>If someone comes up to me on the street
>and asks if I know where he might find some
>crack and I tell him that the crackhouse down
>the street might be a good place to start
>should I be arrested as a drug dealer?
I think, in this case, that my examples fit a little better than yours.
Back in May, just after I moved here, one of the local TV stations had a special on their nightly news profiling "San Francisco's biggest 'black market'".
Seems that there's a streach of road in SOMA that's notorious as a black market for damn near anything you'd care to buy. Drugs, hookers, stolen electronics, stolen jewelry, and DVDs (w/o regional encoding, and thus guaranteed to make the MPAA all pissy) imported from Hong Kong were a few of the items the news mentioned.
So, if *I* were to go down there to score a hit of X, would the TV station be responsible for *MY* actions???
In the Guardian's "Best of the Bay" list a few weeks back, one of the categories was "Best place to score weed if you're new to town and don't have a hookup yet".... they mentioned a certian park in Berkeley.
So, if *I* were to go over there to score a bag of weed, would the Guardian be responsible for *MY* actions???
In both cases, common sence AND morality would both say no....
But then, both corperations and the law are routinely immoral AND nonsenceical...
Who said ANYTHING about desppising the United States? Not me. The Unites States != the federal bureau of investigation, despite what the uber-conservative control freaks amongst you might think.
I'm actually very fond of America as a whole, but that does NOT make me a mindless lackey who's going to toady to the fsckin FBI.
Have you ever READ anything about the history of the FBI beyond what they put out themselves??? I HAVE! It's a sordid affair replete with blackmail, corruption, murder, and persecution of anyone who doesn't fit the FBI's definition of proper orthodoxy... that includes: civil rights leaders, labor activists, unpopular (to the FBI) religions, hollywood types that lean a little too far to the left for the FBI's taste, hell... ANYONE who leans a little too far left for their tastes, homosexuals (ironic, given Hoover's own eh... extracurricular activities), unpopular (with the FBI or the president) journalists, peace activists, the list goes on and on.
I wouldn't trust this bunch of government-sanctioned hired thugs so far as I could spit a rat.
Hell, even if I were to totally ignore the lessons of history, an such an Orwellian intrusion on my privacy as carnivore would be enough, by itself, to convince me not to trust the MF_ers.
From the Special Agent who called me, AND IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS AN FBI SPECIAL AGENT, w/ regards to my friend who was getting his clearance in the Navy.
>but the FBI has nothing to do with acquisition
>of clearances for US armed service
>members.
Well, don't tell *ME*; tell the fscking bureau!!! Because unless that was a Navy guy lieing to me, it was a fscking fed.
>never saw a hoover, either while getting
>cleared or since
'Kay, *YOU* may have never been hassled by the fsckers, and may been fortunate enough to only deal with military security types, but who did they send to harass any non-military friends you may have listed as references? When the assholes called me, I ASKED why it was the FBI hassleing me and not the Navy. The guy told me that they did all of those investigations as a matter of course.
Now, my ordeal with the bureau WAS back in 1994, so mabye things have changed since. Another reply to my original post claims that the feds have since contracted out the background checks to private investigators. I can't confirm or deny that myself.
But I certianly remember WHO it was that called me SEVEN TIMES before getting the hint that I wasn't about to talk about my friends to the fucking feds. And I remember WHAT Special Fucking Agent Davidson spewed out before I told him to go fuck himself.
I'm bloody well NOT spilling ANY info on *MY* friends to the institutional descendents of J. Edgar Hoover... or hell... nor to any other "law enforcement" type either.
>it doesn't mean that the FBI will get the
>analysis they want. Cleared is not always
>synonymous with lackey, brown-nose, or hypocrite.
Uh... just WHO do you think gives out security clearances in the first place? Yep... Each and EVERY person who has any kind of security clearnce has been approved of by the agency founded by J. Edgar Hoover and which makes its residence in the building that bears his name! You DON'T *get* a clearance AT ALL unless you've passed the FBI's definition of orthodoxy.
It doesn't matter who you work for or why you need a clearance. Wanna work for the CIA? FBI has to approve. Wanna be more than a toilet scrubber in the Navy? FBI has to approve. Wanna build neat airplanes for Lockheed Martin? FBI has to approve.
They do the background check/approval for ALL security clearances.
Even to be a lowly electronics tech in the Navy... the FBI has to annoint you as being sufficently orthodox. I've personal expierence on this one, as a friend of mine listed me once as a reference when getting his clearance in the Navy. Well guess which fscking three letter agency starts calling ME??? Well, they finally gave up calling after about the seventh "Fuck You ".
>I've seen engineers with xxxx clearance turn red
>in the face and scream at the very brass who pay
>their contract and asked for the clearance.
It's not "the brass" that verifys that someone is sufficently subservient. You don't HAVE to be a lapdog to "the brass". It's J. Edgar's brainchildren that you have ingraciate yourself to.
PS.
If Echelon really *IS* real, and this message ever gets back to Mister Special Fscking Agent Davidson, a hearty FUCK YOU to you once more.
It's just been revealed that the CHIEF JUSTICE of the fscking SUPREME COURT can be bought and sold by gates like so much fruit at the flea market!!!
To MY mind, that should be front page, New York Times news!
Or perhaps I was foolish not to have realised that the supreme justices have been for sale to the highest bidder all along. If so, that's one bit of foolishness I'm rathar sad to lose.
>two cosmonauts died on rentry when an external
>valve failed to close, thus sucking the air out
>of the capsule.
I thought it was three.
My "history of spaceflight" memory is a bit hazy, but IIRC, the Russians wanted to be the first to get three men in space before the Apollo capsules were online. So they modifyed theit two-man capsule to carry three.
The problem being, that in putting three men in a two-man capsule, they didn't have room to take their space suits along... whoopsie.
I may be off base here, but I'm pretty sure thats what happened.
No matter which side fate has favoured, the Russians HAVE always pushed their margins of safety a fair bit more than NASA has been willing to do so.
And I think the previous poster was right anbout a parachute problem. One of their early one-man capsules IIRC re-entered just fine. But it's parachutes jammed when they tried to open, and the cosmonaut died on impact with the ground.
>And the digital film whoever is pushing to >Hollywood is actually worst than film. Hollywood
>has already replaced 70mm/3D/VistaVision with now
>standard less 35mm. I don't want them to go even
>lower quality unless they lower the ticket price.
Bullshite.
I've been fortunate enough to have been able to see BOTH the analog film print AND the digital projection of the SAME MOVIE. Last fall, when Toy Story 2 came out, I was liveing in Orlando, Florida. I saw TS2 the second night of its release at a theatre near my home. EXCELLECT movie!!!
Not long after, I learned that the AMC Theaters at Downtown Disney/Pleasure Island had a digital projection rig and was showing Toy Story 2 there. Well, I wasted little time in setting up a night to go down to Disney/AMC with some friends to dee the digital version OF THE SAME MOVIE.
Now, for some months before Roger Ebert had been trashing the computer industry and telling his readers and anyone who would listen that digital video/movies was complete crap. He was hypeing some new camera/projector/film rig that would play conventional film at variable speeds (up to double the normal 24fps IIRC). So I went to Disney/AMC curious but not expecting to be overwhealmed. Ebert had, in the past, seemed to be a pretty good critic, turning out good reviews and articles. I had a fairly good respect for his opinion...
... until I saw Toy Story 2 in full, unadulterated digital glory!
I was astounded at how incredibly superior digital prooved to be over analog film. It was a PERFECT image, not even a hint of focus problems. NO SCRATCHES!!! No digital artifacts that I could see. Perfect sound in perfect sync with the video. Sharper image with NO JITTER!!! It was, in all ways, a drasticly superior motion picture expierence to film.
My respect for Ebert dropped DRAMATICLLY after that. I wonder if he owns an intrest in the company that makes those spiffy new film projectors he's pushing?
Not only do I applaud George Lucal for going all digital for Episode II, I look forward to the day when all studios do so for all movies. Hopefully, Episode II will hasten that move, and the obsolescent crap will be dead and buried sooner rathar than later.
>>it would probably just be simpler to tattoo a
>>barcode on each of us at birth.
>I refuse to take the mark of the beast!!!
Now, it's been a LONG time since I've attended mass, but even *I* remember the important basics!
It's only the mark of the beast if it's on a specific body location. IIRC, the forehead and/or the right hand are the parts specified.
So the solution is simple. We'll simply require everyone to be barcoded on their LEFT hands, or the back of their neck, or the lower right buttock; or somewhere similarly non-biblical. Simple enough way to keep the fundies happy, eh?
In any event, barcoding at birth wouldn't work anyway. The body does a LOT of growing in its early years, and a barcode done that early would just streach and become distorted and unreadable.
Barcoding should be done when the body's finished most of its growth. Perhaps at age 18, as a prerequisite to being considered a legal adult, able to vote, go to college, buy alcohol, enter the workforce, buy/rent a car, get married, etc. Resistance is NOT futile!!!
>in exactly the same way that I can backup audio
>CDs to tape, and play them in my car. I don't
>see anything in the least bit illegal about
>FlaskMPEG, but I'm sure that the MPAA lawyers
Yeah, the MPAA/RIAA/metallica (I honestly don't see any significant difference anymore) ALREADY sees it as illegal, even just making a copy for your car, and they've argued this before congress!!!
Remember the flap about a month or so ago, during the congressional hearings? Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, asked jack valenti/hillary rosen/lars ulrich (once again, I don't remember which, but it doesn't matter, they're all basiclly interchangable drones) if it would be legal or not for him to make a copy of an album to listen to in his wife's car. After considerable hemming and hawwing, the jack/hillary/larsbot tried to claim that it was illegal. Hatch then gave jackhillarylarsbot a viscious verbal beatdown, saying that it *IS*, in fact legal.
Orrin Hatch should know. HE HELPED WRITE THE LAW THAT MAKES IT LEGAL!!!
>He doesn't mention a $2M government contract.
>Are you sure that's real?
So what if it *IS* true?
Fisher Space Pens sell for $7.99 per at the gift shop (last time I went to see a shuttle launch @ Kennedy Space Center... about two years ago).
I used to live in Florida. I lived there for more a decade. I know the habits of touisitis annoyingians quite well. I have no doubt in my mind at all that they've sold enough $7.99 Fisher Space pens to recoup a $2mil investment, and more.
It boggles the mind what a tourist will drop money on just to have an "official souvineer". SOMEBODY is *surely* making a healthy profit off those things; two-million dollar development cost or no...
"look maw!!! it's one of them thar ass-trough-nut pens!!! less get one for juinor sweetums nana pappy and the rest of the clan!!!"
And let's not even THINK of the mounds of Disney crap that the suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htourists will blow money on.
>On another note, I'm sick of napster. It's
>sucking all the bandwidth on my campus college,
>and I'm quite looking forward for it to be
>banned. We've got 2 T1's with about 1300
>students.
Well, your problem is not Napster. Your problem is that (2*T1)/1300students == totally fscking INSUFFICENT bandwidth!!!
Drag your IT dept into the street and have them shot, drawn and quartered, and their heads impaled on stakes in front of the CompSci building as a warning to the next ten generations NOT to be a totally incompetent MORON!
Then have your new IT staff get a reasonable amount of bandwidth.
But don't blame Napster because some cretinous beancounter got the stupid idea that 3Mbps was a sufficent amount of bandwidth to divvy up between 1300 people.
Hell, I have a 640/640Kbps DSL at home, and I BY MYSELF am able to saturate that line far too often! I'd get more, but I'm too far from the phoneCo's office. That's just over a THIRD of a T1. I can't imagine the torture of shareing it with 216 other ppl! Hell, you'd be better off w/ a 56K dialup!
Except for the fact that WW2 took place sixty YEARS ago. And the leaders of Germany at the time have all died by their own hands, been hanged by the Nurmberg tribunals, or died in prison.
The Sony incident took place less than sixty DAYS ago. And the executive in question is, to my knowledge, still in power, not having been so much as fired, much less hanged or imprisoned.
>Well what are some legitimate uses for it? And
>give some examples of where they took place,
>hypothetical uses won't cut it...
I have personally, and repeatedly (and NOT hypothetically), used Napster to down load MP3 tracks of:
The Smashing Pumpkins,
Keoki,
Spooky,
Less Than Jake,
Limp Bizkit,
Mustard Plug,
The Offspring,
The Pilfers, and
Social Distortion.
... all of who have spoken publiclly and enthauasticlly in support of Napster.
I have also used it to gather MP3s of bands that, while not (to my knowledge) haven spoken out specificlly in favor of Napster, have historiclly supported their fans' right to record and trade their music: mainly Phish here... the Greatful Dead were well before my time.
All of the above are non-hypothetical "legitimate" uses of Napster, and would remain so even if the RIAA/metallica and its lackys are sucessful in destroying the fair use principle.
Now, as I recall, the Sony Betamax case DID rule that where there ARE legitimate uses, the technology IS legal. Too bad the RIAA/metallica has been able to buy so many politicians in the meantime.
>Apple got $300 Million under the table, $100
>Million over the table
Where do you get your numbers?
I assume the "over the table" cash you refer to is actually the $150 million of non-voting stock that gates purchased. Or was there another public cash settlement.
But for the "under the table" payment, where do you get the $300 million figure? Whenever I've read about the Apple/gates cease-fire, I've always seen the phrase "undisclosed sum" to describe the rest of the settlement. Was the value of this ever actually disclosed?
A link would be really cool if there is a legitimate source, or is the $300 million figure from a Mac rumours site, and subject to the dubious reliability of those sites?
In fact, I plan to become a BETTER Radio Shack customer because of this!
Hell, there are four Radio Shack's I can think of off the top of my head between work and home. I'll be taking the time to stop at EACH ONE on my way home tonite to pick up my free barcode scanner. Hell, I bet Radio Shack's webside has a store locator... the SF Bay Area is SURELY rife with them. I could devote a couple hours over the weekend to picking up as many Cue Cats as I can reach Radio Shacks. Rinse, Lather, Repeat... when a different salesdroid is working the store!
>and make my peers do so as well
Hey! So will I!!!
And mabye I'll tape the wonderous scene of hundreds of CueCats being dumped into the bay!!! Compress to Quicktime, and email to both Radio Shack AND digital convergance!
>I am far more concerned that "environmentalists"
>will push us into doing something that really
>does counter environmental changes, and those
>changes turn out to be natural and necessary.
You know... the odd thing is, that the "environmentalists" can't make up their OWN minds what is happening.
I was talking to my dad on the phone not long ago, and in the course of conversation, I mentioned the earlier article about the polar icecap melting. He's a retired submariner and has actually BEEN to the north pole before.
Well, after a few sea stories, he mentioned an intresting little tidbit. It seems that right about the time I was getting around to being born, all these "environmentalists" were, even then, claiming that all the pollutantants that we're spewing into the atmosphere was going to drastically affect the global climate. Tricky bit was, the doomsayers were NOT talking about global warming... they were saying that industrial soceity was bringing about global COOLING!!! We were dooming ourselves to a new ice age! And now they've done a 180 and are doomsaying about global warming???
>But hey, it goes against the opinion of the
>average/bot, so it must be a troll eh?
Wrong. Look at its posting history. Not just those on its user page, go back in the/. searches too. This "Jon Erikson" is a fabricated uber-conservative fascist-xtian character that has frequently countered the uber-liberal bleeding-heart characters such as martinez/woston.
Or try another approach. Google for the London "IT consulting agency called NPO Technologies" that it supposedly works for. That's right! No such company; just like the woston troll's "jjjjulius games"!
You *HAVE* been trolled, YHL, HAND.
It's just too bad that the moderators fall for this nonsence so often; and that gullible people are so egear to bite.
More and more, I wish that Taco, et. al. would dispense with the "lameness filter" nonsence, and just implement killfiles (Hell, there's already code for killfiles on sourceforge). That way I could block worthless rubbish like "Jon Erikson" and woston/martinez, no matter how many alternate accounts they have to mod up their own posts. But I would still be able to see the genuinely funny trolls like OGG.
>The quality of Toy Story indicates it has a
>little bit of a way to go
It's hardly fair to trash Toy Story for not being photorealistic.
Remember, Toy Story came out five YEARS ago (1995)... that's an eternity in the computer (and thus, the CGI) world.
And Toy Story II is not a fair testiment as to the true abilities of Pixar. Since TS2 is a *sequel* to the original, it MUST keep the same visual style. Even though Pixar is certianly CAPABLE of a much more sophisticated CGI now than in 1995, they could NOT make TS2 photorealistic. And who's to say that photorealism would be appropiate in a Pixar/Disney production anyway? Jobs/Lasseter have done great things with Pixar's visual style as it is. I don't think a little "cartoony" visual style detracts at all.
Can you inagine a photorealistic Woody and Buzz Lightyear? I didn't think so. That wouldn't have fit within the style of the Toy Story universe.
>Apple did move OS X Server into the load pool for
> www.apple.com a while back, then they took it
>out again. Not the best advertising for your
>"industryial strength" server software.
But, the question is: has Apple been advertising OS X Server as such? To my knowledge, the answer is no. Apple has been advertising OS X Server as a low end server for a small business or... say... a classroom of fifty iMacs. At no point have I seen an Apple ad calling OS X ""industryial strength" server software.".
The advertising for micro$oft, OTOH, has, at the direction of gates and his minions, for years been telling us that *NIX, Oracle, and Apache, etc. is utter and absolute shit, and that the whole world would be an infinitely better place if we all switched to windoze, access, and iis, etc.; because the micro$oft alternatives are superior to the alternatives in every conceivable way.
>What we should really be concerned about is the
>willingness of Yahoo to roll over for a
>corporation. If you went to them and said, "I
>want to know all the info you have on this
>person", they'd tell you to buzz off. Why is a
>corporation treated differently?
It's simple really. Steve Jobs didn't just call up Jerry Yang and say "Hey, could you tell us who this guy is?"
Apple filed suit against "John Doe" first, and was therfore able to issue a subpeona to Yahoo for the info in question. Yahoo's privacy policy has an exception in it saying that they WILL turn over your information if required, by law, to do so. Well guess what... discovery procedings before a civil trial give the plaintiff the right to subpoena pretty much anything they feel related to the case. And a subpoena, issued in California, IS legally binding against Yahoo... were they to refuse, I don't think any PERSON would go to jail for contempt, but the company would be facing some hefty fines.
It's not a matter of one corperation kissing another's ass... it's a matter of complying with the law. If YOU *DID* file a lawsuit against a Yahoo user, YOU would ALSO have the right to subpoena yahoo's records on that person.
This was actually covered on/. a couple months back. Someone was sabotaging his emploiyer's stock price by posting inside info on Yahoo message boards, the company sued, and subpoenaed Yahoo to get the guy's real name. The guy then sued Yahoo FOR COMPLYING WITH THE COURT ORDER and turning over his info... stupid really. The ACLU got involved, and it turned into a bib mess, I don't know how it eventually turned out, but the story is in the/. archives.
Here's a clue to the Yahoo bashers:
Corperations are *NOT* your friend. They may supply a service you like at a good price, and the staff may be friendly. But the corperation is *NOT* your friend. They will NOT fight YOUR legal battle FOR you!!! (unless you pay them a lot of money to do so, and that's only if we're talking about a law firm)
>Why aren't there translators built right in to
>modern programming languages, so that I can write
>it in English, but if you are a Mandarin speaker
>and want to read my code you simply have to hit a
>button (or whatever) and it translates the
>results into the Mandarin version.
Simple.
Can you even IMAGINE the size of the character set for something like that? Chineese has thousands upon thousands of characters you'd need to include. But you wouldn't just need to be able to display them, and represent them in memory, you'd need to be able to TYPE them.
Imagine the keyboards. You'd need either a HUGE keyboard that encircles most of your body, or you'd have to go back to the MIT style keyboard... three shift keys with different functions, and any combination of four meta keys on top of that.
Add to this the necessity to display the characters. You need either insanely high resolution on your monitor, or to increase the size of each character beyond convinence.
Now, a phonetic language, like Japanese is much more convinent, even though it DOES have many more than English's 26 letters. In fact, Jappanese, heberw, greek, arabic (I think), and cryllic have all made it into unicode. But even WITH unicode, you need to go through some contortions with a standard keyboard to get the proper characters.
English, on the other hand, is perfectly happy with only a single byte for the entire character set, and then some. And try as some people might to eradicate ASCII, it shows no sign of going away anytime soon. Plus, with even a paltry 640x480 resolution display, you can still get 80 collums of LEGIABLE characters, a feat not possible in Chinese or even Jappanese.
So I would predict that it's unwise to bet on english giong away anytime soon.
But do you have ANY idea just how often people are just writen off as being "hyperactive" and given ritalyn as if it were some kind of panacea?
I, personally, know two people from high school who were (mis)diagnosed as having ADD. At my HS we had this dipshit school councilor who thought that a BS in pop psychology and a "Child Development Certificate" (whatever the fsck THAT is) somehow made him qualified to diagnose mental disorders.
He had this arangement with one of the local doctors where he would write a letter testifying to a child's problems in school and that the kid might be hyperactive. The doctor, after a cursory exam of course, would promptly condemn the patient to ritalyn.
This happened to both of the friends I mentioned. Neither one actually suffered from ADD. Wanna know the truth?
One actually turned out to be dyslexic. You can imagine the effect that that had on his learning process; which led to his (mis)diagnosis. It wasn't until high school (after being on ritalyn for a year) that the truth was discovered. Fortunately, the ritalyn didn't mess him up too much.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for my other ADD (mis)diagnosed friend. Ritalyn only led to MORE problems for her. She actually became suicidal briefly. It wasn't until after lengthy (and expensive for her family) counciling and examination by a REAL psychiatrist, that it was discovered that she suffered not from ADD, but from Bipolar Disorder. A change to the PROPER medication did wonders for her, but didn't erase the years of torment before ritalyn, and the months of near psychosis ON ritalyn.
So you'll please forgive me if and when I have kids, and they have problems in school; and some fscking pop shrink says "oh, they're just hyperactive, here hop them up on ritalyn"; I tell the asshole to take a flying leap.
Oh, but of course we do. And just *HOW* do we know this? Easy, we're all good little drones^H^H^H^H^H^H... er... christians who beleive what our chick tracts tell us.
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>and asks if I know where he might find some
>crack and I tell him that the crackhouse down
>the street might be a good place to start
>should I be arrested as a drug dealer?
I think, in this case, that my examples fit a little better than yours.
Back in May, just after I moved here, one of the local TV stations had a special on their nightly news profiling "San Francisco's biggest 'black market'".
Seems that there's a streach of road in SOMA that's notorious as a black market for damn near anything you'd care to buy. Drugs, hookers, stolen electronics, stolen jewelry, and DVDs (w/o regional encoding, and thus guaranteed to make the MPAA all pissy) imported from Hong Kong were a few of the items the news mentioned.
So, if *I* were to go down there to score a hit of X, would the TV station be responsible for *MY* actions???
In the Guardian's "Best of the Bay" list a few weeks back, one of the categories was "Best place to score weed if you're new to town and don't have a hookup yet".... they mentioned a certian park in Berkeley.
So, if *I* were to go over there to score a bag of weed, would the Guardian be responsible for *MY* actions???
In both cases, common sence AND morality would both say no....
But then, both corperations and the law are routinely immoral AND nonsenceical...
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>If you despise this country
Who said ANYTHING about desppising the United States? Not me. The Unites States != the federal bureau of investigation, despite what the uber-conservative control freaks amongst you might think.
I'm actually very fond of America as a whole, but that does NOT make me a mindless lackey who's going to toady to the fsckin FBI.
Have you ever READ anything about the history of the FBI beyond what they put out themselves??? I HAVE! It's a sordid affair replete with blackmail, corruption, murder, and persecution of anyone who doesn't fit the FBI's definition of proper orthodoxy... that includes: civil rights leaders, labor activists, unpopular (to the FBI) religions, hollywood types that lean a little too far to the left for the FBI's taste, hell... ANYONE who leans a little too far left for their tastes, homosexuals (ironic, given Hoover's own eh... extracurricular activities), unpopular (with the FBI or the president) journalists, peace activists, the list goes on and on.
I wouldn't trust this bunch of government-sanctioned hired thugs so far as I could spit a rat.
Hell, even if I were to totally ignore the lessons of history, an such an Orwellian intrusion on my privacy as carnivore would be enough, by itself, to convince me not to trust the MF_ers.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
From the Special Agent who called me, AND IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS AN FBI SPECIAL AGENT, w/ regards to my friend who was getting his clearance in the Navy.
>but the FBI has nothing to do with acquisition
>of clearances for US armed service
>members.
Well, don't tell *ME*; tell the fscking bureau!!! Because unless that was a Navy guy lieing to me, it was a fscking fed.
>never saw a hoover, either while getting
>cleared or since
'Kay, *YOU* may have never been hassled by the fsckers, and may been fortunate enough to only deal with military security types, but who did they send to harass any non-military friends you may have listed as references? When the assholes called me, I ASKED why it was the FBI hassleing me and not the Navy. The guy told me that they did all of those investigations as a matter of course.
Now, my ordeal with the bureau WAS back in 1994, so mabye things have changed since. Another reply to my original post claims that the feds have since contracted out the background checks to private investigators. I can't confirm or deny that myself.
But I certianly remember WHO it was that called me SEVEN TIMES before getting the hint that I wasn't about to talk about my friends to the fucking feds. And I remember WHAT Special Fucking Agent Davidson spewed out before I told him to go fuck himself.
I'm bloody well NOT spilling ANY info on *MY* friends to the institutional descendents of J. Edgar Hoover... or hell... nor to any other "law enforcement" type either.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
>analysis they want. Cleared is not always
>synonymous with lackey, brown-nose, or hypocrite.
Uh... just WHO do you think gives out security clearances in the first place? Yep... Each and EVERY person who has any kind of security clearnce has been approved of by the agency founded by J. Edgar Hoover and which makes its residence in the building that bears his name! You DON'T *get* a clearance AT ALL unless you've passed the FBI's definition of orthodoxy.
It doesn't matter who you work for or why you need a clearance. Wanna work for the CIA? FBI has to approve. Wanna be more than a toilet scrubber in the Navy? FBI has to approve. Wanna build neat airplanes for Lockheed Martin? FBI has to approve.
They do the background check/approval for ALL security clearances.
Even to be a lowly electronics tech in the Navy... the FBI has to annoint you as being sufficently orthodox. I've personal expierence on this one, as a friend of mine listed me once as a reference when getting his clearance in the Navy. Well guess which fscking three letter agency starts calling ME??? Well, they finally gave up calling after about the seventh "Fuck You ".
>I've seen engineers with xxxx clearance turn red
>in the face and scream at the very brass who pay
>their contract and asked for the clearance.
It's not "the brass" that verifys that someone is sufficently subservient. You don't HAVE to be a lapdog to "the brass". It's J. Edgar's brainchildren that you have ingraciate yourself to.
PS.
If Echelon really *IS* real, and this message ever gets back to Mister Special Fscking Agent Davidson, a hearty FUCK YOU to you once more.
john
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It's just been revealed that the CHIEF JUSTICE of the fscking SUPREME COURT can be bought and sold by gates like so much fruit at the flea market!!!
To MY mind, that should be front page, New York Times news!
Or perhaps I was foolish not to have realised that the supreme justices have been for sale to the highest bidder all along. If so, that's one bit of foolishness I'm rathar sad to lose.
john
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>valve failed to close, thus sucking the air out
>of the capsule.
I thought it was three.
My "history of spaceflight" memory is a bit hazy, but IIRC, the Russians wanted to be the first to get three men in space before the Apollo capsules were online. So they modifyed theit two-man capsule to carry three.
The problem being, that in putting three men in a two-man capsule, they didn't have room to take their space suits along... whoopsie.
I may be off base here, but I'm pretty sure thats what happened.
No matter which side fate has favoured, the Russians HAVE always pushed their margins of safety a fair bit more than NASA has been willing to do so.
And I think the previous poster was right anbout a parachute problem. One of their early one-man capsules IIRC re-entered just fine. But it's parachutes jammed when they tried to open, and the cosmonaut died on impact with the ground.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
I can.
Search for:
Smashing Pumpkins
Less Than Jake
Mustard Plug
The Pilfers
The Offspring
Public Enemy
Phish
Limp Bizkit
Hole
Need I go on?
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
>And the digital film whoever is pushing to >Hollywood is actually worst than film. Hollywood
>has already replaced 70mm/3D/VistaVision with now
>standard less 35mm. I don't want them to go even
>lower quality unless they lower the ticket price.
Bullshite.
I've been fortunate enough to have been able to see BOTH the analog film print AND the digital projection of the SAME MOVIE. Last fall, when Toy Story 2 came out, I was liveing in Orlando, Florida. I saw TS2 the second night of its release at a theatre near my home. EXCELLECT movie!!!
Not long after, I learned that the AMC Theaters at Downtown Disney/Pleasure Island had a digital projection rig and was showing Toy Story 2 there. Well, I wasted little time in setting up a night to go down to Disney/AMC with some friends to dee the digital version OF THE SAME MOVIE.
Now, for some months before Roger Ebert had been trashing the computer industry and telling his readers and anyone who would listen that digital video/movies was complete crap. He was hypeing some new camera/projector/film rig that would play conventional film at variable speeds (up to double the normal 24fps IIRC). So I went to Disney/AMC curious but not expecting to be overwhealmed. Ebert had, in the past, seemed to be a pretty good critic, turning out good reviews and articles. I had a fairly good respect for his opinion...
... until I saw Toy Story 2 in full, unadulterated digital glory!
I was astounded at how incredibly superior digital prooved to be over analog film. It was a PERFECT image, not even a hint of focus problems. NO SCRATCHES!!! No digital artifacts that I could see. Perfect sound in perfect sync with the video. Sharper image with NO JITTER!!! It was, in all ways, a drasticly superior motion picture expierence to film.
My respect for Ebert dropped DRAMATICLLY after that. I wonder if he owns an intrest in the company that makes those spiffy new film projectors he's pushing?
Not only do I applaud George Lucal for going all digital for Episode II, I look forward to the day when all studios do so for all movies. Hopefully, Episode II will hasten that move, and the obsolescent crap will be dead and buried sooner rathar than later.
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
>>barcode on each of us at birth.
>I refuse to take the mark of the beast!!!
Now, it's been a LONG time since I've attended mass, but even *I* remember the important basics!
It's only the mark of the beast if it's on a specific body location. IIRC, the forehead and/or the right hand are the parts specified.
So the solution is simple. We'll simply require everyone to be barcoded on their LEFT hands, or the back of their neck, or the lower right buttock; or somewhere similarly non-biblical. Simple enough way to keep the fundies happy, eh?
In any event, barcoding at birth wouldn't work anyway. The body does a LOT of growing in its early years, and a barcode done that early would just streach and become distorted and unreadable.
Barcoding should be done when the body's finished most of its growth. Perhaps at age 18, as a prerequisite to being considered a legal adult, able to vote, go to college, buy alcohol, enter the workforce, buy/rent a car, get married, etc.
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>CDs to tape, and play them in my car. I don't
>see anything in the least bit illegal about
>FlaskMPEG, but I'm sure that the MPAA lawyers
Yeah, the MPAA/RIAA/metallica (I honestly don't see any significant difference anymore) ALREADY sees it as illegal, even just making a copy for your car, and they've argued this before congress!!!
Remember the flap about a month or so ago, during the congressional hearings? Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, asked jack valenti/hillary rosen/lars ulrich (once again, I don't remember which, but it doesn't matter, they're all basiclly interchangable drones) if it would be legal or not for him to make a copy of an album to listen to in his wife's car. After considerable hemming and hawwing, the jack/hillary/larsbot tried to claim that it was illegal. Hatch then gave jackhillarylarsbot a viscious verbal beatdown, saying that it *IS*, in fact legal.
Orrin Hatch should know. HE HELPED WRITE THE LAW THAT MAKES IT LEGAL!!!
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
>Are you sure that's real?
So what if it *IS* true?
Fisher Space Pens sell for $7.99 per at the gift shop (last time I went to see a shuttle launch @ Kennedy Space Center... about two years ago).
I used to live in Florida. I lived there for more a decade. I know the habits of touisitis annoyingians quite well. I have no doubt in my mind at all that they've sold enough $7.99 Fisher Space pens to recoup a $2mil investment, and more.
It boggles the mind what a tourist will drop money on just to have an "official souvineer". SOMEBODY is *surely* making a healthy profit off those things; two-million dollar development cost or no...
"look maw!!! it's one of them thar ass-trough-nut pens!!! less get one for juinor sweetums nana pappy and the rest of the clan!!!"
And let's not even THINK of the mounds of Disney crap that the suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htourists will blow money on.
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
>sucking all the bandwidth on my campus college,
>and I'm quite looking forward for it to be
>banned. We've got 2 T1's with about 1300
>students.
Well, your problem is not Napster. Your problem is that (2*T1)/1300students == totally fscking INSUFFICENT bandwidth!!!
Drag your IT dept into the street and have them shot, drawn and quartered, and their heads impaled on stakes in front of the CompSci building as a warning to the next ten generations NOT to be a totally incompetent MORON!
Then have your new IT staff get a reasonable amount of bandwidth.
But don't blame Napster because some cretinous beancounter got the stupid idea that 3Mbps was a sufficent amount of bandwidth to divvy up between 1300 people.
Hell, I have a 640/640Kbps DSL at home, and I BY MYSELF am able to saturate that line far too often! I'd get more, but I'm too far from the phoneCo's office. That's just over a THIRD of a T1. I can't imagine the torture of shareing it with 216 other ppl! Hell, you'd be better off w/ a 56K dialup!
john
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Except for the fact that WW2 took place sixty YEARS ago. And the leaders of Germany at the time have all died by their own hands, been hanged by the Nurmberg tribunals, or died in prison.
The Sony incident took place less than sixty DAYS ago. And the executive in question is, to my knowledge, still in power, not having been so much as fired, much less hanged or imprisoned.
So, yeah, a boycott IS still in order.
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
>give some examples of where they took place,
>hypothetical uses won't cut it...
I have personally, and repeatedly (and NOT hypothetically), used Napster to down load MP3 tracks of:
The Smashing Pumpkins,
Keoki,
Spooky,
Less Than Jake,
Limp Bizkit,
Mustard Plug,
The Offspring,
The Pilfers, and
Social Distortion.
... all of who have spoken publiclly and enthauasticlly in support of Napster.
I have also used it to gather MP3s of bands that, while not (to my knowledge) haven spoken out specificlly in favor of Napster, have historiclly supported their fans' right to record and trade their music: mainly Phish here... the Greatful Dead were well before my time.
All of the above are non-hypothetical "legitimate" uses of Napster, and would remain so even if the RIAA/metallica and its lackys are sucessful in destroying the fair use principle.
Now, as I recall, the Sony Betamax case DID rule that where there ARE legitimate uses, the technology IS legal. Too bad the RIAA/metallica has been able to buy so many politicians in the meantime.
Care to try again?
john
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>Apple got $300 Million under the table, $100
>Million over the table
Where do you get your numbers?
I assume the "over the table" cash you refer to is actually the $150 million of non-voting stock that gates purchased. Or was there another public cash settlement.
But for the "under the table" payment, where do you get the $300 million figure? Whenever I've read about the Apple/gates cease-fire, I've always seen the phrase "undisclosed sum" to describe the rest of the settlement. Was the value of this ever actually disclosed?
A link would be really cool if there is a legitimate source, or is the $300 million figure from a Mac rumours site, and subject to the dubious reliability of those sites?
thanks
john
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How do you figure?
www.slashcode.com
Doesn't look very hipocritical to me.
john
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Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
NO!!! Don't boycott!!!
In fact, I plan to become a BETTER Radio Shack customer because of this!
Hell, there are four Radio Shack's I can think of off the top of my head between work and home. I'll be taking the time to stop at EACH ONE on my way home tonite to pick up my free barcode scanner. Hell, I bet Radio Shack's webside has a store locator... the SF Bay Area is SURELY rife with them. I could devote a couple hours over the weekend to picking up as many Cue Cats as I can reach Radio Shacks. Rinse, Lather, Repeat... when a different salesdroid is working the store!
>and make my peers do so as well
Hey! So will I!!!
And mabye I'll tape the wonderous scene of hundreds of CueCats being dumped into the bay!!! Compress to Quicktime, and email to both Radio Shack AND digital convergance!
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
>will push us into doing something that really
>does counter environmental changes, and those
>changes turn out to be natural and necessary.
You know... the odd thing is, that the "environmentalists" can't make up their OWN minds what is happening.
I was talking to my dad on the phone not long ago, and in the course of conversation, I mentioned the earlier article about the polar icecap melting. He's a retired submariner and has actually BEEN to the north pole before.
Well, after a few sea stories, he mentioned an intresting little tidbit. It seems that right about the time I was getting around to being born, all these "environmentalists" were, even then, claiming that all the pollutantants that we're spewing into the atmosphere was going to drastically affect the global climate. Tricky bit was, the doomsayers were NOT talking about global warming... they were saying that industrial soceity was bringing about global COOLING!!! We were dooming ourselves to a new ice age! And now they've done a 180 and are doomsaying about global warming???
Well, come on guys... which is it?
You can't have it both ways.
john
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Yes it is.
>But hey, it goes against the opinion of the
>average
Wrong. Look at its posting history. Not just those on its user page, go back in the
Or try another approach. Google for the London "IT consulting agency called NPO Technologies" that it supposedly works for. That's right! No such company; just like the woston troll's "jjjjulius games"!
You *HAVE* been trolled, YHL, HAND.
It's just too bad that the moderators fall for this nonsence so often; and that gullible people are so egear to bite.
More and more, I wish that Taco, et. al. would dispense with the "lameness filter" nonsence, and just implement killfiles (Hell, there's already code for killfiles on sourceforge). That way I could block worthless rubbish like "Jon Erikson" and woston/martinez, no matter how many alternate accounts they have to mod up their own posts. But I would still be able to see the genuinely funny trolls like OGG.
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
>little bit of a way to go
It's hardly fair to trash Toy Story for not being photorealistic.
Remember, Toy Story came out five YEARS ago (1995)... that's an eternity in the computer (and thus, the CGI) world.
And Toy Story II is not a fair testiment as to the true abilities of Pixar. Since TS2 is a *sequel* to the original, it MUST keep the same visual style. Even though Pixar is certianly CAPABLE of a much more sophisticated CGI now than in 1995, they could NOT make TS2 photorealistic. And who's to say that photorealism would be appropiate in a Pixar/Disney production anyway? Jobs/Lasseter have done great things with Pixar's visual style as it is. I don't think a little "cartoony" visual style detracts at all.
Can you inagine a photorealistic Woody and Buzz Lightyear? I didn't think so. That wouldn't have fit within the style of the Toy Story universe.
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
> www.apple.com a while back, then they took it
>out again. Not the best advertising for your
>"industryial strength" server software.
But, the question is: has Apple been advertising OS X Server as such? To my knowledge, the answer is no. Apple has been advertising OS X Server as a low end server for a small business or... say... a classroom of fifty iMacs. At no point have I seen an Apple ad calling OS X ""industryial strength" server software.".
The advertising for micro$oft, OTOH, has, at the direction of gates and his minions, for years been telling us that *NIX, Oracle, and Apache, etc. is utter and absolute shit, and that the whole world would be an infinitely better place if we all switched to windoze, access, and iis, etc.; because the micro$oft alternatives are superior to the alternatives in every conceivable way.
john
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Remove the collective if
>willingness of Yahoo to roll over for a
>corporation. If you went to them and said, "I
>want to know all the info you have on this
>person", they'd tell you to buzz off. Why is a
>corporation treated differently?
It's simple really. Steve Jobs didn't just call up Jerry Yang and say "Hey, could you tell us who this guy is?"
Apple filed suit against "John Doe" first, and was therfore able to issue a subpeona to Yahoo for the info in question. Yahoo's privacy policy has an exception in it saying that they WILL turn over your information if required, by law, to do so. Well guess what... discovery procedings before a civil trial give the plaintiff the right to subpoena pretty much anything they feel related to the case. And a subpoena, issued in California, IS legally binding against Yahoo... were they to refuse, I don't think any PERSON would go to jail for contempt, but the company would be facing some hefty fines.
It's not a matter of one corperation kissing another's ass... it's a matter of complying with the law. If YOU *DID* file a lawsuit against a Yahoo user, YOU would ALSO have the right to subpoena yahoo's records on that person.
This was actually covered on
Here's a clue to the Yahoo bashers:
Corperations are *NOT* your friend. They may supply a service you like at a good price, and the staff may be friendly. But the corperation is *NOT* your friend. They will NOT fight YOUR legal battle FOR you!!! (unless you pay them a lot of money to do so, and that's only if we're talking about a law firm)
john
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Remove the collective if
>modern programming languages, so that I can write
>it in English, but if you are a Mandarin speaker
>and want to read my code you simply have to hit a
>button (or whatever) and it translates the
>results into the Mandarin version.
Simple.
Can you even IMAGINE the size of the character set for something like that? Chineese has thousands upon thousands of characters you'd need to include. But you wouldn't just need to be able to display them, and represent them in memory, you'd need to be able to TYPE them.
Imagine the keyboards. You'd need either a HUGE keyboard that encircles most of your body, or you'd have to go back to the MIT style keyboard... three shift keys with different functions, and any combination of four meta keys on top of that.
Add to this the necessity to display the characters. You need either insanely high resolution on your monitor, or to increase the size of each character beyond convinence.
Now, a phonetic language, like Japanese is much more convinent, even though it DOES have many more than English's 26 letters. In fact, Jappanese, heberw, greek, arabic (I think), and cryllic have all made it into unicode. But even WITH unicode, you need to go through some contortions with a standard keyboard to get the proper characters.
English, on the other hand, is perfectly happy with only a single byte for the entire character set, and then some. And try as some people might to eradicate ASCII, it shows no sign of going away anytime soon. Plus, with even a paltry 640x480 resolution display, you can still get 80 collums of LEGIABLE characters, a feat not possible in Chinese or even Jappanese.
So I would predict that it's unwise to bet on english giong away anytime soon.
john
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Haiku:
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Remove the collective if
But do you have ANY idea just how often people are just writen off as being "hyperactive" and given ritalyn as if it were some kind of panacea?
I, personally, know two people from high school who were (mis)diagnosed as having ADD. At my HS we had this dipshit school councilor who thought that a BS in pop psychology and a "Child Development Certificate" (whatever the fsck THAT is) somehow made him qualified to diagnose mental disorders.
He had this arangement with one of the local doctors where he would write a letter testifying to a child's problems in school and that the kid might be hyperactive. The doctor, after a cursory exam of course, would promptly condemn the patient to ritalyn.
This happened to both of the friends I mentioned. Neither one actually suffered from ADD. Wanna know the truth?
One actually turned out to be dyslexic. You can imagine the effect that that had on his learning process; which led to his (mis)diagnosis. It wasn't until high school (after being on ritalyn for a year) that the truth was discovered. Fortunately, the ritalyn didn't mess him up too much.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for my other ADD (mis)diagnosed friend. Ritalyn only led to MORE problems for her. She actually became suicidal briefly. It wasn't until after lengthy (and expensive for her family) counciling and examination by a REAL psychiatrist, that it was discovered that she suffered not from ADD, but from Bipolar Disorder. A change to the PROPER medication did wonders for her, but didn't erase the years of torment before ritalyn, and the months of near psychosis ON ritalyn.
So you'll please forgive me if and when I have kids, and they have problems in school; and some fscking pop shrink says "oh, they're just hyperactive, here hop them up on ritalyn"; I tell the asshole to take a flying leap.
john
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Remove the collective if
Oh, but of course we do. And just *HOW* do we know this? Easy, we're all good little drones^H^H^H^H^H^H... er... christians who beleive what our chick tracts tell us.
john
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Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if