Sure there is! This is the age that you don't have to know the guy that makes your food, sells you your food, even the guy that makes your food.
The point of the food rant is that we are more disconnected from each other now than at any other point in human history. And spare me the 'small world' crap because planes, telephones, internets and fax machines do not bring people closer, they just make you have a great number of increasingly anonymous people that seem to be nothing but resources.
In the ages past we NEEDED the support of a real community to survive. No longer, and this has had a separation effect on us that leads exactly to what the GP was talking about.
Actually, AFAIK the black market measuring system for drugs is still a mixed system too. Pounds, ounces, grams, kilos, all of these can be heard in the back alleys of America. In fact, I think the drug using population is probably better equipped for a switch to metric than just about any other significantly sized group. Not that I advocate drug use, of course.
They did on one plane. And a reason that the others didn't? An odd mixture of fear and security. The fear component is obvious, scared of the big bad terrorists. The more insidious bit is the secure feeling we Americans have... See, there's always a cop to call, a firefighter, an ambulance... We expect the government to take control of any scary situation, making those passengers sit there and wait for some authority figure to save them.
I bet someone on the unsuccessful plane realized that he/she was NOT going to be saved and acted, starting a chain reaction that lets the 200 people beat the 5 hijackers, like of course they can.
C'mon mods, just because bitt3n is a horribly sick and disturbed individual to want anything to do with that, it's still funny. The.sea part was clever even. Give this person points.
I don't know anything about Wii modding (except that some fine work is being done in the wiimote-pc area) but doesn't the Wii use Opera? Is this going to help in cracking any trusted executable protection I assume (maybe incorrectly) they've used to foil pirates/legitimate backup makers?
If you don't care enough to learn how a tool works, then it's no one but your own fault when you maim yourself using it.
However, hopefully when you need a tool used you find someone who knows how to use it properly to assist you. Why do they have the magical ability to do something you don't? Why, they were interested in it and spent time to learn. That's how society works, some people can do stuff you can't, you can do stuff they can, and for some reason (community spirit, cash, favors, whatever) you help each other out.
Not everyone has to understand computer science to trust the machines, if you trust the computer scientists verifying it. With open source software the verification group grows far larger, vastly increasing the chance that some decent person with the right skill set notices the error (or impropriety as the case may be), compared to some paid group approved by the corporation (who may or may not have a political agenda).
If you're still so worried about open source backdoors and bugs, you have to ask yourself it it matters enough to you to learn what you need to to verify it yourself. The information is available, and you CAN learn these things, it's not magic.
I don't understand, are you trying to count votes on this machine or play Quake 4? There are fine, small, stable kernels out there for many embedded systems. Hell, there are dozens of tidy OSs for the ARM family alone.
The system you seem to be describing, a full blown linux system, all networked to some type of central vote counting database is so beyond the scope of this discussion it's unreal.
You know, even allowing for big powerful linux boxes to do something so simple as count touchscreen presses, I think a good case could be made for using a minimal SELinux installation. It's NSA approved for all the flag-waving true believers, and open sourced for all the critical cynics.
Either way you go, machines are built by people, they are not magical boxes with a will of their own and therefore unable to be trusted with counting our votes. Machines can be checked, verified, and if necessary retooled to remove a flaw. Open source software lets you find flaws while I find flaws, while she finds flaws, and, hopefully one of us will care enough about democracy to call foul and find a way to fix it.
Your examples of why these uniformed authority figures should be respected ring hollow for me, and I'll tell you why.
The first case, with the state trooper helping you with your car in a ditch is something that happened to me. No ditch really, but in pouring rain and while pushing my car out of the road a state trooper came, parked on the side of the road behind me and proceeded to run my plate. Satisfied that I was pushing a car not listed as stolen, and that the person who owned it (me) had no warrants issued, he merrily went on his way without so much as a smile and wave. Boy was I ever so respectful of that lazy piece of shit. BTW, this happened less than 150 yards from a state police post. Didn't even ask if he could radio me a towtruck.
Next, and most shamefully is your New Orleans rescue scenario. Are you kidding me? Were you talking about the Bizzaro World version of Katrina, where the police and national guard came and saved the day? Or were you REALLY just thinking about how grateful you were that the authority figures were protecting your retail stocks from falling a couple tenths of a cent from the looting of all that food that the people had no right to eat, at least until the store re-opened and the gracious masters allowed the subjects to feed again, at the proper price of course.
You say grow up, I think that's like the pot calling the Tupperware(TM) black.
I disagree that the next major milestone is a manned mission to Mars. IMHO the next milestone for human space exploration will be the one that opens the doors wide... The first commercially profitable space mission. Well, okay, not the first, but putting satellites up doesn't count.
Seriously, it'll turn out to be something like asteroid mining (automated of course) that will get the money flowing in that economical sector.
THEN comes the manned mission to Mars, along with a profitable reason to do it.
Oh, and while I'm pulling stuff out of my ass like this, I'd like to see some sort of solar farm placed into orbit... Just a huge array of solar panels floating around out in space, storing (batteries, something better?) or beaming (large masers or something) sweet sweet electrical goodness to us generated by Helios, our built in fusion furnace (and so much more, the sun rocks).
See what happens when you post under the influence.
I don't get it... How? Cause he/she used the word 'prejudice'? Hell, I think it would be far more ignorant, unreasonable and/or irrational to NOT be prejudice against things like child molestation. If I were to meet someone who was into child molestation I think it would be perfectly reasonable to smash the persons face without having a heart to heart first. I say that if more prejudice were applied to overt evil and less to things that are just us verses them (like sexual orientation, religion, race) we might be able to make some real progress.
I'm sorry, but that is the most un-American thing I've ever read on slashdot.
My nephew's life, my son's lives, my wife's life, MY life, not one is more important than keeping America free. You have wrongly placed your life and that of your loved ones on a pedistal higher than that of Freedom. Freedom is what every soldier who's ever died under the Stars and Stripes died for, and you're willing to give that all away to be safe? You're MORTAL! I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but you're going to die, you cannot avoid it.
I could go on for a long time, as you've really pressed a button, so before I do all that, I'll just offer you some advice.
While you live, live free, and hold on to that freedom even at the cost of your life.
You know, I'm a technophile, and I'd MUCH rather lose every drop of high (meaning electrical for the purposes of this post) technology then have to bow down to the overlords ability to do whatever they want with my data, as the opposite is SURELY not going to be allowed.
Let me tell you, as someone who has had thier identity stolen, the ability to pay bills and whatnot online isn't worth having your information stolen WITH NO CORRECTIVE ACTION BEING TAKEN. Hey, it's a digital world, and shit happens, stuff gets stolen, it's the point that it was just OK to be this sloppy with someone's information... And they were sloppy, there's no way anyone without superpowers (corporations/governments/virtual adepts) can crack good (and free and simple) encryption. Okay, maybe 'no way' is a bit harsh, but I'd win the lotto first.
We cannot put the service providers on such a pedistal or they will 'maximize profits' us right out of everything we have. You bash the 70s because personal contact hadn't been automated out of society yet, but people were much better off back then in many other ways. Only technology has gotten better, and no, that's not because service providers are given free reign to do as they please, it's because of very bright people at a few labs around the globe, but mostly because of AT&T and a few universities here in the United States. I mean, look what happened to telecom tech after AT&T got the ole samurai chop. All the service providers, each one trying to prove who could suck the customer's johnson the best led to low rates, high usage, technology boom, and a generally good time for all... Now that things are deregulated and starting to come back into larger globs, look what's happening, in case you hadn't noticed, the U.S. is losing the broadband wars to 3rd world countries. Heh, that's just funny.
If you've gotten to the point that the media needs to damn you, well, then you've made a dent. The way to deal wth the problem of the slander is built into the whole affair... If you can convince at least one friendly and sociable person in every neighborhood your local chapter represtents then people (who really do already know Rush et all are overboard, if not plain old propaganda) will tell this to thier neighbors.
You're right tho, they don't call them television PROGRAMS for nothing, maybe I'm being overly optimistic...
I've noticed that many other posters have put you firmly into the dunce corner for your little brainfart, as well they should have. Just because the major media has done it's jobs by telling us how we've lost our rights and now is doing it's REAL job (the transtion to acceptance of those lost rights by making it something we don't talk about any more) doesn't mean we don't care.
Are you a flag-waving troop pro-war(go out and die for my ego boy) 'patriot'?
When you're thinking of the 'freedoms' our Beloved Leader is protecting, which ones do you think about? Because, honestly, I haven't gotten the list of what freedoms I have to give up so that my freedoms can be protected, and I would really like one of these lists. In my hubris I had assumed the Bill of Rights to be this list, but apparently I'm a terrorist sympathiser for thinking that I need all that freedom.
When I -DO- get a copy of the REVISED Bill of Rights (for Patriots(TM)), I'm going to tear it into small squares and use the damned thing as wadding in the shells will use to ACTUALLY defend my freedoms, probably at the cost of my life, but that's the price some of us must pay so that the rest may live free.
Note that most people who can't help screaminig about how 'patriotic' they are usually are th first ones to be willing to give up everyone's rights for thier own safety. They have mistaken partriotism for nationalism, as they are far too scared to actually live in a democracy. See, in a democracy people are free to learn, maybe even things that can hurt other people.
If you don't like that, good for you, democracy is all about the freedom to choose, so, if you're too scared to live in a democracy, we won't begrudge you at all to goto a nation that lets God tell it's leaders the way the people should be treated. Iran sounds nice, but I heard they may be getting a flare up of naplam, bunker buster NUKES (that's not just a euphamism) and hot D.U. rain... You know, freedom showers, bringing people freedom (from breathing) and Happiness (mandatory 7.5 Smile Factor, or report for interrogation/sodomy at Gitmo), so bring a raincoat... Ignoring facts and making up realities THERE like you do HERE just won't work (ask Cheyney, but not from firing range), but you'll have gotten rid of those nasty freedoms that stupid Americans like me are willing to trade our lives for.
Sure it does, probably more than one. We've just never heard about them because the content of thier message is WAY above the allowable truth level of the major (and most minor) media outlets.
On second thought, maybe not. I read a fair number of alternatve media outlets, and even yet I don't hear anything about the 'Reality' party or anything similar, so maybe you're right.
If they don't exist, the question (to me at least) becomes 'Why not?', there are plenty of Americans (I optimistically believe a majority, or nearly) out there clear minded enough to hear signal through the noise, if presented well enough. There should be organzed a new party out there knockinig on doors from coast to coast, unreliant upon (and strategically aware of the absence of) media coverage. Grassroots organization and propaganda fueled the Republican revolution in the 80s and 90s, it can be done again.
This country (and probably the world) would now be experimenting with new types of utopian government if the Republcans now running the country had had any intention of actually doing good things. Mind you, they WERE already one of the two spoons we're allowed to be fed from, but a large number of feet on th ground and hands knockinig doors could still work, at least well enough to open a few eyes.
Oh, and if my post is missing a few 'i's, it's because my keyboard wants me to be a masochist and hit it harder than anything else.
No, it's plain common(sic) sense and plain common(double-sic) decency. It's the "every situation must have a rule to dictate it" mindset that has turned many of our nations (most especially mine) into paranoid schizoprenics, and the reason laywers run things... Lawyers are the only ones with enough balls to pretend they understand the insane patchwork of logic(ubersic) we call our code of law.
Look, it's like this... No, this doesn't even deserve an analogy, this situation itself SERVES as a fine example of 'woops, we got caught, start shreddin the documents' because that's exaclty what they did when they removed the references in question.
Ever had a teacher that says "there are no stupid questions except unasked ones"?
Well, I had a teacher like that in HS (my best teacher ever, btw), who's mind I changed about that. See, we were discussing when some scientist (I think Tesla, but I'm not sure) accidently made a spark between some metal object and a freshly dead frog's brain, thus making the frog's legs jump.
Of course, this being my computer science teacher (and physics, the class where this conversation was held), and added to the fact that we had been studying digital logic in hardware (TTLs etc, wiring up logic circuits for homework) for the past few months, I immediatly asked if it was possible to make a remote control frog.
Heh, he looked at me for a few seconds and said "Mr. *CENSORED*, what I said before about stupid questons was wrong, that would have been a smart question to leave unasked."
Just thought I'd share the flashback you inspired.
To me this is the perfect example of why capitalism != democracy.
And by the way, has anyone noticed China setting up a capitalistic communism? Did they just look at the U.S. And U.S.S.R. during the cold war and say "Yeah, a little of both please" and pick out the worst of both worlds?
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, I think we ALL forgot Vanilla Ice, or at least tried to.
LOL, I think the parent poster must've accidentally stumbled across the brown noise while poke-ing around with his C64.
I figure that kind of rage is reserved for something that either maimed you or made you shit yourself explosively.
Sure there is! This is the age that you don't have to know the guy that makes your food, sells you your food, even the guy that makes your food.
The point of the food rant is that we are more disconnected from each other now than at any other point in human history. And spare me the 'small world' crap because planes, telephones, internets and fax machines do not bring people closer, they just make you have a great number of increasingly anonymous people that seem to be nothing but resources.
In the ages past we NEEDED the support of a real community to survive. No longer, and this has had a separation effect on us that leads exactly to what the GP was talking about.
Actually, AFAIK the black market measuring system for drugs is still a mixed system too. Pounds, ounces, grams, kilos, all of these can be heard in the back alleys of America. In fact, I think the drug using population is probably better equipped for a switch to metric than just about any other significantly sized group. Not that I advocate drug use, of course.
They did on one plane. And a reason that the others didn't? An odd mixture of fear and security. The fear component is obvious, scared of the big bad terrorists. The more insidious bit is the secure feeling we Americans have... See, there's always a cop to call, a firefighter, an ambulance... We expect the government to take control of any scary situation, making those passengers sit there and wait for some authority figure to save them.
I bet someone on the unsuccessful plane realized that he/she was NOT going to be saved and acted, starting a chain reaction that lets the 200 people beat the 5 hijackers, like of course they can.
C'mon mods, just because bitt3n is a horribly sick and disturbed individual to want anything to do with that, it's still funny. The .sea part was clever even. Give this person points.
Right wing think tanks don't impress me.
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1452
I don't know anything about Wii modding (except that some fine work is being done in the wiimote-pc area) but doesn't the Wii use Opera? Is this going to help in cracking any trusted executable protection I assume (maybe incorrectly) they've used to foil pirates/legitimate backup makers?
If you don't care enough to learn how a tool works, then it's no one but your own fault when you maim yourself using it.
However, hopefully when you need a tool used you find someone who knows how to use it properly to assist you. Why do they have the magical ability to do something you don't? Why, they were interested in it and spent time to learn. That's how society works, some people can do stuff you can't, you can do stuff they can, and for some reason (community spirit, cash, favors, whatever) you help each other out.
Not everyone has to understand computer science to trust the machines, if you trust the computer scientists verifying it. With open source software the verification group grows far larger, vastly increasing the chance that some decent person with the right skill set notices the error (or impropriety as the case may be), compared to some paid group approved by the corporation (who may or may not have a political agenda).
If you're still so worried about open source backdoors and bugs, you have to ask yourself it it matters enough to you to learn what you need to to verify it yourself. The information is available, and you CAN learn these things, it's not magic.
If you STILL don't trust the machines (now that
I don't understand, are you trying to count votes on this machine or play Quake 4? There are fine, small, stable kernels out there for many embedded systems. Hell, there are dozens of tidy OSs for the ARM family alone.
The system you seem to be describing, a full blown linux system, all networked to some type of central vote counting database is so beyond the scope of this discussion it's unreal.
You know, even allowing for big powerful linux boxes to do something so simple as count touchscreen presses, I think a good case could be made for using a minimal SELinux installation. It's NSA approved for all the flag-waving true believers, and open sourced for all the critical cynics.
Either way you go, machines are built by people, they are not magical boxes with a will of their own and therefore unable to be trusted with counting our votes. Machines can be checked, verified, and if necessary retooled to remove a flaw. Open source software lets you find flaws while I find flaws, while she finds flaws, and, hopefully one of us will care enough about democracy to call foul and find a way to fix it.
Your examples of why these uniformed authority figures should be respected ring hollow for me, and I'll tell you why.
The first case, with the state trooper helping you with your car in a ditch is something that happened to me. No ditch really, but in pouring rain and while pushing my car out of the road a state trooper came, parked on the side of the road behind me and proceeded to run my plate. Satisfied that I was pushing a car not listed as stolen, and that the person who owned it (me) had no warrants issued, he merrily went on his way without so much as a smile and wave. Boy was I ever so respectful of that lazy piece of shit. BTW, this happened less than 150 yards from a state police post. Didn't even ask if he could radio me a towtruck.
Next, and most shamefully is your New Orleans rescue scenario. Are you kidding me? Were you talking about the Bizzaro World version of Katrina, where the police and national guard came and saved the day? Or were you REALLY just thinking about how grateful you were that the authority figures were protecting your retail stocks from falling a couple tenths of a cent from the looting of all that food that the people had no right to eat, at least until the store re-opened and the gracious masters allowed the subjects to feed again, at the proper price of course.
You say grow up, I think that's like the pot calling the Tupperware(TM) black.
I disagree that the next major milestone is a manned mission to Mars. IMHO the next milestone for human space exploration will be the one that opens the doors wide... The first commercially profitable space mission. Well, okay, not the first, but putting satellites up doesn't count.
Seriously, it'll turn out to be something like asteroid mining (automated of course) that will get the money flowing in that economical sector.
THEN comes the manned mission to Mars, along with a profitable reason to do it.
Oh, and while I'm pulling stuff out of my ass like this, I'd like to see some sort of solar farm placed into orbit... Just a huge array of solar panels floating around out in space, storing (batteries, something better?) or beaming (large masers or something) sweet sweet electrical goodness to us generated by Helios, our built in fusion furnace (and so much more, the sun rocks).
See what happens when you post under the influence.
That's the story how I remember it, but IIRC the version that accidently shipped with some source included was service pack #something for NT 3.5...
:-)
Thanks for posting that, your parent poster made my eyes roll so hard that if you hadn't posted this I was going to. You saved me a google.
That's right, I don't care what drinkypoo says, and I agree with him totally!
Democracy rocks!
I don't get it... How? Cause he/she used the word 'prejudice'? Hell, I think it would be far more ignorant, unreasonable and/or irrational to NOT be prejudice against things like child molestation. If I were to meet someone who was into child molestation I think it would be perfectly reasonable to smash the persons face without having a heart to heart first. I say that if more prejudice were applied to overt evil and less to things that are just us verses them (like sexual orientation, religion, race) we might be able to make some real progress.
I'm sorry, but that is the most un-American thing I've ever read on slashdot.
My nephew's life, my son's lives, my wife's life, MY life, not one is more important than keeping America free. You have wrongly placed your life and that of your loved ones on a pedistal higher than that of Freedom. Freedom is what every soldier who's ever died under the Stars and Stripes died for, and you're willing to give that all away to be safe? You're MORTAL! I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but you're going to die, you cannot avoid it.
I could go on for a long time, as you've really pressed a button, so before I do all that, I'll just offer you some advice.
While you live, live free, and hold on to that freedom even at the cost of your life.
Actually, when I read it I assumed he/she meant bytes, as that would bring his numbers very close to what I get in KB/s.
You know, I'm a technophile, and I'd MUCH rather lose every drop of high (meaning electrical for the purposes of this post) technology then have to bow down to the overlords ability to do whatever they want with my data, as the opposite is SURELY not going to be allowed.
Let me tell you, as someone who has had thier identity stolen, the ability to pay bills and whatnot online isn't worth having your information stolen WITH NO CORRECTIVE ACTION BEING TAKEN. Hey, it's a digital world, and shit happens, stuff gets stolen, it's the point that it was just OK to be this sloppy with someone's information... And they were sloppy, there's no way anyone without superpowers (corporations/governments/virtual adepts) can crack good (and free and simple) encryption. Okay, maybe 'no way' is a bit harsh, but I'd win the lotto first.
We cannot put the service providers on such a pedistal or they will 'maximize profits' us right out of everything we have. You bash the 70s because personal contact hadn't been automated out of society yet, but people were much better off back then in many other ways. Only technology has gotten better, and no, that's not because service providers are given free reign to do as they please, it's because of very bright people at a few labs around the globe, but mostly because of AT&T and a few universities here in the United States. I mean, look what happened to telecom tech after AT&T got the ole samurai chop. All the service providers, each one trying to prove who could suck the customer's johnson the best led to low rates, high usage, technology boom, and a generally good time for all... Now that things are deregulated and starting to come back into larger globs, look what's happening, in case you hadn't noticed, the U.S. is losing the broadband wars to 3rd world countries. Heh, that's just funny.
Alright, enough rant for me.
Yeah, thanks. That combinaton of A and B are prolly why I have bad karma here. :-)
If you've gotten to the point that the media needs to damn you, well, then you've made a dent. The way to deal wth the problem of the slander is built into the whole affair... If you can convince at least one friendly and sociable person in every neighborhood your local chapter represtents then people (who really do already know Rush et all are overboard, if not plain old propaganda) will tell this to thier neighbors.
You're right tho, they don't call them television PROGRAMS for nothing, maybe I'm being overly optimistic...
I've noticed that many other posters have put you firmly into the dunce corner for your little brainfart, as well they should have. Just because the major media has done it's jobs by telling us how we've lost our rights and now is doing it's REAL job (the transtion to acceptance of those lost rights by making it something we don't talk about any more) doesn't mean we don't care.
Are you a flag-waving troop pro-war(go out and die for my ego boy) 'patriot'?
When you're thinking of the 'freedoms' our Beloved Leader is protecting, which ones do you think about? Because, honestly, I haven't gotten the list of what freedoms I have to give up so that my freedoms can be protected, and I would really like one of these lists. In my hubris I had assumed the Bill of Rights to be this list, but apparently I'm a terrorist sympathiser for thinking that I need all that freedom.
When I -DO- get a copy of the REVISED Bill of Rights (for Patriots(TM)), I'm going to tear it into small squares and use the damned thing as wadding in the shells will use to ACTUALLY defend my freedoms, probably at the cost of my life, but that's the price some of us must pay so that the rest may live free.
Note that most people who can't help screaminig about how 'patriotic' they are usually are th first ones to be willing to give up everyone's rights for thier own safety. They have mistaken partriotism for nationalism, as they are far too scared to actually live in a democracy. See, in a democracy people are free to learn, maybe even things that can hurt other people.
If you don't like that, good for you, democracy is all about the freedom to choose, so, if you're too scared to live in a democracy, we won't begrudge you at all to goto a nation that lets God tell it's leaders the way the people should be treated. Iran sounds nice, but I heard they may be getting a flare up of naplam, bunker buster NUKES (that's not just a euphamism) and hot D.U. rain... You know, freedom showers, bringing people freedom (from breathing) and Happiness (mandatory 7.5 Smile Factor, or report for interrogation/sodomy at Gitmo), so bring a raincoat... Ignoring facts and making up realities THERE like you do HERE just won't work (ask Cheyney, but not from firing range), but you'll have gotten rid of those nasty freedoms that stupid Americans like me are willing to trade our lives for.
Sure it does, probably more than one. We've just never heard about them because the content of thier message is WAY above the allowable truth level of the major (and most minor) media outlets.
On second thought, maybe not. I read a fair number of alternatve media outlets, and even yet I don't hear anything about the 'Reality' party or anything similar, so maybe you're right.
If they don't exist, the question (to me at least) becomes 'Why not?', there are plenty of Americans (I optimistically believe a majority, or nearly) out there clear minded enough to hear signal through the noise, if presented well enough. There should be organzed a new party out there knockinig on doors from coast to coast, unreliant upon (and strategically aware of the absence of) media coverage. Grassroots organization and propaganda fueled the Republican revolution in the 80s and 90s, it can be done again.
This country (and probably the world) would now be experimenting with new types of utopian government if the Republcans now running the country had had any intention of actually doing good things. Mind you, they WERE already one of the two spoons we're allowed to be fed from, but a large number of feet on th ground and hands knockinig doors could still work, at least well enough to open a few eyes.
Oh, and if my post is missing a few 'i's, it's because my keyboard wants me to be a masochist and hit it harder than anything else.
No, it's plain common(sic) sense and plain common(double-sic) decency. It's the "every situation must have a rule to dictate it" mindset that has turned many of our nations (most especially mine) into paranoid schizoprenics, and the reason laywers run things... Lawyers are the only ones with enough balls to pretend they understand the insane patchwork of logic(ubersic) we call our code of law.
Look, it's like this... No, this doesn't even deserve an analogy, this situation itself SERVES as a fine example of 'woops, we got caught, start shreddin the documents' because that's exaclty what they did when they removed the references in question.
Ever had a teacher that says "there are no stupid questions except unasked ones"?
Well, I had a teacher like that in HS (my best teacher ever, btw), who's mind I changed about that. See, we were discussing when some scientist (I think Tesla, but I'm not sure) accidently made a spark between some metal object and a freshly dead frog's brain, thus making the frog's legs jump.
Of course, this being my computer science teacher (and physics, the class where this conversation was held), and added to the fact that we had been studying digital logic in hardware (TTLs etc, wiring up logic circuits for homework) for the past few months, I immediatly asked if it was possible to make a remote control frog.
Heh, he looked at me for a few seconds and said "Mr. *CENSORED*, what I said before about stupid questons was wrong, that would have been a smart question to leave unasked."
Just thought I'd share the flashback you inspired.
To me this is the perfect example of why capitalism != democracy.
And by the way, has anyone noticed China setting up a capitalistic communism? Did they just look at the U.S. And U.S.S.R. during the cold war and say "Yeah, a little of both please" and pick out the worst of both worlds?