Posts by Luther Blissett

@Martin Usher

> The SU got into central planning, a target culture and other early management techniques in a big way in the 1920s (and starved a whole bunch of its people in the process).

It's not clear if you use "management" as a euphemism (metaphor) (like a named instance of a C struct), or as a reference& (synecdoche) (like in C++). Was that event part of the expected flow of control, or did it need exception handling?

If you don't subject the program to mathematical validation proofing, bugs must emerge some time. What comes prior to coding, prior to O&M?

Large-scale forced starvation can be a managed process, but is surely due to the management rather than the process. The nu labour device of representing itself as management is disingenuous. (The sort of excuse a 9 year old might dream up).

@Phil

> Would the Barron Knights "Little White Bum" qualify as paedo music?

Dunno mate, I'd have to read the official expert report first, but that film Three Men and a Baby looks to be in deep doodoo. They'll be hanging the actors, director, and all copies of the videotape and the DVD from the trees.

@Timothy Chase

> scientific skepticism should not be confused with Cartesian doubt -- as the climate "skeptics" would seem to have it.

A false dichotomy, a straw man, and an invitation to feed the troll all rolled up in one.

The irony in your throwaway line is precisely that in 1975 a clique comprising Margaret Mead and her followers in the AAAS specifically instigated a program to abandon scientific skepticism. Not, as in Descartes case, as a methodological convenience in pursuit of the philosophical justification of truth, but to promote and diffuse a preconceived prejudice as both a "reality" and a political agenda.

Everyone can decide for themselves whether an organized effort to promote one particular theory makes it more or less likely to be true:

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-23/pdf/50-55_723.pdf

Perhaps you can't bring yourself to say "eugenics", but eugenics does not seem so far away from some of the views expressed above about how "climate "skeptics"" should be treated in practice.

@Tom

Period aka full stop. I cannot decode your "elludes" whatever deconstruction I try, but let me know if it continues to elude your sensibilities.

Eyeballed by a fly

Or some such. Ever happened to you? I'm tempted to say that if I’d stayed where I was, I’d be dead. Instead I will report that in the milliseconds before impact it was growing at a prodigious rate, and the last thing I remember is that it was bigger than a tree, bigger than an office block, and was a horrible black thing filling most of the horizon. And I was only smoking Gauloises at the time.

@ AC 11.25 - see Harriet likes "frolic"

> He could also have been imply they were having an intimate relationship, but I doubt it.

> Mind you do lawyers understand concepts like irony, sarcasm and humour, probably not.

In the sense your point requires, lawyers do, but it's politicians qua holders of public office who don't. History shows their official understanding of humour is limited to putting their foot in their (own) mouths. (Wilson's "Reds under the bed" running gag from the 1960s is not an exception, because it was done on the electioneering stump and not in office). It is why authorizing the assassination of other politicians they do not like, etc must be kept secret - "I was only being ironic" does not wash as an excuse, regardless of postmodernity ("I was being fashionably ironic"?). It is why saying "Burnham is a clown" is not libellous, regardless of how he dresses out of hours. So there is a prima facie case here, and I hope it sees Burnham shafted, though on current form exceptions to the nu labouring clique's pussilanimity should not be expected.

Semiotic algebra of headlining

Back in the old days there was "Man bites dog". Or fXg - expressed as a relation. But now women have equal rights, and IT has replaced dogs in so many ways (think: man's best friend, what to kick, Descartes' idea of beasts as elaborate machines incarnated in the living AI), we have lots of stories where women substitute the first term and a gizmo substitutes the second. So far so good.

Extensions are permitted, i.e. most desirable, so: fXg on/in h (anatomical reference), fXg on/in h on i (situational reference), fXg on'in h on i after j (prior event reference - may have its own semiotic substructure). If you can't think of any examples, you clearly haven't been reading L.Reg long enough, because I can.

Just don't balls it up. Don't substituting the first term but not the second - the retiring but well scrubbed Wacky Jacqui has a brand new pr0n lore, and she's just itching to scratch it.

The argument passed away at Vulture Central on 12 June 2008 at 12.04

Reg readers identified several life-threatening flaws, but a logical autopsy suggests that the patient had a predisposing congenital condition to failure.

This was an inherent inability to distinguish between the common English words - belief and faith. For while even the intellectually challenged can go about their daily business regardless of whether the Earth is flat or not, the question of whether someone has religious faith is not only difficult to establish by observation (requiring a DHS size budget and technology), but has to deal with awkward conceptual matters like hypocrisy.

So tell me again what Professors profess? Faith in reason - or merely belief in the Everlasting Goodness of the Public Teat?

Many-brained beings

> The idea is that the primitive parts of the human brain can spot threats which the conscious mind will miss.

I thought grunts were not allowed to have brains, and that that was all the square-bashing, boot spitting, flag-saluting, bum-numbing, side-splitting stuff was all about. Clearly "the idea" has validity - in med school it is taught as the 3F's (sometimes the 4F's) of stress response. However, the limbic system is not well understood, and while upward progress thru the ranks correlates with the return of frontal brain function (magic!) in the military, the functional status of grunts' brains is not something one should bet money on in a combat zone: shooting civilians perceived as threats is far too common. The same would seem to apply to PC Plod who is given a gun. As usual, cause and effect seem to be somewhat confused.

What is that institution for, Mummy?

Detachment in the context of universities used to mean being able to study ideas without the pressures that would prevail if such research was conducted in concrete social contexts.

Detachment now appears to mean that university authorities are not going to back you if any such pressures find their way into the Groves of Academe and oppose your research. See the recent Kollerstrom case.

Welcome to the hyperreal university, where research is simulated, and the end-product (knowledge; not graded brains) is a simulacrum.

Look at those cavemen go - it's the freakiest show

http://libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=226017

Reports a Russian "expert" as commenting > "We tested a similar system back in 1972. Even then our ‘laser cannon was capable of hitting targets with high precision." "We have moved far ahead since then, and the U.S. has to keep pace with our research and development," he added.

A comment which must be considered as entertainment, since it succeeded in short order in summoning the neanderthals from out of the woodwork. Here is one working the hamster wheel:

> 19. To: Russki (#16)

"It also gives us sense that your country has our eventual destruction on it's agenda."

We're comin' for you right after the moslem "problem" is fixed:)

We want your fine tall womenfolk. <

Probably the true Neanderthals also appreciated conventional military logic, that to stand a reasonable chance of prevailing in a scrummage against the cavemen from the other valley you need a numerical superiority of about 3 or 4 to 1, whether in numbskulls, nukes, or postings of nonsense on the intertubes. It was a homo sapiens called Archimedes who conclusively articulated the value of asymmetry when he said, Give me a lever and I will move the Earth. And he wasn't thinking of Mrs Archimedes.

Is there life on Mars? (Yes, but don't tell the cavemen).

Sex, violence, and a coincidence from history

There was a Marquis de Sade, who liked to write "extreme porn". The Powers that Were were outraged and put de Sade in pokey. Meanwhile, fed up with the civilities introduced by Catherine de Medici into polite society in the form of social dances, they invented for themselves a pr0n entertainment version called ballet. Shortly afterwards the peasants were told to eat cake, and then the Powers that Were succumbed to the kitchenware of Mme la Guillotine.

A picture holder with no picture - the missing Magritte?

In a grey, brown and red room. Or if you prefer corridors, grey, red, and blue. Such schemes are not harmonic, and require an additional datum for sense perception. Treated symbolically they tell an interesting story ("Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth, None of them along the line know what any of it is worth"). The ornaments also will repay some Rendering Intelligible.

Koyaanisqatsi. There are 3 types of equilibrium - stable, neutral, and unstable. Place your bets, and roll the dice.

Why?

To hide the Red Queen on a black and white chessboard. Or in newspeak, "cultural diversity", which sounds like a product, but is actually an on-going process to confuse and confound social identities. Which is newspeak for replacing real communities in spatio-temporal proximity with virtual ones in quasi-logical proximity. Real ones with hyperreal ones.

Why?

Women in (very hard) labour

Words failed me, and then I remembered... Horace.

Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Pull the other one, it's got bells on it

How convenient to equivocate speculation with hoarding, and ignore the futures market (and who is playing it). Just as it is convenient for Brown to equivocate the OPEC suppliers with the price of oil, and ignore the global dollar hegemony pricing fix. Evidence: the rising price of gas. Are we to hear next that commodities and foodstuffs price rises have been caused by export controls in the produced countries?

@Chris Powell

> You can say almost anything you wish in UK, if you are at Hyde Park Corner, and what you are saying will not outrage public decency or you do not call the Scientology lot a cu*t.

In an infamous case a marxist academic, fond of some Hyde Park Corner Sunday afternoon urging of UK workers to unite, throw off their yokes, etc, was prosecuted for sedition. He ended up with 7 days in pokey. Sending him down, the judge said "there are some opinions so stupid that only an academic could hold them". That was before Co$ was invented.

Chaos Theory verified, then

Butterfly flaps its wings in the Andes, causes monsoon in the Himalaya. Bug strolls across Moody's big iron, causes global financial meltdown. Also verified, 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, Kirchoff's Laws, Sod's Law.

To save a life... you need to be a hero

Best Bits Censored (BBC) let slip during its coverage that 200,000 abortions are performed in the UK annually - industrial-scale production of embryonic stem cells. The result of making love on an industrial scale.

One cannot kill the thing one loves, so how is it that it has become so easy to kill and so hard to love?

Dig the title of the book

That deserves a special Dawkins award all for itself.

UK carriers safe - not from a little Sunburn

Why is then that the USN has put the procurement of further carriers on hold? It's not because the printing presses can't be diverted a few minutes from cranking out the $$$ to plug the gaping sub-prime void.

Somewhere in the US there are a couple of middle ranking USN officers. They don't have a ship, not much of a crew, they don't sail (maybe at weekends), and their uniforms are probably gathering moths. What they have is the power to stop USN procurement in its tracks. Their job is to ensure whatever the USN buys can be defended. In IT terms they do sanity checks. They have decided USN carriers cannot be defended against Sunburn, and until there is a solution, new carrier expenditure cannot be justified.

A little Sunburn is the ultimate boys' toy. Ixquick it, and have fun. An anti-ship missile with sufficient kinetic energy on impact to sink a carrier from the hole it can make - in case the dispatchers forgot to stick on a nuclear warhead. More significantly, an est 3 seconds for a defensive system to compute a firing solution and take it out. So if the dispatchers did fit a nuclear warhead, and you get real lucky and get a kill, you get fried anyway, and most of the carrier group with you. In short, the only place UK carriers are going to be safe from a little Sunburn is parked well up the Thames somewhere near Henley, and painted white pretending to be a marquee.

Which simply puts into perspective what can be inferred from this item - that a whole load of politicking has gone into tying up this decision. Politicking about who gets the pork in the coming years, and who gets the jobs. An analysis by parliamentary constituency could be revealing. Were it possible to spin the idea of shipbuilding in rural Cheshire, doubtless we would be hearing it.

If this is the way UK defence spending is going, our boys will be breaking into the Tower of London for the pikestaffs and the body armour to fight the Taliban. Luther notes that it is not so very far from the Tower to Whitehall.

WTF?

"According to the Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, over 250,000 requests for access to this [communications traffic] data were made in the first nine months of 2007,... And nearly 800 separate bodies can ask to see some or all of it. "

1000 requests a day? Either GCHQ or someone has an automated request for access system running, feeding some neural network or something to find "cells". Or there are several hundred different people daily making requests, since you then have to sift the data for information - but what information, and to what end? Looks suspiciously like abuse by jobsworth with access and nothing better to do then snooping on some neighbours or the spouse. It couldn't possibly be SOCA or the Good Cops spying on the Bad Cops, could it; not with nearly 798 other bodies also with thumbs in the pie.

@amanfromMars

> "Put all that into the Binary Melting Pot ...... add a few spicey herbs and simmer over a Hot Stove Pipe in a Summer of 69 CodeXXXX and Google Control Head Quarters and have a Ticket 42 Ride Everything ......"

Including Swiss mountain goats ;-). Mind the horns (just mind? or just just?). Klaxxxons XXXtra, that is the decision to be made, but I recommend disengaging them 1st so not to wake the sleepers, tho if discovered few would suspect amanfromMars and attribute alien visitation, such are the Infernal IntelAIgent Engines. amfM wants to know what I know about the Godisagodess Program? The Sun Also Rises. 2xChange is 2xForm.

".... with Information just being Tricked out of and Trickled into Searching Universal IntelAIgent Virtualised Engines,"

A logical non sequitur, but doubtless a celebratory rhetorical flourish (AFAIK) to invert cause and effect to see if anyone is still awake and listening. Would that Fat Old Sun in the Sky be affecting the DialecticK of the capacITors at EarthObsAtenshunStation by any chance?

@Anonymous John

> "The MOD admitted today that a laptop containing 100 years of UFO data has been stolen." Doesn't that sound far more plausible?

100 years, no. 60 years, definitely. There seem so few UFO reports prior to Roswell that if these started turning up one could assume they were being manufactured for present purposes, not to reveal past history. The explanation for UFO therefore seems connected with events originating at that time and continuing to the present. Events that are public domain. Events like having our own supersonic silver flying machines with night lights and preternatural noisiness...

You don't suppose alien space ships are like randy dogs, always on the lookout to sniff another of similar general appearance...?

"we could not say that they need redemption"

In which case they would be superior to the human race, and therefore it must be theologically ok for them to take over the Earth, starting by "redeeming" it off humans, by way of "redeeming" humans for their own good. Which is good old Vatican-speak for torture, confession, repentance, and final deliverance (of the soul of course, but only the soul) into the hands of the Creator. Or into the dark womb of Mother Earth, to be more up to date with the narrative. Except for those who have never erred or were infallibible to start with, namely Papa Ratty and his rat-pack. And what is possible is necessary, under some philosophical interpretations of logical modality. So you will die, because you MUST die.

What a creepy lot they are.

You will of course never meet an alien yourself, merely see the bright flashing lights, and feel the endorphine of XTC a few milliseconds before you are vapourised, during which brief time you will remember all the hyperreal cargo-cults about aliens bringing wisdom, and the postmodern scientific conception of "truth" (although not being a Blissett you won't think in those terms, but you will believe that you are finally experiencing the underlying true Platonic reality that the deep and esoteric myths have pointed to all your life - because that's an idea you picked up in Eng.Lit. class without even knowing it) and you will think YES! And that'll be it. Finis. Good-bye and Sayonara.

Sorry folks, death rays do not mean aliens. Neither do announcements by Japanese foreign ministers, Popes, Bliars, or the BBC.

But after 3 days of oohs and ahhs growing steadily less until silence reigns. the silver flying machines will come back down to a base in Montana or somewhere, in a celebratory inversion of the myth just exterminated, and President McCain (for it will be him) will be there, or rather the hollow shell that remains, and as the fliers disembark will slap them on the back and say "Job well done, boys". As they disperse into the Paraguay sunset.

Ofcom mytholgizing itself already

by re-writing the history and economics of radio. But ho what is this we read - Ofcom wants to make "possession of the equipment" illegal? Well blow me if they haven't been looking at how our wunder-kinder police operate and thinking, we could do with a big bit of all that inaction too. Why bother with illegal acts when you've convinced yourself that having the means means illegal intent, and mens rea is abolished because all your thoughts are belong to us (as we put them there in the first place).

I am equipped to reproduce good music/non-GM plants/non-GM Blissetts/truth. So I should expect the black helicopters of Ofcom in its real guise of attack dog of the media-infotainment complex.

The Reg defence desk

If the Reg needs a defence desk it should get Dawkins to advise on how to evolve toute de suite into pterodactlys (or whatever the ones with teeth are called). We can't have someone/something else stealing the Vultures' carrion from under its beaks.

The sky is blue not so that vultures can go for a quiet glide after lunch to aid the digestion, but to promote deep thought. (The sea also is blue, but that is to promote awareness of the ever-present danger of taking a wrong dive, aka dialectical error).

@SpitefulCOD

How I picture your Man - more like Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now. Plenty of us have watched the rise and rise of M$, ITs dripping maw enlarging by the year as it gorges on the competition while gouging the consumer. Every pyramid (but 1) must have its capstone; its name is irrelevant, it's just a variable from the heap, tho we would do well to note whether it is signed or unsigned for when the accumulator overflows.

@amanfromMars - "just a Semantic IT Concept". When a servo-control system is operating at optimum, the actuator is not doing very much. Then it may even seem there is no servo there at all, especially when a Hegelian is describing the machinery (He He) - look Ma, no hands! or wires or strings. But that is an illusion, on which the hyperreal magic show depends.

"The unpleasant reality...

... that being a helpless prisoner leaves you open to abuse." As Iraq, so England.

And did those feet in ancient times ...?

Prefer my disinformation direct from the WP

Lot of tasty disinformation in here. Just to take one example. "It's also been suggested by the US and Israel that Iran's ally Syria was engaged on a secret weapons programme at its Al Kibar plant, lately destroyed in a mysterious Israeli bombing raid."

In fact Israel's lips are and have been sealed on the matter of the mysterious bombing raid. And why not - with its hand up the US making its lips move on the issue, there is no need to crank the heat up further. Cooking its goose is not to be hurried, it will only end up raw in the core. Not there was any nuclear core, as it happened - had there been, the release of radioactivity would have been detected.

And why shouldn't so many countries be interested in nuclear power when the price of oil is so high, it cannot be paid for in anything other than dollars, and when the Fed is inflating its currency so that by the month the dollar reserves they have to pay for it are worth less? It is a matter of simple economics. That it can be viewed otherwise testifies to the disinformation campaign - people will believe the "truth" they hear and read most often repeated.

Has the Vulture got bored with biting the hand that IT feeds, that it would rather suck its grubby fingers?

@bluesxman - where's the story here?

AC said "Why does everyone assume that aliens would bother attacking?" Or, to put it another way, why is L. Reg's "security hack" running this, not a "science hack"?

It's there in open view - Japan cannot undertake preemptive aggression to the safety of its ruling elite. It also cannot say it would like to join the big boys and be able to do so. So it is concocting a reason, along with its pals, which will wash with Joe-san Soap. I expect such reports of aliens to multiply, just as soon as airborne platforms for anti-personnel laser weapons become as viable as the current advanced radars which can track people inside or outside buildings at a range of several hundred miles. (In the hyperreal way that is the norm, the aliens the Japanese will report as contacting will be about 8 foot tall, white rather than grey, have lots of hair, and smell bad).

You read the game plan in Catch-22. And the reason. Noone will suspect it's really the culling of useless eaters by the Nu Insect Overlards (too fat to go into space), not after the BBC solemnly announces we are in Their Presence.

@Dennis: "And the difference between invisible aliens and God is what?"

Richard Dawkins believes in the former but not the latter (sic).

@Pete

Pigist prejudice. Pigs are meticulous in designated a specific area for giving back to nature. They roll around in mud to cool off, as they cannot sweat away excess body heat, and don't want to be cooked pork before their allotted time. They are also far smarter than dogs- in fact they are smart enough to play computer games for food. (Which could be turned into an ad hominem argument).

@dervheld: "Surely for any organism to be capable of comprehending a state of dignity, it would have to be fully sentient and self aware."

Which would seem to rule out a lot of people (e.g. Downs syndrome, West Hampstead novelists, etc) - and could rule in a lot of IT (cue amanfromMars). The fun here is that the boffins are disarmed by their scientistic ideological rejection of the very metaphysics (pace Logical Positivism) which could help them navigate the issues. Instead, what have they got? (1) empirical objective verification of (2) some sort of self-reporting. Well, parrots can be taught to say "Gordo is a Scotsman". So in effect, the dialectic can only be carried forwards by the veggies and the hippies. Faced with the prospect of being confined to gripping only crystals for the rest of their lives (per some fatuous nu laborious "Tree hugging not allowed, you perv" policing perhaps), the arguments they come up with should be entertaining.

'Intellectual property 'landgrab' '?

Recursion is not well supported by natural languages. Call it pigopolists wanting to have their snouts in other pigopolists' troughs, and you can dispense with all the inverted commas.

It was inevitable that talk of "rights" would lead to non-persons such as corporations wanting to get in on the act - and likewise insisting that Governments guarantee their "rights". No longer happy being global monopoly capitalists, they want their profits guaranteed for them. Alistair, Darling, would you mind just bending over a bit further? Now you've had Northen Crock, you won't notice us at it one bit.

Thermal imaging?

Plod won't apprehend them half as quick once these n'er-do-wells cotton onto the Afghan Mujahadeen counter-measure - a blanket carried on the outside of their packs. Black helicopter? Sit down, cover with blanket, yawn, and praise al-Lah for all good things sent for the deliverance of true believers and the damnation of the Great Stan.

Fraud and FRAUD

If a little company like ITV can be fined so much for a little fraud in the overall scale of things, then how much should the big banks be fined for end-running around the regulations on their capital reserves by lending and then shoving the loans off balance sheet?

Like so much else, regulation is a simulation which requires occasional exercise in peripheral areas, as here, to occlude the fact that there is no regulation at the rotten core.

@The Thing

> I still don't know... ...whether that extreme lesbian site at www.theregister.co.uk is going to be legal or not.

Only if Eee Girl continues not being contexturally surrounded by lots more skimily dressed nubilia. Perhaps. No-one really knows. (Discussing her tits and ass and what she might like to do in her spare time are all fine, though).

Hieronymous Bosch? Goya? Titian? That would be "art", mate. Gilbert and George (humongous deconstructions featuring close-ups of bodily fluids)? A bit doubtful, this postmodern stuff to do with The Body. Not to mention taboos, or critiqueing the social construction of taboos.

So this nu labourious revanchist project now exposes the cynical hypocrisy in their attitude to the arts. Of course they would rather have a G&G hanging on their wall than a dart board. They may be challenged, intellectually, morally, sexually, but they know what dosh is. Rather like the average normal 8 yr old compared with the average normal adult.

Humping the camel some more

Some more peculiarites of this bill.

1. Suggestive images are to be illegal, but it will be quite all right to depict the same scenario using words to describe it in the minutest ("graphic") detail. So I cannot show you any camel-humping, but I can write about it. "She was so gooooood...." doesn't begin to scratch the surface.

2. Men apparently prefer their pr0n visual, women theirs verbal. The legisation is discriminatory.

3. It could be illegal to possess the notorious Abu Ghraib images. Junior denies the USA tortures, but I doubt the US authorities would be prepared to testify in your defence that what was depicted there was interrogation of prisoners.

This legislation is so bad that I suspect prosecutions will undertaken cautiously (if at all), in case juries dismiss them not on their merits, but on the grounds that the law alleged to cover them is such a mess that it would be unfair to convict anyone under it.

Top cop is correct

If the footage is of such poor quality as to be render identification of suspects in doubt (only one of several reasons against the admissibility of CCTV evidence), and needs to be "reinforced by written descriptions of suspects", what reason is there to think that a national CCTV database is going to be of any use (notwithstanding the reasons mentioned above). As IT experts we should all know that computers are quite happy to curve-fit random data into spurious regular relationships. Trough meet snout...

Given the number of people in the UK who would like to point CCTV cameras onto their neighbours' (not allowed), it begs the question whether the unrelenting paranoidal legislative attack on personal liberties is really top-down, or in fact bottom-up.

Bottoms up, then. And remember the stiff upper lip.

Who cares about water on the Moon

Beer is what we really want, especially in these times of changing climates.

Peanuts

Slap in the face for Charlie Brown from Snoopy then.

So

No-one thinks of the Jordanians. Very odd.

A title is required

The record company says so.

@Chris: "Categoricalimperativetards... ". No. Just read what you quoted - philosophy is not rocket science, it's free for all (sic). There are respectable objections which say the Categorical Imperative doesn't specify what is ethically right or ethically wrong to do, so it isn't itself a principle of moral conduct. The CI is a necessary condition of judgment, namely that what you decide must be something that any other rational being could also decide (to do or think) - but not itself a sufficient condition, i.e. it doesn't justify anything. Quoting Kant against the Freotards just gives them an excuse for some silliness.

@AC: "Perhaps I'm a special case but really, do you honestly think that everyone that downloads would pay for music?"

Hail to the Thief! The problem is that those who do not "honestly do" may also not "honestly think" - and may in fact do the former because of the latter. What you don't tell us is if you go to concerts, or you just think you should (firing up Guitar Hero does not count; firing up the stage would).

@Steve: "Paytard: someone who happily pays a vastly inflated price to a dodgy cartel". Robinson Crusoe, I presume. I wonder if there is a connection between nihilist miserablism in music and any such attitudes on the part of its consumers (neither "proponents" nor "enthusiasts" seems right) - the kind which sees the enemy's enemy as a friend, ergo Vulture Central supports the Rec Ass of Am. But, no, such an idea is quite unfashionable. I guess you never saw Kermit the Frog sing "Green", you got Crazy Frog instead.

@ Kirk Bannister: "So the solution for the artists is ride the wave, ditch the record companies start webpages, buy cheap home grade sound recording gear and instrements,..."

And progressively rock backwards about 80 years. Arghhhh. Sing the pain of the myth of progress - lots of mileage there.

"...get some ad banners ask for donations and see where it goes,.."

Nowhere possibly, if the Orphan Works Act is going to be abused. To emulate your rhetoric, one useful conclusion we can draw from recent history is that if an opportunity exists for Big Business, someone will step forward in the confidence that regulations on their activities are honored more in the breach than the observance. If Big Business is ready to act dishonorably, people can hardly be expected not to take steps to redress the balance of power.

Found out, then

Scientists are supposed to (a) tell as it is, (b) openly, (b) accept peer-review. So the myth goes.

The best-selling game in town

Compare these transfers of undertakings: All liabilities for loss of personal data from whatever causes, loss of monies from fraud, loss of liberty, etc to be borne by the individual. All accruals from the acquisition of personal data from whatever causes, of monies from fraud, of liberties at the expense of the individual, etc to remain the property of the corporatist state. Not just a tendency, but almost a full blown reality.

Grand Theft Auto to the power of Aleph Null.

The Nu Insect Overlards have a clear embarrassment in the current dead man walking. Unlike their previous favourite, this one is quite incapable of convincing the public that black is white and white is black. It is looking less and less likely they will want to wait 2 years to promote him out of the way.

Meanwhile, the game goes on.