"And for my last wish, I want a 4G network with truly epoch speed."

And the genie smiled.

It's really only when you examine the unary representation of pi that the fascinating patterns tend to emerge:

000.000000000000000000000[...]00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000[...]000000000000000000000000000000000 and so forth.

Jolly Ranchers may be relatively harmless in and of themselves, but it is well known that they are a gateway to the "harder" stuff (not literally, nothing's actually harder than a Jolly Rancher.) Sure, today little Chastity Amber is sucking innocently on a Jolly Rancher (and if that sentence doesn't bother you, it should), but tomorrow she's chowing down some Now&Laters. And that shit be quantum. Is she eating it now? Is she eating it later? Until you actually open her mouth and look inside, she's doing both.

Perhaps he's merely being considerate, and requesting that the Jaws theme be queued to play as soon as the current soundtrack (as well as any other pending tracks) have fully completed. It's rude to interrupt someone else's soundtrack, after all. </unwarranted optimism>

You would be correct, if only "Some of the guys try dumb" were a well-constructed sentence. Unless this is some sort of regional dialect? "You guys wanna try dumb tonight?" "Yuh-HUH!"

Under most circumstances, you would be correct. However, there are certain situations under which it is grammatically correct to omit the final mark of punctuation: when a speaking character is defenestrated mid-dialogue; when the narrator has just discovered himself to be his own grandpa; and (as is clearly the case in the grandparent post) when quoting the first line of a limerick:

Wish I had mod points, this entire thread is one of the funniest ever on /.
Second quite possibly only to last week's delightful essay on the breakdancing robot
Of course it would be
somewhat remiss of me
Not to mention that I find most everything hilarious because I just don't get out a whole lot.

That is true, but nowhere have I equated popularity with talent, nor have I stated (or implied) that I believe the "greatest" artists should also be the most well-paid. My question was: if you believe that musicians should not be paid relative to the number of people who enjoy their music (i.e. the popularity - not "quality" of said music), do you likewise believe that other members of society should not be paid relative to the popularity of their services or products?

We who are without mod points salute you, sir.

You make some compelling arguments, and I agree with a lot of what you say - to a point. However, my feeling is that you are wrong on one crucial point: I don't think that the overwhelming majority of people who pirate music do so because they don't believe that artists are entitled to any sort of compensatory rights for what they do (forgive me if I'm misstating your point: I'm inferring that from "Whatever rights the artist may claim, the majority don't recognise them.") I think that filesharing has simply become the path of least resistance: it's convenient, and free, and the assumption is made that other people will buy the record and support the artist. I think it's much like citizens who don't bother to vote: while there is undoubtedly a small core of people who believe that voting is meaningless and that the democratic system is inherently flawed, most nonvoters essentially believe in the system, but are content to rely on the participation of others. You find this statement unreasonable: "The artist deserves to be rewarded for their work, therefore every single one of you who listens to me has to pay." To be honest, I don't find anything particularly high-minded in the converse: "The artist deserves to be rewarded for their work, therefore someone else should pay."

I agree with you that the current interface between artists and audience is far from ideal. One thing I find interesting about your position, however, is the notion that there should not necessarily be any kind of correlation between the number of people who enjoy an artist's music and the degree to which that artist should be financially compensated. I'm just curious: do you feel the same way about sports stars (for example)? My perception (which may be skewed, I admit) is that whereas most members of society - in or out of the arts and entertainment community - who affect the lives of large numbers of people would be expected to make a correspondingly large amount of money, there seems to be growing sentiment that musicians should be held to a different type of standard altogether.

The thing is, people don't torrent Beyonce to protest the copyright status of Richard Strauss. They just want free stuff. If the duration of copyright were revised drastically downward, people would still pirate the most current music. I'm not defending life+70 - it's patently insane (ha ha) - but let's not pretend it has any bearing on this issue.

That you are convinced invoking the phrase "bunch of jews" will magically ignite some kind of uniquely Semitic firestorm of controversy, AC, speaks more to your own illogical beliefs and double standards than those of the mainstream. (Only barely worth mentioning, even parenthetically, is your odd notion that "bunch of muslims" is somehow 'going further' [on what intangible axis of delusion?] than "bunch of christians".)

"Good morning class, today's topic is the evolution of European imperialism. Please load up King's Quest I, V, and VI."

There's a Turing machine for that.

How can you am so sure?

If diagonalization will solve Firefox's halting problems, I'm all for it.