Keep in mind though, that using a no CD crack is pretty much a requirement for running many games in Windows too. All convenience issues aside, SecuROM and other DRM can actually break the games' ability to run in many systems CD or not. To say nothing of various Windows issues you may have due to the DRM. So after you buy the game, you frequently need either a No-CD cracked.exe, or you just pirate the damn thing and leave the unopened game on your shelf.
In regards to Flash, I've never actually had an issue with it. I run Ubuntu 8.04 and the non-free binary version of Flash and Firefox has no issues whatsoever with YouTube or any Flash site. Indeed, I've not had a problem with flash since Ubuntu 5.10 or thereabouts. Now, Shockwave, that's another issue. It doesn't work AT ALL. I'd like to see a fix for that sometime this millenium.
The problem is that only ONE of the four non-nuclear options you list has any ability to provide baseline power or is economically viable. That's Nat Gas. Only problem? You can only GET NatGas by drilling for OIL. So since drilling for oil is supposedly SO bad, that leaves us three rather crappy options:
Wind - inconsistent power generation, requires ridiculous amounts of land for a "wind farm" and tends to need to be placed in the same locations that very rich and powerful people (who REALLY don't want a bunch of giant windmills blocking the view) want to put their homes.
Solar - inconsistent power generation, requires very specific weather patterns (IE: craploads of sun and almost no clouds which means it cannot be used economically on more than half the planet.
Geothermal - fantasy tech. Is only beginning to be used in some areas of the world with high geothermal activity (read: Iceland, Iceland, and um... Iceland.) Not viable for the large swathes of the planet that are geologically stable, still many questions on the long-term viability of building a power plant on top of geologically unstable ground.
I'm sorry, but those options just are NOT going to work. They sound so cool and sci-fi-ish in THEORY. But in reality they are expensive, inconsistent, and unrealistic for large large areas of our planet. No, we basically have one way forward here:
1) Drill for more oil in the short term to "get us over the hump" energy-wise. We are going to need the petroleum for all the other niceties of modern life anyway (plastics, anyone?) so let's just go ahead and get the stuff out of the ground and in use while we...
2) Build lots and lots of nuclear power plants and massively upgrade the power grid so that we can support the heavy use of EV's.
Yes, we can (and should) still build solar, wind and maybe even geothermal plants too, but they will NEVER provide consistent baseline power like nuclear can. And our future is going to need consistent, plentiful power. Lots of it.
Time to get off the fantasy train kids. Oil + Nuke is the only way to go. Any other plan is a fantasy ride to cultural and technological oblivion.
Would a consumer-positive result (IE: Time Warner loses) also have any kind of side-effect on the issues surrounding the cable "Broadcast Flag" controversy and digital T.V. cards for PC's? Admittedly, I stopped following that entire scene a year or two ago when the flag came to life, so it may have already been resolved, but it does make one wonder what far-reaching effects a positive ruling in a case like this might have.
To quote the great philosopher, Fezzik: "I hope we win."
"Getting it" and thinking it's funny or assists with the quality of the discussion are two different things.
I personally got a chuckle out of it, but if I had mod points I would have ignored it for modding. Not funny enough for a funny mod, not a troll, and certainly not insightful.
Apparently some people found it offtopic, and I guess I can see that too.
Seriously though, as a basically honest person and an IT geek I find it incredibly frustrating to hear stuff like this. It's bad enough that non-specialist IT folk (general net admins and support people) get paid fuck-all despite that they are the backbone of the IT world. But to find that with a minimal amount of study and a willingness to break multiple laws you can essentially double, triple or quadruple your income and NOBODY BOTHERS TO HUNT YOU DOWN FOR IT is incredibly depressing. More and more it seems, honesty is rewarded with a kick in the crotch, and being a societal leech is rewarded with cash payouts and bling.
they just sent out a million people in planes, and won by sheer numbers.
Except... Ah... um... Ahem... They lost.
So apparently the whole "send out millions of guys in inferior fighters to crash into the enemy and die" thing only works in Starcraft. Not in the Star Wars universe, and not in real life either.
Which is precisely why you see so much illegal dumping in areas where the local or state government tries to enforce pay-to-recycle schemes.
It's Human Nature; People will gladly recycle if they can just leave it by the curb to be picked up. But if they have to take time out of their busy days (and really, who isn't incredibly busy anymore?) to drive their old whatever down to the designated recycling center, make sure it is sorted properly by type and/or material, lug it from the car into the center and possibly stand in line waiting to have it taken, then they find they have to pay? Nope, most folks will either try and hide the "recyclable" junk in with the rest of the trash, find a lonely country road and dump it in the ditch, or in the case of old PC stuff, simply hang onto it for a stupily long amount of time.
This happened in microcosm in my area. A local upscale township tried to enforce a pay-to-recycle program on it's residents. Just to be clear, these were the local semi-wealthy. Tenured College Professors, Doctors, Lawyers, Businessmen and Executives. Well educated and active citizens. Not your stereotypical poor slouches from crapsville who don't know jack about recycling. The town used to just take everything, and had no recycling plan. Pressure from local activists to start a recycling initiative and some newly elected leftist town government members pushed through the pay-to-recycle scheme and law against NOT recycling. Within a week of the new plan and law illegal dumping and incidents of recyclables mixed in with the regular trash skyrocketed through the roof. People were simply unwilling to take the time and pay the extra money to bother with recycling. Even in the face of potentially large fines. This went on for well over a year, and only escalated over time.
The township tried making everyone switch to clear plastic garbage bags, so that the garbagemen could see if there were recyclables. People just put the recyclables inside white kitchen garbage bags or paper bags and then put those in the clear bags. Or they ignored the clear bag law and continued using black plastic bags. The town offered to give people special recycling bins and to take the recycling away for them for a monthly fee (read: special tax) THAT went over like a lead balloon at the next town meeting.
Eventually the outcry from the residents and from the garbagemans union (about being forced to become "garbage cops") forced the town to rework it's plan. They made a deal with the local recycling company: The town recieved special recycling bins from the recyling company, and then distributed those to the residents at no additional charge. They then set up a special team of recycling trucks (re-purposed garbage trucks) that just collected recyclables from the bins, and would then take them to the center. The private recycler took care of sorting and recycling the junk. In the end, the town ended up turning a small profit after about a year due to the large amount of recyclables turned in at the private recycling company. Illegal dumping dropped off to the minimal level it was at before the forced pay-to-recycle plan, and most of the surrounding towns, including my own, have adopted the same type of plan. Why not? It works.
Oh, and the morons that thought up the stupid pay-to-recycle scheme? Voted out of office the next election cycle. Ain't Karma grand?
This was one of the large reasons I had held off on playing half life (2) for so long...
Ditto.
Until I pirated it, that is.
I had and have no intention of dealing with Steam(-ing pile of crap). I found (and continue to find) the entire concept ludicrous. If I buy a single-player game, I expect to be able to play it whenever, wherever, forever. No SecrapROm, no Online checks, no Nada. I'm willing to punch in a CD Key, provided it is no longer than 32 digits, and even that long is pushing it.
I think game publishers need to understand a few basic truths of business:
1) There will ALWAYS be thieves. No matter what you do, or how much money you spend on stopping them, a small percentage of people will always find a way to steal your products. Some will do it for no other reason than because they can. Don't like it? Too bad, that's business in the digital age.
2) Using DRM, rootkits, Online-checking single player games and spyware-like software to try and "secure" your game against "piracy" is at the very least ineffective and mostly nigh-on useless in actually stopping piracy. (See rule #1)
3) Assuming that ALL your customers will be thieves and thus distributing software with the garbage listed in #2 UPSETS your customers. Surprisingly, people get annoyed when software they paid good money for treats them like a criminal and/or refuses to run due to DRM and/or breaks other things in their PC, up to and including the OS itself.
4) Angry and annoyed customers means both lost revenue through negative word of mouth advertising, and by driving some customers and potential customers to outright piracy. Why should anyone pay for a game that is broken with DRM when the pirated version will come out in a week with the DRM stripped out and will be FREE to download?
5) The best way to keep piracy to a minimum is to serve up a clean game, with no DRM or anti-piracy junk other than a CD key. (One that doesn't require the CD to play would be nice as well). And since you aren't wasting MILLIONS on third-party DRM crapware, you can charge LESS for the game, and still make a higher profit. In other words, Cheap and DRM-free games sell.
I'm sure that the US will be equally happy to extradite all those Americans who hack into European criminals' computers to face charges over here.
Maybe...
But it's EUROPE. You guys can only BARELY put away terrorists. People that actually kill innocent bystanders get light sentences. What do you really think will happen to a hacker who hacks a phisher? I suspect that the worst that will happen is that they will bar this hypothetical hacker from entering Europe for a while. Which, since the hypothetical hacker in this situation is American, would mean that the hacker gets an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe for a few weeks and then comes home. Wow. Real scary.
Worse, when they come on, it's wall-to-wall coverage with NOTHING but Olympics news. And being a good Slashdotter and "geek" (the computer/networking kind, not the bites-heads-off-chickens kind), I'm not really all that much into sports.
I personally feel the same way about most major sports venues, the Superbowl being a prime target. Just leave it on the Sports channels so the rest of us that don't give a damn don't have to have it shoved in our faces. Of course, no matter what happens, half the people where I work are freaking obsessed with it, so I can't escape it no matter what.
I guess this is a large reason why I don't watch much T.V. anymore. Most of it is marketed to the same people that spend THOUSANDS to watch a bunch of roid-rage millionaires get sweaty for an hour or two. Bleah.
Let the guy start out at whatever specs he can think of (like selecting a computer from Dell), and make them pay extra for it.
Mod this guy up!
This has to be one of the smartest suggestions I can think of in a long time. The reason I refuse to play WoW or games like it is because they are big fsking time sinks, and I actually have a real life, house, cars, wife, and kids. Why the heck should I be essentially required to sacrifice all of my very valuable time just so I can play at a high level with the kids that have all summer to level up?
Being able to BUY my way to whatever the highest level is (for a reasonable and non-stupid price) Should always be an option for the working stiff.
I've never flown like Superman, met someone who flew like Superman, or even known someone who flew like Superman, In 37 years in this country. Therefore nobody flies like Superman?
Neither yours, nor the Op's line's of reasoning make any real sense, and the conclusions are equally flawed.
Let's try another, more logical line of thought: Just because there are some isolated incidents of police in a Free Society using excessive force does not automatically turn that Free Society into a Police State. All it means is that some people are assholes, even when those people are cops.
It also means that systems of Government created by humans are, by nature, as imperfect as the people in them. Thus there will always be corruption, and always be asshole cops who get too rough. But this is why we have high standards and the Rule of Law, so that the system, via The People, can self-correct.
Personally, I simply see people using cameras to expose corrupt officials as the natural self-correcting nature of Western Democratic Society becoming more efficient through the use of technology created BY that society. It's a good thing, and to be applauded.
Where are you going to get oxygen to burn the oil with?
More importantly, Since when do spacecraft BURN Hydrocarbons to provide propulsion?
I was under the impression that the primary stages of most space-capable rockets were Liquid Hydrogen-Oxygen fueled, with a solid fuel as a secondary booster stage, and then more liquid Hy/Ox fuel for space-based boosting and maneuvers.
Since when did we start putting V8's in our rockets?
Soon to be crammed full of unsolicited MALE. Once they catch him and send him off to REAL prison!
What a maroon! He get's sent to the country club you aren't allowed to leave for a less than 2 year vacation and he ESCAPES? He's gonna get EXACTLY what he deserves now.
I remember reading that book as a kid! MAN I wanted one of those SO BADLY. And now I can finally get one! Although I think I'll skip the "setting fires with small dragonfly probe and destroying the probe in the process" part.
Because we ALL know how the Government is a MODEL of efficiency and frugality. What with the DMV, Welfare, Medicare. Why, let's let Big Mamma government run EVERYTHING in our lives! Then we can all have things as cheaply and efficiently as they did in that Worker's Paradise, the Soviet Union!/sarc off
Idiot. We need MORE privatization and LESS government bureaucracy. Not the other way around! People who think like you are the ones that cost me and mine piles and piles of cash in taxes to fund your stupid pet projects that so spectacularly fail. People that think like you should be the ones shot.
That, and the fact that it is highly unlikely that neo-cavemen would even be ABLE to dig hundreds of feet down into bedrock to get close enough to the waste for it to do any harm.
The article that sparked this Slashdot post is by some know-nothing Ivory tower far leftist. Full of 10 dollar words, long on speculation and short on facts.
In other words, "Nothing to see here, move along".
It's "Don't waste The People's tax money on something that private industry will find a profitable use for". Like using the nuclear waste for nuclear power generation in more modern reactors, thus turning what was once hazardous and incredibly long lasting nuclear waste into less hazardous and very short-lived nuclear fuel AND large amounts of clean energy to power our economy and green the planet.
Or we could waste BILLIONS of tax-payer money on some hair-brained far-leftist scheme that won't work and will actually make the problem worse. I mean, why do the SMART thing and let The People fix the problem through ingenuity and enlightened self-interest? Let's let the Ivory-tower intellectuals have a go at it first so that the proper solution ends up even MORE expensive that it otherwise would be. Look how well that's worked out for our Energy Policy!
Please explain to me how a PRIVATE company NOT providing a service free of charge (free ISP newsgroups vs you paying for a newsgroups account at say, Giganews.com) constitutes an "observable erosion of civil liberties".
Seriously, I'd like to see you try. Before you start though, you should know that there really isn't any way you CAN show that. Well, not without seriously twisting and bending the defenition of civil liberties well past the point where it no longer has any semblance to it's original meaning.
Look. I like newsgroups as much as the next guy. But trying to say that an ISP (EVEN in concert with the Attorneys General of the United States) dropping it's free access to newsgroups or filtering the newsgroups it offers for free is some kind of censorship or erosion of civil liberties shows a complete lack of understanding about what censorship and civil liberties are.
You will STILL be able to get uncensored newsgroups via the Internet, and you will STILL be able to access the supposedly "banned" websites. Just use OpenDNS and sign up for a pay newsgroups account at the newsgroups company of your choice. If necessary, switch ISPs. You might need to go to dialup, but you CAN switch. I'm not going to get into a net neutrality argument or an ISP mono-duo-trio-poly discussion, but in all but a few select cases there are other choices. Please also remember that an ISP has the right (and some would say, responsibility) to cooperate with law enforcement to filter out ILLEGAL content.
This is much ado about nothing. Merely an election-year stunt to generate publicity that will have NO effect on our rights as citizens and NO real effect on stopping kiddie porn.
Now everybody stop hyperventilating and get back to downloading porn.
Re:One thing Google could do about incoming spam..
on
Spammers Choose GMail
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
Says the resident slashdot apologist for the evil Communist Chinese Thugocracy.
*eyeroll*
Go back to reading your "party approved" propaganda lit. We aren't interesting in the "party line" here.
Keep in mind though, that using a no CD crack is pretty much a requirement for running many games in Windows too. All convenience issues aside, SecuROM and other DRM can actually break the games' ability to run in many systems CD or not. To say nothing of various Windows issues you may have due to the DRM. So after you buy the game, you frequently need either a No-CD cracked .exe, or you just pirate the damn thing and leave the unopened game on your shelf.
In regards to Flash, I've never actually had an issue with it. I run Ubuntu 8.04 and the non-free binary version of Flash and Firefox has no issues whatsoever with YouTube or any Flash site. Indeed, I've not had a problem with flash since Ubuntu 5.10 or thereabouts. Now, Shockwave, that's another issue. It doesn't work AT ALL. I'd like to see a fix for that sometime this millenium.
The problem is that only ONE of the four non-nuclear options you list has any ability to provide baseline power or is economically viable. That's Nat Gas. Only problem? You can only GET NatGas by drilling for OIL. So since drilling for oil is supposedly SO bad, that leaves us three rather crappy options:
Wind - inconsistent power generation, requires ridiculous amounts of land for a "wind farm" and tends to need to be placed in the same locations that very rich and powerful people (who REALLY don't want a bunch of giant windmills blocking the view) want to put their homes.
Solar - inconsistent power generation, requires very specific weather patterns (IE: craploads of sun and almost no clouds which means it cannot be used economically on more than half the planet.
Geothermal - fantasy tech. Is only beginning to be used in some areas of the world with high geothermal activity (read: Iceland, Iceland, and um... Iceland.) Not viable for the large swathes of the planet that are geologically stable, still many questions on the long-term viability of building a power plant on top of geologically unstable ground.
I'm sorry, but those options just are NOT going to work. They sound so cool and sci-fi-ish in THEORY. But in reality they are expensive, inconsistent, and unrealistic for large large areas of our planet. No, we basically have one way forward here:
1) Drill for more oil in the short term to "get us over the hump" energy-wise. We are going to need the petroleum for all the other niceties of modern life anyway (plastics, anyone?) so let's just go ahead and get the stuff out of the ground and in use while we...
2) Build lots and lots of nuclear power plants and massively upgrade the power grid so that we can support the heavy use of EV's.
Yes, we can (and should) still build solar, wind and maybe even geothermal plants too, but they will NEVER provide consistent baseline power like nuclear can. And our future is going to need consistent, plentiful power. Lots of it.
Time to get off the fantasy train kids. Oil + Nuke is the only way to go. Any other plan is a fantasy ride to cultural and technological oblivion.
Would a consumer-positive result (IE: Time Warner loses) also have any kind of side-effect on the issues surrounding the cable "Broadcast Flag" controversy and digital T.V. cards for PC's? Admittedly, I stopped following that entire scene a year or two ago when the flag came to life, so it may have already been resolved, but it does make one wonder what far-reaching effects a positive ruling in a case like this might have.
To quote the great philosopher, Fezzik: "I hope we win."
"Getting it" and thinking it's funny or assists with the quality of the discussion are two different things.
I personally got a chuckle out of it, but if I had mod points I would have ignored it for modding. Not funny enough for a funny mod, not a troll, and certainly not insightful.
Apparently some people found it offtopic, and I guess I can see that too.
Unfortunately, there is no "+nothing, Meh." mod.
Second look at becoming an Online Criminal!
Seriously though, as a basically honest person and an IT geek I find it incredibly frustrating to hear stuff like this. It's bad enough that non-specialist IT folk (general net admins and support people) get paid fuck-all despite that they are the backbone of the IT world. But to find that with a minimal amount of study and a willingness to break multiple laws you can essentially double, triple or quadruple your income and NOBODY BOTHERS TO HUNT YOU DOWN FOR IT is incredibly depressing. More and more it seems, honesty is rewarded with a kick in the crotch, and being a societal leech is rewarded with cash payouts and bling.
Why am I an honest person again?
Except... Ah... um... Ahem... They lost.
So apparently the whole "send out millions of guys in inferior fighters to crash into the enemy and die" thing only works in Starcraft. Not in the Star Wars universe, and not in real life either.
Which is precisely why you see so much illegal dumping in areas where the local or state government tries to enforce pay-to-recycle schemes.
It's Human Nature; People will gladly recycle if they can just leave it by the curb to be picked up. But if they have to take time out of their busy days (and really, who isn't incredibly busy anymore?) to drive their old whatever down to the designated recycling center, make sure it is sorted properly by type and/or material, lug it from the car into the center and possibly stand in line waiting to have it taken, then they find they have to pay? Nope, most folks will either try and hide the "recyclable" junk in with the rest of the trash, find a lonely country road and dump it in the ditch, or in the case of old PC stuff, simply hang onto it for a stupily long amount of time.
This happened in microcosm in my area. A local upscale township tried to enforce a pay-to-recycle program on it's residents. Just to be clear, these were the local semi-wealthy. Tenured College Professors, Doctors, Lawyers, Businessmen and Executives. Well educated and active citizens. Not your stereotypical poor slouches from crapsville who don't know jack about recycling. The town used to just take everything, and had no recycling plan. Pressure from local activists to start a recycling initiative and some newly elected leftist town government members pushed through the pay-to-recycle scheme and law against NOT recycling. Within a week of the new plan and law illegal dumping and incidents of recyclables mixed in with the regular trash skyrocketed through the roof. People were simply unwilling to take the time and pay the extra money to bother with recycling. Even in the face of potentially large fines. This went on for well over a year, and only escalated over time.
The township tried making everyone switch to clear plastic garbage bags, so that the garbagemen could see if there were recyclables. People just put the recyclables inside white kitchen garbage bags or paper bags and then put those in the clear bags. Or they ignored the clear bag law and continued using black plastic bags. The town offered to give people special recycling bins and to take the recycling away for them for a monthly fee (read: special tax) THAT went over like a lead balloon at the next town meeting.
Eventually the outcry from the residents and from the garbagemans union (about being forced to become "garbage cops") forced the town to rework it's plan. They made a deal with the local recycling company: The town recieved special recycling bins from the recyling company, and then distributed those to the residents at no additional charge. They then set up a special team of recycling trucks (re-purposed garbage trucks) that just collected recyclables from the bins, and would then take them to the center. The private recycler took care of sorting and recycling the junk. In the end, the town ended up turning a small profit after about a year due to the large amount of recyclables turned in at the private recycling company. Illegal dumping dropped off to the minimal level it was at before the forced pay-to-recycle plan, and most of the surrounding towns, including my own, have adopted the same type of plan. Why not? It works.
Oh, and the morons that thought up the stupid pay-to-recycle scheme? Voted out of office the next election cycle. Ain't Karma grand?
Ditto.
Until I pirated it, that is.
I had and have no intention of dealing with Steam(-ing pile of crap). I found (and continue to find) the entire concept ludicrous. If I buy a single-player game, I expect to be able to play it whenever, wherever, forever. No SecrapROm, no Online checks, no Nada. I'm willing to punch in a CD Key, provided it is no longer than 32 digits, and even that long is pushing it.
I think game publishers need to understand a few basic truths of business:
1) There will ALWAYS be thieves. No matter what you do, or how much money you spend on stopping them, a small percentage of people will always find a way to steal your products. Some will do it for no other reason than because they can. Don't like it? Too bad, that's business in the digital age.
2) Using DRM, rootkits, Online-checking single player games and spyware-like software to try and "secure" your game against "piracy" is at the very least ineffective and mostly nigh-on useless in actually stopping piracy. (See rule #1)
3) Assuming that ALL your customers will be thieves and thus distributing software with the garbage listed in #2 UPSETS your customers. Surprisingly, people get annoyed when software they paid good money for treats them like a criminal and/or refuses to run due to DRM and/or breaks other things in their PC, up to and including the OS itself.
4) Angry and annoyed customers means both lost revenue through negative word of mouth advertising, and by driving some customers and potential customers to outright piracy. Why should anyone pay for a game that is broken with DRM when the pirated version will come out in a week with the DRM stripped out and will be FREE to download?
5) The best way to keep piracy to a minimum is to serve up a clean game, with no DRM or anti-piracy junk other than a CD key. (One that doesn't require the CD to play would be nice as well). And since you aren't wasting MILLIONS on third-party DRM crapware, you can charge LESS for the game, and still make a higher profit. In other words, Cheap and DRM-free games sell.
I think that just about covers it.
Maybe...
But it's EUROPE. You guys can only BARELY put away terrorists. People that actually kill innocent bystanders get light sentences. What do you really think will happen to a hacker who hacks a phisher? I suspect that the worst that will happen is that they will bar this hypothetical hacker from entering Europe for a while. Which, since the hypothetical hacker in this situation is American, would mean that the hacker gets an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe for a few weeks and then comes home. Wow. Real scary.
Because frankly, The Olympics are boring.
Worse, when they come on, it's wall-to-wall coverage with NOTHING but Olympics news. And being a good Slashdotter and "geek" (the computer/networking kind, not the bites-heads-off-chickens kind), I'm not really all that much into sports.
I personally feel the same way about most major sports venues, the Superbowl being a prime target. Just leave it on the Sports channels so the rest of us that don't give a damn don't have to have it shoved in our faces. Of course, no matter what happens, half the people where I work are freaking obsessed with it, so I can't escape it no matter what.
I guess this is a large reason why I don't watch much T.V. anymore. Most of it is marketed to the same people that spend THOUSANDS to watch a bunch of roid-rage millionaires get sweaty for an hour or two. Bleah.
Yeah, looks like it's back up. Kudos to the Neowin guys!
That didn't take long. Not bad for a Friday morning.
Indeed. WoW sucks. Play EvE.
Mod this guy up!
This has to be one of the smartest suggestions I can think of in a long time. The reason I refuse to play WoW or games like it is because they are big fsking time sinks, and I actually have a real life, house, cars, wife, and kids. Why the heck should I be essentially required to sacrifice all of my very valuable time just so I can play at a high level with the kids that have all summer to level up?
Being able to BUY my way to whatever the highest level is (for a reasonable and non-stupid price) Should always be an option for the working stiff.
I've never flown like Superman, met someone who flew like Superman, or even known someone who flew like Superman, In 37 years in this country. Therefore nobody flies like Superman?
Neither yours, nor the Op's line's of reasoning make any real sense, and the conclusions are equally flawed.
Let's try another, more logical line of thought: Just because there are some isolated incidents of police in a Free Society using excessive force does not automatically turn that Free Society into a Police State. All it means is that some people are assholes, even when those people are cops.
It also means that systems of Government created by humans are, by nature, as imperfect as the people in them. Thus there will always be corruption, and always be asshole cops who get too rough. But this is why we have high standards and the Rule of Law, so that the system, via The People, can self-correct.
Personally, I simply see people using cameras to expose corrupt officials as the natural self-correcting nature of Western Democratic Society becoming more efficient through the use of technology created BY that society. It's a good thing, and to be applauded.
More importantly, Since when do spacecraft BURN Hydrocarbons to provide propulsion?
I was under the impression that the primary stages of most space-capable rockets were Liquid Hydrogen-Oxygen fueled, with a solid fuel as a secondary booster stage, and then more liquid Hy/Ox fuel for space-based boosting and maneuvers.
Since when did we start putting V8's in our rockets?
Soon to be crammed full of unsolicited MALE. Once they catch him and send him off to REAL prison!
What a maroon! He get's sent to the country club you aren't allowed to leave for a less than 2 year vacation and he ESCAPES? He's gonna get EXACTLY what he deserves now.
Heh,
I remember reading that book as a kid! MAN I wanted one of those SO BADLY. And now I can finally get one! Although I think I'll skip the "setting fires with small dragonfly probe and destroying the probe in the process" part.
Because we ALL know how the Government is a MODEL of efficiency and frugality. What with the DMV, Welfare, Medicare. Why, let's let Big Mamma government run EVERYTHING in our lives! Then we can all have things as cheaply and efficiently as they did in that Worker's Paradise, the Soviet Union! /sarc off
Idiot. We need MORE privatization and LESS government bureaucracy. Not the other way around! People who think like you are the ones that cost me and mine piles and piles of cash in taxes to fund your stupid pet projects that so spectacularly fail. People that think like you should be the ones shot.
That, and the fact that it is highly unlikely that neo-cavemen would even be ABLE to dig hundreds of feet down into bedrock to get close enough to the waste for it to do any harm.
The article that sparked this Slashdot post is by some know-nothing Ivory tower far leftist. Full of 10 dollar words, long on speculation and short on facts.
In other words, "Nothing to see here, move along".
Uh No.
It's "Don't waste The People's tax money on something that private industry will find a profitable use for". Like using the nuclear waste for nuclear power generation in more modern reactors, thus turning what was once hazardous and incredibly long lasting nuclear waste into less hazardous and very short-lived nuclear fuel AND large amounts of clean energy to power our economy and green the planet.
Or we could waste BILLIONS of tax-payer money on some hair-brained far-leftist scheme that won't work and will actually make the problem worse. I mean, why do the SMART thing and let The People fix the problem through ingenuity and enlightened self-interest? Let's let the Ivory-tower intellectuals have a go at it first so that the proper solution ends up even MORE expensive that it otherwise would be. Look how well that's worked out for our Energy Policy!
*rolleyes*
You were dead-on up until the last sentence.
Please explain to me how a PRIVATE company NOT providing a service free of charge (free ISP newsgroups vs you paying for a newsgroups account at say, Giganews.com) constitutes an "observable erosion of civil liberties".
Seriously, I'd like to see you try. Before you start though, you should know that there really isn't any way you CAN show that. Well, not without seriously twisting and bending the defenition of civil liberties well past the point where it no longer has any semblance to it's original meaning.
Look. I like newsgroups as much as the next guy. But trying to say that an ISP (EVEN in concert with the Attorneys General of the United States) dropping it's free access to newsgroups or filtering the newsgroups it offers for free is some kind of censorship or erosion of civil liberties shows a complete lack of understanding about what censorship and civil liberties are.
You will STILL be able to get uncensored newsgroups via the Internet, and you will STILL be able to access the supposedly "banned" websites. Just use OpenDNS and sign up for a pay newsgroups account at the newsgroups company of your choice. If necessary, switch ISPs. You might need to go to dialup, but you CAN switch. I'm not going to get into a net neutrality argument or an ISP mono-duo-trio-poly discussion, but in all but a few select cases there are other choices. Please also remember that an ISP has the right (and some would say, responsibility) to cooperate with law enforcement to filter out ILLEGAL content.
This is much ado about nothing. Merely an election-year stunt to generate publicity that will have NO effect on our rights as citizens and NO real effect on stopping kiddie porn.
Now everybody stop hyperventilating and get back to downloading porn.
You guys see ads?
No Firefox+Adblock Plus?
WTH? I thought this was Slashdot?!?!?!?
Just give it the Mythbusters treatment and make an "Archimedes Death Ray" (AKA, very-short-range-small-stuff-burner-but-only-on-very-sunny-days.)