sweasel.com

Thank God you opined on this, Weaz! It has reared its’ ugly head again, and I was really getting pissed about the scare-mongering. It’s a dead issue. Ain’t gonna happen.

As painful and often emotionally unsatisfying as the high road often is, the Right cannot afford to fear-monger like the Dems. It’s beneath us. It lacks dignity. It reflects on character and breeding.

I hate having smoke blown up my butt, McGoo. And both sides are doing it with this one. I’m not sure why.

Whenever politicians collude to promote a silly idea, my bullshit detector goes off the scale.

Angling for your Glorious People’s Revolutionary Democratic Government Happy Fun Communication Agency license a little early, aren’t you?

Apple-polisher.

The only problem is, what if the Democrats Socialists decide that not only are they going to go after the “broadcast media”, which from everything I have heard mainly affected the radio waves, to the intertubes and satellite. All it would take is just to change the Fairness Doctrine around a lil bit, ya know, add the words INTERNET and SATELLITE RADIO, for instance, and with a few Obama nominations to the Supreme Court who will fly through the filibuster proofed Senate, boom. Is it going to happen or is everyone hyperventilating over nothing. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But with San Fran Nancy drooling over her prospects for San Fransisco Values™ being spread around like buttah.. well…

Duncan, do you know the old expression “the internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it”? It’s very, very, very hard to regulate the internet (or satellite) without the cooperation of the governments of the entire world.

The only way China has managed to control the ‘net is to, in essence, build a completely separate internet that only touches the rest of the world in strategic places they control. And even then, they find it extremely difficult to choke off everything they don’t want.

See, the problem is that the internet is, well, international. As Canada has discovered when issuing gag orders about court cases, people in other countries just post the information on their blogs.

Now, it’s possible in future to build in controls. Eliminating anonymity would go a long way in this direction. That’s why I get the willies whenever they talk about the “next generation” internet. But to build in those controls, they need the cooperation of hardline geeks — the only group of people in the world who are predominately hardline libertarians, as well.

In other words, San Fran Nan’ll be long gone before any body has the ability to rein in the ‘net. If they ever do.

They would likely kill the goose that laid the golden egg, too — the ability to sell things back and forth across the world has help prop up our economy in a big way.

Ironically (ironically because China, at least, controls internet access so rigidly inside its borders), if the Western world somehow cooperated to rein in their corner of the ‘net, I bet you places like China and Russia would see it as a business opportunity. Already, a hell of a high proportion of spam comes through Russia and China. Why not iTunes and Blogger sites that circumvent Western rules?

You know DVDs are region-encoded so that the ones I buy in the UK I can’t use in the US and vice versa? No point of that at all except to give movie studios more control of video releases. Bastards. Well, to get around that — we buy each other DVD’s for Christmas, after all — Uncle B and I purchased a neat bit of Chinese software called DVD Region Free. It intercepts the region coding and allows any DVD to be played on that computer. It’ll skip the FBI warning for you if you like, too.

There’s a big something to be said for a divided world with some lawless bits left, you know.

Did Nancy Pelosi change the spelling of San Francisco?

Hmmmm.

@ S. Weasel

Sorry but you’re completely and utterly wrong on this.

1. Broadcast media still has the largest audiences.

2. It will destroy talk radio.

3. Pelosi, Reid and Obama have all gone on the record about implementing a “new” Fairness Doctrine. And I hope you’re not silly enough to think that they would leave out satellite and the internet when doing so.

4. Satellite is vulnerable because the US government owns the electromagnetic spectrum, which it leases out to specific companies in exchange for payment, and also owns all geosynchronous space above the USA.

5. The DNS servers are located here in the good old USA and wouldn’t be all that difficult to muck with. No record on the DNS servers? No sweasel.com.

6. Where are you going to locate the servers? The data centers? A third world country with no bandwidth and intermittent electricity? Because otherwise there is zero chance your server is going to be beyond Pelosi’s reach.

7. To absolutely destroy the political online society they wouldn’t even have to bother including the internet in a “new” Fairness Doctrine. F–king McCain saw to that.

McCain-Feingold does not explicitly exclude the internet from the onerous reporting requirements listed in that stupid law. Only a single ruling, which can be changed at any time, by the FEC excludes the internet.

How fast can that change? Particularly since the Democrats can hang the responsibility onto a Republican for it? Pretty damn fast. How about lefty sites you ask? Who says the FEC, under the control of a Democratic supermajority, is going to be equal in jurisdiction?

…

This is a serious serious issue and one the Democrats, if they have the power, will address. Whether it is by FEC, tax law or a “new” Fairness Doctrine the Democrats, leadership *and* base, have clearly stated their intentions to reduce or completely eliminate political talk by conservatives and Republicans.

You can say it is all bullshit. Just hope those aren’t your last words we’ll ever see or hear on this issue.

Time will tell which of us is utterly full of shit, Memomachine. I’ve been online since the mid Eighties and one thing I’ve learned: politicians don’t understand the first thing about technology.

How is McCain/Feingold going to control the political speech of a British citizen posting in the South of England (which I shall be in four years)? Are they going to eliminate proxy servers? Blogging venues in other countries? How do they know who you are if you access the ‘net through an anonymizer?

Yes, they could shut down one by one all of the things that have made the internet work. But they won’t do it quickly, the won’t do it with a single law, and they won’t do it without the full cooperation of the single most libertarian group of people on the planet: geeks.

politicians don’t understand the first thing about technology.

That’s a pretty brash statement, considering who created the internet.

Excelsior!

You know, I’ve always felt kinda bad for Al on that one. Bonehead though he is, he did approve a lot of the early expenditures for DARPAnet. I really think it’s more a case of “misspoke” than “made up some nutty shit” in that case.

DARPA, I did some work for them once. That’s one strange agency, there are some really spooky people there.

Limbaugh, is blowing smoke. The Fairness Doctrine, I love how these pols come up with innocuous names for utter BS. If nothing else I would welcome it. It would give back meaning to pirate radio.

Seems to me that China has it’s own totalitarian infrastructure and the support of Google, and whoever wants to do business there, in order to strangle freedom of ideas and speech.

Jill… changed it, to what? San Nancisco. It would be the perfect narcissistic move for a narcissistic city.

Oh, and uh… Weas… if I have it right every DVD player has an unlock code that does what you are talking about. Unless they’ve changed it recently, of course.

You know, I’ve always felt kinda bad for Al on that one. Bonehead though he is, he did approve a lot of the early expenditures for DARPAnet. I really think it’s more a case of “misspoke” than “made up some nutty shit” in that case.

Maybe so, but he still made a fatal miscalculation.

Consider: according to his own data, the most drastic effects of global warming have been seen…when? In the time of the industrial revolution, when every major city was choking on coal smoke and coal-fired locomotives crossed entire nations?

Or in the RECENT past, when vehicle emissions controls have gotten absolutely draconian, and people commute even less thanks to the ability to telecommute?

I’ve spent more than my share of times in server rooms, and network closets, half deafened by the A/C units and cooling fans. Lots…and LOTS…of cooling fans.

Those heat loads weren’t there before every office building had a dozen servers and a bajillion workstations, when huge office buildings had windows that could open for cooling instead of being hermetically sealed and air conditioned to protect all the delicate equipment.

The internets…they make heats.

Ergo…Al Gore…CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING.

Too late to atone, Big Al.

As originally designed by Tim Berners-Lee, the web was meant to run on belgian waffles and fairy dust. And god knows the Euros have a surplus of both.

Addendum: NNTP ran on pureed Fonzie, and no other protocol before or since was ever so damn cool.

I’ve also worked on DARPA shit, Allen. Spooky ain’t the half of it.

I just went through 2 1/2 months of No Internet. I am generally a very patient man, and fairly tolerant of inconvenience, but I can testify that – if my lack of internet connection was due to a politician or some party’s legislation – I’d be marching and protesting and screaming non-stop at our peerless leaders, 24/7.

Those Dems mess with my Limbaugh and (R) radio and alternative opinion to MSM and I’ll make kicking them all out of office a career. I suspect that that’s even more the case for most web-surfin’ Conservatives.

LK, Duncan posted it as San Fransisco Values™.

I’m just a-wonderin’…

To memomachine:

Regarding your point #2. It will destroy talk radio.

I think the more appropriate statement is that it would destroy radio, and the companies that own radio.

Look, now, at the value of companies like Citadel and Entercom….

“In the toilet” seems like a fairly kind description.

Ant they are in the toilet, even with the popularity of talk radio.

As to the relative popularity of left wing talk radio, like Air America…that organization is somewhere past “in the toilet” and well down the sewer pipe, already….

So, as far as the reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine is concerned, this would be somewhat of a threat to talk radio, to be sure…but it would be the absolute death knell for the companies who own the broadcst outlets.

Therefore I doubt that it is anything other than an idle threat…not even Harry Reid can be so tone deaf as to propel the entire AM radio broadcast industry into bankruptcy….

(Should I reconsider what I just said about Harry Reid? Have I possibly overestimated his intelligence?)

These days, with my shorter commute, I listen to talk radio exclusively over the ‘net. I can’t get radio reception at my desk, and the station I listen to at home doesn’t come in so good. So streaming it is.

I’m surprised that companies haven’t taken advantage of the advertising possibilities better. Oh, they advertise over the streamed versions, but it’s the same few ads over and over and over again. And they’re different from the broadcast ad.

Somebody needs to get clever about packaging ads, and (where appropriate) targeting the ad to the listener’s IP. Sometimes I listen to stations geographically far away, where the product advertised is local.

The only reason I reckon they haven’t exploited this better is that either the market share of streaming listeners is still too small, or they’re just not seeing the potential.

Reid is a vindictive little prick, Pelosi a loon, and Obama, a narcississtic punk who can’t tolerate criticism….already proven many times over. Bad combo, They will try something just to distract radio and force the talkers to spend a lot of cash defending themselves.

Hmmmm.

@ S. Weasel

1. “Time will tell which of us is utterly full of shit, Memomachine. I’ve been online since the mid Eighties and one thing I’ve learned: politicians don’t understand the first thing about technology.”

I’ve been programming professionally since 1978. If we’re exchanging tech cred that is.

*shrug* time will tell. But considering how deranged the Left is on this issue I seriously doubt the Democrats won’t act.

2. “How is McCain/Feingold going to control the political speech of a British citizen posting in the South of England (which I shall be in four years)?”

*shrug* it doesn’t have to. Seriously. How relevant -is- the political speech of someone commenting on American politics who doesn’t actually -live- in America? How timely is it? How informed is it? And how likely is it that you’ll stick to blogging about politics in the USA rather than shifting to politics in the south of England?

But as for the mechanics of it. Seriously. You don’t think the UK authorities wouldn’t act to comply with requests from the US government? Not to be a spoiler but I didn’t think there was freedom of speech in the UK. There certainly isn’t a Constitution.

If the UK authorities requested your ISP to shutdown, you’re shut down. If the USA authorities request your domain be removed from the nameservers, you’re gone.

3. “Are they going to eliminate proxy servers? Blogging venues in other countries? How do they know who you are if you access the ‘net through an anonymizer?”

No offense but you’re trying to apply the Chinese situation to this, and it doesn’t apply. There the Chinese are trying to control the end users.

Here they would be controlling the ISPs and webhosts.

Totally different situation.

4. “Yes, they could shut down one by one all of the things that have made the internet work. But they won’t do it quickly, the won’t do it with a single law, and they won’t do it without the full cooperation of the single most libertarian group of people on the planet: geeks.”

Really? Frankly I think your confidence is severely misplaced.

Hmmmm.

@ Steve

“Therefore I doubt that it is anything other than an idle threat…not even Harry Reid can be so tone deaf as to propel the entire AM radio broadcast industry into bankruptcy….”

Don’t you remember the vitriol the Left had towards Clear Channel? Remember? 2004?

Consider also that if AM radio dies off completely then the US government will have yet another group of extremely valuable spectrum freqs to lease off to the highest bidder.

Welcome revenue during a bad time.

Let me get this straight: the party that, quite literally, brought the financial world to its knees and, got off, essentially, scott-free due to the complicity of the MSM is going to *not* take a crack at silencing its ‘racist’ opponents because, somehow, the magic of the Internet (apparently going back to the BBS days) will somehow prevent that? Are you fucking for real? Memomachine has it exactly correct and it’s interesting that you chose to knock only the one scenario in which you feel you’d be immune (in the merry old land of Big Brother, no less, where they never-ever trample civil liberties except every other week!)

Futher, given the fascist impulses of the O! campaign and its militant acolytes (shooting at McCain campaign buses; assaulting people that dare pull for McCain in Manhattan; shutting down the switchboards on radio shows that dare shine a light on Obama’s seedy underbelly ‘just because people should stop questioning Obama’; etc.) do you really believe a new and improved Fairness Doctrine won’t year its ugly head within a year of Obama taking office that covers *everything* (including the magical internet).

Oh yeah, sure: they’ll take it easy on this because they generally go so easy on coporations (look at Wall St. whom they’re blaming for the financial debacle they created; looks at the oil companies who they readily blamed for the oil crisis but was down to their policies; and, with the new and improved Fairness Doctrine, they’ll just blame Clear Channel et al for fomenting hate and the like as they inexorably chip away your–well our, since you won’t even be here–freedom of speech).

Reading some of these head in the sand comments it is to laugh!

I need to stay totally out of this thread since I’ve been employed as a talk radio host and still am actively involved.

Allen and McGoo… DARPA may be some of the weirdest stuff around but they’ve also been some of the funnest projects, too. If you don’t think big and wild, or small and wild, or just crazy and wild… some stuff will never get invented.

The chinese control more than the end users… they control it all.

You honestly think I’m going to be less timely and informed about American politics because I’m reading the same news and listening to the same radio from the other side of the Atlantic? Where do you get YOUR news, licking the sidewalk?

And, yes, if the American government asked the British government to stop a British citizen talking about American elections on a personal blog, I can guarantee the response would be whatever the British equivalent is of “pound sand.”

The idea that the US government is going to shut down political speech by taking control of the internet is the 2008 version of “Bill Clinton will declare martial law and be president for life.”

Not. Going. To. Happen.

Oh, and to the person who just asked Google “what happens if you eat weasels?” the answer is: YOU CURL UP IN A BALL AND DIE. ‘K?

Hey, Uncle B…. what IS the Brit equivalent of “pound sand”?

I think it probably is going to be a lot drier and not quite sound like an insult until you think about it. Which is way cool.

what happens if you eat weasels?

Really? Ugh. All that fur stuck in yer teeth. And passing a claw has to be nasty.

🙂

The idea that the US government is going to shut down political speech by taking control of the internet

Don’t forget that the Obamatons have already crashed and disappeared some anti-Obama sites for awhile. Google has done similar things, yahoo too – ‘right’ videos gone, jihad ones stay.
That being said, they might not be able to take control of the internet BUT a lot of people still do not have internet. They either have tv or radio….and radio may go bye-bye or turned into major turmoil.

Hmmmmm.

@ S. Weasel

1. “You honestly think I’m going to be less timely and informed about American politics because I’m reading the same news and listening to the same radio from the other side of the Atlantic?”

Yes I do. Why? Because I went through the same process as I moved around. With distance there is less immediacy, with closeness there is more.

It won’t happen right away. But I would be extremely surprised if it didn’t.

2. “Where do you get YOUR news, licking the sidewalk?”

Excuse me but I didn’t insult you. So kindly don’t insult me. But if you want to get into it I’m more than happy to start throwing around “f–k you” as liberally as you could possibly like.

3. “And, yes, if the American government asked the British government to stop a British citizen talking about American elections on a personal blog, I can guarantee the response would be whatever the British equivalent is of “pound sand.””

Based on *what* precisely? Your vast experience with the UK justice system? There is no freedom of speech guarantees in the UK as there are in the USA.

Who knows perhaps they’d shut you down anyways just for “hate speech” regulations.

4. “The idea that the US government is going to shut down political speech by taking control of the internet is the 2008 version of “Bill Clinton will declare martial law and be president for life.””

And that is a ridiculous exaggeration of my point.

I’m not talking about “taking over the internet”. I’m talking about regulatory agencies duly authorized by Congress to regulate political speech on the internet.

Something the FEC can do now without any intervention by Congress.

5. “Not. Going. To. Happen.”

Why? Because you said so?

We’re not talking about anything that would affect the vast majority of traffic on the internet. It wouldn’t affect B2B, commercial websites, buying or selling. The only focus would be on political speech intended to affect elections and so would be covered under new legislation or McCain-Feingold.

Then there is also the issue of you continuing to be an American citizen. One thing a lot of people aren’t aware of is that American citizens continue to remain under the legal jurisdiction of the US legal authorities regardless of where they are in the world or where they permanently reside.

There are several examples of this where American businessmen have been sent to prison for bribing foreign government officials -while in foreign countries-. So your residing in southern England may not really mean all that much.

Ugh, there’s nothing more painful than dealing with an argument that comes in the form of a numbered list. So I’ll hit the highlights, if you don’t mind.

Look, I brought up England only because it is an example of how the internet o’erspreads the globe and cannot be regulated like a local entity (we can argue British jurisprudence and my knowledge thereof some other day). I have the same confidence I could continue to speak my mind from inside US borders. Canada isn’t even trying to prevent US sites from leaking information that would be illegal to print on Canadian sites, because the process is too fraught.

There is, that I know of, one example of a lawsuit that hopped the pond (an American, I believe, prosecuted by a Brit under British libel laws). And that was only possible because the principals duked it out online for years and didn’t attempt to conceal their identities.

Any change in policy that allows the government to track and monitor the origins of all speech (at least in cases where people intend to conceal them) WOULD affect the whole fabric of the net, B2B and all.

They’d have to get librarians to narc out web surfers (librarians! The most scary-militant political bloc in the country). They’d have to shut down all the proxies, anonymizers, dial ups (there are still dial-ups, right?) and web cafes. All over the world. They’d have to monitor all email (you can post to WordPress by email, for example). Hell, USENET might come back from the dead if they tried that hard to quash speech.

The idea that we can’t stop music piracy, spam or jihadi videos, but the FEC could regulate American political speech as easy as pie is just not technically supportable.

And that’s before we even look at whether it would be politically supportable, or make it past the Supremes (this is to McCain/Feingold as atom bomb is to squib).

Otnay. Oingay. to Appenhay.

They’d expand any new version of this (it wouldn’t be exactly the same sort of deal) to cover all media, not just broadcast TV.

Again, the only reason they got away with it on broadcast TV and radio is because bandwidth is limited and therefore controlled by the government. Resources that are not so limited wouldn’t meet the same test.

Why do you think they’ve never mentioned the fairness doctrine in the context of newspapers? Even a liberal Supreme Court would laugh that out of the room.

“Somebody needs to get clever about packaging ads, and (where appropriate) targeting the ad to the listener’s IP. Sometimes I listen to stations geographically far away, where the product advertised is local.”

Weez, it’s not just politicians who don’t understand dick about technology.

One of the younger guys at my work just announced a chili cook-off for our floor, with sales at $2 per bowl and $1 to purchase a vote.

I made some crack about ACORN involvement and he said it’s a true capitalist democracy.

🙁

I’ve got a special bowl of red waiting for that guy. Those habaneros are lookin’ downright purty.

apotheosis – make sure you use the Red Savina variety. Mmmm-mmm.

Only total control of the Innertube would suffice for memomachine’s Big Brother scenario to come into existence. And then it would shortly blink out; for the internet, total control equals annihilation. Sure, they can kill it; other than that, they’re just pissing in the wind.

You can’t control cancer, rats, cockroaches, or weblogs. All you can do is crush them out of existence. And that strategy’s worked really well with cancer, rats, and cockroaches. It’s bound to be similarly effective against the internet.

China’s managed to control the internet pretty effectively, all things considered.

That the rats and cockroaches got a reprieve may or may not be a direct result of this.

No, China didn’t control the internet. The way I heard it explained, they set up a completely separate net that only touches the rest of the world’s net in a few places, that they then monitor. And even then, there’s leakage.

Ones and zeroes, folks. They can move around in all kinds of ways.

make sure you use the Red Savina variety. Mmmm-mmm.

wikiwikiwiki

It is also commonly known as the Dominican Devil’s Tongue Pepper or the Ball of Fire Pepper in Guyana.
[…]
Samples of Red Savina have been measured as high as 577,000 Scoville units

Sweet baby Jesus on a buttermilk biscuit. O_O

I don’t think the NRC will let a civilian purchase that without a graphite-and-lead containment facility. And U.N. oversight.

All we have around here are those wussy little orange habaneros. But that should be sufficient, he looks like an Armour tinned chili kinda guy.

The way I heard it explained, they set up a completely separate net that only touches the rest of the world’s net in a few places, that they then monitor.

Thus, for all intents and purposes (meaning domestic), they control “the internet.” Meaning, the generalized distributed network of information and the infrastructure that supports it, even if it’s not the ACTUAL internet. That distinction would be pretty much lost on someone whose only access is through Sinonet, or Chinernet, or whatever they call it.

Oh sure, it looks much the same to them. But the actual difference is huge.

What they’ve got is essentially what I’ve got right now: a big corporate intranet with a little hole to the real internet. My bosses could shut down my desktop surfing in an instant (and, incidentally, would be well within their rights to do so). But I don’t think America — or Belgium, or South Korea — would be keen on paying for a service like that. Not after tasting the real internet all these years.

Remember the furor over Carnivore? Gosh, that seems a long time ago. Remember even before that, when it was customary to sign email and USENET messages with a series of stop words (bomb, nuclear, attack…) intended to clog monitoring software? The pushback against government intrusion on the ‘net is as old as the ‘net, and my money is on the push-backers.

Stoatie, the problem is that if you allow these people to marginalize even part of the forum, or to define what and when debate is allowable, they will continue to come on until there is nothing less. The UnFairness Doctrine may not be a death blow to Limbaugh, Hannity and others, but this sort of thing MUST be opposed on the principal of free speech…..

Oh, certainly, it must be opposed, Scuba. And it will be. There’s just plenty of us who take Palin’s runningmate’s advice and don’t telegraph our actions.

Oh sure, it looks much the same to them. But the actual difference is huge.

Well, not to them. I mean, we know a Big Mac is tastier than tofu, but few of them have any basis for comparison.

I don’t think America — or Belgium, or South Korea — would be keen on paying for a service like that.

And what does the public know, except what they’re told is good for them? Would a well-informed public want the government running their health care system?

If a convincing argument can be made that it’s in the public interest? If supporting evidence can be marshalled in the way of (for example) a sudden, unexpectedly serious wave of DDoS attacks and break-ins against financial institutions, which simply “can’t” be handled by the resources of anything short of a government agency?

Yes, the public looks at internet access as a right. It’s now accepted as a necessity of doing business, of conducting one’s personal affairs, of keeping up on the world. When “the public” is suddenly denied what it’s long considered a right, history shows they cry to the government first, with little immediate regard to how the government provides it.

Buyer’s remorse will come later.

As for me…I dial modems on the telephone, and scream zeroes and ones directly into the mouthpiece.

hardcore.

(sorry for the side track folks)

apo – I grow Red Savinas in my garden. I used one in a sauce I made last friday (Young Thailand Sauce). It’s safe to say that it will remove grease stains on your garage floor.

Red Savinas – didn’t he sing “Phantom 309”?

😛

You too, apo? Guess that proves there really are only 10 kinds of people in the world.

I grow Red Savinas in my garden. I used one in a sauce I made last friday (Young Thailand Sauce). It’s safe to say that it will remove grease stains on your garage floor.

“Know what those things will do? Peel the paint off your house and give your family a permanent orange afro.”

As for home production, I can’t even grow bell peppers. My poor little seedlings poked their heads through the soil, screamed something along the lines of “I am fortune’s foe,” and expired pitifully.

My cabbages are rockin’ tho, so on balance…big win.

Bingo, Jill. He did “Teddy, Bare” too. The mental image it inspired, however (even a young Teddy Kennedy proved too repulsive to ponder), was enough to keep it off the charts.

Just in at AoS: Cuba drank our milkshake.

I hate Nancy Pelosi.

Come on, now! Everybody sing along to the Red Savinas song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg1iEBWxVeQ

🙂

Bottom line, we have something called the first amendment. It was not put there to protect ‘polite’ speech. It is another right put there to protect un-polite/offensive/etc speech, and us from the government.

When the government, in the forms of Pelosi ‘Yes, I am for the Fairness Doctrine’, Reid ‘Letter sent to Rush’s employer’, and Truth Squad Obama, (not to mention the San Francisco creeps who publicly censored Savage), use their positions to even threaten the idea, they have stepped way past the ‘line’ and violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

We should not have to worry that they would even go there. And yet, here we are.

Uncle B had an acoustic coupler: a big ol’ suction cup he stuck on the mouthpiece of a phone while audible ones and zeroes dribbled into it.

Me, I used to be able to dial the phone by pressing the hang-up thingie in quick succession, corresponding to numbers. It was a real skill and it took me ages to master. Man, I hated fucking nines in phone numbers. Broke my heart when it went all tonal.

It’s going to take more than a San Fran Gran to shut ME up.

So…whatever. Let’s drink.

Woo hoo!!!

http://www.morevinott.com/graphics/1405.jpg

I love this one:

more animals

Looks exactly like Damien. Taking exactly the sort of joyful, giant stinky dump Damien always took before breakfast. Here…IiiiII’m…making you…something….special…

Don’t you know that huge bin of litter was to that tomcat what a Mighty Ferguson was to Al Bundy.

By god, a litterbox fit for a TOM!

Oh how I miss that special odorifical bouquet that Silver d’Cat would bomb the entire downstairs with now and then. People running for gas masks, the kids writhing on the floor, paint bubbling on the walls, and flushing of the eyes for a full five minutes to stave off permanent damage. And then using the jaws of life to extricate the silly feline from his litter box when it melted and contracted around him.

Miss it… Erm. Not.

Oh God, Stoatie, I need to get you an updated pic of Schroedinger. He’s picked up this habit of investigating the commode with his butt sticking up in the air. I KNOW that there’s some comic potential you could tap there…. 🙂

I will forever regret not catching Damien’s toilet dance on video. He was fascinated by water all his life. When he were a little tiny thing, you could flush the toilet, and he’d chase the water round and round, running along the toilet seat. Then he’d stare intently at the handle until you flushed again. I’m convinced he’d’ve worked out flushing for himself, had he hung around longer.

Any old excuse for cat pitchers, Scubafreak. Which reminds me…we haven’t had a PUPPY UPDATE in a while, LK!

Oh, god…what sort of blog am I running here?

Darpa? Isnt that for high-tech Mind Control shit? I guess once they have that sucker up and running – there wont be a need for a fairness doctrine. We will all shuffle along in our zombie walk, saying “yessss…” to whatever is spewing from the radio airwaves, no matter what the topic.

Heh. DARPAnet was what the internet was called when it was a baby (they later dropped the D and made it ARPAnet). A lot of the early shareware repositories were on .mil servers, too.

The same people, but this time using their Evil Military Powers for good.

Wendy, just get a tinfoil helmet. NOONE can control your mind when you walk around looking like a sperm…… 🙂

Scuba – if you look like a sperm wearing your tin-foil hat I think you are making it wrong! 😛

Image trivia: while I was putting that picture together this morning, I thought to myself, “self? What search terms can I use to find a picture of somebody putting his hands out, like he’s in a glass box?”

Yup. Those hands belong to Marcel Marceau.

I will post a pupdate tonight…

Hey don’t forget the Pet Foil Hat Technology (conveniently acronymed PFHT, which means diddly + squat). Google it if you haven’t seen it. It’s a hoot.

Sorry Scuba – I just went to the pet foil hat website and I now understand the sperm comment. Obviously I’m the one who doesnt know how to properly make a tin-foil hat. 🙂

Woooooo! Woooooo! I’m using scary DARPA mind-control techniques…! You must watch this video:

Aw. Nertz. Preaching to the choir is no fun.

Obviously I missed the earlier reference to the PFHT thingy. So sorry to be a squid-brain and add a repeat comment. Long day, too much caffeine, crappy toilet paper… you get the idea. I wonder if our forebears had it this rough?

I just got an email advertising “barley legal teens.”

I think it has something to do with reducing drinking age for hard alcohol consumption.

Wendy, if you need advice on the proper use of the tinfoil helmet, I would recomment M. Night Shamalan’s “Signs”. First rate training material…… 🙂

Apo – were they malted barley teens?

Signs. ZOMG! That was him? Wonderful! The most unintentionally hilarious touching death scene in the whole history of cinema.

“Sweetie? That car? Pretty much pinched you in half. His bumper and this tree are the only things holding you together right now. So, ummm…sure, let’s talk while we wait for the tow truck. And then something…really…unspeakable is going to happen. KTHXBAI!”

I liked the parody of it with Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards…

“Honey, I promise, I will never love anyone but you…”

“And NO SEX!!”

“I’m sorry honey, I couldn’t hear you, you’re fading out….”

Ode to a Barley Legal Teen

If it weren’t for your yeasty aroma,
I believe I’d maybe take you homa.

Great. Now I’ve got “John Barleycorn Must Die” stuck in my head.

Obama’s plan to socialize broadband.

mashable.com/2008/10/21/national-cto/

nicked from Malkin’s site.

Stoatie, It’s better than chorus after chorus of “Barnacle Bill….” 🙂

“What if I should have a child?
What if I should have a child?
What if I should have a child?” cried the tender young maiden.

Barley legal teen,
Your love is illicit wheat
Your passion – dry rye.

“I’ll open your crack, and shove it right back!” says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
“I’ll open your crack, and shove it right back!” says Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

My sailor bretheren were a class bunch, no?

Ok – I missed out on this discussion.
But I like old things. I have a console long distance Zenith radio from 1939 in my living room. It’s about four and a half feet tall. It has tubes and everything and still works. I listen to AM radio on it when I am cleaning the house. It has the call letters from all the stations that were around back then. Here’s a picture http://www.oldradiozone.com/z15s373.html

Apo – were they malted barley teens?

One supposes.

*dons punderwear*

She was barley legal, and in a glass by herself.
She was barley legal, and her relationship was on the rocks.
She was barley legal, and I love her still.

….She was barley legal, and you couldn’t fit a cointreau it.

*smack* OK OK NO MORE

Ok, let me get this straight:

“BLT’s” pass w/ flying colors.

Enas says the word “spork” and is gooshed by Akismet.

Sounds about right.

Pupdates are up. Scroll to the second item. BTW… Note the space after the http…

http ://lemurking.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/halloween-celebrating-friday-the-13th/

… ?… ? … ?

PUNDERWEAR?

Geez that is good. Probably been around 4ever and I am hopelessly out of touch but dammit it’s still good.

Hmmmm.

@ porknbean

(yeah I’m a list kinda person)

1. “Bottom line, we have something called the first amendment. It was not put there to protect ‘polite’ speech. It is another right put there to protect un-polite/offensive/etc speech, and us from the government.”

The problem with this is that the SCOTUS has already ruled that McCain-Feingold -is- Constitutional. And McCain-Feingold regulates not speech as speech but rather speech as -something with monetary value-. And for whatever reason SCOTUS bought this idiotic idea.

So if/when the government seeks to regulate sweasel.com it won’t be for the political content of the blog but the monetary value of the blog’s content attributable as campaign contributions.

And that’s only if Pelosi et al don’t come up with newer and more direct legislation.

And the purpose of this? To make creating content an onerous process because creating it requires additional reporting that itself is the onerous part. And the reporting can be complex which might require hiring experts to help with the reporting or at least advising on it.

2. “When the government, in the forms of Pelosi ‘Yes, I am for the Fairness Doctrine’, Reid ‘Letter sent to Rush’s employer’, and Truth Squad Obama, (not to mention the San Francisco creeps who publicly censored Savage), use their positions to even threaten the idea, they have stepped way past the ‘line’ and violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution.”

Absolutely agreed.

One reason why I despise McCain. McCain-Feingold was/is the single biggest assault on the 1st Amendment in decades.

3. “We should not have to worry that they would even go there. And yet, here we are.”

I’m worried.

Look a lot of people are being very sanguine about the internet. But the reality is far far different. Control over the basic structure of the internet is still subject to government control. Additionally we’re going to go from one type of TCP/IP structure to another, this is to create more potential IP addresses because the world really is running out, which offers the government even more opportunities for mischief.

But people also have not considered the impact of something as simple as “net neutrality”.

Right now the net is neutral. The internet is as fast for anybody regardless of who you are with differences based on the bandwidth available to you, the ISP and the webserver. It is entirely democratic as far as how packets are handled. The major carriers however want the legal ability to improve or degrade service based on the account of the user providing that service.

So right now if you’re visiting Amazon.com, your service is the same as anybody else with a similar situation. But if net neutrality is replaced then you the user and Amazon.com would independently be offered different pricing plans that would affect how much bandwidth there would be available than say BarnesAndNoble.com.

How would this affect sweasel.com? With this mechanism in place it is entirely possible that the carriers could severely limit sweasel.com bandwidth to the point where having multiple users trying to concurrently access the site would not be possible. At least without a significant cost and this cost could be partially set by the FEC or another agency setup by Pelosi.

Sorry folks but the internet is a lot more vulnerable to manipulation than you’re giving credit for. And keep in mind that the 1st Amendment preserves the Right to freedom of speech, but that freedom does not extend to freedom of speech on the internet. On the internet you can, and many times are, censored freely without any legal recourse.

And by using commercial carriers rather than the government to limit political speech, Pelosi could avoid having any legal interference.

How would this affect sweasel.com? With this mechanism in place it is entirely possible that the carriers could severely limit sweasel.com bandwidth to the point where having multiple users trying to concurrently access the site would not be possible.

I believe this could be overcome with randomly distributed independent servers, and I defy you to name anything more random, distributed, or independent than a pack of weasels.

Yes, Scuba, we were nothing if not chock-full o’couth.

LemurKing, that dog is awesome. Love the colors on his face.

apo – thankee re: the dog. She’s currently chewing every damn thing in the house except for the free chewables we try to provide her. She takes my 3 year old son’s pants off after she’s got him down, and then takes off his diaper as he runs away. She’s cute tho.

Look, I’m going to say this as politely and respectfully as I can… does anyone really think that there are the time and resources to police the ‘net in such a totalitarian fashion? Not even close.

It would make the full tax code look like a 1040-EZ form.

Hunt down EW1SG and get a bit better feel for what the net is… because I’m by no means an expert, but what I have understood of what he’s told me – we got bigger fish to fry than to sort through all that.

LK, the difference in “policing” the net is that unlike broadcast media, search engines can give them back exactly what they’re looking to “police” with nearly perfect recall.

And the biggest kid on the block, search engine-wise, has already indicated an interest in making this a shinier, happier, more tolerant internet.

This is GREAT! http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f88f8d6385

Your foil hats, and Internet concerns are no longer valid.

We now control the Tesla Wave.

Foil sandals might work, but it’s doubtful.

Ugh. Seriously. I can’t read a block of internet text that long, numbered or not, M’machine. So I’ll react to the last couple of paragraphs and hope the cure for cancer wasn’t in the middle somewhere.

The bandwidth sweasel.com uses is minute. Why do you think it’s in black and white? Because grayscale images are smaller. If they choke off bandwidth to my little corner of hell, the whole rest will be utterly unusable. And I’d be perfectly content to go text-only if I had to. USENET if absolutely necessary; I kind of pine for those days. You know how much ascii text you can fit in 1K?

And OF COURSE 1st Amendment protections extend to the internet. In fact, they extend farther on the internet than we ever managed to apply them in print. Ever visited alt.tasteless or rotten.com or 4chan? Brrrr.

You do realize that the First A. does not guarantee that you can say anything you want to anywhere you want to without repercussions, right? It simply says Congress shall make no law. They let the McCain/Feingold abomination slip past it, but the day they make it illegal for me to say “Nancy Pelosi is a doody-head” on my blog is the day we might as well not have a constitution. And then, seriously, we’re into “Clinton declares martial law” territory.

Which is not even to touch, once again, on the complete impossibility of choking off a little ascii text in the middle of this huge howling shitstorm of spam and pirated music. The ‘net would have to change into something radically different to make that possible.

I don’t put it past them to try. But wouldn’t be to go after Rush Limbaugh, let alone Stoaty Weasel. It would be at the behest of the recording industry.

And it wouldn’t work.

Bhut Jolokia chili.

Red Savinas are for pussies.

That is a wonderfully cool radio, Dawn!

I’m too lazy to look, but SCOTUS did strike parts of McCain/Feingold. Does anyone remember which parts?

uh oh.

I should take a picture of the floor radio (tube set) my dad and I refinished. A friend bought it for me at a flea market for $5. She figured that if I didn’t want it, she wouldn’t be out that much money. Phhhht…of course I wanted it.

Dad had it working for a while. He knew a guy who still sold old radio tubes and had a tube tester. Didn’t understand (jokingly) why he couldn’t tune in The Green Lantern, Arthur Godfrey or Fibber McGee and Molly.

I’d actually be afraid to plug it in now, since it still has all of the original wiring.

It looks alot like this one:

http://www.emarket-usa.com/classifieds/pictures/34881890_0.jpg

Yo Gonz, the last thing I’m going to do is get into a discussion about who’s got the biggest cojones. I like mine just fine and am happy with ’em.

I have yet to even run into someone who actually held a jolokia much less ate one. Mostly people read about them and talk trash.

Just tell him to kiss your bhut.

You know, I read this article about how Obama is tweaking his ‘tax refund’ to apply to workers only, so it doesn’t look so much like welfare, and all I could think was…

Teddy Davis, Hope Ditto, Arnab Datta, and Ferdous Alfaruque?!? Is that a byline, or a new show on Cartoon Network?!

Ferdous Alfaruque

Bond villain? Arugala subspecies? Flesh-eating virus?

apo … 🙂

Sighted, but not sure about the ID… was that a pepper-troll that wandered by?

Again… 🙂

Again, the only reason they got away with it on broadcast TV and radio is because bandwidth is limited and therefore controlled by the government.

And the only reason we didn’t have to worry about the McCain-Feingold CFR bill was because the supreme court would clearly find it in violation of the 1st amendment…

Hmmmmm.

@ apotheosis

1. “I believe this could be overcome with randomly distributed independent servers, and I defy you to name anything more random, distributed, or independent than a pack of weasels.”

Sorry but while that sounds good it really doesn’t mean much.

——————————————-

@ S. Weasel

1. “Ugh. Seriously. I can’t read a block of internet text that long, numbered or not, M’machine. So I’ll react to the last couple of paragraphs and hope the cure for cancer wasn’t in the middle somewhere.”

*shrug* ok.

2. “The bandwidth sweasel.com uses is minute. Why do you think it’s in black and white? Because grayscale images are smaller. If they choke off bandwidth to my little corner of hell, the whole rest will be utterly unusable.”

Sorry but you’re thinking 2005 still. The major carriers, who own the pipes that everyone else leases out, have the technology to limit bandwidth based on IP addresses. What they want is the legal authority, i.e. approval by Congress and no interference, to do so.

3. “And I’d be perfectly content to go text-only if I had to. USENET if absolutely necessary; I kind of pine for those days. You know how much ascii text you can fit in 1K?”

Yes I do know. But I’ll point out that if you are limited to USENET then you’ve already lost.

4. “And OF COURSE 1st Amendment protections extend to the internet. In fact, they extend farther on the internet than we ever managed to apply them in print. Ever visited alt.tasteless or rotten.com or 4chan? Brrrr.”

No actually they don’t. First Amendment applies to the government. It doesn’t apply to *corporations*. And that’s what I’m talking about.

5. “You do realize that the First A. does not guarantee that you can say anything you want to anywhere you want to without repercussions, right?”

Yes I do.

6. “It simply says Congress shall make no law. They let the McCain/Feingold abomination slip past it, but the day they make it illegal for me to say “Nancy Pelosi is a doody-head” on my blog is the day we might as well not have a constitution. And then, seriously, we’re into “Clinton declares martial law” territory.”

But what if the major carriers decide your content violates their TOS and then block your IP? What if a Democratic Congress passes a law that allows them to do so without any recourse to the courts?

You’re screwed.

7. “Which is not even to touch, once again, on the complete impossibility of choking off a little ascii text in the middle of this huge howling shitstorm of spam and pirated music. The ‘net would have to change into something radically different to make that possible.”

Sorry but you’re still forgetting that there have to be servers and fiber, and that people who own them cannot be anonymous.

8. “I don’t put it past them to try. But wouldn’t be to go after Rush Limbaugh, let alone Stoaty Weasel. It would be at the behest of the recording industry.”

You’re not paying attention then to what is going on around you.

9. “And it wouldn’t work.”

The RIAA can’t make their efforts work because they can’t get the carriers to comply.

Congress has a lot more juice than the RIAA.

Check out Hotair.com

Hotair.com

Hmmmm.

@ S. Weasel

Fairness Doctrine Could Apply To The Web, FCC Commissioner Warns

Memomachine, I think this is exactly the same thing as Congress threatening to bring back the draft: they couldn’t get it through in a zillion years — and they wouldn’t if they could, because they don’t want it hung around their necks — but they’ll propose it every ten minutes to try to put the fear of god into you. In fact, that’s pretty much the point of the original post: this is Congress’ way of saying to the internet, “you kids settle down back there or we’ll turn this thing right around and head home!”

Only time will tell which of us has it right.

[…] Weaz says it’s much ado about little to nothing, but I tend to think more along Gutfeldian lines on this one: The Fairness Doctrine illustrates a […]