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Clonaid, Lullabyes, Gerbils 68

Posted by michael from the spies-like-us dept.
Your recommended daily dose of insanity. FattyBoeBatty writes "Napster has been sued again, but this time it's by a company that makes meditation music -- and for once it's not about copyrights. They're afraid that without their company's warning labels, unsuspecting Napster users will be lulled to sleep by the tranquil melodies and will fall asleep at inopportune times (i.e. driving, operating heavy machinery, etc.)" A bunch of people submitted this story about Clonaid, a group of people wearing tin-foil hats who want to clone a human (and whose leader will give speeches for a measly $100,000). Finally, Hacky writes: "Security Service MI5 once planned to recruit a team of specially-trained gerbils as a secret weapon to sniff out spies, it has been revealed."
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Clonaid, Lullabyes, Gerbils More

Clonaid, Lullabyes, Gerbils

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  • i swear, it makes me sick to hear about lawsuits that deal with people being plain dumb. 'ohh no, i spilled coffee on myself, i must now receive millions in exchange for my emotional trauma'.

    i say FUCK it. let the dumb people burn themselves. let the morons kill themselves. maybe this will raise the general population's iq, which seems to be on a slow decline.

    we have been avoiding natural selection in many ways, and now including the law, which preserves the DUMBEST of the species. god, i'd like to take a gun and start weeding out idiots myself. however, i want the nature to take its course. if you're dumb, and you do something stupid enough - it's your fault. don't put the blame on some company, individual, etc, that didn't warn you about things you should have know. yes, the goddamn coffee is hot when you make it. deal with it. by the time you're old enough to order it from the damn mc'donalds, you should know it.

    ok, i'll quit ranting.

  • I always wondered why Richard Gere always received special interest from the MI5 whenever he travelled to the UK.


    Cheers,

  • They can clone me when they can pry my memories out of my hard, thick skull.
  • Wouldn't cloning cause each body to now have only one half as many thetans? So one could get the number of thetans down to a single one by cloning oneself sufficient times. Not that it would matter to the clones which grow up not knowing Scientology...
  • ...and whose leader will give speeches for a measly $100,000

    Their leader is Bill Clinton?
  • Thinking we were created by intelligent aliens and not by some omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient being! Someone should lock them up for their heresy!
  • that's dumb ;)
    ------------------------------------
  • Here is something that the /. authors seem to have missed that belongs in this section.

    The editors have seen fit to ban web clipping devices from using slashdot. Avantgo gives a "forbidden" sign when using it to try to access http://slashdot.org/palm and avantslash [custard.org] now gives error messages because the author of website has had his website blocked.

    All of this without a peep from any of the editors? I have been a reader of slashdot for years. I normally do not post messages such as this one, but they have not responded to my emails. The avantslash author is a nice guy. How about letting him know whats going on? Whats up with all this? Whats going on with you guys???? Please snap out of it.

    -ali
  • I would love to see the clonaid and the Scientologists get together for a b.b.q. it would make a good sitcom

    How about a good old fashioned Clambake [xenu.net] instead?

  • So when can I have my abnormally large, tinfoil-hat-wearing, defective penguin?

    Look right here. [cowboyneal.org]

    Okay, so it's an abnormally large, penguin-hat-wearing defect, but it's GOTTA be close enough.

  • has sex in exchange for information.
  • Actually, the fact that they are large has something to do with one of the chemicals used when cloning cattle. Sheep don't have this issue. It is actually believed that human cloning would be much more successful, because so much more is known, due to invirtro fertilization.

    The reason cloning has problems is that no one knows how the egg unmasks the dna (parts of the dna are masked to create the different types of cells), and it takes sperm and eggs months to become ready for use, and this unmasking process is forced on the dna in a few days, sometimes even hours.

    Everyone is so ready to clone, they forget that we don't even know why cloning works at all!

    Just like a script kiddie, not carring how the script works, just that it does. That's why they screw up and get caught all the time.
  • Hollywood [BD] -- Paramount and Gene Roddenbury Productions have filed suit agains MI5, MI6, British Intelligence, the Home Office, the Queen, the Royal Family and those guys in the silly uniforms (guilt by association) for theft of Intellectual Property (IP).

    At the end of December, 1967, NBC aired Episode 49 of Paramount's Star Trek, entitled "The Trouble with Tribbles", a story written by David Gerrold. Paramount and Roddenberry Productions hold joint copyright.

    In this story, small, furry vegetarian rodents are used, in end effect, to ferret out spies. A similar storyline used in a later episode of Deep Space Nine, entitled "Trials and Tribble-ations", and it is from this that Paramount lawyers claim MI-5 got their idea.

    "We will protect our ideas at all costs," said attorneys for Paramount. "With the incredible reception DS9 'Trials and Tribble-ations' received, we expect we can re-use this storyline a few more times at a few $mill a pop. A re-use every 20 years or so can mean almost one half billion dollars in a century. And all for the $350 we paid in 1962 for the story. Ain't America grand?"

    Scientology lawyer and Judenhascher[1] Helena H (The Kobra) Kobrin, no fan of origami buttplugs, stated her support for the plaintiffs. "This is copyright terrorism!" she exclaimed. "Sue the bastards!"

    When asked for comment as to whether clones might have Body Thetans, the $cientology attorney said, "No comment, and if you talk about BTs again, I might have to sue you, too."

    Paramount's lawyers have also implicated Monsanto in a similar, but unrelated, IP theft case for genetic experimentation with wheat. "They may have modified the grain," said one attorney, "but we not only named 'Quatrotriticale', we had the idea that you could modify triticale to begin with!"

    © 2001, BadDoggie. The preceding was parody. It was funny. Woulda modded to a 5 if I'd logged on a couple hours ago (Whore nuthin'! Karma SLUT!)

    woof.
    [1] n.b.: My opinion! Just my opinion! While I have had some good chats with H. Keith Henson, I have no real desire to run to Canada and bunk up with him.

  • I can see why the gerbils in the story would have failed as lie testers. when someone says in a british accent "Ok, turncoat, it's time for my four legged litmus test" and then proceeds to pull a rodent out of his pocket, whatever raised pulse I had before be lost laughing.
  • The funniest thing was that using gerbals worked, in that they sensed the "smell of fear". The online problem was that the were too sensitive, I mean wouldn't most people be a little scared getting interogated, nevermind what they're actually asking? Another use that was put around would be to detect bomb carrying passagers in planes, although this too couldn't work, for far too many people are nervous about flying....
  • Yeah. $cientologists are rational: They want to make money by faking a religion, and it's working pretty well.... ;-)

    BTW, Rael [rael.org] is the favorite religion of a historian of religion friend of mine, who is studying modern religious movements. Raelians are so nuts, they've got it all... :-)

  • You do have a point here. Cloning isn't easy, but given that Raelians are nuts (they are nuts, believe me), it is entirely possible that they could find enough willing people to attempt to work on hundreds of embryos, most of which will fail, some of which might become a child. But it is not very likely to be a healthy child. People who are as nutty as the Raelians often lack the ability to think carefully about what they are doing, and that's a real problem.

  • Upon viewing this comic [penny-arcade.com], I knew that Gabe had his head screwed on right. Perhaps he was involved [penny-arcade.com] with the training of these spy gerbils.

    Peace,
    Teslakid

  • "Eternal life thanks to science"

    Now where have I heard that [alexchiu.com] before [slashdot.org]? :)

  • is how the Gerbil project ended when the homosexual scientist on the team went to the hospital for 3rd degree burns to his face as caused by methane gases lit when he needed to search out the gerbil in his partners rectum.
  • Or to quote his doctor "No Richard I said herbal suppositories".
  • Thank you. That is the most ludicrous thing I've seen in recent memory, and it's certainly close enough.
  • ...it's easy to poke fun at groups like Clonaid, because after all, their ideas are pretty far removed from "normal" society and have almost no (if any) basis on fact. But I'm not sure if it's a good idea to write off everything they do as fodder for the "humor" category.

    Yup. I think the gentleman here has a valid point. The Raelites (or Raelians?) may be a little weird, or for that matter a whole bunch of weird, but they're prepared to throw a lot of money at cloning, and they just might succeed. Although, yes, they are a cult run by a French race car driver, that doesn't mean they can't hire real scientists, and it's entirely possible they'll manage to pull this off. Keep your eyes on them. Stranger things have happened.

  • So if you've lost a child, you need not be racked with grief. Instead you can pay lots of money to have your child returned to you defective, deformed, sick and abnormally large, with a tin-foil hat.

    So when can I have my abnormally large, tinfoil-hat-wearing, defective penguin?

  • Their CD's do knock you out cold in no time flat. They also market a line of polka CD's that can induce a bowel movement so fast that your head (or whatever) will spin.
  • If they are huge that would be awsome.

    "get in my belly... mom"
  • remember someones sig saying
    "friends dont let friends listen to trance"
    www.tagstrance.com
  • I listened to thoes mp3s and looked over the site, and I have to say that you would do well not to listen to Peirce any more. I beleave in free speech and this moron has the right to say what he likes. I'm just glad that the people of /. have the capabiblity to remove the 'blinders' and ignore you.

    BTW: if you're considering downloading thoes files, don't waste you bandwith. Think Hitler(-the military power) crossed with Rush Limbaugh.

    Top 10 reasons to procrastinate:

  • Its sad what people will do for money these days. What a sorry excuse for a court case, this is the kind of gardbage that clutters our legal system.... can we please move on to something that is actually important?
  • Hey atleast these people have some rational basis for their religous beliefs. Strange, yes. But not out of the question. Hell we are only about 1000 years away from being able to d osuch things as create another civilization.
  • Seems the marketing ploy is working.
    A bit too good!! It's been /.ed (as per usuall) I recon some chaos on their servers is some compensation for court costs
  • I've been thinking about the link.. and we ALL know what gerbils are used for.. I don't even want to think about it.
    Ofcourse it could be that they are waiting for the mothership that is piloted by a bunch of mutent, adrenalin-smelling, little, green, invisible gerbils who will take them away to a planet far away where they can perform their hedonistic rituals in peace
  • And in latest developments GOD (the lord almighty himself) has filed for copyright infringement by Clonaid after they successfully clones a human being.

    God claims that he/she/it/hir owns copyright over the said human being and that Clonaid is infringing on his/her/its/hir devine right as sole distributer of human beings

    Clonaid on the other hand claims that they are only making a backup copy incase the original fails/breaks.
  • Surely MI5 don't need any more rodents............
  • So I guess instead of paying a PR firm to promote your product, just sue somone famous. It won't cost you much if you are prepared to lose, and you get all sorts of publicity for free!
  • Check out this [golden.net] old story.
  • Where does the Clonaid article mention tin foil hats?
  • I wonder if Scruffy the Wonder Gerbil will be as smooth with the ladies as Bond?
  • I would love to see the clonaid and the Scientologists get together for a b.b.q. it would make a good sitcom
  • Well, this just goes to show that if people can't sue you for one thing, they'll turn around and sue you for some other stupid reason.
  • I think that's technically what the US attempts to do by using its jury system. In theory, if there is a stupid case, a bunch of people say "That's dumb" and kick it out of court.

    Though, its not as fast as doing it your way with flashing lights or something.

    On the downside, there are a large number of dumb cases with juries. That usually implies that a) the cases aren't as dumb as we think, or b) the juries are dumber than we think. It can be dangerous to overestimate people like that sometimes.
    ---
  • I hear the /. crew employs quite a few gerbils in secret activities.
    ------------
    a funny comment: 1 karma
    an insightful comment: 1 karma
    a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
  • There was no "coverup" at Ruby Ridge - it's all been rather well handled IMHO by the authorities.

    As to not deriding the loonies thanks but I'd rather have them ostracized then allowing them to claim any sort of credibility & suck in more victims. If folks were to stop making nice-nice and actually get critical of wacko cults like the Scientologists, Raelians, Aum Shinrikyo, Order of the Solar Temple, Heaven's Gate, etc. they might whither away & the world be a healthier place for it.

    Trading in critical thought and honest analysis for "happy news" is not a good long-term strategy (unless you'll looking to raise a generation of McSlave carnation-pushers.)

  • Read the Register article before you make up your mind about him.
  • The scariest part is that cloning means even more of these type people.
  • Victor Frankenstein, M.D.
    Fertility Specialist

    We also install lightning rods

  • One gerbil was quoted as saying, "Bring on Saddam Hussein but damn man, the guy I'm really scared of is Joe Cartoon! [joecartoon.com]"

    -- iCEBaLM

  • FYI (Score:2)

    by joq ( 63625 )

    Little do people a lot of things like this happen. For instance, when former drug kingpin Pablo Escobar couldn't evade having his data sniffed by the CIA, Delta Force (U.S. Army), and others, he turned to good old fashioned pigeons. [Killing Pablo [killingpablo.com]] I don't remember which chapter it is but it's there somewhere. Let's not forgot the recent rumors of Usama bin Laden plotting using remote controlled helicopters either.

    Hey if it works and gets the job done go for it.
  • Still, though... they are going to reap a lot of recognition out of this. Too bad they're doing it at the expense of our already-overburdened court system.
    Sounds like an instance when "loser pays" would be mighty nice.
  • Yeah, you all say the meditation music thing is a marketing ploy to get the company's name out. How could you accuse them of such a thing? It's not like they are going out of their way to mention the product by name in every report and it's not like they charge almost $150 per cd. Oh wait, yes they are and yes they do.

    PS: I posted the story first

  • The ultimate spy team: Bond and Boo!
    ---
  • CNN: But after stories were written about the group's goals, the Bahamian government pressured the company to leave. It relocated last year to the United States.

    I'm pretty sure that's the first time that anyone has ever left the Bahamas for the U.S. because of legal pressure!

    --

  • Hehe, I just got back from that. I can't believe Spielberg spliced in CE3K footage for the last half hour of the movie. I know special effects are expensive, but that's pretty rediculous - plus he had a perfectly good ending a half hour before.

    It's still an interesting movie though. It's not good in the traditional sense, but it sure had me entertained if only for trying to pick apart the movie and figure out which bits came from Kubrick and which from Speilberg. I have the odd feeling that Kubrick probably came up with the Pinnochio allusion, but some how I doubt he would have shoved it down the audience's throat and explained it over and over. Still, the movie would have been much worse had Spielberg tried to emulate Kubrick (he did to a point, but really only so far as going with slow pacing and using Kubrick's drawings/ideas for shot setup). At least the movie didn't say, "You know David - that's the first man eh?" - oh wait, it did. The really awkward thing is that the movie could have been good. At least the ewok .... errr teddy bear was entertaining.

    It's not a movie that entertains me, but it's still my favorite Spielberg movie next to Jaws. Oh wait, it also follows the Indy trilogy. Really he should either stick to those types of movies or stop trying to make movies that have some sort of underlying meaning and then tagging them with a John Williams score and computerized aliens.
  • OK, the ending could have been good. No shit theyh weren't aliens - I'm just saying go watch CE3K where the aliens are unveiled and then watch both the first time David is introduced and the first time the ultra-futeristic-robots are on-screen. I had three main problems with the ending - visual style, overuse of exposition (which really lasted the entire movie), and typical Spielberg-esque emotional manipulation. Yeah, I realize Spielberg is quite talented at getting a John Williams score in D-Minor, showing people crying/dying, and complimenting it with slow camera pans/zooms to get the audience into the movie, but it doesn't work for me. Suprisingly, it didn't even work for the audience I saw it with either. He had the opportunity to make the robot encounter into a great suprise ending (well, it was expected, but so are most suprise endings). It was horribly executed. It should have left me pondering its meaning when I left, but I don't have to, because the robot explained it all for me for 10 minutes. I really don't have to think about the Pinnochio allusion either because its meaning was hammered into me about four times in the movie (first reading, boy's request for blue fairy, dr. know, coney island, good god can a metaphore be so drawn out). Not to mention that the "we can only bring mommy back for a day due to the space-time-continuum" voodoo bullshit was pretty rediculous. That might have been Kubrick's idea, but it was still bull. How would the universe revolve around the human day when humans themselves are extinct? Doesn't the ending prove the lack of existence of some spiritual defense of humanity?

    You're right that Spielberg's made great and shitty movies. Jaws is great, Indy is great, CE3K is great, Schindler's List is good. But this is just not particularly good in either the typical-spielberg-entertainment sense or the artistic-merit sense. It won't be a box office smash. It'll probably be #1 this weekend because of the shear number of competing movies, but it won't next weekend. The whole movie felt like it was the Cliff's Notes Complete version Spielberg made of Kubrick's ideas. Again, I know that Kubrick wanted Spielberg to direct this, but I don't know how happy he would've been.

    And no, every last bit of it was not Kubrick. He would not have used a JW score (look at his past strategic reuse of classic music to aid his movies - Beethoven's 9th in Clockwork, Flight of the Valkries in Full Metal Jacket). He would not have had slick CE3K robots. He wanted David to be a robot rather than a boy - physically. Again, Spielberg has liscense to change all that. My problem is just that he tried to keep all of Kubrick's plans/themes while imposing his own directing style - the emotionally manipulative, overly expository one. When Spielberg used his Indy/Jaws style for the Rouge City scenes among others, it mostly worked.

    Basically I can't like this movie, but I'll still come back to watch it a few more times (though I may fast-forward through a bit of the ending). It's interesting to watch in the same sense that something like Survivor is - to try and figure out what went on behind the scenes to make the movie. I don't like the movie because it thought I was an idiot (though according to you, this is a proper accusation), but I still enjoyed watching it to figure out just where Spielberg went wrong. It could have been great; he could have made it great; he obviously didn't, however, and that's why I liked watching it.
  • Cloning Dolly required 277 attempts. And it carries risks. Hill, who has cloned cattle, said the cloned calves are often sick and abnormally large.

    [...] he will give you a dead baby, a defective baby or a deformed baby [...]

    So if you've lost a child, you need not be racked with grief. Instead you can pay lots of money to have your child returned to you defective, deformed, sick and abnormally large, with a tin-foil hat. Now that's progress!

  • Lets put that $100,000 speech on Napster!

    "The road to the top of the bell-curve is paved with mediocrity." - collin brack
  • users will be lulled to sleep and will fall asleep at inopportune times

    hmm.. you sure they're not talking about AI? Damn, but I can't WAIT to see a review of that here :)

  • The Register has a story [theregister.co.uk] about this.

    According to the article Hauben coined the term Netizen in a 1992 article entitled "The Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net Has on People's Lives", and contributed to the IEEE's Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.

  • James Bond's newest ally (Score:3)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @08:50PM (#117376) Homepage
    JAMES BOND HAS A NEW ALLY

    Santa Monica, CA (PP)- MGM executives have unveiled a new ally in James Bond's fight against evil, Scruffy the Wonder Gerbil.

    Scruffy, a new jersey spotted gerbil, will lead an effort to stop a band of terrorists from downing airliners. In a remarkable new cross-company marketing scheme, MGM officials have announced that Scruffy will be deployed using the patented Outpost.com Gerbil Cannon.

    "Scruffy the Wonder Gerbil will join other crime fighting rodents of the silver screen," announced MGM CEO Michael Bootiepants. "Mighty Mouse, Stuart Little and, of course, those rascally critters from Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers."

    Scruffy was unavailable for comment, he was training for the role in a new state of the art excercise wheel made entirely out of titanium.

  • From a CEO of a meditiation company (Score:3)

    by gatesh8r ( 182908 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @09:34PM (#117377)
    Dear /.:

    <meditation music in background>

    I am from the CEO of a major meditation company. <yawn> I believe it's in the best intrest of our intelectual property to be protected, along with our sweet melodies, that ppl don't get hurt by our pro... <snoring>.... uh? ya. Where were we? Anyway, we don't want any problems occuring form those wholesale pirates!

    So, if you would excuse me, I need a nap. Bye.

  • Something Obvious with that... (Score:3)

    by krystal_blade ( 188089 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @11:46PM (#117378)
    Napster users will be lulled to sleep by the tranquil melodies and will fall asleep at inopportune times

    What I don't get is that the redundancy filter didn't catch this.

    LULL PEOPLE TO SLEEP

    NAPster

    So either the company wants the "NAPster" name, or they want free advertising on their site.

    krystal_blade

  • Re:Oh great... (Score:3)

    by zhensel ( 228891 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @11:25PM (#117379) Homepage Journal
    Actually, I heard Napster already moved to filter all John Tesh songs to preempt any similar suits.

  • Oh great... (Score:3)

    by Pyrion Celendil ( 455058 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @09:11PM (#117380) Homepage
    Now it's Napster's fault that this company puts out music that puts people to sleep.

  • Wow, I never thought I'd see it... (Score:4)

    by Cheshire Cat ( 105171 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @08:47PM (#117381) Homepage
    Clonaid makes the Scientologists seem almost rational in comparison. Almost.

  • Stupid case (Score:5)

    by hugg ( 22953 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @10:09PM (#117382)
    There needs to be a way to weed out dumb court cases. Maybe you could ask ten people, and if nine of them say "that's dumb" then you throw the case out. Or maybe use some kind of roulette wheel with flashing lights or something.

  • Meditation marketing ploy (Score:5)

    by artemis67 ( 93453 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @08:56PM (#117383)
    The suit by the company selling meditation music is obviously a big marketing ploy.

    Little podunk company brinks suit against one of the most highly-trafficked sites on the 'net, 'cept to make their suit stand out, they throw in some extra marketing razzmatazz about how their music is so effective in putting people to sleep that it needs warning labels.

    Yeah, right.

    Why didn't they just contact Napster and tell them to add their songs to the filtering system? I wonder if even a single one of their songs is being traded...

    Still, though... they are going to reap a lot of recognition out of this. Too bad they're doing it at the expense of our already-overburdened court system.

  • You know... (Score:5)

    by Yu Suzuki ( 170586 ) on Saturday June 30, 2001 @09:43PM (#117384) Homepage
    ...it's easy to poke fun at groups like Clonaid, because after all, their ideas are pretty far removed from "normal" society and have almost no (if any) basis on fact. But I'm not sure if it's a good idea to write off everything they do as fodder for the "humor" category. Human cloning presents some serious ethical and moral issues, and we should be prepared for the possibility that some group like the Raelians will actually clone in human. The cloning process has been pretty extensively documented to the public -- I certainly wouldn't have any trouble believing that some fringe group could pull it off.

    When we mock groups outside mainstream society, we only give them more reason to retaliate. Just look at Columbine, or at the Oklahoma City bombing in which Timothy McVeigh was motivated by the cover-up of those who died at Ruby Ridge. I'd think the supposedly free-minded people at Slashdot would know better to mock ostracized groups and deride them as "tinfoil-hat wearing" (note that nowhere in the CNN article are the Raelians actually described as wearing tin-foil hats). These people may be different from us, but their actions could present a real, serious issue.

    Yu Suzuki

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