As a counter-point, I'd bring up Stephen King's experiment, where he allowed free download of his book and asked for a tiny donation in return. Very few of the people who downloaded the book paid for it and the project was scrapped.
In the final reckoning, King had somewhere in the ballpark of 71% payemnt (i.e. 71% of those who downloaded kicked him a buck, as per agreement), and made something like a $400,000 *profit.* The projected wasn't "scrapped" at all, but rather back-burnered in favor of other projects (which he is contractually obligated to complete.)
Your major point-- that big names hardly need to benefit from the name-building power of distributing freebies-- still stands, but the King facts were wrong.
The difference between "thou" and "you" has nothing to do with number. It's all about familiarity: "thou" is the familiar form (used with pals, family and subordinates) and "you" is the formal form (used with strangers, superiors, etc.) It's exactly like the difference between "tu" and "usted." Both "thou" and "you" can function as singular or plural, although in a group situation you'll tend to use the more formal form (this goes for contintental Spanish as well as early modern English)-- probably erring on the side of safety (wouldn't want the serfs thinking you like 'em.)
Indeed! My favorite pic by far is this one. Not only is she wearing a halter-top that has a play on the word "avacado" printed on it, but she also appears to be HOLDING an avacado. God bless you, zany Japan 100%!
OK, I guess I'm just following this whole mess down troll lane, but:
The first thing that needs to happen is that corrupt american politicians need to stop voting more and more free money to israel. They wont because then the jewish interest groups will stop giving them money, but that would be a good start.
OK, I'm a little confused about these vast Jewish interests groups that are controlling all of the US Gov with money. Jews currently account for less than 2% of the US population (around 5 or 6 million Jews nationwide-- about the same as Arab/Arab-Americans in the US, in what is a dicededly convenient co-incidence.) If money is what talks-- and the above statement seems to pretty explicitly point out that's where you're coming from-- then where are these 6 million members of ZOG getting the wherewithall to make themselves heard?
Look, since '97, Big Tobacco alone has given around $18 million in political contributions. I find it hard to believe that a vast minority of Americans is going to compete with that-- and that's just Big Tobacco. What about the Auto Industry? Coal and Oil? the NRA? From '89-'98 the NRA dropped something like $14 million on Congress alone.
Maybe if every Jewish man, woman and child put a dollar in a special fund in order to get certain US officials elected . . .
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# pandt.pl- a lame joke that violates FAA regulations.
#
# all code original "Savage" Henry Matisse
#
# released to public domain April, 1998
#
# Penn and Teller made me do it!
system "clear";
print "READY\n";
sleep 4;
system "clear";
print "ARMING\n";
print "ARMING.\n";
print "ARMING..\n";
print "ARMING...\n";
print "ARMED!\n";
sleep 3;
$seconds = "17";
system "clear";
{
if ($seconds >= 0){
print "ARMED!\n";
print "00:00:$seconds UNTIL DETONATION\n";
The responsibility they have to their shareholders to make as much money as possible precludes any moral compunction they may have.
Sorry, incorrect. If that were the case, then the company would, by definition, not have any moral compunction (seeing as how they always must be making money, so the moral compunction is constantly precluded.) If the company had no moral compunction, then there would be no reason for them to follow any laws (feel free to debate this, but the fact of the matter is that you honor laws because you feel it is right to do so, not because you fear punishment-- everyday everyone of us has a million oppertunites to flaunt many a piddling law [speeding, seatbelt laws, petty theft, murder, rape, arson, "file sharing"] without detection, and yet we generally do not choose to do so. As such, what is making you follow those laws? Nothing more than you general moral compunction. Furthermore, since you've no doubt broekn many laws and not found yourself punished, why is it that you follow any laws at all, when you know fully well taht you cannot possibly be caught? Or, even better, that being caught cannot possibly hurt you? So, you honor laws because you're moral, not because you live in constant, debilitating fear of some draconian, spanking-father super-survellience Man.) So, if you have no moral compunction and if your highest motive is profit, then you are obligated to get into teh most profitable concievable business. That business is the dealing of addictive substance (with a relatively low production/conversion cost, no quality control, and a vertical demand curve.)
Do most corporations deal crack? Well, then, I guess there's some fucking morality out there afterall, you dim fucking shits.
"Would you trade in some of your personal freedom to be safer from terrorists?"
Most folks would agree to this, certainly. Unfortunately, as it stands, it seems the more salient question is "Would you trade in some of your personal freedo to be no safer from terrorists?" Because that's where it is: we will be asked to sacrifice our freedoms, but will be no safer from terrorist actions-- especially terrorist that display the adaptibility, patience and savage will that these hijackers did.
You are both clearly insane people! A field-coit gestation transform? Decompressing ontlogogical entropism? You'd probably suggest protecting the nuclear launch codes using a Batman decoder ring from a box of cereal. For the very love of Christ, I pray and hope that neither of you boobs are in the Public Sector.
Everyone-- me, the old lady next door, the kid down the street, the dog-- knows that field-coit gestation transforms and ontological decompression over a finite field are about as secure as a tipsy girl's chastity on prom night. Field-coit, when push comes to shove, is hardly more than a complex-- but certainly tractable-- hex-stacked XORing from an arbitrary (but by no means random) set of figures of undefined length. And ontological demopression?!? Christalmighty! Not only is it slow (maybe you can wait 1345 months to encrypt "The Old Man in the Sea", but I myself have a wife and dog to feed), but you actually end up with LESS entropy than using, say, triple-DES with unique keys-- which also has the tiny-tiny-twee little advantage of not taking 112 YEARS!!!
This is what I hate about this ENTIRE FIELD: Some gintch in Ireland comes up with a cute (if entirely infeasable)cryptosystem (which, I might add, she has already aknowledged and published the weaknesses of!), and then I have to listen to every blowhard from here to Katamandu go off about how great field-coit and ontological decompression are. Christ, it's wors than talking about laptops with Mac-Addicts!
Buyer beware on those eTowers, kids. I've got one, and have two big complaints:
1) The modem is a cheap piece of junk that will a) never connect at over ~30k and b) die within 2 months 2) the USB ports on these puppies are wickedly FU-- which is to say very inconsistant. They'll support a USB ZIP drive, but not a USB modem, for no appearent reason. eMachine's tech support just scratches their heads on this one.
Man, any of you persecuted American Christians out there need someone to hide you? I'll gladly make space in my hayloft and attic-- I mean, what with those Muslim, Jew and Buddhist storm troopers pounding the pavement, hunting you down, you need all the protection you can get.
Honest, my heart weeps for those poor fucking Christians.
I wholeheartedly agree that Princess M was very original (some REALLY cool monsters in the begging, and a lof of super characterization.) Unfortunately, (and maybe this is just 'cause I'm not an anime-afficianado) but I found this film to have, like, 5 pounds of plot in a ten pound bag. I actually dozed off several times during the last quarter of the film (and that's a really bad sign-- I don't think I've ever dozed off during a film before.)
The writing and dialogue in this film was excellent. With all the things too see and hear, it says a lot that the writing stood out so much that I noticed.
I'll have to disagree with you on that. I'd say that the dialogue was, at best, very uneven. That little turtle mofo had great lines and was very well done, and the female protagonist (voice of Drew Barrymore) was also handled well, both by the writers and voice-actress. But the Weapons Specialist Kangaroo-Dog (Geanine Grafalo [sp?]) had almost no interesting dialogue-- all of her lines could have been replaced with grunts w/o detriment to the plot or chracter devel. For that matter, the protagonist (voice of Matt Damon) was handled in a pretty heavy-handed manner-- first he doesn't give a rat's-ass for earth, then he's suddenly gung-ho (this sealed by meeting Pellea's grandkids, or somesuch thing.) And poor Bill Pullman (did the voice of the turncoat human captain) was just about crushed by the weight of his awful dialogue-- it sounded like they'd cast those grim, manly utterances from cement.
Apart form strict dialogue concerns, the writing in general seemed to suffer from too-many-cooks syndrome: the scene with the ancient bat-people race was excellent, both in its early creepiness/buyability and its late wicked-awesome chace seen. But the reversal (really, double reversal) of Captain Benedict Arnold was ham-handed, at best, as was the conclusion.
But, yeah, whatever. Please flame me across hell's-half-acre and mod me down now.
The movie, set a thousand years in the future, features the voices of Matt Demon and Drew Barrymore as a pair of teenagers on a quest to save mankind after Earth has been destroyed by alien attack.
Matt Demon? Paging Dr. Freud!
Re:that's a weird troll then . . .
on
DeCSS Update
·
· Score: 1
Ah, this is a weird and wonderful thing. Is there a possibility of Bruce and Brucedot battling it out in a no-holds-bared ThunderDom death match?
Two Bruce enter, One Bruce leaves . .. Two Bruce enter, One Bruce leaves . ..
that's a weird troll then . . .
on
DeCSS Update
·
· Score: 1
. . . on account he/she isn't trolling. The remark was even tempered and informative (if entirely without basis in fact.) That's a really weird, psy-ops kind of trolling. What purpose might it serve?
Will the real Bruce Perens please stand up ...Please stand up ...Please stand up.
All of a banks protocols are open, at least as far as your money is concerned. Go in and talk to one of the reps-- they'll tell you exactly what money entrusted with them is being used for, what interest is being returned, etc.
Were the founders alive they'd be 180-some years old-- absolutely ancient-- bald, blind, in constant agony from the grinding progress of the failing organs (or would they have recieved bionic replacements by now, making them a trio of super-cyborg-presidents?), probably weeping constatnly, praying to finally die.
Well, that's my opinion at least.
"Hey, what would Marilyn Monroe be doing right now if she were alive?" "I dunno, Tyler, what?" "Clawing at the lid of her coffin."
The AI-Agent could watch the way various posts scores change over several weeks (or hell, hours with Slashdot), digest the posts' content, and try to draw connections between changes in score and post contents (comparing contents to 1. its parents' text, 2. the over-all thrust of comments for that article [the conversational climate, as it were] and 3. the linked news article [if appliable]) in order to ultimately begin to make intelligent asscertians re: what probably will get mod'ed down or up. Ultimatly, you might be able to generate a prog to do the job of moderating, leaving just some few meatspace meta-moderators with the job of making sure the AIA doesn't go karma-crazy.
Or, this could end up being a filter that an individual user could apply to his/her Slashdot viewing, so that moderation reflects his/her tastes, data-wise.
What you're talking about are called pidgin dialects. What one should keep in mind, though, is that even the most evolved pidgin languaged (like, for example, Yiddish ) never quite make it to the level of being a really broad language-- they'll be good for plenty of uses (for example, Yiddish is very well suited for trade and discussing inter-relationship affairs) but very poor for others (Yiddish is really low on abstractions. There's a lot of literature, poetry and drama written in Yiddish, but never any scientific research or hard philosophy written in it-- Yiddish is way to dependant on metaphors.)
At any rate, I don't think that there's any reason to believe that instant-Inernet-communication will cause a language shift any different than that of folks of varying cultural backgrounds living in the same town. Despite the profound cultural mixing in New York (esp. in comparrision to, say, North Platte, Nebraska), you'll note that New Yorker English and North Platte English (save for some few vocab differences) are basically the same-- certainly not diffrent dialects, let alone different langauges.
The film studios are real bastards about copyright-- specifically, they frequently try and stop people from using their material even though the use in question falls cleanly within Fair Use. (IANAL, but my understanding, in a nutshell, is that if you quote/sample someone else's (c) material, but the piece you create is itself a significant artisitc departure from the original piece, then that quoting/sampling is legal, and their is no neccesity fo ryou to pay licensing fees are get express permission from the original (c)-holder. Additionally, it is always legal for an artistic work to be quoted/referenced for the purpose of scholarly analysis or education.)
I have a friend who was editing a scholalry journal at a major midwestern University. Universal Studios attempted to bar them from even printing the name of one of their films and its characters, despite the fact that the journal made clear that 1) it was a non-profit, scholarly journal and 2) the article itself was a critical piece. Despite the fact that the usage was clearly within the throw of Fair Use, Universal made a big we-can-afford-to-drag-you-into-litigation-that-wil l-bankcrupt-you stink. The little journal had to actually drag in lawyers (luckily some relatives were willing to do a little pro bono) in order to be permitted to do something which was well within their rights.
Although I can't speak for this particular case (I've never listened to this album), I do knwo that it's common for those with deep pockets to attempt to trample on the artistic freedoms of sample artists (see, for example, the way U2 tore Negativeland a new asshole several years back)
(PS, if my understanding of Fair Use is totally FUBAR, please step forward and straighten me out-- e-mail or post below or post here. Thanks.)
(At the risk of getting moderated bloody) Why is it that we freak out so much over spam? Yes, I recognize that some people get buried in the stuff (i.e. receive so much that it overpowers their e-mail client, or thrusts the signal-to-noise ration down into the molten mantle), but most of us (i.e. folks like me), I think, just get a couple of messages for "HOT GIRLIE GIRLS" and cheap office paper, delete them and let it go. It just seems weird that we'll seethe and holler over spam, but don't holler a peep about old-school snail junk mail, which is much more resource consumptive (printing costs, ink, paper, actual physical humans distributing each piece by hand) than spam. Sure, spam wastes a little human time and effort (e.g., the amt. of time/work it takes me to hit "D"-- gotta love PINE) but not nearly so much as that glossy ad for LA CLIPS that I get twice a week-- an add printed on dead trees by a press monitored by a human, with other humans loading in paper, and still more humans loading the printed circulars into trucks-- later, some more humans sort them, drop one in among my mail, and send a human in blue shorts and knee socks out to bring it right to my door. Once that human drops off the LA CLIPS meatspace-spam, I look at it long enough to register that I'm not interested in getting a hair-cut, then drop it in among my recycling. Later, I have to drag the pizza boxes and junk-mail out to the recycling bin at the side of my building. At the end of the week, the guy who lives on the first floor will drag that huge bin full of pizza boxes and glossy ads out to the curb, and two more humans-- dirty one with a thankless job but good pay-- will drive up in a really freaking huge truck (which runs on a fluid made of dead dinosaurs, by the way) full of pizza boxes and junk mail will ad our buildings cardboard and glossy paper to their load, and whole the whole mess down to god-knows-where, where I'm told still further humans do something clever to make it all back into more cardboard (suitable for holding pizzas) and paper (suitable for printing coupons and other junk).
Hell, just look at all the human time I've wasted typing this up-- the time I spent outlining this mess exceeds my spam-removal time by a factor of 10, at least. It's silly. Let's just hit delete and let it go.
(at further risk of being modified up the wazoo) Why is it that we always talk about "voting with our dollars"? Hell, as a nation, we hardly bother to vote with our votes. Sure, where you put your cash makes a sort-of political statement, but actually making political statements, contacting your reps (they're nice folks, even the pig-fuckers) and voting at every freaking opportunity really does a much better job of it.
Slashdot Mirror
As a counter-point, I'd bring up Stephen King's experiment, where he allowed free download of his book and asked for a tiny donation in return. Very few of the people who downloaded the book paid for it and the project was scrapped.
In the final reckoning, King had somewhere in the ballpark of 71% payemnt (i.e. 71% of those who downloaded kicked him a buck, as per agreement), and made something like a $400,000 *profit.* The projected wasn't "scrapped" at all, but rather back-burnered in favor of other projects (which he is contractually obligated to complete.)
Your major point-- that big names hardly need to benefit from the name-building power of distributing freebies-- still stands, but the King facts were wrong.
The difference between "thou" and "you" has nothing to do with number. It's all about familiarity: "thou" is the familiar form (used with pals, family and subordinates) and "you" is the formal form (used with strangers, superiors, etc.) It's exactly like the difference between "tu" and "usted." Both "thou" and "you" can function as singular or plural, although in a group situation you'll tend to use the more formal form (this goes for contintental Spanish as well as early modern English)-- probably erring on the side of safety (wouldn't want the serfs thinking you like 'em.)
I'm in 68.40.X.X and am also blocked (in MI). THis totally sucks; I'm in the middle of finding hot pr0n^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H doing important research.
Indeed! My favorite pic by far is this one. Not only is she wearing a halter-top that has a play on the word "avacado" printed on it, but she also appears to be HOLDING an avacado. God bless you, zany Japan 100%!
OK, I guess I'm just following this whole mess down troll lane, but:
The first thing that needs to happen is that corrupt american politicians need to stop voting more and more free money to israel. They wont because then the jewish interest groups will stop giving them money, but that would be a good start.
OK, I'm a little confused about these vast Jewish interests groups that are controlling all of the US Gov with money. Jews currently account for less than 2% of the US population (around 5 or 6 million Jews nationwide-- about the same as Arab/Arab-Americans in the US, in what is a dicededly convenient co-incidence.) If money is what talks-- and the above statement seems to pretty explicitly point out that's where you're coming from-- then where are these 6 million members of ZOG getting the wherewithall to make themselves heard?
Look, since '97, Big Tobacco alone has given around $18 million in political contributions. I find it hard to believe that a vast minority of Americans is going to compete with that-- and that's just Big Tobacco. What about the Auto Industry? Coal and Oil? the NRA? From '89-'98 the NRA dropped something like $14 million on Congress alone.
Maybe if every Jewish man, woman and child put a dollar in a special fund in order to get certain US officials elected . . .
#!/usr/bin/perl
/1000/){
#
# pandt.pl- a lame joke that violates FAA regulations.
#
# all code original "Savage" Henry Matisse
#
# released to public domain April, 1998
#
# Penn and Teller made me do it!
system "clear";
print "READY\n";
sleep 4;
system "clear";
print "ARMING\n";
print "ARMING.\n";
print "ARMING..\n";
print "ARMING...\n";
print "ARMED!\n";
sleep 3;
$seconds = "17";
system "clear";
{
if ($seconds >= 0){
print "ARMED!\n";
print "00:00:$seconds UNTIL DETONATION\n";
$seconds --;
redo;
}else{
next;
};
};
{
if ($t =~
next;
}else{
print " BOOM!!! ";
$t++;
redo;
};
};
print "\n";
sub sweep{
sleep 1;
system "clear";
};
Sorry, incorrect. If that were the case, then the company would, by definition, not have any moral compunction (seeing as how they always must be making money, so the moral compunction is constantly precluded.) If the company had no moral compunction, then there would be no reason for them to follow any laws (feel free to debate this, but the fact of the matter is that you honor laws because you feel it is right to do so, not because you fear punishment-- everyday everyone of us has a million oppertunites to flaunt many a piddling law [speeding, seatbelt laws, petty theft, murder, rape, arson, "file sharing"] without detection, and yet we generally do not choose to do so. As such, what is making you follow those laws? Nothing more than you general moral compunction. Furthermore, since you've no doubt broekn many laws and not found yourself punished, why is it that you follow any laws at all, when you know fully well taht you cannot possibly be caught? Or, even better, that being caught cannot possibly hurt you? So, you honor laws because you're moral, not because you live in constant, debilitating fear of some draconian, spanking-father super-survellience Man.) So, if you have no moral compunction and if your highest motive is profit, then you are obligated to get into teh most profitable concievable business. That business is the dealing of addictive substance (with a relatively low production/conversion cost, no quality control, and a vertical demand curve.)
Do most corporations deal crack? Well, then, I guess there's some fucking morality out there afterall, you dim fucking shits.
"Would you trade in some of your personal freedom to be safer from terrorists?"
Most folks would agree to this, certainly. Unfortunately, as it stands, it seems the more salient question is "Would you trade in some of your personal freedo to be no safer from terrorists?" Because that's where it is: we will be asked to sacrifice our freedoms, but will be no safer from terrorist actions-- especially terrorist that display the adaptibility, patience and savage will that these hijackers did.
Everyone-- me, the old lady next door, the kid down the street, the dog-- knows that field-coit gestation transforms and ontological decompression over a finite field are about as secure as a tipsy girl's chastity on prom night. Field-coit, when push comes to shove, is hardly more than a complex-- but certainly tractable-- hex-stacked XORing from an arbitrary (but by no means random) set of figures of undefined length. And ontological demopression?!? Christalmighty! Not only is it slow (maybe you can wait 1345 months to encrypt "The Old Man in the Sea", but I myself have a wife and dog to feed), but you actually end up with LESS entropy than using, say, triple-DES with unique keys-- which also has the tiny-tiny-twee little advantage of not taking 112 YEARS!!!
This is what I hate about this ENTIRE FIELD: Some gintch in Ireland comes up with a cute (if entirely infeasable)cryptosystem (which, I might add, she has already aknowledged and published the weaknesses of!), and then I have to listen to every blowhard from here to Katamandu go off about how great field-coit and ontological decompression are. Christ, it's wors than talking about laptops with Mac-Addicts!
Some days, I'd rather be flipping burgers.
1) The modem is a cheap piece of junk that will a) never connect at over ~30k and b) die within 2 months
2) the USB ports on these puppies are wickedly FU-- which is to say very inconsistant. They'll support a USB ZIP drive, but not a USB modem, for no appearent reason. eMachine's tech support just scratches their heads on this one.
Honest, my heart weeps for those poor fucking Christians.
I wholeheartedly agree that Princess M was very original (some REALLY cool monsters in the begging, and a lof of super characterization.) Unfortunately, (and maybe this is just 'cause I'm not an anime-afficianado) but I found this film to have, like, 5 pounds of plot in a ten pound bag. I actually dozed off several times during the last quarter of the film (and that's a really bad sign-- I don't think I've ever dozed off during a film before.)
I'll have to disagree with you on that. I'd say that the dialogue was, at best, very uneven. That little turtle mofo had great lines and was very well done, and the female protagonist (voice of Drew Barrymore) was also handled well, both by the writers and voice-actress. But the Weapons Specialist Kangaroo-Dog (Geanine Grafalo [sp?]) had almost no interesting dialogue-- all of her lines could have been replaced with grunts w/o detriment to the plot or chracter devel. For that matter, the protagonist (voice of Matt Damon) was handled in a pretty heavy-handed manner-- first he doesn't give a rat's-ass for earth, then he's suddenly gung-ho (this sealed by meeting Pellea's grandkids, or somesuch thing.) And poor Bill Pullman (did the voice of the turncoat human captain) was just about crushed by the weight of his awful dialogue-- it sounded like they'd cast those grim, manly utterances from cement.
Apart form strict dialogue concerns, the writing in general seemed to suffer from too-many-cooks syndrome: the scene with the ancient bat-people race was excellent, both in its early creepiness/buyability and its late wicked-awesome chace seen. But the reversal (really, double reversal) of Captain Benedict Arnold was ham-handed, at best, as was the conclusion.
But, yeah, whatever. Please flame me across hell's-half-acre and mod me down now.
The movie, set a thousand years in the future, features the voices of Matt Demon and Drew Barrymore as a pair of teenagers on a quest to save mankind after Earth has been destroyed by alien attack.
Matt Demon? Paging Dr. Freud!
Two Bruce enter, One Bruce leaves . . . .
Two Bruce enter, One Bruce leaves . .
Will the real Bruce Perens please stand up
...Please stand up
...Please stand up.
All of a banks protocols are open, at least as far as your money is concerned. Go in and talk to one of the reps-- they'll tell you exactly what money entrusted with them is being used for, what interest is being returned, etc.
Well, that's my opinion at least.
"Hey, what would Marilyn Monroe be doing right now if she were alive?"
"I dunno, Tyler, what?"
"Clawing at the lid of her coffin."
Um, not to rain on your unsupported rant, but MIR is still functioning peachy keen. Articles here and here
Yeah, that occured to me while I was posting, but I though I'd just seen Pi one too many times.
Or, this could end up being a filter that an individual user could apply to his/her Slashdot viewing, so that moderation reflects his/her tastes, data-wise.
The Hacker News Network is running a nice round-up of this "Catch that Spyder" clusterfuck. Funny.
At any rate, I don't think that there's any reason to believe that instant-Inernet-communication will cause a language shift any different than that of folks of varying cultural backgrounds living in the same town. Despite the profound cultural mixing in New York (esp. in comparrision to, say, North Platte, Nebraska), you'll note that New Yorker English and North Platte English (save for some few vocab differences) are basically the same-- certainly not diffrent dialects, let alone different langauges.
I have a friend who was editing a scholalry journal at a major midwestern University. Universal Studios attempted to bar them from even printing the name of one of their films and its characters, despite the fact that the journal made clear that 1) it was a non-profit, scholarly journal and 2) the article itself was a critical piece. Despite the fact that the usage was clearly within the throw of Fair Use, Universal made a big we-can-afford-to-drag-you-into-litigation-that-wil l-bankcrupt-you stink. The little journal had to actually drag in lawyers (luckily some relatives were willing to do a little pro bono) in order to be permitted to do something which was well within their rights.
Although I can't speak for this particular case (I've never listened to this album), I do knwo that it's common for those with deep pockets to attempt to trample on the artistic freedoms of sample artists (see, for example, the way U2 tore Negativeland a new asshole several years back)
(PS, if my understanding of Fair Use is totally FUBAR, please step forward and straighten me out-- e-mail or post below or post here. Thanks.)
Hell, just look at all the human time I've wasted typing this up-- the time I spent outlining this mess exceeds my spam-removal time by a factor of 10, at least. It's silly. Let's just hit delete and let it go.
(at further risk of being modified up the wazoo) Why is it that we always talk about "voting with our dollars"? Hell, as a nation, we hardly bother to vote with our votes. Sure, where you put your cash makes a sort-of political statement, but actually making political statements, contacting your reps (they're nice folks, even the pig-fuckers) and voting at every freaking opportunity really does a much better job of it.