Haxwell.org

Interesting Quotes From Around The Internet

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Just Plain True

Regardless of how strongly the basket is made, it still makes sense not to put all your eggs in it.
- bigpat on slashdot re: the lack of choice in the market and how government regulations can entrench it.

An addict is a guy with one foot in the past, one foot in the future. And he's always pissin' on the present.
- Unattributed

You know, if we had recruiters for Pharmaceuticals standing outside of colleges offering new graduates 10.2 million over 3 years, then cancer would have been cured 10 years ago. Why do athletes, that contribute NOTHING to society, get paid the most?
- Unattributed but from here on Slashdot

People are suckers. Suckers are there to be fleeced. My friend had a poster that said "Life is tough, it's tougher if you are stupid".
- Killjoe on Slashdot re: this article on Wired with some of the stupidest shit I've ever heard someone say.

Job is an acronym for Just Over Broke.
- Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad, Poor Dad, advocating owning assets not just receiving a paycheck.

On Music

The best selling jazz record of all time was released 40 years ago and it still sells 5,000 copies a week.
- NPR's JazzProfiles on Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue.

On Free Software

The reason GNU/Linux holds as much value as it does is due to the love that people around the world have put into it. There is no greater gift to the true creator than to share that which he has made with the rest of humanity. If, in the real world, we would use the same philosophy, that of helping our neighbour, we would all be working to better the position of the world as a whole, not some independent corporation and its parts.
- Daniel Werner on the value of Free software and why its just a good idea. Period.

On Technology

There isn't any quantity of lawsuits that will convince users to give up P2P. But if the studios keep it up, they will permanently alienate their customers and drive them to seek out successively less controllable versions of P2P systems. It's slow, spectacular suicide.
- Cory Doctorow, science fiction writer.

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
- Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, speaking to congress in 1982 on why the VCR should be made illegal. (Google search, Full Text)

We can't rely on the vendors to act in our interest these days, dragging the entertainment execs kicking and screaming to the money tree. The irony is that the tech companies say that this is all done in your interest, that by pleasing the studios, they can give you a device for which Hollywood might make a few movies available. But it will be on their terms, not yours. With friends like that, who needs the Boston Strangler?
- Cory Doctorow in Popular Science on Tech companies selling out to Hollywood interests, for our supposed benefit.

In response to this article in BusinessWeek advocating Linux switch to a license other than the GPL:

Its BusinessWeek. Business people like to force a useless migration to something different every once in a while.
- productbyproduct on slashdot.

On Piracy

If it is true, first, that widespread piracy at some point diminishes the incentives for industry to invest in new works;

And if it is true, second, that piracy is limited to a demographic, say, 15-25 year-olds (perhaps because people older than that are lazy or value their time more);

Won't the eventual response of industry be to simply begin investing in films like "On Golden Pond," and music like "Air Supply, Greatest Hits part 6?"

In other words, doesn't piracy carry its own punishment? (And conversely, doesn't paying brings its own rewards?) That's how the rest of the market works -- products follow willingness to pay. And if this is right, what are the arguments for government supplementing the punishment?
- Tim Wu, filling in for Professor Lessig on his blog, 08/16/04

On Politics

Is cheap Broadband UnAmerican? While the conglomerate corporations would like it to be that way, free shit is still very American. It's freedom that we are losing and don't give a shit about.
- William Roehl (Slashdot post) on the corporate control of broadband internet in America.

And for all the talk of restoring honor and integrity to the White House, here we are again arguing over how to define "relationship."
- Dante Chinni (Christian Science Monitor) re: Bush on Iraq, Al Qaeda, and whatever relation there may be.

What is incredible is that these attacks on men who served not just honorably, but heroically, are coming from a hawkish party that is controlled by an astonishing number of men who sprinted as far from the front lines as they could when they were of fighting age and their country was at war.
- NY Times Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert 8/27/04.

Politically, Kerry needs to ... give an idea of what he'll do [re: the Iraq War] if and when he takes over. But the emphasis should be on the undeniable fact that though the way forward may be murky, the last person you want to lead the country down that foggy path is the guy who screwed everything up so badly in the first place.
- Joshua Micah Marshall, 9/13/04, on how the hell Kerry could be losing to this guy (among other things :)

"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two," [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld said [re: Iraq & al-Qaida] during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington research center.

In September 2002, before the war, Rumsfeld had said the U.S. intelligence community had "bulletproof" evidence of such links.
- By Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott / Knight Ridder Newspapers 10/5/2004 quoted from the Kansas City Star.

On Other Folks' Quotes Pages

Who would have thought that the folks at Rotten.com would produce the best case I've seen documenting the simple fact that Bush and his cronies LIED to us.