sm62704's Journal: Outrageous news: Your Rights (what rights?) offline

The former mayor is under indictment, the Village Board is hamstrung by infighting and a defiant landowner has vowed to put a pig farm on his property to stop the town from building a water tower.

But the news on everyone's lips in far north suburban Island Lake is about Greg Kachka and his T-shirt.

The Tribune has me fuming today. First, DOW firing the Midwest Administrator for the EPA (it's in the firehose, I submitted it this morning) and now this.

Only in a police state do you get arrested for speech. Liberty? What liberty?

The guy, a Vietnam veteran and retired postal worker, was at a city council meeting wearing a t-shirt with a Marine Corps insignia that said, "Don't Move. If You Run, You'll Only Die Tired", and wagged his finger at a councilcritter, who was obviously afraid that Kachka migh fire the menacing finger finger at her.

In other government misdeeds, the "DC Madam" that got some nanny-state politicians, married men who wagged their loaded tongues at hookers and hypocritically spoke against prostitution while being johns reportedly killed herself.

Like one of her girls killed herself. Like Clinton lawyer Vince Foster killed himself.

I'm reminded of an old racist joke (actually it's more of an anti-racist joke, albeit a sick one) about a black man in the old south found dead hanging from a tree, with a shotgun wound in his back and five knives sticking from his chest. "Worst suicide I've ever seen", says the sheriff.

Here in Cartoon City, Illinois, a man was arrested for "allegedly leaving a suspicious-looking cooler outside the Pavilion building at St. John's Hospital." The terrorists have indeed won, as our cowardly governments are indeed not just terrified, but scared shitless.

In the same linked page is an incident where a man was run over by a train. Good thing he was a cartoon character from Springfield or he might have been killed!

A Springfield man suffered only broken bones and a cut to his head when he was hit by a train Thursday morning.

Police said they do not know why Michael Watkins, 59, was on the 10th Street tracks at Cook Street. They took a criminal trespass report, but it was unclear Thursday if Watkins was to be arrested.

I don't even know why the next item was even in the paper: State worker allegedly took bribes. NO! In Illinois? Not here!!!

Now, the next item truly is a "man bites dog" story: Northwestern dean admits mistake.

Must be a typo or something, a university dean admitting he made a mistake? What's next, McCain admitting that Bush fucked up when he invaded Iraq? Obama admitting that going to Wright's church was fucktardedly stupid and made voters question his judgement and intelligence? Clinton admitting that she's a fucking bitch almost as bad as offline troll Ann Coulter?

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I added the following as a remidnder to the mods that they should think before moderating. I usually metamoderate every day or so.

Today, you have 10 moderations to meta-moderate.
Devolving backwards I think
by - on Thursday December 13, @10:17PM (#21692506)
If the Christian church had evolved any sooner we wouldn't have evolved as far as we did.
I think the chruch is the cause of the lull, every mutant human born has to be kept alive and allowed to procreate its defective genes.
I not saying who should choose in these cases, only that we have no NO selection pressure on improving the gene pool and a significant pressure from the church to weaken it severely.
The right to lifers would have us breed ourselves back into vegetables.
Original Discussion: Recent Human Evolution May Have Been Driven By Self-Selection
Rating: Offtopic.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

Just because I disagree with the comment doesn't mean it should be downmodded. It was on topic, so an "offtopic" moderation is unfair. Mod just got downmodded.

Doesn't make sense
by - on Sunday January 06, @12:57PM (#21932994)
It doesn't make sense to me: first you burn coal, which basically creates energy by oxidizing carbon and creating CO2; then you use solar energy to undo that and turn the CO2 back into CO. Wouldn't it make more sense to make electricity directly from the solar energy and not involve the coal at all? Besides which, if the CO is later used as fuel as they say, then eventually you're going to oxidize that anyway and create the same CO2 you would have in the first place. It seems like a very roundabout way to add solar energy into the mix.
Original Discussion: Scientists Recycle CO2 with Sunlight to Make Fuel
Rating: Insightful.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context

How does "It doesn't make sense to me" show insight? If it had been moderated "interesting" I'd have marked it as fair. Mods, consult a dictionary if you don't know what "insightful" means.

Re:All I need do is replace my whole OS
by - on Wednesday January 16, @06:58PM (#22072898)
Maybe you haven't stepped outside the university much, but most users have those apps boot at start-up because they don't know how to disable them (or worry they'll break something if they did).

Couple that with the persistence of certain vendors installing unnecessary applications into their taskbars (and as services) and of course there's a lot of cruft that could be cleaned up.
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You never actually own anything with data rights management in it.
Original Discussion: Startup Offers Instant-Boot Windows Alternative
Rating: Insightful.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context
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yuck!
by - on Thursday January 17, @03:55PM (#22084196)
What about those of us who are squicked by the thought of anything getting near our eyes, let alone contact lenses?

While I have no expertise in the field, I've always assumed that we'd first see this with glasses. The classic HUD on aircraft is an image projected onto glass in the pilot's line of sight. I figured we'd see this when we either had a) some sort of transparent material with a tiny lcd grid so that wireframe graphics could be overlaid on the real world objects or b) VR goggles scaled down to the size of comfortable glasses with the world projected inside with the overlays on top.

The one other variant I could think of for a projector technology would be glasses with a tiny low-power laser tracking the retina and beaming photons into it.

Thinking about VR, though, it does make you wonder about the interrogation potential for completely controlling someone's environment. If you thought the Ministry was scary in 1984, just imagine the interrogator controlling your entire reality. There was actually a surprisingly good TNG episode where Riker was put through VR interrogation so that he would reveal something important. Each of those constructed realities seemed entirely convincing at first but as he started to find flaws, the reality would shatter and be replaced by something new. Scary.
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Kwisatz Haderach sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Original Discussion: Bionic Contact Lens May Lead to Overlay Displays
Rating: Interesting.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context
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Re:It's not a church
by - on Thursday January 24, @11:25AM (#22167410)
Cult: organization pretending to be a religion. Keeps true beliefs secret from recruits, one would think because they would have no recruits if beliefs were known. Viciously attacks any and all who expose secret beliefs. Has tendency to lock people up, either through social pressure or actual locked doors. Uses any means possible to intimidate press, infiltrate government, and co-opt police forces. See: Moonies, Scientology, any number of local Jesus franchises in USA, and yes, even the Mormons, tho they succeeded in all points listed above so long ago that no one remembers they are a cult. Hell. the Salvation Army is a cult, but people rarely look at its belief system. A uniformed army, eh? But I digress.
Original Discussion: Internet Group Declares War on Scientology
Rating: Insightful.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context
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Usefulness
by - on Thursday February 28, @07:07PM (#22594448)
Granted, I don't know to what extent they're using this to drive their development, but...

Most people seem to be commenting that if just suggestions drive their development, the end result will be terrible. That's probably true. But often as a developer you just have no real idea if implementing X, which is on your to-do list, is a feature people even care about, wheras people may really care about implementing Y, another item you know you can take care of but just haven't gotten around to.
Original Discussion: Ubuntu Brainstorm Launched
Rating: Insightful.
This rating is Unfair Fair | See Context
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What the article fails to pont out is ...
by - on Wednesday April 02, @09:01PM (#22946906)
This newly discovered Black Hole is the final result of a Large Hadron Collider, that caused a microsopic black hole on the third planet formerly circling the former star now known as 'XTE J1650-500'. So, this is not a naturally occuring black hole, but an alien-created one. Sadly this alien species is now extinct so they can't tell us how to avoid their mistake.
Original Discussion: Scientists Discover Teeny Tiny Black Hole
Rating: Funny.
This comment is Unfunny Funny | See Context

OK, I didn't have coffee shooting out of my noise but it was humorous, and its moderation doesn't affect karma one way or another.

Oh sorry, ladies and gentlemen, we've run out of time. Tune in again for another exciting game show with your host, Alex Tribbin and the lovely Alice DeFrye. RIP, Doctor Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD who passed away on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at the age of 102.