 18. (Folks over 18 are exempted only because, well, it is next to impossible to get a free Driver's Ed course once out of high school--the cheapest courses I've been able to find run over $100 :P)
Pretty much, if you are still in high school, you HAVE to take some kind of Driver's Ed before being allowed behind the wheel at all. :P If you don't, you are essentially farged till you hit 18 and can get a course through Yellow Cab or the like (there are some schools here that--even for gifted/talented or higher-level high-school work or most electives--are ALREADY having to ship kids out to other schools; those kids are positively screwed unless the state gives vouchers for Driver's Ed...then again, at least one school for which this applies is a school for the "emotionally disturbed" (read: those kids unlucky enough to get "geek profiled" or having bad probs with their folks), another is (perversely) the major gifted/taltented magnet school here (!)...
Then again, Kentucky has downright strict laws regarding teen driving, period...you must keep a permit for six months, you cannot drive after sundown if on a permit (this screws a lot of kids over, especially with magnet schools--it was originally meant to keep kids from "cruising", but some kids in HIGH SCHOOL don't get home till almost 6 pm anyways due to multiple bus transfers--yes, this is regular yellow school bus transfers, folks--there are bits about nearly the entire high school system being made up of magnet schools that sucks), the person who must ride in the front seat with you must be someone over 21 who has been licensed for at least two years, there is "zero tolerance" for ANY alcohol (if you take communion and then drive--and are stopped by a cop and alcohol is found in your bloodstream--you can lose the right to get a permit or license in Kentucky till age 21), if you have been placed in juvenile hall you can lose the right to drive till age 18/21, and Kentucky has "no pass/no drive" (basically, if you make below a C on any report cards or progress reports your license or permit is revoked until either you get all grades with a C or better or you hit the age of 18, whichever comes first). I'm really surprised they just don't up the driving age to 18 and be done with it... :P
Kentucky's teen driving laws are supposedly among the strictest in the US according to both MADD and AAA, though (I think only New York has more severe requirements, and their driving age is 18 in NYC), so I don't expect most of you have it QUITE that bad :)
CaseyB dun said:
Thanks a ton for bringing this up (I was about to if you didn't)...this isn't really meant for sitting between classes or out on a nice day playing with a laptop (besides, if the day is so nice you're going to brave the Daystar to go out, what the hell are you bringing a laptop along for anyways? ;).
The perfect application for something like this, IMHO, is for RV travellers (a fair number of folks do actually live in their RVs and go cross country in them--for those who are curious, mail is done by maildrops or forwarding). As it is, a lot of RV catalogues sell solar-panel packages for charging one's batteries during the day in areas where there aren't power hookups (running a generator, especially if someone doesn't have a 34-foot RV or motor coach, can get expensive (especially with today's gas prices); this also works nicely with RVs as most RV equipment uses 12-volt DC or is dual-power anyways--in any case, it certainly saves on using the loud-arse generator :).
Hell, if I had money to burn, I'd be sore tempted to get one of these setups--as it is, I tend to take two vacations a year in an RV where no external power hookups are available (Bristol, TN during the car races...ok, you can stop giving me that look--it's downright FUNNY to hear the car racers cuss each other out, even if I feel like an old hag seeing all the dot-com adverts all over the place :). A little solar-power array would be right handy for charging batteries for use at night (hell, for that matter, if someone wanted to set up live webcams from car races--the vast majority of superspeedways, including Indy, do allow camping in the infield but don't have facilities for power hookups), because I'd really not like to have to fire up the generator just to run a PC and keep caught up on email :)
(Then again, RV living would include other specialisations for one's computer...like cell modems or DirectPC service (a positively OBSCENE number of people at car races have DirectTV dishes on their RV's, and a fair number of them tend to be tuned to ESPN...which never made sense to me seeing as they're going to watch the darned race in person ;)...but it IS possible. :)