Australian Website Bans ... Australians 247
Nazlfrag writes "Earlier this month the blog and discussion forum ZGeek was sued for $42 million AUD over a user's comment. The plaintiffs are aspiring movie producers who claim to have lost a movie deal due to a 9/11 conspiracy discussion thread. Even though the initial lawsuit has been thrown out, and the company complied with lawyers' demands by taking down the offending posts, it is believed the plaintiffs will file suit again. In addition to suing the forum, in an Australian first they have been granted an injunction to force the ISPs to disclose the IP addresses of the two posters involved. Due to the risk of incurring even greater legal costs the company is closing its doors in Australia, and will ban their fellow countrymen from posting there again."
Poor Aussies (Score:5, Funny)
Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?
The sad part is that it seems that only Aussies treat Aussies like a bunch of criminals. Yes, I get the joke, but considering the great firewall and more, it just seems less funny.
Rabbit-Proof Firewall (Score:2)
http://www.wikileaks.org/leak/acma-secret-blacklist-18-mar-2009.txt [wikileaks.org]
I searched for "slashdot" but couldn't find it. So we'd better not badmouth Australians too much; there could be some here.
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Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Funny)
The sad part is that it seems that only Aussies treat Aussies like a bunch of criminals.
That's because they forgot to kick out the guards.
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In this case it represents the difference in slander laws. You can be sued for slander if you make a statement of fact about someone that you cannot prove to be factual in a court of law, rather than only having to demonstrate that you believed that fact to be true. The simple solution is to couch statements as opinions rather than as facts or where you manage a forum ensure that all users are informed that 'all' postings regardless of content are the 'opinions' of the poster and should not be construed as
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Well by your logic, Americans have the most criminal society on the planet, what with having more than China. Somebody should just lock everyone in that country up and be done with it.
/sarcasm -- Because I know the mods would have missed it.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Funny)
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I think you just came up with a great idea on how to spend stimulus money!
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If we could afford to completely imprison our entire public, we would do it, sure. But now with this recession it's only a dream.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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Uh, wasn't that the whole reason Austrailia was settled in the first place (ignoring the aboriginals)? Getting back to our roots, are we?
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We have more than China because China is more willing to just shoot them rather than locking them up....
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Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Funny)
They're used to it, because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Funny)
Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?
Oh come on... we can't be dicks to a penile colony?
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Interesting)
Who the heck moderated this interesting? It's supposed to be funny!
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Who the heck moderated this interesting? It's supposed to be funny!
Actually, I was shooting for "-1 Overrated". Apparently I missed.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I prefer +5 Troll.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?
Because the purpose of every country's legislative branch is to add laws, not remove them. The judiciary's job is to review laws, not remove them. And the executive branch's job is to suggest, review, and approve laws, not remove them. Therefore, the older the country, the more laws. And it doesn't take long before all the major ones required have been added, so there is an inevitable climb toward the bottom, to regulate even the smallest matters, until everyone is a criminal, though they may not know or consider themselves as such, in some fashion.
Consider this: The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.
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Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Informative)
Why are we regulating cabbage? Are they requiring the price to be low to combat anti-competition tactics in cabbage syndicates?
The government has regulated the cost of food for a long time for many reasons...
1. The free market cannot be trusted to maintain price stability. If there was a sudden drop or rise in the price of food, then people might not be able to afford it, or in the reverse, that farmers would go bankrupt and supply would diminish. When it comes to basic needs things like food, electricity, water, stability often sought after.
2. There is no cabbage cabal, only Zuul.
3. Incorporating a price floor prevents large corporations from winning based on economy of scale -- they cannot undersell smaller operations, thus existing infrastructure (land, mainly) will never be repurposed at a lower cost. But it "protects rural america" doing this.
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You would be surprised at how unobvious that is to so many people. I recently spent the better part of 5 or 6 posts talking to a guy over subsidies and their intent whil
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The free market cannot be trusted to maintain employment stability. If there was a sudden drop or rise in the employment, then people might not be able to afford food or shelter, or in the reverse, the employers would go bankrupt and supply would diminish.
What's the difference between not having cheap enough food and not having enough money to buy food?
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Lobbyists, duh.
Does the GP ACTUALLY think that the massive and powerfull aggricultural lobbies exist to keep corporations from "winning"? Large "family" farms (usually a corporate operation privately owned at that size), very large family farms, and non-family farms (8 percent of all farms) account for 68% of production in the US. Who do you think is benefiting most from a price floor? Cut prices by 3/4 and eliminate the competition or make twice as much with a price floor. Hmmm... USDA stats on the matte [usda.gov]
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Lol... You must be a special kind of ignorant. This is already done and has bee
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Farms would certainly go under, but this would be a corrective measure. Populist farm measures were implemented to keep farmers in business, not to prevent starvation--there are too many chefs in the pot already, and instead of letting the market correct itself (who wants poor ol' farmers to have to feel the pinch?) it's more politically expedient to prop up the excess farms and get votes.
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Have you even looked at countries that do that? I'll stick with consistent, safe and reliable foods, thank you very much.
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"Who do you think is benefiting most from a price floor? C"
The citizens.
Food is cheap in the US, and historically speaking corporate farms are more efficient, safer, and reliable then small farms.
Why do you think the corporate modal is used? Because it's efficient, generally speak, that is.
Not as efficient as most government bureaus, but still a lot more efficient then the family farm.
Yes, most government bureaus and projects are far less wasteful then the corporate counter parts. Take a look at the books
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The difference is that there is plenty of sources of food outside your employment. Government aid is one of them, private charities are another while friends and family should not be forgotten.
If you lose your job, there will be something you can eat in order to stay alive. Homeless people with absolutely no jobs at all are able to live. It happens all the time.
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Why isn't that obvious to you?
If you don't have enough jobs you can still pay the unemployed unemployment benefits, but if your country doesn't have enough food, even with full employment someone is going to starve.
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If prices rises, farmers will likely try to increase their yields leading to eventually lower prices, or more farms will open. If the price falls, then that would almost certainly be due to supply. You say that farmers would go bankrupt and supply would diminish if prices fell too much, but you fail to ask why prices would fall--it would almost certainly be due to an overproduction of any particular foodstuff to begin with, so farms going out of businesses would be a corrective measure. The reason small
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:4, Informative)
Your scenerio would need infinite arable land.
Price fall for a variety of reasons. Farms aree NOT a corrective measure the way youi think of them. You can't stop and start a farm business, yit needs constent work. When you happen to ahve a poor yield, you need to work it so it's ready for the next year. If we let just the amrket drive it, we wil have a low yield years, farmers will go out of business, and then the next year we wont have enough.
A bad year, or decade even, can be caused by forces other then market forces. too little water, too much water,a freeze, insects, and disease can kill a yield even when demand is high.
You do realize we are talking about food here, right? People die without it?
maybe you should take a look of what farming and food markets are actually like before yapping off?
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If you have lots of land and do away with your farms, you can't just restart them up instantly.
FWIW, the USA does protect military manufacturing jobs
If you're a small city state with no land for farms, just don't start any wars, and hope nobody bothers to take over your itsy bitsy country
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I'm normally for heavy regulation of corporations so long as it is GOOD regulation; corporations NEVER have the public welfare or public good in mind. People say the electricity problems in California were from overragulation, but rather than overragulation they stemmed from BAD regulation.
In the US, there is a lot of BAD regulation regarding farming. Small family farms are dying, big megacorporation food factories are taking over. And the food sucks. I'm glad I have a back yard I can grow a garden in, too
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:4, Informative)
The government has regulated the cost of food for a long time for many reasons...
Hey dude, as someone else has pointed out in this thread, your tale of cabbage regulation is an urban myth [snopes.com]
Do you have anything to back up anything you're saying - or are you just trolling?
It's *entirely* plausible (Score:2)
e.g. EU bananna regulation
Take for example European Commission Regulation (EC) 2257/94
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31994R2257:EN:HTML [europa.eu]
What The Fuck... As they say.
The US Will have similar wastes of time and money on it's law books. All laws should have a mandatory default time limit of somewhere around one generation, about 25 years after which they have to be renewed or are removed from the books.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an extremely starry eyed and naive idea of much primary production regulation.
The alternative and reality in most cases is that huge corporate interests, often the supermarkets and generally large agricultral management corps want to apply pressure on smaller and independant farmers. Large supermarkets don't like having to deal with small farmers and in many cases are in direct competition with smaller farms through their own holdings in large agricultural management firms. And obviously large agri-holdings have many reasons to want to shove the small old school independents out of business.
But you keep believing the government is acting primarily in the interests of the handful of small 100 - 2000 acre unorganized independent farmers remaining in the west rather than the large billion dollar agri-corps and supermarkets that give politicians hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds each year.
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Which would be notable, if that was the only thing it was regulating.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Informative)
Consider this: The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.
I'm shocked nobody has called bullshit on this one yet. Damn, dude. Check snopes.
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp [snopes.com]
Unless of course you also read this on snopes and decided it was a good time to perpetrate an urban legend. *shrugs*
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Funny)
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Consider this: The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.
I'm shocked nobody has called bullshit on this one yet. Damn, dude. Check snopes.
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp [snopes.com]
Unless of course you also read this on snopes and decided it was a good time to perpetrate an urban legend. *shrugs*
What's truly silly about this urban legend is that there are plenty of *real* examples of excessively long government documents. Google for "military brownie specification" for an example ("wc" tells me it's only 9660 words, but I'm sure there are some others that can equal or exceed the 26,911 number).
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First, Not. A. Dude.
From the American Heritage Dictionary
3 Slang.
2. dudes Persons of either sex.
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But the fact is, as the GP pointed out, you don't have to be male to be called "dude". It was obvious that he wasn't calling girlintraining a city slicker or a fancy dresser. From the context it was obvious the meaning was "fellow". Kennedy would say "My fellow Americans", Obama would more likely use the more contemporary "Dudes". Kennedy wasn't just referring to men whan he spole to his "fellow Americans".
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Dude, lighten up a bit. Dude is a generic term and a filler word. This is a tech forum, let's not bring sexual (mis)identity into this.
The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words.
By removing your urban legend portion your point is now lost. Unless, of course, we also remove the Gettysburg address since it isn't actually law of any sort, then we see a pattern forming; although you can't really make a good pattern based off of two occurrences.
This is all assuming that your "point" was that laws are using up more and more words, which wasn't very cle
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First, Not. A. Dude. I'm a dyke, get it right.
You put too much emphasis on your gender and sexual orientation.
From your user profile:
"A geek like you, but who doesn't get the respect you do because I wear a skirt and you wear pants."
It seems that you have self-steem issues you need to sort out.
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Heck if she's actually right she should link to the relevant cabbage regulations, then we can learn something...
FWIW snopes did link to a pdf about US cabbage standards which is about 3 pages and has a fair number of words.
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Which actually happens about as often as I read the articles.
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See Snopes for more info. [snopes.com]
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Funny)
A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.
Ah, yes. Also known as "Cole's Law".
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Ah, yes. Also known as "Cole's Law".
That bill should have been shredded.
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Most of the ten commandments are not enforceable by law though. Murder the theft are crimes. Bearing false witness is only a crime in some circumstances. More to the point it is against the law to enforce some of them, seeing as most western countries have some provisions for freedom of religion).
Laws do get removed and replaced over time. What tends to happen is that breaches of some particular law first start getting minimal sentences. Then cases invoking it start getting dismissed the public prosecuto
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Insightful)
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According to snopes.com, nobody has found that directive, and that claim has circulated for several different documents, none of which are identifiable, always just below 27,000 words.
Local solution (Score:5, Funny)
Throw anotha lawya' on the barbie, mate?
Forum website FTW (Score:2)
So Where is the Forbidden Thread? (Score:5, Interesting)
So where is the cache of the thread?
Australia is a little jumpy right now (Score:5, Funny)
what with Sasha Baron Cohen making a contentious movie about a flamboyant gay Australian
and their favorite Australian son, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is having major troubles in Caleefornya
but Australians will always have the Sound of Music, Mozart, the Tyrolean Alps, and Hitler
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That's just the kangaroos.
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You, Sir, circletimessquare, are my hero. Without even trying you have managed to make about fifteen people look like fools with their answers. :)
This could indeed be a record-breaking post.
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Governor Schwarzenegger is Austrian, not Australian as you can tell simply by listening to his speech. He doesn't say G'Day Mate, nor does he properly pronounce "put nother shrimp on the barbie"
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*Whoosh*
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*WHOOOOSH* (Score:5, Funny)
Finally on BBC News we go to Sheila McCarthy, who is braving the UNIX longhairs on Slashdot to bring us a *WHOOOOSH* post. What's happening there Sheila, you big-titted should've-been-a-pornstar shagpot? Oh, thinking out loud again. Errrrm, cut to Sheila, cut to ...
- At Slashdot -
I'm reporting live from Slashdot where someone has just mis-understood a joke. "Now what's unusual about that, you news-readin' ho'?" You might ask. The person doing the mis-understanding is a male, basement-dweller, with an enormous beard and a stupendously huge ... collection of adult videos. But the unusual thing is how smash here is a four-digit UID'er. This is someone who has spent literally millenia on Slashdot, yet when he saw this -- fairly elementary -- joke, it flew right over his head. Let me tell you, Dermot MacDermott, it was quite a sight and not something this community is likely to forget in a hurry.
- back in the studio (where Dermot is scratching his crotch with one hand, whilst gesticulating toward a monitor screen with another) -
Those fuckin' tits man, they're like what they model implants on, you sure they're fuckin' real man? *Ahem* So Sheila ... Is it likely that Slashdotters will erect some sort of monument to this event, maybe erect a ... ummm ... statue?
- Outside Slashdot HQ, Soviet Nealistan -
There have been discussions of celebrating this event yearly, some names for the event have been discussed, but have all been shit so far. For example: "smash-n-whooosh", "-1 Funny Day" and "Day of the Whooosh" are some of the names suggested. Since these are a bit shit, it has been decided -- in a joint meeting of Neal Industry executives, Netcraft's resident BSD troll, and Rob - Dingo Ate Ma Baby - Malda -- that a name for this soon-to-be historic occassion be opened up to the wider Slashdot community. With a winner being the first post following this one to be moderated "+5 Troll". We're attempting to get an interview with smash, but until we can find him it's back to Dermot in the studio in London, where hopefully he's not having a wank like during the report on women's mud wrestling last Thursday, dirty bastard.
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With a winner being the first post following this one to be moderated "+5 Troll".
I claim my reward, or by "this one" did you mean the gp?
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That is truly an amazing post. I tip my hat to you and hereby hire you to work for the BBC.
On a more serious note, the original poster should be ashamed not knowing that Australia and Austria are two entirely different countries. Austria is in Africa. Everyone knows that.
Well, everyone who's seen an Austrich knows that.
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i W0n teh intarwebs! (Score:3, Interesting)
what's awful is that although its the most spectacular troll i've done in awhile, its this retired chestnut of a joke that should be old and tired and expired by now
i think this silly joke has been featured in at least 100 fark headlines over the years, no?
oy
Wish this could be modded higher than 5 (Score:2)
This needs to go on "Seen on Slash". This clearly a "best of slashdot" entry if there ever was one. Best post I've read in a long while. Scathing humor, done properly. Tip of the hat to you sir. If only the rest of Slashdot could write as well.
Yes, how did "smash" miss that one? It truly boggles the mind.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480494/Bush-confuses-Austria-Australia-latest-gaffe.html
Sad to see you go. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to see you guys drop off the face of the Internet, but I guess that's what happens when you get a bunch of pricks in Parliament.
But I guess that the government will figure it out when no one wants to deal with Australia as far as the Internet goes.
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There's also the dingo fence, which originally was to keep the dingos on one side away from the sheep on the other side, but nowdays largely serves to keep the dingos on one side away from the dingos on the other.
It does make a really cool noise when you drive through it, though...
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You forgot the obligatory 'NO CARRIER' half way through the sentence.
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Microsoft can sue Slashdot, or any other pro-Linux (Score:2)
Using the logic used in this lawsuit, Microsoft could sue Slashdot, and every other pro-Linux website for defamation, claiming millions of dollars in lost sales due to attacks on Windows.
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You mean all those 0.92% of sales that went to Linux? I can see Microsoft lining up its lawyers now...
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.92% of windows sales would send slashdot broke and keep hundreds of lawyers in beer and skittles.
Banned? Not so much. (Score:5, Informative)
Wait what?
As a longtime user (~10 years) of Zgeek, and an Aussie, I'm pretty sure we haven't been banned. It's just that the site, which is hosted in the US already is going to legally set up shop outside of Australia to avoid these kinds of legal hassles.
For the record, the whole lawsuit thing is a joke, and everyone's aware that it's doomed to failure. The problem is that since Zgeek is essentially run by one guy in his spare time, he doesn't have the resources to fight it effectively, so it's better to run away rather than set yourself up for future problems.
For the record, the site really isn't too much more than a place were people post random news, and a forum which is dominated by in-fighting, trolling, and a bizarre 'shit-in-his-shoes' meme (it was started after Google started rating us highly as place to get life advice). And yes, it's as much fun as it sounds.
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For the record, the whole lawsuit thing is a joke, and everyone's aware that it's doomed to failure. The problem is that since Zgeek is essentially run by one guy in his spare time, he doesn't have the resources to fight it effectively, so it's better to run away rather than set yourself up for future problems.
I admire your optimism. But just because everyone is aware that it's insane does not mean the lawsuit will fail.
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Yah, they'll just get sued in whatever country they set up in and have the additional difficulty of getting subpoenaed long-distance.
I'm unaware of any country that both has decent bandwidth and does NOT have stupid laws that affect the internet.
I can think of a few regions that fullfil the second clause and could be brought to fulfill the first, but most of them are populated by people who find bronze tools sufficiently indistinguishable from magic and would likely smash the electronics and use them as spe
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So you're saying it's essentially identical to Slashdot, but with an unfortunate twist on "hot-grits-in-pants."
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For the record, the site really isn't too much more than a place were people post random news, and a forum which is dominated by in-fighting, trolling, and a bizarre 'shit-in-his-shoes' meme (it was started after Google started rating us highly as place to get life advice). And yes, it's as much fun as it sounds.
So doesn't that mean it violates /. IP?
Some snippets of the thread from caches. (Score:5, Informative)
Page 1 [74.125.47.132].
Page 2 (John posts as "Doghead" on this page) [74.6.239.67].
Page 4 [74.6.239.67].
Greg Smith's threat/post [74.125.47.132].
Mirror - Page 1 [dyndns.org]
Mirror - Page 2 [dyndns.org]
Mirror - Page 4 [dyndns.org]
Mirror - Greg's Threat [dyndns.org]
If there are any other pages I missed that got picked up in the cache, post them here.
Lawyers... (Score:2)
The system seems to be broken if lawyers can bring about this kind of boobery.
Bill of Rights. (Score:2)
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our chance at such a document that actually benefits everyone, has long sailed.
Who owns the Movie rights for (Score:2)
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I'm starting to have serious concerns about anyone who puts the queen on their money.
Funny, I have concerns about anyone who puts his money on a queen.
You are the yin to my yang.
Too Anglocentric, it's not just us Brits (Score:2)
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I completely agree.
George W: scary as hell
Prince Philip: hilarious
disclaimer: I am neither from the US nor the UK.
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Re:So much for the First Amendment. (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, amendment to what? We don't have that fancy-schmansy Bill of Rights you yanks have, we go back to the Magna Carta, mate.
Oh, wait...
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Now now Mr. Gibson