This back and forth about piracy and morality and P2P is such bullshit.
Everyone -- yes, every goddamn one -- knows that the Hollywood/MPAA (and the RIAA music fight) boils down to one thing: money in the pockets of executives. That's it. It's only about technology insofar how that technology impacts the bottom-line. It's not about art. It's about making sure a select group of executives make sure they can keep the mortgage payments on their Bel-Air mansions and can keep memberships in their country clubs. That's it. That's where my, yours, and everyone else's dollars are going: to buy some titanium fucking Big Bertha golf club for the peabrained asshole who's been crowned king of the other peabrained assholes working beneath him.
Valenti wants to make sure the cash keeps flowing into his pocket and into the pocket of every other overpaid, dim-bulb, "I can green-light this" executive motherfucker working the valley.
You want goddamn immorality? It's the entertainment industry and the people that run it that are at the very foundations of the "immorality" of piracy. Forget Janet Jackson's nipple. Forget Powell's sudden decision to attempt to regulate *cable* television today (!). Forget the fact (and I'll digress here) that the fundamentalist assholes that have gone to see Mel Gibson's "Passion" claim that it's a fantastic movie yet in the same breath decry Janet Jackson's nipple, the state of marriage, and the violence in contemporary culture -- overlooking perhaps that the Passion is more "violent" than any number of Grand Theft Auto games strung together and more "explicit" than any svelt little nipple hiding behind a sun-shaped nipple medallion.
The hypocrisy of Valenti and his immoral executive motherfuckers is astounding. It boggles the mind.
in fact, if you remember playing Bolo in your spare time and then tinkering around with gopher because you thought it was cool, then you're okay.
of course, you get extra points if you remember sitting in the back of radio shack and dicking around with the TRS-80 Model I Level II and a 300 baud acoustically coupled modem. Or you remember Infocom's Zork I for the TRS-80 coming in those ziplock bags.
And bonus points for anyone here who messed around with a Commodore Pet and its plastic keyboard (which still rocks, BTW.)
Wait, yes, this is off-topic. But it's on topic. Because if you had an Osbourne MicroAce or messed around with an Altair, you automatically deserve points because 90% of the Slashdot crowd doesn't remember these computers and how cool it was to sit back in -- what? -- 1981? 1982? -- and fiddle around with these things.
I still remember my computer science teacher in high school who said, well, if Microsoft ever goes public, *that's* the company to invest in. Of course, this was between accusing us of using Super Utility Plus on the TRS-80 to copy Asylum I and Death Maze 5000 so we could play it on all the computers in the labs. (Those games were Doom and Quake before anyone had heard of Doom and Quake, BTW).
I've had precisely the same experience. I quit buying CDs several years ago.
But a year ago I got I got an iPod, checked out iTunes, bought a couple of songs to test the waters -- and suddenly I'm buying whatever I want off iTunes -- whenever the mood strikes.
I've bought several full albums, but mostly I'm just using iTunes to pick and choose -- and because I can create my own playlists, I pretty much create my own "albums" (if you buy into the theory that an old-school "album" is a thematically linked selection of music.)
I realize "suck" is pretty subjective, but I've suddenly realized a couple things. I'm not buying songs that suck (at least according to my standards) and I have a lot fewer CDs to move around and find storage for.
*shrug*
I'm no audiophile, but I dig tunes. Is the music as "clear" as it could be? Fuck it. I don't care. I get the tunes I want. Who cares. They sound fine on my iPod. And that's the point.
I don't know the answer to what I'm about to ask. I'm a writer, not a programmer, but as I was reading Cringley's column -- especially toward the end when he talks about how PSCP can be used in DRM to really (really, really) obfuscate a watermark -- I got to thinking: couldn't this theory of PSCP be used to further obscure (or encrypt -- whatever you want to call it) P2P networking?
And maybe this is already being done -- or maybe this is just pure stupidity on my part for asking the question -- but couldn't this sort of "morph-as-you-go" theory be used to obfuscate -- and essentially hide -- a network path used to get (or put) a piece of data? Kinda like BitTorrent -- but in a much more severe, much more shifty way? You getting the data -- eventually -- and you're both downloading and uploading as you go -- but the paths through which your current bit of data is being retrieved are both unknown until you visit it and obscured once you leave it?
I remember we had a mini-arcade in the Sears in our mall. It was a dark room off in the back of the store -- near the catalog desk and the bathrooms. I remember shoving copper slugs up the coin return slots in order to get free credits -- it was tricky because you had to sorta squat and turn your back to the machine to get the leverage necessary to flip the copper slugs up the slots with your index finger.
You could never do the copper-slug trick in Aladdins Castle because the dude with the little red vest was like a viper: if he spotted you doing anything untoward, he'd banish you forever from the arcade. Or call the cops. I remember our dudes in the red vest being *incredibly* big-brotherish.
If you got banished from Aladdins Castle, the only place to go was Radio Shack, where you could go in the back and fiddle with the Model I's and II's -- and later the Color Computers and the Model III's and IV's. I remember there was a kid named Eberle was *always* in the Radio Shack. He'd sit there in the little glass-walled computer showroom in the office chair and have every single piece of software and would do neat stuff with the 300 baud acoustically coupled modems.
And I remember the clerks there at the Radio Shack who didn't have a clue and were too afraid of Eberle (he had frizzed out black hair and was sorta the prototypical computer geek -- yucky blue jeans with grass stains on the knees, black t-shirts with a lot of crumbs, and a wallet that he kept chained to his belt.)
Eberle always had money, too. He'd send us out to the Orange Julius to get those yummy hotdogs and a large Orange Julius for him. Sometimes he'd let us use a couple bucks to buy an Orange Julius for ourselves.
But not only was he the resident expert in Radio Shack, he was always the one loaded down with quarters and tokens at video game places. He'd stack about fifteen tokens across the front of Donkey Kong and stake out the machine for the rest of the afternoon. He was friends with everyone, including the dudes in the red vests. Sometimes the dudes with the red vests would take Eberle to the backroom of Aladdin's Castle. I never knew what they did back there -- count money, fix coin machines, etc. But Eberle seemed to have a neverending supply of tokens than he *never* lent to anyone.
Eberle was connected. I liked that. I was 12 at the time. My youth was spent in Radio Shack and Aladdin's Castle.
My question -- slightly off topic -- but I'm really curious: who here actually *remembers* the old school arcade games? Pac-Man? Donkey Kong? Frogger? Tron? Pole Position?
I mean, arcades back in the 80's were something pretty spectacular. I had the misfortune a few weeks ago of hitting a local place called 'Dave and Busters' (no idea if it was a chain or not) but I was *astounded* at how arcades have changed.
I still have fond memories of Aladdins Castle in our piddly mall. Getting five dollars worth of tokens (around 25, I think), and spending the whole afternoon in front of Tron or Pac Man or even -- my little guilty pleasure -- "Journey": the arcade game named after the band. You controlled Steve Perry and his band mates. I don't remember it too well, but I remember we played it a lot -- and listened to 'Separate Ways' and 'Faithfully' a lot, too.
Memories.
Kodak dosent make paticularly good film. Which is not to say they make bad film, its good enough for the consumer market
WTF? You, like most people here, have not even *used* Kodak film. You're gadget freaks, not photographers.
Saying Kodak doesn't make "good" film (what the hell does that mean, anyway?) is like saying Hostess doesn't know how to make Twinkies.
Name two other companies that *make* film -- let alone "good" film.
The only people who care about "film's demise" -- and who actually gloat and clap their hands about it -- are people that have never used film in the first place.
My god. This may be the first pragmatic post I've read on Slashdot in months.
Right on, brother.
I agree 100%. Everyone's always got the better idea -- "Hey, man, listen to this: I get the GribbleGrabble OS, add a DibbleDabbe board, and lookity-look with only some fibble fabble doobily doop API calls to the fibble fabble, I can kabble wobble the hoppity hobble."
Why bother -- when all you have to do it walk into Best Buy, walk out with a TIVO, and plug it in?
Some guy in this thread talks about spending 8 hours configuring Linux, warning that HabbleFabbleTV isn't for newbies, cuz, man, if you're a newbie, you'd be better off with a boring ol' TIVO. Got that?
Yeah, I got it. More power to ya: but come on. Time is money -- and time is time, period -- and if all you do is fiddle with yabble dibble, then fine -- rock on.
But I got a kids, the air is nice outside, the snow is pretty, and I got better things to do than wabble wibble with the uber-kibble kobble.
It's not entirely useless. Personally, I'm much more interested in 'portable video' than all this ebook nonsense. I'll take my books as real books -- I dig real books -- but I'm especially interested in carrying around a couple of films.
I've sorta rediscovered Criterion's DVDs, and the idea of toting around a couple of Fellini flicks is (for me, at least) pretty compelling. I tend to get obsessed with stuff like that -- carrying around Barenboim's Beethoven cycle, for example, on my iPod -- and the idea that I could pull out 'La Strada', '8 1/2', and 'Amarcord' and watch it on my lunch hour is, well, weirdly compelling in a very George Jetson-like way.
I know a guy -- a friend -- who's high-life of making films available in his shared folder allowed him to buy a little beagle named Bobo who chews napkins and eats poop. My friend charged a buck for access to an ftp drive. After one hundred twenty five suckers paypal'd their bucks to my friend, my friend went down to his local no-kill dog shelter and adopted Bobo.
Of course, his ISP -- a national one -- cut him off. But my friend was able to keep Bobo. AFAIK, this is the only reported incident of "fame and fortune" thus far reported due to trading "Fitty-thent" (that's '50 Cent' for you tone-deaf people) CDs and 'Love Actually' screeners.
Bobo, BTW, prefers squirrel shit, but in a pinch, he'll eat his own. I've told my friend -- in person because his friendster account has been hacked -- that if you feed Bobo some sort of enzyme concoction, he'll stop feasting on his shit. "And make sure you take him out," I told my friend. "Puppies need regularity. You think that's just for old folks? Think again. Every two hours. Tell Bobo she's a good girl for doing her business outside."
"That's funny," my friend said. "The thing about regularity."
"It's funny. But it's true."
"Okay," he said. "I'll try that."
He did, and so far he and Bobo are both doing fine. So thank you Bennifer, Keaneau, and Gene Hackman. Thanks to your wonderful new movies, you've saved a little two year old beagle.
See, some good can come out of Hollywood (although for sure it'll take some time to air the stale stink out of Jack's office when he finally retires to a private Palm Springs putting green and his favorite Oscar Goldman plaid pants.)
Dude, here's a tip about the American rich: they're cheap. They like deals. The American rich person care more about saving 10 bucks than spending 10,000.
That said, I'll say this: what crazy isn't so much the price but the fact that it requires yet another adapter to use. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm out of plug-in space. I'm not rich, and I don't have a house full of outlets, but I do have a few outlets -- and several power strips -- and I'm sick of adapters. I'm especially sick of the goddam adapters that are big. I've gotten to the point where I won't buy a product if it's got one of those fatass adapters that's so big that it blocks two other plugs just to get it to fit in my power strip.
Here's a tip for Apple, AltecLansing, and even Microsoft: work on something -- anything -- that can *REDUCE THE GODDAMN SIZE OF POWER ADAPTERS* and, if that's not possible -- work on something that'll reduce the *NEED* for adapters.
Power over ethernet? I dunno. Whatever that is, if it works and frees up some of my power outlets, I'm all for it.
Anyway, the fact that this gadget requires two adapters -- its own and the Apple -- is just dumb. It should be reviewd at 3/10 instead of 7/10.
Let's see some progressive, forward-looking thinking on the power outlet situation. I leave my house thinking a power surge is gonna come, fry up all my powerstrips, and catch my drapes on fire. My dogs are gonna burn, my beloved toaster over is gonna fry, and I'm gonna be standing by a heap of ashes, wondering what happened to all my photoalbums. And I'm gonna have some smartass fireman asking me why I didn't store the important stuff in safe-deposit boxes off the premises?
"Like I'll store a couple of beagles in a safe-deposit box?"
Gone because of some Altec Lansing speaker system?
I once new a woman named Scorpia Marscopone who would have loved to set her ample peepers on a fucking pepper. Scorpia acted in a variety of porno flicks and one night after a shoot accidentally walked in front of a freight train.
I'm not sure why this is mod'd as off-topic. I mean, it's a *little* off-topic, yeah. But it's a true story. And it it's directly tied into the/. tongue-twisters that were posted earlier.
Moderation here troubles me. I think one requirement for moderation would be "sense of humor".
Now, to move this back on-topic, let me add my two cents: http://www.agonist.org remains *the* best site for the current crisis. The dude running the site is posting almost (but not quite) minute-by-minute updates from a variety of sources. It's clearly a "top blog" for GWII, and it doesn't yet seem to be suffering from excessive load.
Okay, this is off-topic, but I have to add some very odd autobiographical details:
I once new a woman named Scorpia Marscopone who would have loved to set her ample peepers on a fucking pepper. Scorpia acted in a variety of porno flicks and one night after a shoot accidentally walked in front of a freight train.
What was weird about Scorpia was the way she wore perfume. She'd wear something normal like Chanel and her internal chemistry would weirdly transform it into this odd, highly-enriched attractor. None of us could keep our eyes off Scorpia on account she smelled so good.
Bobby Mexico, my cameraman (I wrote the screenstories) used to tell me he was crazy in love with Scorpia and one night even told his own wife, a midget (er, "little person") from Mobile, Alabama. The little person was so enraged, she threw Bobby Mexico, his 8mm Kodachrome, and all of his Samsonite out onto the front lawn. Then she called her ex-boyfriend who within a week had moved himself into Bobby Mexico's house while Bobby Mexico, completely broke and unable to shower for over a week, tried desperately to get Scorpia to take pity on him.
He'd stand outside of Scorpia's dressing room, pleading with her. "I love you, Scorpia. You're the sweetest smelling woman I've ever met."
Of course, Bobby was pretty rank, so everytime he'd go back on the set, we'd ask Scorpia to come out with her Chanel and her wacky body chemitry to defumigate the hallway.
In the early 1980s, I tried a similar tactic with my parents. I was hooked on video games, and attempted to explain that if I didn't get an Atari 2600, they'd be funding terrorism.
I also explained the lack of quarters for the Aladdin's Castle in the mall was probably funding terrorism. When I wanted a TRS-80 Model I Level II computer and my parents refused, I urged them to rethink their stance. "Not buying the computer probably means you're funding terrorism."
My dad looked at me, told me to go to my room and not come out for a while. From behind my bedroom door, I yelled out that by grounding me, they were supporting the Soviets in Afghanistan. By not purchasing the Mattel 'Big Trak' remote control car I coveted, they were essentially supporting the Argentinians in the Falkland Island dispute. But they held firm.
When, many years later, my parents refused to fund the purchase of my first automoble (a little Buick Opel), I wondered whether or not their recalcitrance wasn't actually helping Manuel Noreiga in Panama. I explained that by refusing to do what I asked was probably assisting rogue regimes across the globe.
And now, take a look around. The North Koreans are threatening to rain missiles down on America's cities. Sadaam Hussein is sitting in his bunker with some sweet tea, watching Tony Blair struggle for his political life. General Idi Amin Dada is still exiled in Saudi Arabia, but I'm betting he's got a funding pipeline that comes directly from all those times my parents refused to give me five dollar bills so that I could go to Aladdin's Castle and get the five extra tokens when you stuck a five dollar bill in the cash machine.
The rise of rogue regimes is the direct results of doing things I didn't want done. Microsoft is absolutely right.
I'm not sure why filesharing is any more of a problem on a university campus than, say, underage drinking or drug use. Universities do their best to deal with drug use, do their best to combat underrage drinking, but I don't see congress asking universities to do *more* than what's currently being done.
Where's the Jack Valenti drug czar appealing to congress to close down potential "drug dens" on campuses? Where's the Hilary Rosen rape and violent assault czar lobbying congress to force all students to cease and desist from such behavior or face ten, twenty, fifty years in prison? Where's the outrage about heroin use on college campuses?
All of which is to say: the laws are there, most folks are aware of the laws, universites make a good faith effort to enforce the laws. But I cannot in good conscience understand why filesharing -- filesharing! -- seems to be more important than preventing drug use, alcohol abuse, or violence on college campuses.
Actually, I do understand. The answer is money. Corporations have such sway in American government and have the money to back up their big mouths that they've managed to convince to big-business suits in congress that sharing an MP3 is more vital than preventing rape.
If those legal fucks spending money on filesharing initiatives would put *half* that money -- even a *tenth* of that money -- into rape and violence awareness programs on American college campuses then the quality of life would be immeasurably improved.
I watched the ad and went out and bought some Spam (TM).
First, Spam comes in a neat can. It's curved and low-to-the-ground. I like that. It's very appealing to purchase something and actually like the way it's packaged. I consider this a successful purchase.
Next, the can opens easily. Again: this is a good thing. The little pull-tab is nice.
Now, I expected lots of Spam juice to come dripping out when I yanked off the top, but I was pleased to see that no Spam juice flew forth.
Even better, the spam actually *filled* the can. It's not like a bag of potato chips. Open the bag and you're lucky to see fifteen chips.
Spam is most definitely "old-school" when it comes to packaging: they have a product, have a nice can, and fill the can with the product. Thumbs up, boys.
There are recipes on the side of the can. Better still, the recipes are fairly easy to make. I opted for the "fried Spam". The recipe indicated that I should scramble some eggs. I did this, toasted some Butternut Texas toast (thick slices of bread, in case you're not sure what 'Texas Toast' is), and then got my tried-and-true non-stick frying pan (lots of teflon for those of us who, like myself, have no idea what 'seasoning a skillet' means and so buy into the non-stick hype.)
Out of the can, Spam is a little on the pinkish side. It definitely needed some "color" (as they say) before it was completely palatable. I'm sure raw Spam would taste no different than cooked Spam, but I wasn't sure about the level of processing Spam underwent, so -- in the interested of safety -- I fried thin slices until they were dark brown and slightly burnt at the edges.
I slid the Spam onto the plate (thanks to teflon), slid the eggs onto the plate, and pulled the two pieces of Texas toast from the toaster. I slathered some *real butter* on the toast, cut it in triangles like they do at all fine restaurants, and went to sit in my favorite chair. I had to leave the food for a moment and go back into the kitchen because I forgot my Red Bull. But when I went back to the plate, the Spam was still warm, the eggs were perfect, and the butter had melted into my toast.
The fried Spam -- pork shoulder and ham -- was good. It wasn't great. It wasn't like Jimmie Dean sausage flavored with maple syrup. And it certainly wasn't like Pigs-in-blankets (pancakes wrapped around sausage) but it was damn good. It was a little bland. But it had texture -- a lot of it -- and felt good when I chewed.
The sweet, medicinal Red Bull sorta cast a pall on the otherwise good meal, but Red Bull at breakfast is a necessity for me, so I didn't have much choice.
It does make you wonder why dictators have -- apparently -- security strong enough to stave off attacks by the most powerful army on the planet, yet the government of the most powerful army on the planet allows two-bit Wired.com writers to walk about and write alarmist pieces about the state of security in America and pretend that all they need to do to get a nuke is go down to the gift shop and say, "That one there. The one sitting by the squash-blossom necklace."
I mean, if Baghdad's purported subway system -- which was never used for subways but is instead used to hustle WMDs from one part of the city to the other, avoiding all the Corona-eyes-in-the-sky-satellites and all weapons inspectors -- is enough to stymie the *entire globe*, then shouldn't we be taking lessons from these assholes about how to secure our ops and nukes from a bunch of understaffed, underpaid terrorist cells who live eight-to-a-room in Ma McChesney's Motel Six off Insterstate 80?
You mean to tell me that MS has disable the copy-and-paste, too?
Seriously. Why couldn't I just copy-and-paste my secret memo into a text file and then forward it to FuckedCompany or AssWipeMemos or whatever Pud's pimping.
It's interesting, though. All this DRM/IRM/whatever you want to call it is turning the computer into a block of metal and plastic. I'm old enough to remember the days of the Altair and the Osbourne MicroAce and the Commodore PET with the plastic keyboards -- and I'm troubled by this gradual shift from "hobbyist computers" to -- essentially -- blocks of metal that can only be used to do whatever corporations tell us we can do.
Anyway, fuck it.
If they disable copy-and-paste in Word 11, then it's useless.
And why oh why can't Microsoft add EndNote functionality into their word processing software? For fuck's sake. They've added everything *but* a decent bibliographic manager. I keep hoping the next version of Word would actually add useful features for people who -- imagine that -- write for a living.
Slashdot Mirror
This back and forth about piracy and morality and P2P is such bullshit.
Everyone -- yes, every goddamn one -- knows that the Hollywood/MPAA (and the RIAA music fight) boils down to one thing: money in the pockets of executives. That's it. It's only about technology insofar how that technology impacts the bottom-line. It's not about art. It's about making sure a select group of executives make sure they can keep the mortgage payments on their Bel-Air mansions and can keep memberships in their country clubs. That's it. That's where my, yours, and everyone else's dollars are going: to buy some titanium fucking Big Bertha golf club for the peabrained asshole who's been crowned king of the other peabrained assholes working beneath him.
Valenti wants to make sure the cash keeps flowing into his pocket and into the pocket of every other overpaid, dim-bulb, "I can green-light this" executive motherfucker working the valley.
You want goddamn immorality? It's the entertainment industry and the people that run it that are at the very foundations of the "immorality" of piracy. Forget Janet Jackson's nipple. Forget Powell's sudden decision to attempt to regulate *cable* television today (!). Forget the fact (and I'll digress here) that the fundamentalist assholes that have gone to see Mel Gibson's "Passion" claim that it's a fantastic movie yet in the same breath decry Janet Jackson's nipple, the state of marriage, and the violence in contemporary culture -- overlooking perhaps that the Passion is more "violent" than any number of Grand Theft Auto games strung together and more "explicit" than any svelt little nipple hiding behind a sun-shaped nipple medallion.
The hypocrisy of Valenti and his immoral executive motherfuckers is astounding. It boggles the mind.
or gopher.
if you never used gopher, you're a wanna-be.
in fact, if you remember playing Bolo in your spare time and then tinkering around with gopher because you thought it was cool, then you're okay.
of course, you get extra points if you remember sitting in the back of radio shack and dicking around with the TRS-80 Model I Level II and a 300 baud acoustically coupled modem. Or you remember Infocom's Zork I for the TRS-80 coming in those ziplock bags.
And bonus points for anyone here who messed around with a Commodore Pet and its plastic keyboard (which still rocks, BTW.)
Wait, yes, this is off-topic. But it's on topic. Because if you had an Osbourne MicroAce or messed around with an Altair, you automatically deserve points because 90% of the Slashdot crowd doesn't remember these computers and how cool it was to sit back in -- what? -- 1981? 1982? -- and fiddle around with these things.
I still remember my computer science teacher in high school who said, well, if Microsoft ever goes public, *that's* the company to invest in. Of course, this was between accusing us of using Super Utility Plus on the TRS-80 to copy Asylum I and Death Maze 5000 so we could play it on all the computers in the labs. (Those games were Doom and Quake before anyone had heard of Doom and Quake, BTW).
I've had precisely the same experience. I quit buying CDs several years ago.
But a year ago I got I got an iPod, checked out iTunes, bought a couple of songs to test the waters -- and suddenly I'm buying whatever I want off iTunes -- whenever the mood strikes.
I've bought several full albums, but mostly I'm just using iTunes to pick and choose -- and because I can create my own playlists, I pretty much create my own "albums" (if you buy into the theory that an old-school "album" is a thematically linked selection of music.)
I realize "suck" is pretty subjective, but I've suddenly realized a couple things. I'm not buying songs that suck (at least according to my standards) and I have a lot fewer CDs to move around and find storage for.
*shrug*
I'm no audiophile, but I dig tunes. Is the music as "clear" as it could be? Fuck it. I don't care. I get the tunes I want. Who cares. They sound fine on my iPod. And that's the point.
Three cheers for iTunes.
I don't know the answer to what I'm about to ask. I'm a writer, not a programmer, but as I was reading Cringley's column -- especially toward the end when he talks about how PSCP can be used in DRM to really (really, really) obfuscate a watermark -- I got to thinking: couldn't this theory of PSCP be used to further obscure (or encrypt -- whatever you want to call it) P2P networking?
And maybe this is already being done -- or maybe this is just pure stupidity on my part for asking the question -- but couldn't this sort of "morph-as-you-go" theory be used to obfuscate -- and essentially hide -- a network path used to get (or put) a piece of data? Kinda like BitTorrent -- but in a much more severe, much more shifty way? You getting the data -- eventually -- and you're both downloading and uploading as you go -- but the paths through which your current bit of data is being retrieved are both unknown until you visit it and obscured once you leave it?
Is this Phantom thing the same as the 'Zapstation?'
I pre-ordered the ZapStation five years ago. Someone said it was running on a Celeron 333.
I got a pretty good price. Anyone know when they're shipping?
I remember we had a mini-arcade in the Sears in our mall. It was a dark room off in the back of the store -- near the catalog desk and the bathrooms. I remember shoving copper slugs up the coin return slots in order to get free credits -- it was tricky because you had to sorta squat and turn your back to the machine to get the leverage necessary to flip the copper slugs up the slots with your index finger.
You could never do the copper-slug trick in Aladdins Castle because the dude with the little red vest was like a viper: if he spotted you doing anything untoward, he'd banish you forever from the arcade. Or call the cops. I remember our dudes in the red vest being *incredibly* big-brotherish.
If you got banished from Aladdins Castle, the only place to go was Radio Shack, where you could go in the back and fiddle with the Model I's and II's -- and later the Color Computers and the Model III's and IV's. I remember there was a kid named Eberle was *always* in the Radio Shack. He'd sit there in the little glass-walled computer showroom in the office chair and have every single piece of software and would do neat stuff with the 300 baud acoustically coupled modems.
And I remember the clerks there at the Radio Shack who didn't have a clue and were too afraid of Eberle (he had frizzed out black hair and was sorta the prototypical computer geek -- yucky blue jeans with grass stains on the knees, black t-shirts with a lot of crumbs, and a wallet that he kept chained to his belt.)
Eberle always had money, too. He'd send us out to the Orange Julius to get those yummy hotdogs and a large Orange Julius for him. Sometimes he'd let us use a couple bucks to buy an Orange Julius for ourselves.
But not only was he the resident expert in Radio Shack, he was always the one loaded down with quarters and tokens at video game places. He'd stack about fifteen tokens across the front of Donkey Kong and stake out the machine for the rest of the afternoon. He was friends with everyone, including the dudes in the red vests. Sometimes the dudes with the red vests would take Eberle to the backroom of Aladdin's Castle. I never knew what they did back there -- count money, fix coin machines, etc. But Eberle seemed to have a neverending supply of tokens than he *never* lent to anyone.
Eberle was connected. I liked that. I was 12 at the time. My youth was spent in Radio Shack and Aladdin's Castle.
My question -- slightly off topic -- but I'm really curious: who here actually *remembers* the old school arcade games? Pac-Man? Donkey Kong? Frogger? Tron? Pole Position? I mean, arcades back in the 80's were something pretty spectacular. I had the misfortune a few weeks ago of hitting a local place called 'Dave and Busters' (no idea if it was a chain or not) but I was *astounded* at how arcades have changed. I still have fond memories of Aladdins Castle in our piddly mall. Getting five dollars worth of tokens (around 25, I think), and spending the whole afternoon in front of Tron or Pac Man or even -- my little guilty pleasure -- "Journey": the arcade game named after the band. You controlled Steve Perry and his band mates. I don't remember it too well, but I remember we played it a lot -- and listened to 'Separate Ways' and 'Faithfully' a lot, too. Memories.
WTF? You, like most people here, have not even *used* Kodak film. You're gadget freaks, not photographers.
Saying Kodak doesn't make "good" film (what the hell does that mean, anyway?) is like saying Hostess doesn't know how to make Twinkies.
Name two other companies that *make* film -- let alone "good" film.
The only people who care about "film's demise" -- and who actually gloat and clap their hands about it -- are people that have never used film in the first place.
You're born after 1983, too, I'll bet.
My god. This may be the first pragmatic post I've read on Slashdot in months.
Right on, brother.
I agree 100%. Everyone's always got the better idea -- "Hey, man, listen to this: I get the GribbleGrabble OS, add a DibbleDabbe board, and lookity-look with only some fibble fabble doobily doop API calls to the fibble fabble, I can kabble wobble the hoppity hobble."
Why bother -- when all you have to do it walk into Best Buy, walk out with a TIVO, and plug it in?
Some guy in this thread talks about spending 8 hours configuring Linux, warning that HabbleFabbleTV isn't for newbies, cuz, man, if you're a newbie, you'd be better off with a boring ol' TIVO. Got that?
Yeah, I got it. More power to ya: but come on. Time is money -- and time is time, period -- and if all you do is fiddle with yabble dibble, then fine -- rock on.
But I got a kids, the air is nice outside, the snow is pretty, and I got better things to do than wabble wibble with the uber-kibble kobble.
Check out: http://www.xmfan.com for info on the XMPCR digital mods.
It's not entirely useless. Personally, I'm much more interested in 'portable video' than all this ebook nonsense. I'll take my books as real books -- I dig real books -- but I'm especially interested in carrying around a couple of films.
I've sorta rediscovered Criterion's DVDs, and the idea of toting around a couple of Fellini flicks is (for me, at least) pretty compelling. I tend to get obsessed with stuff like that -- carrying around Barenboim's Beethoven cycle, for example, on my iPod -- and the idea that I could pull out 'La Strada', '8 1/2', and 'Amarcord' and watch it on my lunch hour is, well, weirdly compelling in a very George Jetson-like way.
I know a guy -- a friend -- who's high-life of making films available in his shared folder allowed him to buy a little beagle named Bobo who chews napkins and eats poop. My friend charged a buck for access to an ftp drive. After one hundred twenty five suckers paypal'd their bucks to my friend, my friend went down to his local no-kill dog shelter and adopted Bobo.
Of course, his ISP -- a national one -- cut him off. But my friend was able to keep Bobo. AFAIK, this is the only reported incident of "fame and fortune" thus far reported due to trading "Fitty-thent" (that's '50 Cent' for you tone-deaf people) CDs and 'Love Actually' screeners.
Bobo, BTW, prefers squirrel shit, but in a pinch, he'll eat his own. I've told my friend -- in person because his friendster account has been hacked -- that if you feed Bobo some sort of enzyme concoction, he'll stop feasting on his shit. "And make sure you take him out," I told my friend. "Puppies need regularity. You think that's just for old folks? Think again. Every two hours. Tell Bobo she's a good girl for doing her business outside."
"That's funny," my friend said. "The thing about regularity."
"It's funny. But it's true."
"Okay," he said. "I'll try that."
He did, and so far he and Bobo are both doing fine. So thank you Bennifer, Keaneau, and Gene Hackman. Thanks to your wonderful new movies, you've saved a little two year old beagle.
See, some good can come out of Hollywood (although for sure it'll take some time to air the stale stink out of Jack's office when he finally retires to a private Palm Springs putting green and his favorite Oscar Goldman plaid pants.)
Dude, here's a tip about the American rich: they're cheap. They like deals. The American rich person care more about saving 10 bucks than spending 10,000.
That said, I'll say this: what crazy isn't so much the price but the fact that it requires yet another adapter to use. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm out of plug-in space. I'm not rich, and I don't have a house full of outlets, but I do have a few outlets -- and several power strips -- and I'm sick of adapters. I'm especially sick of the goddam adapters that are big. I've gotten to the point where I won't buy a product if it's got one of those fatass adapters that's so big that it blocks two other plugs just to get it to fit in my power strip.
Here's a tip for Apple, AltecLansing, and even Microsoft: work on something -- anything -- that can *REDUCE THE GODDAMN SIZE OF POWER ADAPTERS* and, if that's not possible -- work on something that'll reduce the *NEED* for adapters.
Power over ethernet? I dunno. Whatever that is, if it works and frees up some of my power outlets, I'm all for it.
Anyway, the fact that this gadget requires two adapters -- its own and the Apple -- is just dumb. It should be reviewd at 3/10 instead of 7/10.
Let's see some progressive, forward-looking thinking on the power outlet situation. I leave my house thinking a power surge is gonna come, fry up all my powerstrips, and catch my drapes on fire. My dogs are gonna burn, my beloved toaster over is gonna fry, and I'm gonna be standing by a heap of ashes, wondering what happened to all my photoalbums. And I'm gonna have some smartass fireman asking me why I didn't store the important stuff in safe-deposit boxes off the premises?
"Like I'll store a couple of beagles in a safe-deposit box?"
Gone because of some Altec Lansing speaker system?
No thank you.
I once new a woman named Scorpia Marscopone who would have loved to set her ample peepers on a fucking pepper. Scorpia acted in a variety of porno flicks and one night after a shoot accidentally walked in front of a freight train.
/. tongue-twisters that were posted earlier.
I'm not sure why this is mod'd as off-topic. I mean, it's a *little* off-topic, yeah. But it's a true story. And it it's directly tied into the
Moderation here troubles me. I think one requirement for moderation would be "sense of humor".
Now, to move this back on-topic, let me add my two cents: http://www.agonist.org remains *the* best site for the current crisis. The dude running the site is posting almost (but not quite) minute-by-minute updates from a variety of sources. It's clearly a "top blog" for GWII, and it doesn't yet seem to be suffering from excessive load.
Very nice site, Agonist.
How much do fucking peppers cost?
Okay, this is off-topic, but I have to add some very odd autobiographical details:
I once new a woman named Scorpia Marscopone who would have loved to set her ample peepers on a fucking pepper. Scorpia acted in a variety of porno flicks and one night after a shoot accidentally walked in front of a freight train.
What was weird about Scorpia was the way she wore perfume. She'd wear something normal like Chanel and her internal chemistry would weirdly transform it into this odd, highly-enriched attractor. None of us could keep our eyes off Scorpia on account she smelled so good.
Bobby Mexico, my cameraman (I wrote the screenstories) used to tell me he was crazy in love with Scorpia and one night even told his own wife, a midget (er, "little person") from Mobile, Alabama. The little person was so enraged, she threw Bobby Mexico, his 8mm Kodachrome, and all of his Samsonite out onto the front lawn. Then she called her ex-boyfriend who within a week had moved himself into Bobby Mexico's house while Bobby Mexico, completely broke and unable to shower for over a week, tried desperately to get Scorpia to take pity on him.
He'd stand outside of Scorpia's dressing room, pleading with her. "I love you, Scorpia. You're the sweetest smelling woman I've ever met."
Of course, Bobby was pretty rank, so everytime he'd go back on the set, we'd ask Scorpia to come out with her Chanel and her wacky body chemitry to defumigate the hallway.
True story.
If /. /.'s /., then is it still officially a /.?
Nah, he's from Canada. Home of Bob and Doug MacKenzie.
This doesn't surprise me one bit.
In the early 1980s, I tried a similar tactic with my parents. I was hooked on video games, and attempted to explain that if I didn't get an Atari 2600, they'd be funding terrorism.
I also explained the lack of quarters for the Aladdin's Castle in the mall was probably funding terrorism. When I wanted a TRS-80 Model I Level II computer and my parents refused, I urged them to rethink their stance. "Not buying the computer probably means you're funding terrorism."
My dad looked at me, told me to go to my room and not come out for a while. From behind my bedroom door, I yelled out that by grounding me, they were supporting the Soviets in Afghanistan. By not purchasing the Mattel 'Big Trak' remote control car I coveted, they were essentially supporting the Argentinians in the Falkland Island dispute. But they held firm.
When, many years later, my parents refused to fund the purchase of my first automoble (a little Buick Opel), I wondered whether or not their recalcitrance wasn't actually helping Manuel Noreiga in Panama. I explained that by refusing to do what I asked was probably assisting rogue regimes across the globe.
And now, take a look around. The North Koreans are threatening to rain missiles down on America's cities. Sadaam Hussein is sitting in his bunker with some sweet tea, watching Tony Blair struggle for his political life. General Idi Amin Dada is still exiled in Saudi Arabia, but I'm betting he's got a funding pipeline that comes directly from all those times my parents refused to give me five dollar bills so that I could go to Aladdin's Castle and get the five extra tokens when you stuck a five dollar bill in the cash machine.
The rise of rogue regimes is the direct results of doing things I didn't want done. Microsoft is absolutely right.
Are you saying that Spam is 40% combined pork shoulder and ham? If so, then what's the other 60%? Water? Salt?
Serious question. I'm curious.
And actually -- back on-topic -- I'm surprised the percentage of spam email is so low. My email is most certainly 90% spam -- possibly 95%.
Dude.
Get real. If *everybody* orders lobster, then no one looks like an asshole except for the vegan freak that orders a femmy salad, hold the dressing.
I think they're referring to 'Computer Aided Dispatch' -- not 'CAD' in the traditional, drawing sense.
911 emergency operators use CAD interfaces to assist with real-time law enforcment routing and dispatch.
I'm not sure why filesharing is any more of a problem on a university campus than, say, underage drinking or drug use. Universities do their best to deal with drug use, do their best to combat underrage drinking, but I don't see congress asking universities to do *more* than what's currently being done.
Where's the Jack Valenti drug czar appealing to congress to close down potential "drug dens" on campuses? Where's the Hilary Rosen rape and violent assault czar lobbying congress to force all students to cease and desist from such behavior or face ten, twenty, fifty years in prison? Where's the outrage about heroin use on college campuses?
All of which is to say: the laws are there, most folks are aware of the laws, universites make a good faith effort to enforce the laws. But I cannot in good conscience understand why filesharing -- filesharing! -- seems to be more important than preventing drug use, alcohol abuse, or violence on college campuses.
Actually, I do understand. The answer is money. Corporations have such sway in American government and have the money to back up their big mouths that they've managed to convince to big-business suits in congress that sharing an MP3 is more vital than preventing rape.
If those legal fucks spending money on filesharing initiatives would put *half* that money -- even a *tenth* of that money -- into rape and violence awareness programs on American college campuses then the quality of life would be immeasurably improved.
I watched the ad and went out and bought some Spam (TM).
First, Spam comes in a neat can. It's curved and low-to-the-ground. I like that. It's very appealing to purchase something and actually like the way it's packaged. I consider this a successful purchase.
Next, the can opens easily. Again: this is a good thing. The little pull-tab is nice.
Now, I expected lots of Spam juice to come dripping out when I yanked off the top, but I was pleased to see that no Spam juice flew forth.
Even better, the spam actually *filled* the can. It's not like a bag of potato chips. Open the bag and you're lucky to see fifteen chips.
Spam is most definitely "old-school" when it comes to packaging: they have a product, have a nice can, and fill the can with the product. Thumbs up, boys.
There are recipes on the side of the can. Better still, the recipes are fairly easy to make. I opted for the "fried Spam". The recipe indicated that I should scramble some eggs. I did this, toasted some Butternut Texas toast (thick slices of bread, in case you're not sure what 'Texas Toast' is), and then got my tried-and-true non-stick frying pan (lots of teflon for those of us who, like myself, have no idea what 'seasoning a skillet' means and so buy into the non-stick hype.)
Out of the can, Spam is a little on the pinkish side. It definitely needed some "color" (as they say) before it was completely palatable. I'm sure raw Spam would taste no different than cooked Spam, but I wasn't sure about the level of processing Spam underwent, so -- in the interested of safety -- I fried thin slices until they were dark brown and slightly burnt at the edges.
I slid the Spam onto the plate (thanks to teflon), slid the eggs onto the plate, and pulled the two pieces of Texas toast from the toaster. I slathered some *real butter* on the toast, cut it in triangles like they do at all fine restaurants, and went to sit in my favorite chair. I had to leave the food for a moment and go back into the kitchen because I forgot my Red Bull. But when I went back to the plate, the Spam was still warm, the eggs were perfect, and the butter had melted into my toast.
The fried Spam -- pork shoulder and ham -- was good. It wasn't great. It wasn't like Jimmie Dean sausage flavored with maple syrup. And it certainly wasn't like Pigs-in-blankets (pancakes wrapped around sausage) but it was damn good. It was a little bland. But it had texture -- a lot of it -- and felt good when I chewed.
The sweet, medicinal Red Bull sorta cast a pall on the otherwise good meal, but Red Bull at breakfast is a necessity for me, so I didn't have much choice.
It does make you wonder why dictators have -- apparently -- security strong enough to stave off attacks by the most powerful army on the planet, yet the government of the most powerful army on the planet allows two-bit Wired.com writers to walk about and write alarmist pieces about the state of security in America and pretend that all they need to do to get a nuke is go down to the gift shop and say, "That one there. The one sitting by the squash-blossom necklace."
I mean, if Baghdad's purported subway system -- which was never used for subways but is instead used to hustle WMDs from one part of the city to the other, avoiding all the Corona-eyes-in-the-sky-satellites and all weapons inspectors -- is enough to stymie the *entire globe*, then shouldn't we be taking lessons from these assholes about how to secure our ops and nukes from a bunch of understaffed, underpaid terrorist cells who live eight-to-a-room in Ma McChesney's Motel Six off Insterstate 80?
I don't understand this.
You mean to tell me that MS has disable the copy-and-paste, too?
Seriously. Why couldn't I just copy-and-paste my secret memo into a text file and then forward it to FuckedCompany or AssWipeMemos or whatever Pud's pimping.
It's interesting, though. All this DRM/IRM/whatever you want to call it is turning the computer into a block of metal and plastic. I'm old enough to remember the days of the Altair and the Osbourne MicroAce and the Commodore PET with the plastic keyboards -- and I'm troubled by this gradual shift from "hobbyist computers" to -- essentially -- blocks of metal that can only be used to do whatever corporations tell us we can do.
Anyway, fuck it.
If they disable copy-and-paste in Word 11, then it's useless.
And why oh why can't Microsoft add EndNote functionality into their word processing software? For fuck's sake. They've added everything *but* a decent bibliographic manager. I keep hoping the next version of Word would actually add useful features for people who -- imagine that -- write for a living.