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Comment Did you? (Score 1) 400

BTK video ... of your young niece?
Or a snuff video ... of your mum?

Can't walk the walk? Then don't talk the talk!

More to the point - all copyright or ownership of the video became forfeit to the young man when he was being tortured. And it has passed to his legal hiers. So if they don't want you to watch it, or wish to remove certain portions, you do not have the right to watch or distribute it.

The only exceptions are fair use, or genuine public interest (with 'public interest' determined by a legitimate authority - like a government fighting the murderers)..

Supporters of the GPL, or any copyright-based licenses - this is particularly applicable to you.

Comment No sympathy for Verizon (Score 1) 214

'Washington should be very thoughtful how they go forward here,' he said. 'This uncertainty is not good for investment, and it's not good for jobs here in America.'"

Why not? Uncertainty drives change, and uncertainty at this point was created _by Verizon._ Granted, something had to change, because what the big ISPs have been doing is abusive at best.

Besides, it was Verizon that started this mess by trying to change the rules for its own benefit. Complaining now is just sour grapes. Enjoy your new Title II status.

Comment Allied (Score 5, Insightful) 242

Most of you probably don't remember back in the sixties when Radio Shack was the retail distribution arm of Allied Radio (yes, it was known as Allied Radio Shack), a major components distributor. It was a real parts store the. Eventually Tandy picked up the chain, began selling branded parts, and it was never quite the same. The reality is that the advent of the personal computer, the death of manufacturing in the U.S., and an educational system that no longer valued engineering skills combined to kill the electronics hobbyist market that the Radio Shack depended upon. Their change of focus to consumer electronics was a reflection of that new reality, but unfortunately that is a saturated market. This was, alas, a long time in coming.

Comment Re: In other news... (Score 1) 307

In related news, free-will has been conclusively proven to be an illusion - whether for man or angel - by a Slashdot forum poster studying the BiBle. Imprisoned serial killers have used this fact to successfully challenge their sentences.

Pesky references to God opposing, curtailing, casting down Satan in certain books of the Old Testament have previously been mitigated by skillful redaction efforts.

Comment Re: In other news... (Score 1) 307

In related news, free-will has been conclusively proven to be an illusion - whether for man or angel - by a Slashdot forum poster studying the BiBle. Imprisoned serial killers have used this fact to successfully challenge their sentences.

Pesky references to God opposing, curtailing and casting down Satan in certain books of the Old Testament had previously been mitigated by skillful redaction efforts.

Comment Re:Honest question. (Score 1) 479

To flip things around for a moment, what about all those female-dominated careers? Why is it that we aren't up in arms about the fact that yoga studios, elementary schools, secretarial staff, birthing services, and hospital nursing staffs are overwhelmingly dominated by women? Nobody seems to be losing sleep over the idea that there is some kind of pervasive gender discrimination that discourages men from these careers. Is that because these careers are seen as somehow less worthwhile- and if so, why? Because women do them?

Modern feminism seems consumed with the idea that career success for a woman can only come by pursuing a traditionally male career path. But this seems like an incredibly sexist viewpoint, because it's assuming that the only kind of job that's worthwhile or important for a woman to aspire to is one that a man traditionally has done. If you're not a CEO, a surgeon, a professor, then you're somehow less worthwhile. But taking care of other people- which is something a lot of female-dominated careers have in common- is incredibly important, and probably contributes as much or more to society than coming up with a better way for Amazon to flood my inbox with special offers.

The other issue is that feminism seems obsessed with the idea that women will be happy if they can pursue these career paths. But here's a thought. Maybe women opt out of certain career paths in favor of other career paths because those career paths better fit what they want out of life. Maybe many women- not all of them, but a lot of them- find working with kindergartners or being a midwife more rewarding than firing employees, shooting at insurgents, or writing computer code.

Comment Re:Academic wankery at its finest (Score 2, Interesting) 154

It's a bit like the iridium spike at the K-T boundary in that the use of nuclear weapons is an event that will have a worldwide signal, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if they got the idea from the asteroid impact. This would be a bit ironic because Alvarez, the guy who discovered the impact, was a Manhattan project alum who actually worked on the explosive lenses and triggers used in the Trinity implosion bomb. The issue with using Trinity is that from a biological/evolutionary standpoint its not that meaningful an event. The Chicxulub impact is a huge deal, it's the driver of the biggest mass extinction in 250 million years. The Trinity test has the advantage of being easy to measure but nuclear weapons have had pretty much zero effect on the biosphere. In fact, primitive hunter-gatherers running around with fire and spears have a vastly larger effect than nuclear bombs. After Homo sapiens moves out of Africa into Australia, Europe, and the Americas, we see massive dieoffs of the megafauna which, combined with the use of fire to alter the landscape, dramatically alter the fauna and vegetation on a continental scale. From an evolutionary standpoint, these migrations are important; they mark the first time the species began to alter the world on the level of entire ecosystems. So I'd argue that the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa would be the defining event, but obviously that's kind of hard to date.

Comment Re: Minor setback (Score 1) 213

Reading between the lines, I think this is a company that specializes in greasing palms/pulling levers in Congress and the Senate, as well as constructing sophisticated internet campaigns that include releases to key susceptible news outlets/columnists and hiring fake posters to post on certain widely read comment boards.

So, highly-paid, professional astroturfers.

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