Snow

I'm still alive in 2010. Beats the alternative.

So, saw a comment today regarding some people getting 10 mod points instead of the normal 5. Must be nice, I haven't seen any mod points in literally 6+ years. I can pretty much narrow down when they disappeared too, after posting in political articles from a conservative standpoint. Supposedly there's no 'blacklist' but I'm sure it's statistically very very unlikely to go without mod points for so long. Anybody else suffering from an suspiciously odd drought of mod points?

(And yes, I'm not using Wherefore thou art to mean why)

We belong to the poet inside us.
It is our owner, our ruler, our king.
To be a slave to anything else is death
by slow, ragged steps.
Yet to follow where our fancy takes us,
wherever, whenever, forever,
is the greatest freedom man can bear.

Notice the boxes that show up around posts...anybody have any idea what they're supposed to be? Is it just a worse case of /. b0rkenness than usual, or are they supposed to do something useful? I think it's been like this for at least a week or two.

(That I'm using a beta version of Firefox isn't the explanation...it looks the same on Firefox 3.0.x on my other machines, and in Safari on my iPhone.)

Just a random entry to put something here.

http://www.random.org/

Yeah. I do.

twittin as Blackneto now.
stalk me.

twittin as Blackneto since that's myprimary account here, that I never use...

I have the following:
1 Windows Vista x64 Machine, in my basement, equipped with a Blu-Ray drive and player software by Cyberlink that in theory works with Windows Media Center.

1 medium-strength (Athlon 2600, 2GB RAM, Radeon X800XTX) former gaming machine, with a license for Windows XP and a current Ubuntu 8.10 install.

I want: to pop a Blu-Ray disc in my Vista machine, stream over gigabit to the lesser machine, for output onto a standard-definition 37" TV.

Any suggestions? Windows Media Center refuses to acknowledge Blu-Ray playback software exists, VLC can't handle it, and I don't have the drive space to store multiple Blu-Ray movies at full resolution. While I'm in principle unopposed to downconverting the Blu-Ray discs to standard definition, that doesn't support the kind of instant experience I'd like.

Thanks!

See where a good discussion about a possible military technology turns into a debate about what a "bad guy" is.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1032117&cid=25788173

I don't know if I should laugh or what.

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

Let's all join hands now and live in peace because a democrat is in office.

When will the masses realize all politicians are the same?

Hey...Is it just me, or are all these fringe liberals getting really crazy lately?

I generally tend to keep my political beliefs quiet and tucked away until someone seeks them out (with a few exceptions), but lately I almost feel I am being attacked left and right by these wacky liberals. Then, when it isn't the crazies – it's the people who thing that life is so horrible in America and how bad things are because of “W” etc. People seem to be losing their minds just because of the upcoming election. Of course, I honestly don't believe it's the election itself. I believe a lot of the democrats in congress and Mr. Obama are intentionally planting these beliefs in the weaker minded individuals out there.

As far as the crazy libs - I'm not talking about people who just vote democrat and have liberal leanings, I'm talking about crazy fringe leftists flipping me off because I'm in the military fighting Bush's war or whatever comment they decide to drop on me. Seriously, this happened the other night and is by no means an an isolated instance. One of the soldiers in my team was basically verbally assaulted during a traffic jam outside post recently, and I have heard of an increasing number of such outbursts. Now, I'm sure people will just say there are always anti-war anti-military crazies out there and I'm used to seeing the protesters, but this is the first time I've been personally confronted by them. Then when it isn't anti-military sentiment, it's anti-gun or blame America first or something of that nature.

Anyway, the perceived state of our economy and how people view their conditions is also really getting on my nerves. It is as if everyone just realized how horrible conditions are after Obama started telling them about it. I find myself continually arguing with people over the economy and how "horrible" life is right now. People have no idea how good we have it! Everywhere I go I see people driving around nice vehicles with DVD players and all that high tech gadgetry going on, houses with big screen plasma TVs glowing in the window, everyone with a cellphone and/or laptop computer, and I could go on. What was that on the Obama commercial last night? The family didn't have snacks or something similarly ridiculous. Hey, guess what? The majority of the world lives off of rice, doesn't have clean drinking water, maybe has a radio or similar if they have access to electricity, and let's not even get into the lack of the freedoms we enjoy in America thanks to our relative prosperity. That's just a small list at that. I'm sorry a lot of people have gotten themselves in to a hole with their ARM loans or lost money in the stock market. Guess what? You're lucky. You're lucky you even had the chance to invest some money. You're lucky you live in a country where you can buy a $200,000+ house on credit. It really saddens me to see this extreme misplaced anger coming out in my neighbors, friends, family, and fellow Americans. It just shows me that as a country we've become extremely spoiled and I fear we're about to make some horrible political choices because of this emotional tantrum.

Guess who said the following:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I'd be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way , that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

If you guessed "B. Hussein Obama," then you, sir, are correct. It's from an interview he gave WBEZ, the Chicago NPR affiliate, in 2001. Go here for the MP3.

"Redistributive change?" "Economic justice?" That's Communism we can believe in.

Do you suppose this would be the new national anthem under an Obummer regime?

Update: (9:15 AM) Sounds like Rush Limbaugh is kicking off the day with this story. John McCain needs to run with this. America won't vote for a Communist.

(Cross-posted at*.)