"A world out of time" by Larry Niven. None of the usual "kill your grandfather" paradoxes, but a well-thought-out and entertaining story about a man catapulted a L O N G way into the future.
Except that Niven didn't use a 'time machine' to do it, he merely had the ship park just barely inside the event horizon of a black hole on a trajectory that would take it a couple million years to come out.
I seem to remember some former rebel colonies doing the same thing in their history.
That was long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Or was that a Fairlane? Those classic Fords trip me up sometimes. Anyways, that was then, this is now, and the former pirates in the US are now the ones screaming for blood.
They're not gonna whack out US prisoners. Too many 3rd party corporations make too much money 'behind the walls' using prisoners as slave labor. Expect that to continue for the mid to long term, especially if our economy keeps tanked due to all the offshoring.
You kidding me? Even Israel hates us, and they get about 30% of every foreign aid dollar out there. Look at how many times we bust Israeli spies and send them home again.
Uh, oh. Does it wake you up that US markets makes 4.9% of Finland's export? Comparing with the exports to Russia of 9.2%, Germany of 10% and Sweden to 11.8%, it seems quite low.
Also, did you know that Finland has less population than New York City? I don't know why I feel all of them will survive quite well to an upset US.
Til somebody claims there's oil under Finland, you mean. Course, it'll be like Iraqi WMDs. Just a claim...
(Never saw what the big buzzy was over Ubuntu in any case. I tried it a couple of times and found it marginally acceptable, but annoying.)
It Just Worked. Debian's ease of upgrade without the headaches. Frozen libraries so shit didn't break as often. No need to wipe and reinstall like Fedora recommends (and yeah, I ran RedHat/Fedora for YEARS, it was practically impossible to upgrade to the next release without wiping and fresh install).
Meh, I don't think the RIAA/MPAA are interested in any more warrants or lawsuits; on average, they lose a lot of money on them. The Verizon deal is great to them because it cuts all those "due process" requirements and it's therefore much cheaper per user.
Why should they care? It's not their money. The whole point of the *AAs getting copyright infringement redefined as a criminal act rather than a civil act was so the taxpayer foots the bill for prosecution, not the *AA. Once the complaint is signed in a criminal case, it's up to the government to investigate, serve warrants, make arrests, haul defendants in front of a judge, etc. In civil cases, it's up to the plaindiff to do all that gruntwork, without the benefit of arrest powers and police backup.
Think they'll be able to pull off Odo's famous Kardashian Neck Trick we used to hear about all the time on Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and never saw? Personally, I felt rather ripped off that they never showed it.
Or maybe they are developing what they believe is better technology...
LOL.
Of course they believe it's better technology. It's a Microsoft product. Whether it really is or isn't is yet to be determined. But it will be copyrighted and trademarked out the ass to better preserve corporate profits.
I seem to recall this being a sci-fi short story somewheres a long time ago... "Jerry Was A Boy"? or something similar to that as the title.
'Jerry Was A Man...' by Robert A Heinlein. The ebook is floating around the net. Can't recall for the life of me what short story collection it was originally in, though, as it's not part of his Future History/Lazarus Long series.
If the Neanderthals were more peaceful than the Cro-Magnons, the Cro-Mags woulda made short work of them. After all, we're descended from the Cro-Mags, and I sure as hell don't see much of a peaceful nature in us as a species.
Meh, just create a botnet to do SETI@Home style keycrunching and infect every smartphone out there with it. Throw enough processors at a private key, it'll fall.
Pennies on the dollar return for those fraud cases, minus legal fees, of course. All the mortgage meltdown did was make a bunch of lawyers a ton of money.
This looks like a great place to store a large number of heavily encrypted psuedo-random garbage files.
Definitely. Let the Feds waste tons of computer processor cycles trying to make sense of it to figure out whose media file is 'stolen'. It'll keep 'em outta trouble, especially if you allude to a mysterious decrypting program that's passed around by sneakernet to 'decode' the garbage files.
Keep in mind that if they monitor the bandwidth used by the endusers, they'll know they're getting something. After all, using massive amounts of bandwidth that's not coming from Netflix/Redbox/Youtube means you're moving something, and in today's climate in the US, that means copyrighted files, especially if the origination point is obscured. Not quite a smoking gun, but with enough campaign contributions, possibly enough to get a warrant from a media-friendly judge...
Can't they use our taxpayer money to do something other than ruin the lives of people who copy files? Even the companies waste taxpayer money in court by filing lawsuits...
Slashdot Mirror
American Pie: Death Star, or will they resurrect one of the short-listed ST concepts from before Enterprise: "ST Academy 90210" :)
Funny, I thought the '09 reboot was Starfleet Academy: 90210. Gotta get my glasses fixed...
"A world out of time" by Larry Niven. None of the usual "kill your grandfather" paradoxes, but a well-thought-out and entertaining story about a man catapulted a L O N G way into the future.
Except that Niven didn't use a 'time machine' to do it, he merely had the ship park just barely inside the event horizon of a black hole on a trajectory that would take it a couple million years to come out.
I seem to remember some former rebel colonies doing the same thing in their history.
That was long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Or was that a Fairlane? Those classic Fords trip me up sometimes. Anyways, that was then, this is now, and the former pirates in the US are now the ones screaming for blood.
They're not gonna whack out US prisoners. Too many 3rd party corporations make too much money 'behind the walls' using prisoners as slave labor. Expect that to continue for the mid to long term, especially if our economy keeps tanked due to all the offshoring.
You kidding me? Even Israel hates us, and they get about 30% of every foreign aid dollar out there. Look at how many times we bust Israeli spies and send them home again.
Yeah, we should just stop making the world a better place, because there's no way in hell that'll ever happen.
In fact, we should just curl up and die right now.
Naw. Just do a Snake Plissken and hit the reset button.
NOT gonna happen. DisneyCorp is gonna milk that sucker forever.
Uh, oh. Does it wake you up that US markets makes 4.9% of Finland's export? Comparing with the exports to Russia of 9.2%, Germany of 10% and Sweden to 11.8%, it seems quite low.
Also, did you know that Finland has less population than New York City? I don't know why I feel all of them will survive quite well to an upset US.
Til somebody claims there's oil under Finland, you mean. Course, it'll be like Iraqi WMDs. Just a claim...
Guess what? Debian is still pretty much the same as it was in 1998 (but yes, with newer packages, you jokers).
From what I hear, the breakage isn't as bad these days now that some of the developers managed to crawl out of the Stone Age.
(Never saw what the big buzzy was over Ubuntu in any case. I tried it a couple of times and found it marginally acceptable, but annoying.)
It Just Worked. Debian's ease of upgrade without the headaches. Frozen libraries so shit didn't break as often. No need to wipe and reinstall like Fedora recommends (and yeah, I ran RedHat/Fedora for YEARS, it was practically impossible to upgrade to the next release without wiping and fresh install).
Then Canonical lost sight of the goal.
Meh, I don't think the RIAA/MPAA are interested in any more warrants or lawsuits; on average, they lose a lot of money on them. The Verizon deal is great to them because it cuts all those "due process" requirements and it's therefore much cheaper per user.
Why should they care? It's not their money. The whole point of the *AAs getting copyright infringement redefined as a criminal act rather than a civil act was so the taxpayer foots the bill for prosecution, not the *AA. Once the complaint is signed in a criminal case, it's up to the government to investigate, serve warrants, make arrests, haul defendants in front of a judge, etc. In civil cases, it's up to the plaindiff to do all that gruntwork, without the benefit of arrest powers and police backup.
Ah, thank you, kind sir.
Having spent some time in rural Northern Germany, I believe Neanderthals are still alive.
Germany, hell. Try spending a weekend in Cleveland.
Don't be flippant. Besides, we were discussing neanderthals. Not cro-magnon. Those are a completely different kettle of Kutteln.
Never been to Cleveland, I see.
Besides, we are Cro-Mags.
Having spent some time in rural Northern Germany, I believe Neanderthals are still alive.
Germany, hell. Try spending a weekend in Cleveland.
"Ice brides". Great typo there. Meant "bridges" obviously, but "brides" has so many comedic possibilities.
Except in my case, I had a flashback of my ex-wife.
Think they'll be able to pull off Odo's famous Kardashian Neck Trick we used to hear about all the time on Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and never saw? Personally, I felt rather ripped off that they never showed it.
Or maybe they are developing what they believe is better technology...
LOL.
Of course they believe it's better technology. It's a Microsoft product. Whether it really is or isn't is yet to be determined. But it will be copyrighted and trademarked out the ass to better preserve corporate profits.
I seem to recall this being a sci-fi short story somewheres a long time ago... "Jerry Was A Boy"? or something similar to that as the title.
'Jerry Was A Man...' by Robert A Heinlein. The ebook is floating around the net. Can't recall for the life of me what short story collection it was originally in, though, as it's not part of his Future History/Lazarus Long series.
If the Neanderthals were more peaceful than the Cro-Magnons, the Cro-Mags woulda made short work of them. After all, we're descended from the Cro-Mags, and I sure as hell don't see much of a peaceful nature in us as a species.
Meh, just create a botnet to do SETI@Home style keycrunching and infect every smartphone out there with it. Throw enough processors at a private key, it'll fall.
Pennies on the dollar return for those fraud cases, minus legal fees, of course. All the mortgage meltdown did was make a bunch of lawyers a ton of money.
This looks like a great place to store a large number of heavily encrypted psuedo-random garbage files.
Definitely. Let the Feds waste tons of computer processor cycles trying to make sense of it to figure out whose media file is 'stolen'. It'll keep 'em outta trouble, especially if you allude to a mysterious decrypting program that's passed around by sneakernet to 'decode' the garbage files.
Keep in mind that if they monitor the bandwidth used by the endusers, they'll know they're getting something. After all, using massive amounts of bandwidth that's not coming from Netflix/Redbox/Youtube means you're moving something, and in today's climate in the US, that means copyrighted files, especially if the origination point is obscured. Not quite a smoking gun, but with enough campaign contributions, possibly enough to get a warrant from a media-friendly judge...
Can't they use our taxpayer money to do something other than ruin the lives of people who copy files? Even the companies waste taxpayer money in court by filing lawsuits...
Copyright infringers tend not to shoot back.
It keeps the powers that be busy.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Half a sec, this torrent is finishing... :D