Y te digo algo mas...

Beta is as useless as Slashot Mobile. I quit using that to read, even tho I enjoyed reading slash on the go. But not anymore.

And soon, I guess I won't be here at all. because fuck beta.

Nothing of value will be lost. Users will probably create a fork / clone / workalike, and Dice will have a nice shiny site with diddly squat for content. At best, it'll be like CNN's coments.

Slashdot, it was swank knowin' ya. Don't look now, but I think that stink behind you is the Grim Reaper come to collect you.

...from the black hole known as Beta is a festering pustule of mediocrity -- the ashes of what probably once was the most interesting site on the 'net.

Put another way, Beta sucks so hard it bends light.

Al Carajo con Beta!

I certainly hope Splashdata isn't reading passwords from SplashID users who store their SplashID data in Splash's servers. For your convenience in backing up and restoring, etc, of course.

BNL was also the government.

The apple doesn't fall from the tree -- the internet's daddy was DARPAnet, brought to you by DARPA, who is part of Dept. of Defense -- good 'ole DoD.

In other words, the internet is a military brat. It wasn't militarized, it was born into a military family.

The Government knows what's best for you.

Ugh just thinking of that sentiment gives me the creeps real bad. That's all I heard when I was a kid / teen ('80's for the curious). That's the party line no matter what party was up at bat.

If this stays, I thinks our world is over. Aw hell it was over in 1973, it's just taken it 40 years for the corpse to realize it.

Still, in a word, Bullshit! Even if they had this deep, massive, dynamic oh-so-easy-to-misuse body of information back in 2001, they wouldn't find the perps before the planes took off because they (NSA, FBI, USA) can't find their own asshole with two hands *and* a flashlight! (torch for our uk-ish readers).

And even that's irrelevant, really. If this stays, we've become a de-facto dictatorship with a rotating figurehead and lower cabinet, to present the illusion of movement at the top every n years. LIke said up there in the main thread, the 4th Amendment is dead, if this thing stays. And that's the paper-thin line that keeps us from being a police state, at least on paper it does.

Y'know, now I think of the third paragraph up there.. we became one a long time ago, didn't we -- a dictatorship with a rotating head.

Just my phone. It's my camera / music player / movie player / compass / satnav / videocamera / processing lab / editing room / maps / guide to strange places out of the beaten path, etc.

But this year's chistmas vacation, there's a piece of electronica that saw way more use than all of your list combined: My lcd projector.

I just binged on about 20 hours of Tiny Toons, the last two volumes that'd been held up forever.

My brain has stopped working. It's not aware that Monday I go back to work.

Aww, look at it. It had to type that last sentence and it's already bawling its eyes our in the corner. It's ok, brain -- I have all of Soul Eeater to kill whatever cells you have left. And if that's not enough, there's always a return engagement of Panty and Stocking..

Streaming and The Cloud: Where the Content Owner or designated representative can come in and remove content you had paid for.

What, exactly, is so appealing about this model? If it's the lack of physical media to store / move, I can *sorta* see that.. but other than that.. where's the appeal in paying for something that the seller / owner can just *zap* out of your world? Does not compute.

And don't give me the "I can view from any device at any time" schtick. Let's take "Wreck-It Ralph." I bought the BD / DVD combo. Ripped the DVD into an apple-friendly format and have it in my phone as part of my "desert island" playbill. The actual disc set is just chillin' in my shelf, and gets played -- a lot. So.. I just do'nt follow. Sorry. I have it in two devices at once. I can make that 3 or 4 without much trouble -- without having to "stream" it from somewhere.

I simply don't see the value of paying for something you can't hold in your hand and can be taken away at a whim. Sounds to me like a model made by criminals bent on theft.

If you want to keep it, get it in physical format.

...that's an A-T field!

You're just accounting for pressing and packaging the disk.

Really good mikes cost a lot of money. Five digits USD is not uncommon. Renting a studio is expensive, and so's building one. THen there's mixing, editing and all that. Talented, skilled engineers cost money, and lots of it.

I'm not rooting for the labels, but props where props are due: "The Labels" know / knew what they were doing. Archiv / Deutsche Gramophone, Atlantic, Telarc, RCA, Columbia, Decca all went out of their way to get better sound. They invented, innovated, adapted new technologies / methods. And that aspect of their business has my support.

Example: Deutsche Gramophone worked with Yamaha to make a recording system capable of getting a 144db dynamic range. That's beyond ridiculous. I have a set of Beethoven Symphonies recorded with this. I had to get a much better amp. The old one couldn't handle it cleanly. When was the last time some indie producer pushed the limits like that?

But of course, if one listens only on crap earbuds or a crap car stereo, then who cares, right? I bet you 9 out of 10 people just flat out don't care about how it sounds, and by extension how your body perceives it. It's more than just your ear holes, you know.

I still think streaming is for suckers. You pay for something that can be arbitrarily taken away by the "content owner" at their whim.

eh, so 5 years instead of 7.. I fail at maths, I don't hate it -- it hates me. The problem is magnified by caffeine deficiency.

A Shell station I used to go to at another job had brand new pumps installed in 2008. These "new" and "improved" pumps would start playing ads the second you took the nozzle off the cradle and started pumping.

Result? I haven't been to that station in 7 years. To hell with intrusive adverts to a captive audience.

Boycott the store, people. Don't buy there. There is no greater "fuck you" to a merchant than an empty till and a competitor's store full of what used to be your own customers.

The Swiss don't exclusively own the high end. The Japanese have wicked watches, there's Seiko and their partner Orient. Seiko has a higher-end name called Credor, and they've made some outrageous stuff.. how about grand complication with sonnerie, based around the SpringDrive movement?

Feel too lazy to type links so just look up Credor, Grand Seiko, Spring Drive. Also Credor Torque and Credor Sonnerie. I'm not gonna type the links for you. Use the google!

What makes Seiko so special? They make everything. They don't buy movements from someone else -- like the swiss do -- and then finish them themselves. Seiko makes everything -- the steel the case is made of, the crystal, the dial, the markers, the glue that glues the markers to the dial, the jewels, the spring that holds the jewel, the lube that goes between the jewels, they make the mainspring, the crown, the stem, every single piece of the movement, the hairspring, etc.

The only other watchmakers than can boast complete construction of every piece of their watches is Patek Phllipe, Jaeger and maybe even Panerai. Everyone else buys from ETA or Jaeger. Cartier? Jaeger. That obnoxious 52mm penile extender? ETA. Bell & ROss? ETA. Omega? ETA. ETA ETA ETA. Jaeger and ETA makes most watches' movements for Europe.

And lastly, if you think Rolex and IWC are the high end, well... I'm sure Patek Phillipe, Seiko and Jaeger would dispute that claim.

Go ahead, do your googlin' and youtubin'. Spring Drive will make your head explode. ETA tried and failed miserably to copy that. It took Seiko almost 30 years to perfect it.

What's on my wrist? A 1968 King Seiko, handwind, no auto. Keeps to plus or minus 2 seconds every 24 hours. Hand-made. Fanatical attention to detail. Don't bother, you won't find a 44KS unless it's from ebay, never sold outside japan.

I'll open by repeating what others have said: this isn't being a Luddite, not by any means. If there's a tech toy / tool that makes my life easier, I'm all for it, whether it be physical goods or software.

But, similar to the "i love me" websites of the early days of the web, Twitter and Facebook, to me, are just another kind of dancing cat / hamster / chilli pepper: Utterly superfluous. I actively reject them, I have no FB or TW account. I don't want to know what my friends are doing 24x7. I don't want the world to know that I just had six blonde Oreos and two cups of non-name-brand non-trendy coffee that is still awesome due to careful preparation.

I'm sure this view is incomprehensible to some. To them I say: It's ok to sell yourself, if you don't mind being treated like a whore -- kept around only as long as you have value to the people "giving" you the serivce for "free." Myself, I'll make "them" work for their money: If you want my $, then you should make things that interest me. I'll hear about them, ads or no ads.

But to those making targeting decisions / algorithms with data obtained from my mere mousing around, I say "fuck off." I took off your logo'd t-shirts and polo shirts a decade ago. I stopped listening to your drivel on TV a decade ago. I block ads and do a few other interesting things, just so I don't have to see / hear your unrelenting patter.

Maybe y'all should look at it from that point of view: To them, your body is a billboard to display their ads, you are data, not a person. Deny them the use of your body, deny them the use of your data. Most everytime you click somewhere you just either made someone a fraction of a penny, or gave data to someone who will eventually make a mint aggregating your data to a massive data mine from which they "target" ads (or lately, as it turns out, "target" people directly)

Resistance to always-on isn't being a luddite, it's about being yourself, and keeping that self as private as possible. It's about not being a slave to the phone, but having the phone as a toy / tool: there for your use or amusement, not the other way 'round.

-- Dave Matthews Band