As I get older and older, this world and all its craptacular descent into one big conglomerated surveillance-based government makes me feel more and more disconnected, displeased and dismayed.

I'm glad I won't have to put up with it for much longer. i suspect the time behind me is longer than the time ahead of me. This is quickly becoming a world i don't want a part of.

I think in the event of total collapse, enough paper books would exist and enough nerds will be around to read then, and make use of them to get back to where we are. Or some reasonable faximile.

So it's less about chosen profession, and more about hobbies. What a paradox.

You know, like all those people that nerd out on steam engines. They could prove useful, no?

You get the idea.

I just went from an Rx-8 to a Mini, both 6-spd manual boxes.

I find myself stepping on my clutch foot with my brake foot. That didn't happen with the 8. Disconcerting, to say the least.

I'm getting better after a month (2000 miles), but that does tell me there are differences between the two cars that my muscle memory is trying to overcome.

I'm not blaming the car, I'm changing how I drive.

Maybe that's what's going on here, except they're not changing how they drive?

Traffic in South Floriduh seems to be much worse than it was 2 or 3 years ago. Seems to be more people and more cars.

That spoonful of sugar can't mask the bitter taste of your own medicine, can it, fancy espionage agency?

The only way this could be useful is if it unleashes a finger of doom from a minigun to do away with the "motorist" causing the backup.

Although, I'll "settle" for having this scout go out, locate said "motorist" and send me back footage of why this one person is causing the 2 mile backup behind them.

My morbid sense of curiosity demands that I know who the fuck just backed up the turnpike.

Electronics that smoke themselves? Have had plenty of them.

They all spewed magic smoke shortly after warranty expiration. Coincidence? I THINK NOT! BWAHAHA!

Just like Slashdot will spew magic smoke when its bitch daddy Dice pulls the plug on classic. All that will remain is a box full of bad smells and no life.

That, sir, is probably the best Fuck Beta comment yet. Bravo. Bra-vo!

What TFS really means is that out of the suck generated by Beta, a new site will emerge, free from corporate cocksuckery.

Beta: Only slightly better than Facetwat.

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.