I think all laws should have expiration dates of no more than ten years. It's the one part of the patriot act they got right. ALL laws. Federal, state, and other. Yes, even the law against murder.
"I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.
What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?
I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq. "
Emily--Was another rare powerful July hurricane that formed in the Atlantic on the heels of Hurricane Dennis during the week of July 10th, 2005. The storm became the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the month of July after its winds reached a peak speed of 155 mph, and its minimum central pressure dropped to 929 mb, or 27.43 inches of Hg. This just surpassed the levels previously established by Dennis, and was just slightly below Category Five Hurricane intensity on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Although Emily ransacked the island of Grenada, which was still recovering from Hurricane Ivan's impact in September, 2004, the storm mercifully spared the islands of Jamaica and the Caymans as well as weakened before making landfall in the Yucatan. The storm did regain some steam after losing its punch over the plateau of the Yucatan Peninsula, and made a final landfall as a major hurricane in Northeastern Mexico with winds of 125 mph. The storm was responsible for 64 deaths, and initially $300,000,000 dollars in damage. It also contributed to the rise in oil prices by forcing the evacuation of employees of Mexico's primary oil company, PEMEX, from their offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hurricane Katrina--Started out modestly on August 23rd, 2005 in the Bahamas as a tropical wave that emerged from the remnants of a tropical depression that had been in the Caribbean. It gradually grew into the season's eleventh named storm and fourth hurricane prior to making landfall in South Florida as a minimal hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, and gusts up to 95 mph. After quickly crossing Southern Florida, Katrina emerged again over water in the Southeastern Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Keys, and strengthened to the 2005 season's third major hurricane before reorganizing into the most powerful storm in the Central Gulf since Hurricane Camille, and third Category Five Hurricane in as many years with winds as high as 175 mph, and a minimum central pressure of 902 mb, or 26.64 inches of Hg. It became the fourth most powerful hurricane of all time ahead of Camille and behind Hurricane Gilbert (1988), the Labor Day of Hurricane of 1935, and Hurricane Allen (1980). After coming ashore as a Category One Hurricane in South Florida, Katrina struck two more times along the Gulf Coast. First in Buras, Louisiana with 140 mph winds, and then near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi with 135 mph winds. It created a 27 foot storm surge in Gulfport, Mississippi and a 22 foot storm surge in Bay St. Louis. Winds as high as 90 mph were felt as far east as Mobile, Alabama, which experienced its worst flooding in 90 years. To make matters worse, part of an oil rig broke away in Mobile Bay and hit a nearby causway possibly causing damage there. Waves as high as 48 feet happened offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Some 50 people were killed in coastal Mississippi including 30 in an apartment complex in Biloxi. Katrina even ripped off part of the roof of the Louisiana Superdome, where 10,000 people were staying in the facility, which was being used as a shelter of last resort. Extensive flooding occurred in New Orleans, which was actually spared the brunt of the storm. The 9th ward in the Crescent City was underwater as well as 80 percent of the city. People fled to their attics to escape drowning and some were rescued by helicopters and boats. So far, the latest death toll is at 1,325 (Louisiana-1076, Mississippi-230, Florida-14, Alabama-2, Georgia-2, Tennessee-1) with damage estimates now ranging from $40 billion to $60 billion. Experts fear that the total cost for the storm could be $200 billion dollars, which would make Katrina the costliest hurricane and natural disaster in United States History.
Hurricane Rita--The seventeenth named storm and fifth major hurricane of the 2005 season, Rita began near the Turks and Caicos Islands as a mere tropical depression on September 17th, 2005. However, as it passed near the Florida Keys
I tried to post a blog entry to let my friends know about the "Chronicles of Narnia" video Chris Parnell and Adam Sandberg from SNL did (hilarious) using a link to youtube... www.youtube.com became www...com when I posted it. At the time I figured it must have been user error.
I should have known. Typical Murdoch bullshit. I was afraid this was gonna happen when I heard Fox was buying it. Friendster? Might as well change their name to spam.com. This could be the beginning of the end. At least Fox hasn't bought Slashdot... yet...
You weren't asking me, but I'm gonna butt in anyway.
There are times when it is critically important to honor a social contract (the vast majority of the time). There are also times when it's critically important to break one (divorcing an abusive spouse, fighting in one's own self-defense).
Any market needs a black market to keep the white market good for both providers and consumers. The exaple I always give is packs of chewing gum. Supermarkets don't sell packs of gum for more than a dollar because they know that the only real consequence would be a vast increase in the shoplifting of gum. OTOH, if they were able to completely eradicate all shoplifting, you bet your bottom dollar the price of gum will be 10 times what it is today in a year from now. This is why most stealing is bad, but a little stealing can change the world. Everything in moderation, remember.
As to copyright, everybody forgets that when the Constitution was being written the entire concept of copyright was twofold - to ensure that creative people could make money off their works, but ALSO and EQUALLY to ensure that, after they'd had their fair shot at capitalizing on their works (which is to say, 7 years after they died), others wouldn't be deprived of their enjoyment. Copyright is now perceived by the vast majority of the public to be a thing which protects only the sellers, and never the buyers.
You are correct that I feel the first shots were fired by big media. But the first shots I'm referring to were not the Sonny Bono law. No, the first shots would have to be the release of 8-track tape. After succesfully lobbying to have home taping made illegal, big media tried to make everybody go out and buy their record collections all over again. Ever seen an 8-track deck you could record on? Ever wonder why not? I remember going to see my Uncle in Idaho, and how aglow he was over the fact that he'd had a casette recorder imported from Japan. I didn't see what the big deal was, until he explained they were still illegal here. Even at that early age, I wondered what the music companies could possibly be thinking. Then they tried to tell us we couldn't record their TV shows onto the VCR's they sold us. The Supreme Court disagreed. Then they came out with CD's to pull the 8-track trick all over again. They knew full well when they did this that they were opening the Pandora's box of lossless duplication, and chose to procedd in spite of this, because they were greedy and wanted more money. Then there was the DAT thing. Then the DCC and Minidisk things. Then the DVD/CSS thing. Now the DRM and TCPI things. Without exception, every single "anti-piracy" trick they've ever pulled has been either defeated or rejected by the marketplace. I have no doubt that DRM-ing everything everywhere will take upwards of 10-15 years, and even then it will be so frought with stupid complications that many people simply won't buy.
The funny thing is that, after trying unsuccessfully to keep home taping illegal for the exact same reasons they're parading out against file-sharing, they made billions and billions of dollars selling cassette tapes to the public.
"Then large numbers of selfish people decided they were above the law"
You're exactly right. And those people were mostly Disney, and the Gershwin heirs. They decided that the words that were in the Constitution regarding copyright and public domain works weren't good enough. So they bribed Mary Bono and some others in Washington into changing the rules, thereby freezing the date at which works enter the public domain.
So hey. You wanna play rough? That's cool. But it's fucking ON now.
They are annoying, but I prefer ads with audio that I can press SKIP on to Salon-style, you-must-watch-this-entire-commercial-before-you-r ead-anything type. If you can't figure out how to hit skip, then... The other day I had a giant ad pop up out of AIM. That was annoying as shit, because you couldn't close it until it ended. That made me think about not using the AIM client... briefly. I've never considered not using myspace because of the ads - you can skip them.
No, please, somebody mod this guy troll. He deserves it.
I'm 31. When I moved across the country to an area where I knew NOBODY, MySpace helped me meet people with similar interests. MySpace is the only reason I have any friends at all down here (yes, I'm a piss-poor socializer outside of an ASCII environment). The one venue where I've found to play my music on a regular basis down here, I found out about through MySpace. I've gotten some fans for my (unsigned, independant) music through MySpace, as well as become a fan of other unsigned, independant local musicians. I don't have a huge fan base, but thanks to MySpace, if I ever visit Seattle, Canada, Charlotte, Chicago, Orlando, or Texas, there's people who can help me hook up shows. MySpace is how I find out when good local acts are playing (do YOU really wanna wade through ten pages of 5-point type in the back of your free weekly? Me neither). MySpace is the reason people come to see me when I play. If MySpace ever adds the ability to email multiple people without the use of bulletins, it might just replace email for me. All of my friends here, and all of my friends in Milwaukee, and all of my friends in San Francicso, are on it. I need to check my MySpace messages multiple times a day. I only need to check my actual email once every day or two.
MySpace isn't completely original - it's basically LiveJournal meets Demostreams. But the idea of a multi-featured user community has come a long way since AOL, and it's a concept that's rapidly gaining traction in the marketplace. Slashdot itself is a user-community, just without certain features (music and pictures) and with others (a more specific and exclusive user base). MySpace, Slashdot, Livejournal, Friendster, etc etc are as successful as they are because the marketplace rewards their ideas. Quit bitching about it, come up with a concept as successful as MySpace, and make your own billion dollars.
Are there problems with MySpace? Sure. The ads are getting more and more intrusive. But if that's your argument against it, you might as well argue against the internet itself. There is plenty of ugly HTML on MySpace. Last time I checked, though, there was also plenty outside of it as well. The servers are getting slower and buggier. But again, MySpace is not unique in this regard - I can't even log into Friendster anymore, it's so slow. And yes, there are a bunch of little kids running around acting like morons. But if this is your argument against it, then you must also be against all IM as well. And, just like Slashdot, there are plenty of people who are idiots - and plenty who aren't. Bottom line, MySpace is very much worth the ZERO DOLLARS I paid to be there.
If you don't want to use it, that's fine, but don't insult everybody on it without exception. That's just stupid and ignorant.
There are places you can do exactly that. Amsterdam and San Francisco come to mind. Alaska permits residents to grow a certain amount for personal use. Small steps, but in the right direction. And the government's slowly coming around. Give em a couple hundred years... Cannabis prohibition is still mostly driven by the paper industry, just like it was in Hearst's day.
To all those who said that P2P "pirate" networks would never bring about significant changes in the business models of big *AA... want some salt with that crow?
Sure, it's restricted, and it expires, but as long as the black market is out there, the white market will slowly bring itself up to speed until the need for a black market lessens more and more. Eventually the result will be something that works for picky consumers like us and for content providers. All file-sharers everywhere should not underestimate the significance of this move.
"If I could raise my kids and have 2-10 lifetimes after that, I wouldn't have any trouble filling my time"
That's a big assumption. How do you know? You've never lived that long, and never seen anybody else do it either. How old are you now, 20? 30? 40? It's real easy to say you'll never get bored of things when there are still things you haven't tried.
And even if you could fill 2-10 lifetimes meaningfully, which I doubt, surely you must realize that, given an indefinite lifespan, you would eventually be bored with being alive. At some point, the only thing you had yet to experience would be death.
How many video games do you continue playing once you've unlocked all the secrets and beaten the game?
" Ok, you feel free to off yourself any time you like."
I don't think I'll have to, as I consider indefinite longevity to be unattainable during my lifetime. Sure, maybe I'll live to be 120 or 130, tops, but I don't think the average human lifespan is going to even top 200 for many many more decades.
Thanks for the invitation, though. Mighty white of you.
"Please don't slow progress down for those of us who want to seek out new solar systems... and wrap them with Dyson spheres."
What does this have to do with longevity exactly? Are you proposing seriously that prolonging the human lifespan is a necessary component of long-range space exploration? Have you given absolutely zero thought to what all those 1000-year old people are going to, say, eat and drink for 1000 years? 1000 years worth of food and water is a lot of food and water, requiring a lot of fuel to get it off the ground. And better make sure it's all non-perishable, because it has to last for 1000 years.
What will make human exploration of deep space possible will be three thing - a) previous exploration of deep space my unmanned probes; b) some kind of suspended animation system, a la "Aliens"; c) A ship large enough to contain agricultural facilities for all of it's inhabitants, and enough inhabitants to form a sustainable gene pool for long enough to reach their destination. Indefinite lifespan is NOT the solution.
Besides, of all the people living on Earth today, very few have any inclination to be space explorers. If a magic wand were waved today and everybody could live to be 1000, your "solution" of everybody being space explorers would seem to require a good chunk of the populace being shipped off to space against their will, to enjoy 1000 years of doing NOTHING but staring at each other while they waited for the ship to arrive. What a swell life that would be. Every single ship would be filled with corpses when it arrived. What a great way to present ourselves to the galaxy. Also, it would seem to require a good chunk of planetary resources being devoted to the manufacture and launch of ships large enough to hold enough food and water to sustain these poor, tortured souls for their long voyage. Except you seem to forget that we'll need all the planetary resources wer can muster for food and water for all the 1000-year old people that we'll have living here. Soylent green, anybody?
"And overpopulation won't be a problem either, since we'll be able to create habitats in environments that are current unsuitable for life (deserts, underground, in the ocean, orbiting, in the asteroids, etc)."
Oh this is rich. Once humanity has indefinite lifespan, there will be no resources available to make these environments habitable. Deserts: There will be no water to irrigate the desert with because all these thousand-year-old people will be drinking it. Udnerground: we have this already. Ocean: too costly even for now, let alone in the resource-starved world of your utopian future brought about by a huge population of uber-geriatrics. Asteroids: this one is fucking hilarious. ASTEROIDS HIT THINGS. All your "solutions" could only take place in a world where money didn't exist. And as long as one thing is more useful to a person than another thing, money will always exist.
"And as to the book, there are many authors who make their living scaring the public. It appears this was one of them."
Oh go soak your head. Scary things exist. It doesn't mean we shouldn't think about them. Does a life-insurance salesman make his living by scaring people? Sure. Does this make him a bad person? No. If nobody sold life insurance the world would be a worse place. Sometimes there are things we need to be scared of.
"Living forever is no way boring"
OK, at the point at which you make this statement, you lose any and all right to claim any
"They'd all be killing themselves after 200 years, or so. What would a psychology formed in 1000 A.D. - or even 1700 A.D. do in the world of today?"
Took the words right out of my mouth. There was a book I read a long time ago, can't remember what it was called, but it dealt with this very issue. There was an elite class of super-rich who could afford an indefinite life span. The problems were many. Firstly, there was overpopulation. This is what happens when fewer people die but the planet stays the same size. Then there was massive boredom among these super-old people because how much is there do do in the world really? At some point you will have done everything there is to do. When the characters in this book reached that point, they responded to their massive boredom with equally massive depravity, and started killing and torturing people because it was literally the only thing they had never tried doing before. What wouldn't humans stoop to with all eternity to kill?
So yeah - bad, bad idea, even if it was probable, which I don't consider it to be.
"The rightest a man could ever be would be to live infinitely long" - L Ron Hubbard. You wanna be on the same side as THAT guy?!
Firstly, this is honestly the first time in my life I've ever been called any kind of conservative. I wish you'd had to courage to not post anonymously so you could read this. I'm quite liberal. My statement that it's never good to put people in charge of the government who hate it is intended to apply to the current administration, to people like Grover Norquist who want the government small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Secondly, if I lived in Ohio or Florida, my vote already would have been taken away.
Thirdly, when you start talking about taking people's votes away, you don't do a great job of presenting yourself in any better light than those currently dismantling America as fast as they can (the neo-cons).
Slashdot Mirror
interlink uses rf, not ir. no line-of-sight issues.
prior art in the form of a bacon activated, erm, joystick.
"bacon, bacon, bacon, i'm makin' the moves on you! you're.... bacon!"
...i read this as "czech tsar"... and who asked him, anyway?
stop the keyword hype!
won't someone think of the children?!
Oh clearly. Just like people WANT cheap gas, so gas keeps getting cheaper.
Wait, what?
Attending to various real-life bullshit. But work's been slow lately, so... here i am!
I think all laws should have expiration dates of no more than ten years. It's the one part of the patriot act they got right. ALL laws. Federal, state, and other. Yes, even the law against murder.
"I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.
What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?
I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq. "
-Dick Cheney, 1991 (boldface and italics mine)
" Marcos
Pinochet
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi"
You forgot Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin. Both created wholely from US assets to serve US purposes.
All historically large and powerful storms.
Emily--Was another rare powerful July hurricane that formed in the Atlantic on the heels of Hurricane Dennis during the week of July 10th, 2005. The storm became the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the month of July after its winds reached a peak speed of 155 mph, and its minimum central pressure dropped to 929 mb, or 27.43 inches of Hg. This just surpassed the levels previously established by Dennis, and was just slightly below Category Five Hurricane intensity on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Although Emily ransacked the island of Grenada, which was still recovering from Hurricane Ivan's impact in September, 2004, the storm mercifully spared the islands of Jamaica and the Caymans as well as weakened before making landfall in the Yucatan. The storm did regain some steam after losing its punch over the plateau of the Yucatan Peninsula, and made a final landfall as a major hurricane in Northeastern Mexico with winds of 125 mph. The storm was responsible for 64 deaths, and initially $300,000,000 dollars in damage. It also contributed to the rise in oil prices by forcing the evacuation of employees of Mexico's primary oil company, PEMEX, from their offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hurricane Katrina--Started out modestly on August 23rd, 2005 in the Bahamas as a tropical wave that emerged from the remnants of a tropical depression that had been in the Caribbean. It gradually grew into the season's eleventh named storm and fourth hurricane prior to making landfall in South Florida as a minimal hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph, and gusts up to 95 mph. After quickly crossing Southern Florida, Katrina emerged again over water in the Southeastern Gulf of Mexico near the Florida Keys, and strengthened to the 2005 season's third major hurricane before reorganizing into the most powerful storm in the Central Gulf since Hurricane Camille, and third Category Five Hurricane in as many years with winds as high as 175 mph, and a minimum central pressure of 902 mb, or 26.64 inches of Hg. It became the fourth most powerful hurricane of all time ahead of Camille and behind Hurricane Gilbert (1988), the Labor Day of Hurricane of 1935, and Hurricane Allen (1980). After coming ashore as a Category One Hurricane in South Florida, Katrina struck two more times along the Gulf Coast. First in Buras, Louisiana with 140 mph winds, and then near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi with 135 mph winds. It created a 27 foot storm surge in Gulfport, Mississippi and a 22 foot storm surge in Bay St. Louis. Winds as high as 90 mph were felt as far east as Mobile, Alabama, which experienced its worst flooding in 90 years. To make matters worse, part of an oil rig broke away in Mobile Bay and hit a nearby causway possibly causing damage there. Waves as high as 48 feet happened offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Some 50 people were killed in coastal Mississippi including 30 in an apartment complex in Biloxi. Katrina even ripped off part of the roof of the Louisiana Superdome, where 10,000 people were staying in the facility, which was being used as a shelter of last resort. Extensive flooding occurred in New Orleans, which was actually spared the brunt of the storm. The 9th ward in the Crescent City was underwater as well as 80 percent of the city. People fled to their attics to escape drowning and some were rescued by helicopters and boats. So far, the latest death toll is at 1,325 (Louisiana-1076, Mississippi-230, Florida-14, Alabama-2, Georgia-2, Tennessee-1) with damage estimates now ranging from $40 billion to $60 billion. Experts fear that the total cost for the storm could be $200 billion dollars, which would make Katrina the costliest hurricane and natural disaster in United States History.
Hurricane Rita--The seventeenth named storm and fifth major hurricane of the 2005 season, Rita began near the Turks and Caicos Islands as a mere tropical depression on September 17th, 2005. However, as it passed near the Florida Keys
I tried to post a blog entry to let my friends know about the "Chronicles of Narnia" video Chris Parnell and Adam Sandberg from SNL did (hilarious) using a link to youtube... www.youtube.com became www...com when I posted it. At the time I figured it must have been user error.
I should have known. Typical Murdoch bullshit. I was afraid this was gonna happen when I heard Fox was buying it. Friendster? Might as well change their name to spam.com. This could be the beginning of the end. At least Fox hasn't bought Slashdot... yet...
You weren't asking me, but I'm gonna butt in anyway.
There are times when it is critically important to honor a social contract (the vast majority of the time). There are also times when it's critically important to break one (divorcing an abusive spouse, fighting in one's own self-defense).
Any market needs a black market to keep the white market good for both providers and consumers. The exaple I always give is packs of chewing gum. Supermarkets don't sell packs of gum for more than a dollar because they know that the only real consequence would be a vast increase in the shoplifting of gum. OTOH, if they were able to completely eradicate all shoplifting, you bet your bottom dollar the price of gum will be 10 times what it is today in a year from now. This is why most stealing is bad, but a little stealing can change the world. Everything in moderation, remember.
As to copyright, everybody forgets that when the Constitution was being written the entire concept of copyright was twofold - to ensure that creative people could make money off their works, but ALSO and EQUALLY to ensure that, after they'd had their fair shot at capitalizing on their works (which is to say, 7 years after they died), others wouldn't be deprived of their enjoyment. Copyright is now perceived by the vast majority of the public to be a thing which protects only the sellers, and never the buyers.
You are correct that I feel the first shots were fired by big media. But the first shots I'm referring to were not the Sonny Bono law. No, the first shots would have to be the release of 8-track tape. After succesfully lobbying to have home taping made illegal, big media tried to make everybody go out and buy their record collections all over again. Ever seen an 8-track deck you could record on? Ever wonder why not? I remember going to see my Uncle in Idaho, and how aglow he was over the fact that he'd had a casette recorder imported from Japan. I didn't see what the big deal was, until he explained they were still illegal here. Even at that early age, I wondered what the music companies could possibly be thinking. Then they tried to tell us we couldn't record their TV shows onto the VCR's they sold us. The Supreme Court disagreed. Then they came out with CD's to pull the 8-track trick all over again. They knew full well when they did this that they were opening the Pandora's box of lossless duplication, and chose to procedd in spite of this, because they were greedy and wanted more money. Then there was the DAT thing. Then the DCC and Minidisk things. Then the DVD/CSS thing. Now the DRM and TCPI things. Without exception, every single "anti-piracy" trick they've ever pulled has been either defeated or rejected by the marketplace. I have no doubt that DRM-ing everything everywhere will take upwards of 10-15 years, and even then it will be so frought with stupid complications that many people simply won't buy.
The funny thing is that, after trying unsuccessfully to keep home taping illegal for the exact same reasons they're parading out against file-sharing, they made billions and billions of dollars selling cassette tapes to the public.
"Then large numbers of selfish people decided they were above the law"
You're exactly right. And those people were mostly Disney, and the Gershwin heirs. They decided that the words that were in the Constitution regarding copyright and public domain works weren't good enough. So they bribed Mary Bono and some others in Washington into changing the rules, thereby freezing the date at which works enter the public domain.
So hey. You wanna play rough? That's cool. But it's fucking ON now.
They are annoying, but I prefer ads with audio that I can press SKIP on to Salon-style, you-must-watch-this-entire-commercial-before-you-r ead-anything type. If you can't figure out how to hit skip, then... The other day I had a giant ad pop up out of AIM. That was annoying as shit, because you couldn't close it until it ended. That made me think about not using the AIM client... briefly. I've never considered not using myspace because of the ads - you can skip them.
No, please, somebody mod this guy troll. He deserves it.
I'm 31. When I moved across the country to an area where I knew NOBODY, MySpace helped me meet people with similar interests. MySpace is the only reason I have any friends at all down here (yes, I'm a piss-poor socializer outside of an ASCII environment). The one venue where I've found to play my music on a regular basis down here, I found out about through MySpace. I've gotten some fans for my (unsigned, independant) music through MySpace, as well as become a fan of other unsigned, independant local musicians. I don't have a huge fan base, but thanks to MySpace, if I ever visit Seattle, Canada, Charlotte, Chicago, Orlando, or Texas, there's people who can help me hook up shows. MySpace is how I find out when good local acts are playing (do YOU really wanna wade through ten pages of 5-point type in the back of your free weekly? Me neither). MySpace is the reason people come to see me when I play. If MySpace ever adds the ability to email multiple people without the use of bulletins, it might just replace email for me. All of my friends here, and all of my friends in Milwaukee, and all of my friends in San Francicso, are on it. I need to check my MySpace messages multiple times a day. I only need to check my actual email once every day or two.
MySpace isn't completely original - it's basically LiveJournal meets Demostreams. But the idea of a multi-featured user community has come a long way since AOL, and it's a concept that's rapidly gaining traction in the marketplace. Slashdot itself is a user-community, just without certain features (music and pictures) and with others (a more specific and exclusive user base). MySpace, Slashdot, Livejournal, Friendster, etc etc are as successful as they are because the marketplace rewards their ideas. Quit bitching about it, come up with a concept as successful as MySpace, and make your own billion dollars.
Are there problems with MySpace? Sure. The ads are getting more and more intrusive. But if that's your argument against it, you might as well argue against the internet itself. There is plenty of ugly HTML on MySpace. Last time I checked, though, there was also plenty outside of it as well. The servers are getting slower and buggier. But again, MySpace is not unique in this regard - I can't even log into Friendster anymore, it's so slow. And yes, there are a bunch of little kids running around acting like morons. But if this is your argument against it, then you must also be against all IM as well. And, just like Slashdot, there are plenty of people who are idiots - and plenty who aren't. Bottom line, MySpace is very much worth the ZERO DOLLARS I paid to be there.
If you don't want to use it, that's fine, but don't insult everybody on it without exception. That's just stupid and ignorant.
There are places you can do exactly that. Amsterdam and San Francisco come to mind. Alaska permits residents to grow a certain amount for personal use. Small steps, but in the right direction. And the government's slowly coming around. Give em a couple hundred years... Cannabis prohibition is still mostly driven by the paper industry, just like it was in Hearst's day.
To all those who said that P2P "pirate" networks would never bring about significant changes in the business models of big *AA... want some salt with that crow?
Sure, it's restricted, and it expires, but as long as the black market is out there, the white market will slowly bring itself up to speed until the need for a black market lessens more and more. Eventually the result will be something that works for picky consumers like us and for content providers. All file-sharers everywhere should not underestimate the significance of this move.
Apology accepted.
"If I could raise my kids and have 2-10 lifetimes after that, I wouldn't have any trouble filling my time"
That's a big assumption. How do you know? You've never lived that long, and never seen anybody else do it either. How old are you now, 20? 30? 40? It's real easy to say you'll never get bored of things when there are still things you haven't tried.
And even if you could fill 2-10 lifetimes meaningfully, which I doubt, surely you must realize that, given an indefinite lifespan, you would eventually be bored with being alive. At some point, the only thing you had yet to experience would be death.
How many video games do you continue playing once you've unlocked all the secrets and beaten the game?
OK, for the record, IHBT.
... and wrap them with Dyson spheres."
" Ok, you feel free to off yourself any time you like."
I don't think I'll have to, as I consider indefinite longevity to be unattainable during my lifetime. Sure, maybe I'll live to be 120 or 130, tops, but I don't think the average human lifespan is going to even top 200 for many many more decades.
Thanks for the invitation, though. Mighty white of you.
"Please don't slow progress down for those of us who want to seek out new solar systems
What does this have to do with longevity exactly? Are you proposing seriously that prolonging the human lifespan is a necessary component of long-range space exploration? Have you given absolutely zero thought to what all those 1000-year old people are going to, say, eat and drink for 1000 years? 1000 years worth of food and water is a lot of food and water, requiring a lot of fuel to get it off the ground. And better make sure it's all non-perishable, because it has to last for 1000 years.
What will make human exploration of deep space possible will be three thing - a) previous exploration of deep space my unmanned probes; b) some kind of suspended animation system, a la "Aliens"; c) A ship large enough to contain agricultural facilities for all of it's inhabitants, and enough inhabitants to form a sustainable gene pool for long enough to reach their destination. Indefinite lifespan is NOT the solution.
Besides, of all the people living on Earth today, very few have any inclination to be space explorers. If a magic wand were waved today and everybody could live to be 1000, your "solution" of everybody being space explorers would seem to require a good chunk of the populace being shipped off to space against their will, to enjoy 1000 years of doing NOTHING but staring at each other while they waited for the ship to arrive. What a swell life that would be. Every single ship would be filled with corpses when it arrived. What a great way to present ourselves to the galaxy. Also, it would seem to require a good chunk of planetary resources being devoted to the manufacture and launch of ships large enough to hold enough food and water to sustain these poor, tortured souls for their long voyage. Except you seem to forget that we'll need all the planetary resources wer can muster for food and water for all the 1000-year old people that we'll have living here. Soylent green, anybody?
On to overpopulation.
"And overpopulation won't be a problem either, since we'll be able to create habitats in environments that are current unsuitable for life (deserts, underground, in the ocean, orbiting, in the asteroids, etc)."
Oh this is rich. Once humanity has indefinite lifespan, there will be no resources available to make these environments habitable. Deserts: There will be no water to irrigate the desert with because all these thousand-year-old people will be drinking it. Udnerground: we have this already. Ocean: too costly even for now, let alone in the resource-starved world of your utopian future brought about by a huge population of uber-geriatrics. Asteroids: this one is fucking hilarious. ASTEROIDS HIT THINGS. All your "solutions" could only take place in a world where money didn't exist. And as long as one thing is more useful to a person than another thing, money will always exist.
"And as to the book, there are many authors who make their living scaring the public. It appears this was one of them."
Oh go soak your head. Scary things exist. It doesn't mean we shouldn't think about them. Does a life-insurance salesman make his living by scaring people? Sure. Does this make him a bad person? No. If nobody sold life insurance the world would be a worse place. Sometimes there are things we need to be scared of.
"Living forever is no way boring"
OK, at the point at which you make this statement, you lose any and all right to claim any
"They'd all be killing themselves after 200 years, or so. What would a psychology formed in 1000 A.D. - or even 1700 A.D. do in the world of today?"
Took the words right out of my mouth. There was a book I read a long time ago, can't remember what it was called, but it dealt with this very issue. There was an elite class of super-rich who could afford an indefinite life span. The problems were many. Firstly, there was overpopulation. This is what happens when fewer people die but the planet stays the same size. Then there was massive boredom among these super-old people because how much is there do do in the world really? At some point you will have done everything there is to do. When the characters in this book reached that point, they responded to their massive boredom with equally massive depravity, and started killing and torturing people because it was literally the only thing they had never tried doing before. What wouldn't humans stoop to with all eternity to kill?
So yeah - bad, bad idea, even if it was probable, which I don't consider it to be.
"The rightest a man could ever be would be to live infinitely long" - L Ron Hubbard. You wanna be on the same side as THAT guy?!
Microsoft has released a program called MCP. Where did I put my frisbee...
Now this is funny.
Firstly, this is honestly the first time in my life I've ever been called any kind of conservative. I wish you'd had to courage to not post anonymously so you could read this. I'm quite liberal. My statement that it's never good to put people in charge of the government who hate it is intended to apply to the current administration, to people like Grover Norquist who want the government small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Secondly, if I lived in Ohio or Florida, my vote already would have been taken away.
Thirdly, when you start talking about taking people's votes away, you don't do a great job of presenting yourself in any better light than those currently dismantling America as fast as they can (the neo-cons).
"It's never a good idea to give people who think the end of the world would be a good thing the means to end the world."
Kinda like it's never a good idea to put people who hate government in charge of all of it...