bucy wrote:
] ] Just hours before being sworn in for a second term, Vice
] ] President Dick Cheney publicly raised the possibility on
] ] Thursday that Israel "might well decide to act first" to
] ] prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
]
] Whoa...

And this is a surprise to who?

RE: Cheney Says Israel Might 'Act First' on Iran

Rattle wrote:
] I am the operator with my pocket calculator. I am adding and
] subtracting. I'm controlling and composing.
]
] If you had one of these, you could press a special key and it
] would play a melody, sort of..

I program my home computer
Beam myself into the future
We are the Robots

Damn I love Kraftwerk

RE: Kraftwerk: 1981 Merchandise pocket calculator

These are all great.

Prince Harry's Rejected Costume Ideas

WHAT WOULD JESUS USE FOR EFFECTS PROCESSING?

The Jesusonic CrusFX 1000 is designed to offer all of the flexibility of a general purpose computer for its effects, without the traditional computer side effects (The CrusFX has (nearly) no moving parts, short boot times, rock solid stability and minimal latency for live performances)

For those who are not yet ready to acquire the CrusFX 1000, or those who want to integrate the Jesusonic effects into their computer-based work environment, can try the Jesusonic Software, which offers much of the same feature set and extensive interoperability with the CrusFX 1000.

...

I thought this was a big joke until I started reading the forums. People are actually using this. WTF?

JESUSONIC - Effects for the Enlightened

We at Interz0ne strive to bring you the absolute best experience while you attend the conference, and we also try to do this where it doesn't empty your wallet in the process. But with trying to bring you the best of the best speakers, forums, and issues, it does mean expenditures on Interz0ne's part. We regretfully announce that we have to raise the entrance fee for this year's conference to $50.00 a person for the weekend.

...

Yes, it is regretful. One question: WHY? I was thinking about going this year, paying the $30 I did last year and hoping to enjoy an excellent schedule like last year. The schedule still looks great this year, but, come on, 50 dollars? What exactly is this paying for?

I still might do it so I can visit my ATLiens (if they are going) and have a good time, but the $50 price tag is really giving me pause. After last year's "Student Price Retracted" debacle, it's giving me even more pause.

Someone clue me in, where does the $50 go? I understand con space costs some $$$ from being involved with Phreanic in the past. Give me a guesstimate to help me make a decision here.

Is the figure so high because the attendance is being projected low? Is the hotel charging way too much for space? Are speakers being compensated?

Interz0ne 4: *50* BUCKS???

Jello wrote:

] ] is usually doubled by BGW preamps. No one uses
] ] turntables. (If you've ever had to haul hundreds of
] ] pounds of vinyl to a club or a friend's house, then you
] ] understand the impracticality of lugging albums around
] ] the world, not to mention the excess baggage surcharges
] ] airlines will impose.) The DJs who work the Goa raves do
] ] so with cassette or digital audio tape. A trio of Sony
] ] Professional Walkmans or Sony or Aiwa digital audio tape
] ] players are the Goan equivalent to the twin direct-drive
] ] Technics turntables ubiquitous to most nightclubs in the
] ] Western world.
]
] Goa is good

Goa is okay in moderation. I don't know if I could take 8 hours of 4/4 909 kick drum anymore though. You definately need to be stimulated or just plain hyper to dance to it with any longevity. I seem to gravitate towards Breaks these days. A little slower, chunkier and funkier. Maybe that's an artifact of choosing to maintain a natural chemically balanced nervous system these days :) Or I'm getting old...

I find it interesting they use cassettes. A laptop with a 60 gig harddrive could easily store 500 CD's worth of music in MP3 format (taking out about 10 gig for OS and the one app needed, Traktor.) It also seems like beatmatching would be more of a pain with reels of tape. I'm sure the decks have some sort of variable pitch control and they know what #### to FF or RR to though. Then again they could just be playing mix tapes.

If you don't want to lug vinyl and you don't want to play MP3s with their sonic degredation amplified 1000x over, playing WAV's off a hard drive with Traktor seems to be the logical choice. You could still get away with about 80 hours of tracks.

RE: Salon Wanderlust | Raving in Goa

Was curious about Freaknic (with an F) and did a google image search. Found this picture from 1998.

For those living in ATL, was it really so dicey that the cops had to walk around with GUNS DRAWN? Sheesh...

Freaknic

From JWZ's site:

I often scan through the wire service photos on Yahoo News, and over the years I started noticing a really strange trend. Many of the photos follow the same form: a picture of a person in the foreground, and on the background, a GIANT HEAD. Now, that's a clever picture once or twice, but it was happening so often that it really caught my attention. Was it always the same photographer? No, it turns out, it's not. So my best guess at this point is that one of the photo editors just has a GIANT HEAD fetish of some kind.

For no particularly good reason, I spent a year collecting them. Here, then, are the big heads of 2004.

Big Heads

Rather than keep adding fuel to the fire, can we just drop this?

My thoughts:

Decius: It is not that easy to figure out the original poster. If you could include the original topic in the thread, or something to otherwise designate that it originally came from User X on Date Y, it would prevent a lot of these cases of mistaken identity. I had to go click on your Memestream to backtrack and find out you were the original poster. I too thought Dolemite was the one who wrote it. Am I stupid and lazy too?

As for the issue itself, I don't need to be told I am a jerk if I don't do this or that. I'm glad you're concerned, but you should have found a nicer way to convey it to others.

Terratogen and Vile: The following words aren't my words, they are from another forum, but they sum up my thoughts on unwanted solicitation and the guilt trips some people try to play:

...

"people do not like to be solicited for charitable donations.

charity should be a personal choice.

personally, ii'll be donating, but i'd be hard pushed to think less of anyone who chooses not to.

i'm motivated by the fact that there are human beings out there, whose relatives have been killed, property has been destroyed, roots have been ripped up, permanence has been wiped out, accumulated wealth is meaningless, and who are now facing cholera, typhoid and worse with no medical infrastructure.

the horror of this situation is of such a magnitude that it's impossible to imagine from my comfy little flat in scotland.

so... i'll donate. but that's my choice.

...

Concern for an issue like this is manifest in different ways. I think Tom's way might have struck a nerve, sure, it did with me too. And of course people's responses to being affronted will differ. Some will say "Fuck you" to the person, other's will say "Fuck you and fuck them" to the people affected. That's fine. I have to disagree with both counts, but that's your opinion and you're free to speak it. And I'm free to say, have a heart will ya?

I guess I'm trying to say, "Can't we all just get along?"

Any flames from this go straight to /dev/null.

RE: Tsunami Relief

This probably won't make sense to you if you haven't seen the original Badgers Badgers Badgers.

Santa Badgers