two-pot screamer dot com

From Slashdot News Story | Journalists Looking For Government Money

Re:good description (Score:5, Insightful)

by Philip K Dickhead (906971) <folderol@fancypants.org> on Saturday October 31, @11:32AM (#29934851)
Journal

250 years ago, there were no “newspapers”. They were technologically impossible, and demographically unreadable.

We had broadsheets for the limited press-runs we were capable of. And for the limited, literate population of large cities. These were pasted as bills, and informally circulated in the leaf.

In the time of the American and French revolutions, the day belonged to the pamphleteer. His screeds, fulminations and genuine insights were the fuel for popular discourses. When the American Constitution enshrined a freedom for the press in basic law, it was the pamphleteer and “almanack” editor for whom this waas a guarantee. You may recognize the pamphleteer.

Today we call him “the blogger”.

Newspapers grew, as a 19th century phenomenon for the obvious reasons we implied, as literate middle-classes expanded in the cities, with money to spend. Industrial papermaking and printing replaced paper-hanging and letter-press, and it became possible to turn the massive engines of industry to something as trivial as glorified broadsheets, rather than simply the production of necessities. In fact, investment capital seeking returns, demanded finding new avenues for industrialization. The newspaper was born.

Now that the demands and opportunities of 19th century central industrialization have passed from the page of history, why should the newspaper magically be granted an existence, into perpetuity? They did not found our societies, and were instrumental mostly in our worst excesses and prejudices, not in promoting our best values and opportunities.

If they still make buggy-whips, let their time fade away.

Re:good description (Score:4, Informative)

by commodore64_love (1445365) on Saturday October 31, @01:09PM (#29935447)

250 years ago, there were no “newspapers”. They were technologically impossible, and demographically unreadable.

That’s only true if you completely-and-totally ignore the existence of founding father Benjamin Franklin. He ran a weekly Philadelphia newspaper for several decades, and became so rich he was able to retire at age 40 (circa 1750). Granted he also earned money from publishing other people’s books, but to say newspapers were not possible is an untruth.

I bet the major cities of Europe also had newspapers in the 1700s.

From Slashdot Entertainment Story | Jack Kirby Heirs Reclaim Marvel/Disney Rights

Re:One begs the question… (Score:5, Insightful)

by ObsessiveMathsFreak (773371) <obsessivemathsfr … m.net minus city> on Monday September 21, @08:35PM (#29498663)
Homepage Journal

Because he can and he should. What’s the point of licensing a character if the licensee could wait for you to die and say “ha ha” and continue using that character?

You know. You’re exactly right. It’s not fair.

Just the other day, I saw a man building a wall on the outside of someone’s house. I thought to myself, that wall is increasing the value of this property and indeed all the properties around it by a considerable amount. Why should that man be satisfied with just one payment. His wall could last forever. Shouldn’t his creativity and hard work be rewarded during that time? The owner of that house an others nearby should pay that man a fair licence fee for his work for the rest of his life.

Your argument has further persuaded me that not only should they pay the money to the wall builder, but also to his heirs. After all, they are his family, and he was working for them while he built those walls. True, they didn’t lay a brick themselves, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to profit from their father’s honest labour till the end of their days. And their heirs in turn should be able to enjoy the benefits. It’s their moral right.

When I think how copyright has consistently delivered fresh innovation and content in the form of superheroes like Superman(1938), Batman(1939), and Spiderman(1962), I realise that the joy they ring to millions should mean financial benefit for the children, grandchildren, and great grand children of the authors. Who knows? Maybe with all the money they earn and such solid intellectual property rights, they’ll go on to produce other famous superheroes who careers will last longer than most nation states. After all, copyright is the great motivator of new creative content!

From Slashdot Idle Story | Trapped Girls Call For Help On Facebook

Re:Teenagers? (Score:5, Interesting)

by Anachragnome (1008495) on Wednesday September 09, @12:20AM (#29361827)

I suppose you could say we did the same thing. A club, that is. We just didn’t advertise it, primarily because we didn’t want all the access routes we discovered bricked over.

To date, my favorite is the turn-of-the-century storm drain system carved out of the sandstone underneath Santa Cruz, CA. Some of them tunnels actually led into the basements of houses (I suspect they were once used in the 20′s for rum-running), some right up against the floorboards of houses (once heard a conversation right through them), and some into long-forgotten rooms that still had old bottles and such in them. One of these rooms had a desk and chair in it, even though the tunnel was too small for the desk to fit through. Crazy. Must have been assembled in situ.

These tunnels were all hand-carved (the pick-marks still visible), and more then one led to a dead end–the tunnel was filled with beach sand, obviously meaning they led to the ocean, yet we never found an entrance/exit tunnel near the beach. We found 4 different entrances, yet not a single mention of these tunnels were to be found in any historical documents I researched, nor could I find a soul that knew about them besides us. As a matter of fact, most people didn’t even believe us.

As evidence, I usually gave up the location of ONE of these tunnels (Under the small bridge just below Ocean View park, there is a pipe hanging from the bridge. Crawl out along it, over the river, and you will see the entrance on the far side of the pipe). It is a really short tunnel and just a very small taste of what is actually under Santa Cruz. The rest go with me to the grave as they are most definitely NOT safe.

A word of caution. NEVER enter tunnels like this during high-tide, before or during a rain storm or if you have any common-sense(we seriously lacked in this dept. back then). They are ALL UN-reinforced, sandstone is quite unstable and we discovered several cave-ins.

Entering ANY storm-drain system before,during or even long after rain is just plain suicidal. Don’t fucking do it.

From Slashdot | Researchers Warn of Possible BitTorrent Meltdown

Re:This is GREAT for bittorrent (Score:5, Funny)

by bluesatin (1350681) on Friday February 13, @10:33AM (#26844161)

I got invited to a private tracker the other day that expected everyone to keep a ratio of over 1:1.

It’s nice to know some sites are so far up their own arse that they forget quite how bit-torrent works and fail at basic maths.

From Slashdot Poll | How do you get to work?

Re:Motorcycle (Score:5, Insightful)

by Dun Malg (230075) on Monday January 12, @12:48AM (#26413763)
Homepage

motorcycles produce more harmful emissions per mile than a car or even a large SUV.

It’s the Harley-Davidson product line that’s skewing the average. Bikes of Japanese manufacture generally meet Japanese emissions standards, which are much stricter, while Harley Davidson is for some fucked up reason allowed to sell bikes with engine designs that should’ve been shitcanned a hundred years ago. You think that blatting earsore with the apehangers and finned straight pipes is burning cleanly? Un-fucking-likely. I hate those goddamned middle aged jackasses who get their rocks off revving their loud engines in an already noisy world. Yes, you are certainly one bad mother-scratcher, rebelling against society in that $900 leather jacket, sitting on the back of a $30K bike you obediently will be making payments on for years to come, and indeed, the loud noise you make does make your dick look bigger.

PS: the sportbike jackasses who buy loud racing pipes for their crotch rockets run a close second.

Re:Motorcycle (Score:5, Insightful)

by alta (1263) on Monday January 12, @09:56AM (#26416823)
Homepage
Journal

does make your dick look bigger

Let me fix that for you:

does make you look like a bigger dick

Scripts and Scaling In Online Games

http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1483105 (Scaling In Games & Virtual Worlds,)

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F20%2F1441203&from=rss (hardware is cheap, programmers are expensive)

This is a website that data mines websites for personal information. It is scary if you have a unique name and have some kind of web presence.

http://www.123people.com/

From Slashdot | How Do You Stay Upbeat Amidst the Idiocy?

by Dun Malg (230075) on Friday January 02, @11:27PM (#26308865)
Homepage

Word to the wise, if your girlfriend or wife is a nurse and you claim that your engineering degree was harder then their nursing degree because they never took calculus, be prepared to spend the night on the couch. Just a tip.

Still, my $TYPE engineering degree makes me more then qualified to do any profession. Why, with a few books from the library and maybe a couple Google searches I could probably give your friend that kidney transplant they need. How hard could it be anyway, those overpaid doctors never had to work with Laplace transforms!

Well, there is something to what you say. Having worked both in an engineering capacity and as a skilled tradesman, I’ve noticed that there is a distinct difference between between the two. Doctors and nurses are skilled tradespeople, like highly trained auto mechanics. No one is ever going to ask a doctor to design a better human being, any more than anyone is going to ask an auto mechanic to design a better car. This is not to say that it’s easy to be able to instantly recognize the symptoms of disease (x), or the bad interaction of drugs (y) and (z); just that it’s not a particularly creative field of endeavor. Engineering and the hard sciences (including programming) are less about being able to instantly reference huge volumes of memorized information, and more about taking a small amount of basic knowledge and putting it together in new ways.

Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

by Rakarra (112805) on Friday January 02, @11:03PM (#26308685)

The majority of people could be above-average drivers is the bad drivers are -so- bad that they throw off the average.

Frustration? (Score:5, Insightful)

by geek (5680) on Friday January 02, @06:52PM (#26306287)

I used to get frustrated a lot. That was before I grew up and realized not everyone follows the same life path I do.

Dumb questions do exist. I laugh when people say “there are no dumb questions” and I laugh even harder when people say “the only dumb question is the one not asked.” In all honesty, both are wrong but I have learned that the only dumb question is the one asked repeatedly. If I have to explain something to someone twice, i figure “ok they just forgot, happens to me too.” But if I have to tell someone, or explain something to someone over and over and over, then it’s a dumb question asked by a dumb person. However, with that said, feeling frustrated doesn’t help. Just walk away, don’t help them, don’t explain. Tell them to figure it out and stop wasting your time. If this is on the job, tell their manager and get them replaced for incompetence.

It isn’t worth getting frustrated and angry. Your emotions are your responsibility. A wise man once told me, “10% of life is what happens to you, the other 90% is how you deal with it.”

From JWZ | You stay classy, Music Industry

From: jwm (Link)
Wed, 24-Dec-2008 10:16 PM (UTC)

Back in the eighties the local branch of the music industry protection racket told TVNZ, then New Zealand’s only TV broadcaster, that they’d have to start paying royalties. TVNZ told them they’d have to start paying advertising rates. They had a stand off for several months until whichever label Queen was on decided that they really needed to promote the soundtrack for Highlander and bought a whole advertising segment to play ‘It’s a Kinda Magic’. Then sanity was restored.

I give them about a month to work out that they’ve just taken a hammer to the knees of their bottom line…

From Standing in Line | Ask MetaFilter…

Except in pubs, people seem to form queues spontaneously at shops, cash machines (ATMs) or anywhere else they have to wait.

There’s generally a queue in the pub as well, its just an invisible one in everyone’s head.

Queuing is definitely part of the national psyche here. People moan about kids not being brought up badly and not queuing properly but that’s just kids being kids and it’s always happened.

I can’t fucking stand queue jumpers though. In fact, the only time I can remember even coming close to being involved in physical violence in recent years was over some queue jumping.

The story is a bit long, but it probably helps build a picture of attitudes to queueing here in the UK:

If you ever want to see British queuing at its best, go to Victoria Station in London during the rush hour and watch the people filter out of the station and queue for the buses – long snaking queues stretching patiently across the concourse, some with gaps in to allow buses (and people) to go through.

Except, that is, when the Underground Train drivers are on strike. When that happens, every single Tube commuter tries to use the buses instead, and a significant portion seem to decide that the queues obviously don’t apply to them because their journey is far more important and must be completed RIGHT NOW!!!11ONEONE.

In other words, they become queue jumpers.

Queue jumpers are generally a weasily and cowardly lot who like to pick on the weak. In contrast, I’m a big stocky bloke with a shaven head. It doesn’t matter that on the inside I’m a nerdy bloke who generally wouldn’t hurt a fly, when John McQueuejump skulks into view he generally scurries quickly past me avoiding my gaze and looks for better prey.

This was exactly what happened one day, when I found myself part of the aforementioned queuing at Victoria during a Tube Strike.

A suited, and obviously late, business man bustled up from the closed tube entrance, took one look at the queue and then sighed. I was ten feet away from him virtually at the front of the queue, and from that moment I knew he was going to queuejump.

And queue jump he did. He walked to the front, carried on walking past the various blokes and was about to push in ahead of a lady with a push chair who was two people in front of me when he suddenly realised I was looking straight at him with that most dreaded of English expressions – RAISED EYEBROWS (dun dun dun!).

He changed his mind, lowered his gaze and walked quickly past me before cutting back in line ahead of the old lady directly behind me.

I turned round and said, politely, that there was a queue here and that perhaps he’d missed it.

“I’m in a Hurry.” He said.

I pointed out that a lot of people in the queue were in a hurry but they seemed to recognise the need to queue, so maybe he should consider heading to the back of it.

“Mind your own fucking business.” He said.

Well obviously I did the only sensible thing a man can do in that situation.

I turned to the old lady behind him, smiled sweetly at her and said:

“Would you like to go in front of me madam?”

And she did, the queuejumper being forced to shuffle back as I did to let her in.

Then i turned to the bloke who had been behind her, and said to him:

“Want to go in front of me mate?”

And he did as well.

In fact, the next sixty or seventy or so people all replied in the affirmative as well, and slowly but surely I (and the queuejumper) shuffled further and further back the line until we reached the end of the line and the end of our strange comedic queue-based dance, me holding eye contact with him the whole time.

By the time we got there he was furious, but was still unwilling to risk saying something to me.

Then as the bus finally pulled up, from the front, came a shout. It was the old lady who I’d first let in front of me.

“Young man! Do you want to go in front of me?!”

“That would be lovelly – thanks!” I shouted back, still holding eye contact with the queuejumper. I shot him my warmest (and smuggest) smile…

…and suddenly he snapped.

With a roar of primaeval anger he lunged at me, fist swinging. Luckily I’m quicker than I look and managed to sidestep just in time. His swing whistled past my nose, missing by milimetres. Overbalanced and unable to stop, he tumbled arse-over-tit onto the ground as everyone looked on in a mixture of shock and amusement.

As he fell I felt a strong but firm hand on my shoulder and turned to see a member of the London Constabulary there with a huge grin on his face. Him and his partner had been watching amused from a distance as the whole scene had unfolded.

“You want to press charges?” He said, laughing.

“Nah.” I replied, “Not fucking worth it.”

“Fair enough,” He said, “You better go get your bus. Don’t worry about tosspot here – we’ll make sure he won’t forget today in a hurry anyway.”

“I fucking HATE queue jumpers” His partner muttered, as he held the guy down on the ground. “Should be a law against it…”