from the use-LAME-you-hippies dept.
These are just a few of the many things that really piss me off:

• Really long file names (already bitched about this).
• Duplicate ID3 tags. If you're not going to add anything that requires an ID3v2, but insist on having one anyway, you're a lame fuckwit who should be shot for wasting valuable bandwidth.
• Stuff with a higher [[bit/sample]rate/number of channels] than needed. Speeches by Dubya do not need to be encoded at 128Kbps 44.1KHz stereo. Take it down to 32Kbps 11025Hz mono or you're still a lame fuckwit who should be shot for wasting valuable bandwidth.*
• Stuff with a lower (bit/sample)rate than needed. I can understand this if you're using a hardware player, but when I can't find a single copy of a song that's above 128Kbps, I start to get pissed off.**
• Not really an MP3 gripe, but would somebody please hit the idiots offering "DVD rips" of [insert the name of any movie that George Lucas is refusing to release to DVD here] with a clue-by-four? While you're up, please hit Michael Eisner, Jack Valenti, and Hillary Rosen too.
• Sound effects in MP3 format. If it's less than, say, 4MB to begin with, I don't think the size-quality tradeoff of MP3 is worth it. Use FLAC instead.

*While you could argue that distributing Dubya speeches in the first place is a waste of bandwidth, they do have some value when placed in the hands of parodists, musicians, etc.
**You may think this makes me a lame fuckwit who should be shot for valuable bandwidth. Tough.

from the sport-utility-filename dept.
Why the hell do so many people think it's necessary to have filenames like John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra -- Star Wars - Episode VI - Return of the Jedi - Special Edition Soundtrack -- Disc 1 - Track 02 -- Main Title - Approaching The Death Star and Tatooine Rendezvous.mp3? They're called subdirectories, mmmkay?

And yes, I would like some cheese with that whine.

from the republicratic-national-party dept.
There are few things that annoy me more than sitting down to read a story on Slashdot and having it suddenly turn into a pedantic political bitchfest. "Oh, your Republicans are actually liberal." "No, they're conservative." "What are you talking about? They're fiscal libertarians!" "No, no, no! They're right-wing. It's the left wing that's for intrusions into privacy." "The Republican Party being broad-minded, the privacy of conservative accounting freedom." "The campaign conservatism representative of the copyright accounting financial national assembly of the group of improvement of campaign public finance becomes deformed." "Lie, lie, and the statistic which are severely criticized." "Duck of mother of soccer!" "Huh?"

I am really the sickness of this excretory ones. Er, sorry... I'm really sick of this shit. Here's a hint, people: The word you keep using does not mean what you thing it means, so why don't you save us all some trouble and say what you do mean! I guarantee, using specific terms like "pro-choice, pro-gun-control, anti-inflamatory pain medication" will take up a hell of a lot less space in the long run than a huge debate over the real meaning of the word "liberal."

from the burn-baby-burn dept.
Is it just me, or would a huge fleet of flaming paper airplanes be a really cool thing to rain down upon your enemies?

from the resistance-is-floor-tile dept.
I just remembered part of a dream last night. In it, I told someone, "When an octopus becomes upset, it may eat itself."

I think I'm assimilated now.

from the great-!white-north dept.
It's the middle of December, five miles from Minnesota, and it's still warm enough that I can almost forget I've got a window open.

Either my system's running hot, or there's something seriously wrong with this picture.

from the normal-is-odd dept.
I was at Wal-Mart the other day, and some lady was there, getting her kid's ear pierced. The kid didn't seem too thrilled about the whole idea (which you could hear from across the store), but the lady made her go through with it anyway. I briefly considered making a comment along the lines of, "Yeah, lady, why don't we all poke holes in our children," but, due to a chronic case of I'm-not-George-Carlin-itis, decided against it. Instead, I started wondering:

Who the hell invented ear piercing?

I mean, think about it: At some point in history, some guy must have said, "Hey, I've got an idea! Why don't we all poke holes in ourselves and hang shit off 'em?"

Odd, eh?

from the merchandizing-merchandizing dept.
Just got an amusing piece of spam (all weird spacing is as seen in the original email):

Show your patriotism! Wipe with Osama bin Laden TP
and support a good cause!

Check it out! http://206.21.235.71/terrorists

p.s. Cool Patriotic T's too! Our server at

www.ihateterrorists.com was temporarily crashed by
cyber-terrorists! First they beat up the guy at the
7-11, and now this! We'll be back there soon!

If you would like to be removed please email: ILikeOsama@hotmail.com
Thank you.

The toilet paper looks (badly) Photoshopped, and they did spam me, so order at your own risk.

from the chocolate-covered-ants dept.
I was going to submit this as a real article, but I couldn't get past the formkeys bullshit. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go kill the Slashcode team with a giant stuffed Tux. Update: Added the link to stuffed tux, and what do I see?

"This form has been used already 3 hours, 9 minutes ago. You can not use a form and hit the back button to use it again.

[...]

* Please choose 'formkeys' as the category."

Since when is clicking Edit the same as using the back button?

from the and-he-puzzled-three-hours, until-his-puzzler-was-sore dept.
Ever get that feeling like the math coprocessor in your brain just burned out? That's how I feel right now. I never want to see another number again. I'm looking at the Edumacation icon in preview right now, and I'm thinking that 2 + 2 quite possibly could equal 5, because I don't have the mental energy to prove it wrong.

I need to work on something else for a while.

from the may-your-chains-set-lightly-upon-you dept.
I'd like to ask everyone not to sing along with the following until they are well out of my hearing range (Why any Slashdotters would be out here in the Land of the Cow anyway is beyond me. This isn't exactly Silicon Valley. But I digress.):

This is the war that never ends;
yes, it goes on and on, my friends.

Some morons started fighting it, not knowing what it was;
they're gonna keep on fighting it forever just because....

Repeat until either:

• The "War on Terrorism" ends,
• I smack you because you're still within earshot, or
• You are paid a visit by your friendly neighborhood jackboots, who remind you that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

Thank you, and God Bless Amerik^Hca

from the department-of-redundancy dept.
It it just me, or is anybody else out there really sick of those morons who keep saying, "Isn't this a violation of the DMCA? It sounds like a violation of the DMCA! Don't you think it's a violation of the DMCA?" every time some act of reverse engineering that has nothing to do with the DMCA comes up? Don't you just feel like you want to see them torn limb from limb by a pack of rabid squirrels? I know I do.

from the so-easy-to-use-no-wonder-it's-number-one dept.
Somebody did a research paper on people who are too stupid to realize they're stupid.

I'd give an example here, but I'm more mature than that.

from the join-us-or-die dept.
According to Wired, the US government is planning to start recruiting "politically motivated" hackers in the weeks to come. Between this and Ashcroft, I'd say the whole thing looks like a giant good-cop bad-cop routine.

Ashcroft: "Hey, you! Yeah, you! Quit fucking with government websites, you little twerp! Do you want life in prison? Do you aspire to be a terrorist? Listen, you little bastard! If you think you can get away with this, you don't stand a snowball's chance in hell! I will find you, and I will bury you in the deepest hole–"
Cyberangels: "Please excuse him, he's having a bad day. See, we're having trouble getting intel on bin Laden and his pals. Maybe you can help us out here..."

I don't think they've thought this through very well, though. Hackers like to brag, we're not good with secrets. Even if we found bin Laden's Master Plan for World Domination, we'd probably post it somewhere to show off, and eventually al-Qaeda would notice and run back to their caves. Update: D'oh! Michael put up his article about 10 seconds after I started writing. Oh well.

from the comet-to-crash-into-earth dept.
Well, NASA's launching a new probe to study comets. Must be very interesting, because the BBC's got three different stories about it. Also worth noting is that the project is named Deep Impact. Yeah, just like the movie. Wonder how long before our not-so-little friends sue them. Update: Wired is getting into the act, too. Update2: Chalk up another one for the BBC.