Slashdot Mirror


User: Ralph+Spoilsport

Ralph+Spoilsport's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,303
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,303

  1. If you don't click on ads, then what? on Microsoft Says Not All Ad Clicks Are Created Equal · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I honestly can't remember the last time I clicked on an ad to see what it was advertising. As far as I know, everyone I know is pretty much the same - clicking on ads only encourages them.

    RS

  2. I can't wait to breathe that crap in on Researchers Develop Self-Cleaning Clothes · · Score: 1
    and die of some horrible lung disease.

    Is there something terribly wrong with simply getting up off your ass and cleaning your clothes once in a while?

    RS

  3. There's a word for this: Fascism on White House Says Phone Wiretaps Will Resume For Now · · Score: 5, Insightful
    They could do this legally through the FISA courts, but rather than go bother with even a Ruber Stamp court like FISA and at least pretend they're not spying on American citizens in direct violation of the fourth amendment for which the FISA courts were implemented to supposedly protect, they would rather run rough shod over everyone's privacy and interests for their own ends based out of their own incompetence and ignorance.

    The sad part? There is no promise that any democratic administration would stop this.

    Why? Because it's fascism, or, as one of the guys who invented fascism (Mussolini) caled it: Corporatism.

    The American Empire is dying and it's a sad thing to watch it act, as WS Burroughs said in 1984, as the single greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

    RS

  4. Re:And when MS invents PURPLE RAY (tm) on Sony Paid Warner Bros. $400 Million to Go Blu-Ray? · · Score: 1
    aaah- sheddep and go back to suckin' Bill's dick ya maroon.

    RS

  5. Re:That would be incredible. on CERN Scientists Looking for the Force · · Score: 2, Funny
    thank you. my opinion exactly, which is why I get all "itchy" with "God" particles. I think the lack of a Higgs is not only more interesting, I think it is much more likely. From my readings in physics and such like, it seems apparent to me that the Universe isn't very Universal... A Higgs boson would give it a grand symmetry and "make sense", but since when has the universe ever made sense? Quantum physics pretty much blows that out of the water, and Goedel prevents us from complete understandings. So, the whole thing is a bit of a hack job. It's as if the universe didn't blast itself into glorious existence, like some grand and opulent sunrise - it's more like a really wet fart of explosive diarrhoea that splattered against the back wall of the hyper dimensional toilet of space.

    Sort of.

    No Higgs would be the kick in the ass humans need right now - we're on our own, and we're not getting out alive. So stop acting like greedy little fucks and get down to the facts so we can survive in this patchwork disaster of a universe.

    RS

  6. Here's a question: what if it's not there? on CERN Scientists Looking for the Force · · Score: -1, Troll
    What if they piss billions of dollars into this machine and there is no Higgs Boson.

    Does that mean There Is No God?

    Good grief - theists are such asshats.

    RS

  7. And when MS invents PURPLE RAY (tm) on Sony Paid Warner Bros. $400 Million to Go Blu-Ray? · · Score: 1
    they will spend BILLIONS and simply buy the entire media industry. Technology quality has nothing to do with anything. Capitalism is NOT a meritocracy. It's a Dollarocracy. And if you're an idiot with craptacular technology (like MS) or an asshole with superior technology (like Sony) it doesn't matter if you ain't got the green and They Do.

    yay. let's hear it for watching re-runs of "Friends" on bleeding edge video technology.

    clap.clap.clap.

    RS

  8. I bet VISTA will bring it to its KNEES on Sandia Wants To Build Exaflop Computer · · Score: 0, Redundant
    petaflop exaflop floppity flop flop flop - whatever - install Vista and watch it puke blood and die...

    obSlashdot: but will it run linux?

    RS

  9. Re:False problems on The Century's Top Engineering Challenges · · Score: 1
    Yep. Quid Malborg in Plano, consternation has turned to elucidation!

    Just say the word "Power" and it responds - JUST LIKE WE DO!

    RS

  10. False problems on The Century's Top Engineering Challenges · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Many of those issues are not really problems, in that they can be cured by other issues that make them redundant/meaningless.

    * Make solar energy affordable

    As noted elsewhere: affordable is relative. Let oil hit some arbitrarily high price, and solar power suddenly looks cheap.

    * Provide energy from fusion

    Also, as noted elsewhere, the sun is a stable fusion reactor, and it is safely located millions of miles away.

    * Develop carbon sequestration methods

    Only if we intend to continue gulping oil. Assuming it goes off the charts in expense, carbon sources (oil or coal) will cease to be economically viable and will cease being used except for Important things like medicine and materials, both of which are small carbon burners compared to the local SUV.

    * Manage the nitrogen cycle

    Corn, Beans, Squash.

    * Provide access to clean water

    Nice idea, but first you have to have enough to go around. This problem (as would many others) be solved with FEWER people shitting the place up.

    * Restore and improve urban infrastructure

    Mostly, TRAINS. Lots of electric TRAINS. Remember: Peak OIl == Peak Asphalt.

    * Advance health informatics

    Nice idea - how you will do it with out petroleum is another issue.

    * Engineer better medicines

    See above.

    * Reverse-engineer the brain

    Why? I would think reverse engineering the liver might be more useful.

    * Prevent nuclear terror

    Sure: Ban nuclear weapons or drive civilisation back to the 18th century. We can do the first, and the oil crash will do the second, over time.

    * Secure cyberspace

    Against WHAT? Phishing?

    * Enhance virtual reality

    Eeew- that is like SO five minutes ago.

    * Advance personalized learning

    Sure, so I can leverage my human resources, right? fuck off.

    * Engineer the tools for scientific discovery

    Like WHAT - INSIGHT? Good luck with that Butch, lemme know how it works out for ya. Moron.

    RS

  11. Re:Syquest drives. And SCSI on Obsolete Technical Skills · · Score: 1
    I forgot: another useless skill: making sense out of multiple devices in a SCSI chain. Argh. Fucking PAIN IN THE ASS. USB and Firewire are SO much nicer...

    RS

  12. Oh - and bad fonts - remember those? on Obsolete Technical Skills · · Score: 1
    Because some stupid shithead thought that buying Fontographer turned him into the second coming of Fred Goudy himself, but the fonts said idiot made were for shit, because points were on top of points, or the paths weren't closed or there were paths on top of paths in opposite directions making the raster engine explode. FUCK I hated crapola fonts - they'd blow up the postscript printer, or they'd print with nasty spikes coming out of them. damn.

    RS

  13. Syquest drives. on Obsolete Technical Skills · · Score: 2, Funny
    remember those pieces of shite? Remember when you put one in and it would go tickety tickety tickety and freeze up and you couldn't eject it? fuck I hated those things. The technique I found was to unplug it, eject it, then start it up, put in a black drive to see if it's the disk (which it usually was) or the drive that had died.

    RS

  14. PostScript Errors? 'member them? on Obsolete Technical Skills · · Score: 1
    Remember them? Remember having to untangle some document because some incompetent fucking boob loaded a FreeHand or Illustrator file with 20 megs of crap on 40 different layers, only to make all but 3 invisible, and then the film printer would shit itself and dump mega$ worth of blank film on the floor, with some obscure error "sorry, could not complete operation, postscript error 23726" or some shit like that?

    God - I hated those days. And then the asshole would show up for his separations and be slapped with some huge ass bill and whine and whine and whine. "buh buh buh if it didn't print why did it finally print?" and we had to tell the stupid little fuck that he should have copied out the three layers he wanted into a single document, and saved it to a damn floppy instead of hauling in a Syquest drive full of bullshit.

    Grrr. I still get steamed thinking about all those two bit losers calling themselves "Designers".

    RS

  15. You can forget about server based computing on Competitors Ally With Comcast In FCC P2P Filings · · Score: 1
    An online word processor? Choked by QoS? Good move Butch. Let me know how that works out for ya.

    Online media editing? Fuggedaboutit.

    Greedy stupid morons.

    RS

  16. some ideas are already in place on Hi, I Want To Meet (17.6% of) You! · · Score: 4, Interesting
    One is a free dating site OKCUPID that uses extensive testing to create match percentages. I've been out of the dating game for years and years, but I find how people represent themselves interesting: personal mythologies are truly bizarre. So I look at these sites as exercises in digital anthropology. In any case, I've taken bunchies and bunchies of tests and quizzes and questions on the okcupid site, and I have to say, when I search by Match %, I do end up with people I think are rather interesting, and if (god forbid, as it would require a tragedy of epic proportions...) I were single I'd probably contact them once I had recovered from whatever epic tragedy caused my single-ness.

    My interest in those sites isn't in the math and machinery, more in the myth and fiction, the vagaries of self perception.

    What I have found is Match.com is useless. Being an avant garde atheist three steps to the left of Rosa Luxembourg always makes me "matchless" on Match.com. Yahoo is better, but I find it oddly untrustworthy - there is something really brittle about it, like it's all fake. That they were sued for leading people on that way doesn't help the atmosphere. Also, on Yahoo, I find the self mythologies more dreary than most. It's all "I want someone from a class rung above me who is in perfect shape to go on long walks on the beach with me." Bleaaah. How. Fucking. Boring. Yahoo seems to have more of that drear than anywhere else.

    Okcupid.com though seems to have much more imaginative people on it, and matches are by percentage and run by a variety of tests and systems that are devised by the users themselves. And the self-descriptions re better than Yahoo, for the most part.

    Back to work.

    RS

  17. Where's the free INTERNET? on Finnish Censorship Expanding · · Score: 1
    Wasn't the web supposed to be this great fun free place of personal self expression?

    Well it seems to have turned into yet another tool for the police state. Yeah - kiddie porn is evil - no doubt, but the bloom is off - it's not a wide open frontier. It's dead and calcifying as we speak.

    RS

  18. Re:But why? No - they understand on WikiLeaks Under Fire · · Score: 1
    No, they understand VERY VERY well what they are doing.

    It's called fascism. It's happened before, and it's happening again, only this time it's all dressed up in a trendy suit, and listens to "cool" music, and it will take our site down in a split second if it wants to. Why? Because it can. That's the essential MO of fascism.

    RS

  19. The CAR is the PROBLEM on New Solar Cell Harvests Hydrogen From Water · · Score: 1
    providing a nice and clean way to gather power for that fuel cell car of the future.

    No, the problem is the notion of high speed private transportation. It's intoxicating and amazing and utterly at odds with anything resembling a sustainable future. We shouldn't be looking for more ways to continue automobile culture. We should be looking into ways to quickly (and as painlessly as possible) re-organise society in such a way where the CAR is not only not necessary, but simply doesn't exist.

    Things like TFA only prolong our foolish hope that some miracle will occur and allow us to continue driving. Sorry, but no: the party's over. The sooner you adapt your life to one without an automobile and you begin to focus on local food acquisition, the better.

    RS

  20. Why: Software on Why Linux Doesn't Spread - the Curse of Being Free · · Score: 0, Redundant
    I've said it before and I will say it again:

    Linux is going nowhere because of the lack of quality software.

    Open Office != or > MSOffice

    GIMP != or > Photoshop

    There's nothing on Linux for quality page layout, CMYK etc, video editing is a fright, and the music software is years behind stuff on windows or mac.

    Sure: running a server on Linux is fine, but that is a tiny tiny percentage of what computers do, and Linux software simply isn't there. Yet.

    Until then, it's going to be a minority OS.

    RS

  21. Re:What a pantload. on Computer Models Find Patterns In Asymmetric Threats · · Score: 1
    Waging an air war with precision guided munitions is not terrorism. Dropping a bomb on an AQI safehouse is not terrorism. Collateral damage caused by a bomb which accidentally falls into a civilian apartment complex is not terrorism.

    Wrong.

    Yes IT IS terrorism, when you INVADE A COUNTRY that hasn't done anything to you!

    You can designate anybody as anything, but when they're just sitting around minding their own BUSINESS, and suffering horribly under sanctions you impose, and then you go and bomb the place to flinders, NO - THAT is terrorism, state sponsored Terror. Shock and Awe? Remember? You SHOCK AND AWE someone to make them feel better? No, you do it to KILL AND TERRORISE THEM. And don't go calling the murder of innocents "collateral damage", when it is simply the murder of innocents. YOU are COLLATERAL DAMAGE.

    RS

  22. Re:Kieth Olbermann's Excellent Review of this. on House Declines To Vote On Telecom Immunity · · Score: 1
    KKlaus wrote:

    In any case, it should be intuitively obvious that corporatism is not Fascism.

    Well, let's GO ASK THE FASCISTS, EH?

    How about, ummmm, I dunno - the guy who invented Fascism, MUSSOLINI himself. He said, and I quote (in translation):

    "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power"

    You don't know your history, and you have some words to eat. Dig in.

    RS

  23. Kieth Olbermann's Excellent Review of this. on House Declines To Vote On Telecom Immunity · · Score: 5, Insightful
    A part of what I will say, was said here on January 31st.

    Unfortunately it is both sadder and truer now, than it was, then.

    "Who's to blame?" Mr. Bush also said this afternoon, "Look, these folks in Congress passed a good bill late last summer... The problem is, they let the bill expire. My attitude is: if the bill was good enough then, why not pass the bill again?"

    You know, like The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

    Or Executive Order 90-66.

    Or The Alien and Sedition Acts.

    Or Slavery.

    Mr. Bush, you say that our ability to track terrorist threats will be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger. Yet you have weakened that ability! You have subjected us, your citizens, to that greater danger!

    This, Mr. Bush, is simple enough even for you to understand.

    For the moment, at least, thanks to some true patriots in the House, and your own stubbornness, you have tabled telecom immunity, and the FISA act. You. By your own terms and your definitions -- you have just sided with the terrorists.

    You got to have this law or we're all going to die.

    But practically speaking, you vetoed this law.

    It is bad enough, sir, that you were demanding an Ex Post Facto law, which could still clear the AT&Ts and the Verizons from responsibility for their systematic, aggressive, and blatant collaboration with your illegal and unjustified spying on Americans under this flimsy guise of looking for any terrorists who are stupid enough to make a collect call or send a mass e-mail. But when you demanded it again during the State of the Union address, you wouldn't even confirm that they actually did anything for which they deserved to be cleared.

    "The Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America."

    Believed?

    Don't you know?

    Don't you even have the guts Dick Cheney showed in admitting they did collaborate with you?

    Does this endless presidency of loopholes and fine print extend even here?

    If you believe in the seamless mutuality of government and big business -- come out and say it! There is a dictionary definition, one word that describes that toxic blend. Fascism.

    You're a fascist -- get them to print you a t-shirt with "fascist" on it!

    What else is this but fascism?

    Did you see Mark Klein on this newscast last November?

    Mark Klein was the AT&T Whistleblower, the one who explained in the placid, dull terms of your local neighborhood I-T desk, how he personally attached all AT&T circuits -- everything -- carrying every one of your phone calls, every one of your e-mails, every bit of your web browsing into a secure room, room number 641-A at the Folsom Street facility in San Francisco, where it was all copied so the government could look at it. Not some of it, not just the international part of it, certainly not just the stuff some spy -- a spy both patriotic and telepathic -- might able to divine had been sent or spoken by -- or to -- a terrorist. Everything!

    Every time you looked at a naked picture.

    Every time you bid on eBay.

    Every time you phoned in a donation to a Democrat.

    "My thought was," Mr. Klein told us last November, "George Orwell's 1984. And here I am, forced to connect the big brother machine."

    And if there's one thing we know about Big Brother, Mr. Bush, is that he is -- you are -- a liar.

    "This Saturday at midnight," you said today, "legislation authorizing intelligence professionals to quickly and effectively monitor terrorist communications will expire. If Congress does not act by that time, our ability to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning, will be compromised... You said that "the lives of countless Americans depend" on you getting your way.

    This is crap.

    And you sling it, with an audacity and a speed un

  24. What a pantload. on Computer Models Find Patterns In Asymmetric Threats · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Terrorist Attacks? What? Some dumbass strapping dynamite to his chest and wandering into a crowded market? OK - that takes munitions. Taking over a plane with razor knives and flying it into a skyscraper? Takes no munitions, just a shitload of nerve and a complacent herd of passengers. Both result in lots of dead innocent civilians.

    But then there are other forms of terrorism, such as flying a B2 filled to the gunnels with high explosive munitions that rain down on the homes and hovels of innocent civilians.

    Americans like to bark about terrorism as in the form taken by small groups of murderous assholes, frequently on a suicide mission. And they bark louder when a state gets involved in support of such efforts. But they refuse to take responsibility (much less blame) when they themselves act as State Sponsored and funded terrorists by bombing the living fuck out of innocent civilians. Whether it's a team of suicide bombers or a team of bomber flight crew, the results are the same: mass death of innocent civilians.

    And don't go cracking a pantload over how the Iraqis attacked your freedom. WHEN did the boat filled with Iraqi soldiers float to the USA and attack your freedom? What day was that? I sure would like to know because I was taking a vacation in this lovely little place called REALITY. The USA is a terrorist nation. Its unwarranted and unwanted and utterly idiotic invasion of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people there. Whether it is death strapped to some delusional team of assholes chanting ALLAH, or some cynical assholes flying at 12,000m dropping ordnance all over a city and thinking it's a job well done, the results are the same: dead civilians at the hands of a team of assholes.

    Here's a way to predict terrorists attacks: check the flying sortie records of the US Air Force.

    RS

  25. The Greatest hits of 1913? on EU Commissioner Proposes 95 year Copyright · · Score: 1
    What utter shit. What songs from 1913 does anyone even KNOW much less give a flying fuck about?

    I can't believe this greedy ignorant nonsense going on with copyright law.

    I found a list of some of the more popular tunes from 1913 - 1919. If you recognise any of them, you're in a tiny minority of listeners.

    1. My Mothers Rosary performed by Charles Harrison
    2. She's The Daughter Of Mother Machree performed by Charles Harrison
    3. When You And I Were Young Maggie performed by Charles Harrison
    4. Silver Threads Among The Gold performed by Elsie Baker
    5. Have A Smile performed by the Sterling Trio
    6. Till We Meet Again performed by Charles Hart and Lewis James
    7. Roamin In The Gloamin performed by Harry Lauder
    8. A Little Bit Of Heaven performed by Charles Harrison
    9. Singapore performed by Arthur Fields
    10. Some Day I'll Make You Glad performed by the Sterling Trio
    11. That Tumble Down Shack In Athalone performed by the Sterling Trio
    12. Smile And The World Smiles With You performed by Lewis James and Peerless Quartet
    13. Peg O' My Heart performed by Charles Harrison
    14. When I Dream Of Old Erin performed by Arthur Clough
    15. Where The River Shannon Flows performed by John McCormack
    16. The Greatest Battle Song Of All performed by Irving Kaufman
    17. On The Road To Happiness performed by Samuel Ash
    18. Somewhere A Voice Is Calling performed by John McCormack
    19. Once Upon A Time performed by Fred Hughes

    I found the list here where you can buy a CD of the stuff. Frankly, I have intention of doing so, because barbershop quartet never flipped my crank. My point is that NO ONE will remember the average piece of music, and the copyright is already too long. I think it should be reduced to 14 years.

    RS