For what it’s worth, I understand the CocaColla team’s frustration about only getting a 15-day window from Coca-Cola to proceed with the takedown of their site and sale of their domain name, but I’m sure that is negotiable.
Hardly worth picking an online battle over, if you ask me. You’ll hurt Coca-Cola more by switching to Pepsi from now on. I hear it’s better-tasting, even.
This is my contribution to Uncensored: A Charitable Project to Support The Open Internet. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
This year I will celebrate my fiftieth birthday. While I haven’t spent a half-century hacking, I recall playing with punch cards in the 1960s, so it has been a good forty years of fascination with information technology. In those forty years, what have I done? I have not written any great books. I do not teach in a university. I did not make millions of dollars. I did not invent anything critical to the advancement of the human race.
My perspective is a little like that of C3PO in Star Wars, a minor character throwing his hands up in dismay at calamity and providing others with an interesting viewpoint on the great events of the last forty years.
Like any space opera, the story of information technology is a very simple one. It is played out in a myriad of different ways by a revolving cast of characters, but it always has its loveable heroes, its predictably nefarious villains, innocent civilians to be saved, and bumbling bureaucrats that aren’t inherently evil, but begin every story aiding the forces of darkness out of a misplaced belief they are preserving law and order in their corner of the galaxy.
The heroes are always in possession of a great secret, one that will disrupt the empire. It always works the same way: It takes power out of the hands of the entrenched nobility and bureaucrats and puts it back in the hands of the people. The movie tells us all about it in Act I, deals a great setback to the heroes in Act II, and in Act III they prevail through pluck and a fierce disdain for the overwhelming forces arrayed against them. Who can forget Han Solo's grim tagline, “Never tell me the odds?”
In hardware, minicomputers disrupted mainframes. Then microcomputers disrupted minicomputers. Now phones and tablets are disrupting microcomputers. With each wave, a hardy band of rebels fought against everything the industry threw up in their way. Waves of salespeople spreading FUD. Rigged government procurement deals. Lobbyists in the halls of power passing laws against them. The battle cry of the empire has always been that a victory by the rebels would cost the economy everything, that jobs would vanish and chaos would reign. But each victory by the rebels actually created more jobs, more wealth, and more freedom.
Now in the next century, what does a somewhat battered and out-of-date protocol droid observe? That everything old is new again. The “intellectual property cartels” act like the hardware giants of old, buying politics by the pound and telling everyone who will listen that they need more protection for their patent portfolio, more protection for their cartoon characters, more protection for even the depiction of sporting events.
They tell us that only a “managed economy” for intellectual “property” will preserve jobs, and that ifthe serfs have more “freedom,” this will actually lead to slavery. The warn us that roving bands of pirates are living it up like drug barons on movie downloads. They explain how they need the senate to grant them special, temporary powers to download the contents of your phone or laptop when you cross the border, they explain why they need to send violent special forces police to arrest and extradite the owners of a file downloading business, they explain why they need to monitor the entire world’s tweets looking for jokes in poor taste.
And that’s just how they run politics. If you want to create the future, the possibility of successfully navigating a patent minefield is approximately 3,720 to 1. And I noticed earlier, the electoral motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to go to political innovation speed.
We are, I think, at the beginning of Act III. Some of you will agree with me that surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative in extreme circumstances. But others will climb into their trusty ships and continue the fight, harassing and wounding the entrenched interests until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own corruption. The future of our economy really does depend on the rebels succeeding. At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our economy have been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies.
More jobs and businesses have been created by VCRs than destroyed by them. More jobs and businesses have been created by the breakup of AT&T than destroyed by it. More jobs and businesses have been created by the decline of IBM than lost in Armonk. More jobs and businesses have been created by the stagnation of Microsoft than lost in Redmond. And it will be the same with the RIAA, the MPAA, Intellectual Ventures, and everyone else scheming to enthral the people with digital “rights” management and criminal prosecution of “file sharing.” In the destruction of the monopolization of ideas, lie the seeds of a new revolution, one that will bring wealth, freedom, and jobs.
Rebels, the force will be with you. Always.
What’s your “Go-to” Joke?
Collected by reddit
There were two sisters, one called Petal and one called Fridge. One day, Petal asks her parents, “Why did you call me Petal?” and they replied “Because when you were a baby, a petal fell on you.” And then Fridge says “bllaaarrarararraraaarg”.
A man goes to the doctor for his annual check-up, and the doctor tells him, “You need to stop masturbating.”
The man asks, “Why?”
The doctor replies, “Because I’m trying to examine you”A polar bear walks into a bar, sits down and order a “Bicardi and………………………………………… cola”
Bartender asks, whats with the huge pause??? Polar Bear says “These? Born with’em….”A horse walks into a bar. Several people get up and leave because they realize the potential danger of the situation.
Three nuns are sitting on a park bench. Then a man comes up and exposes himself to them. Two of them have a stroke. But the third one couldn’t reach.
What did the buffalo say to his son when he dropped him off at school? …….Bison.
Two whales walk into a bar. The bartender asks them what they want.
The first whale replies: WOOOOOOWWWWWW WOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEE WOAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAA WOOOOO
The second whale says: “Frank, you’re drunk”.A man sits down at a bar and says to the bartender: “I bet you 300 dollars that I can piss into the cup all the way over there on the other side of the bar and not miss a single drop.”
The bartender said: “There is no way you can do that. Sure, I’ll bet you 300 dollars.”
The man then begins to undo his pants and begins pissing. He starts pissing all over the bar, the bottles, the floor and the bartender, not making a single drop in the cup.
The bartender starts laughing and says: “You fucking idiot! You owe me 300 dollars!”
The man gets up and walks over to the pool table and starts laughing and shaking hands with the men standing there. He walks back to bar laughing, sits down and hands the bartender the $300 dollars.
The bartender asks: “Why are you laughing? You just lost the bet.”
The man said: “I’m laughing because I bet those guys over there one thousand dollars that I could piss all over you and your bar and not only would you not be mad, you’d be happy about it.”Why does Santa have such a large sack? Because he only comes once a year! Kids love that joke
A magician was walking down the street, then he turned into a grocery store.
An old lady at the bank asked me if I could help her check her balance. So I pushed her over.
A lady walks into a bar and sees a really cute guy sitting at the counter. She goes over and asks him what he is drinking.
“Magic Beer”, he says
She thinks he’s a little crazy, so she walks around the bar, but after that there is no one else worth talking to,goes back to the man sitting at the bar and says,”That isn’t really Magic Beer, is it?”
“Yes, I’ll show you.” He takes a drink of the beer, jumps out the window,flies around the building 3 times and comes back in the window.
The lady can’t believe it: “I bet you can’t do that again.”
He takes another drink of beer, jumps out the window, flies around the building three times, and comes back in the window.
She is so amazed that she says she wants a Magic Beer, so the guy says to the bartender, “Give her one of what I’m having.”
She gets her drink, takes a gulp of the beer, jumps out the window, plummets 30 stories, breaks every bone in her body, and dies.
The bartender looks up at the guy and says, “You know, you’re a real asshole when you’re drunk, Superman!”My favorite knock knock joke from The Office.
‘Knock Knock”
“Who’s there?”
“The KGB”
“The KGB wh–” SLAP
“We are the ones asking the questions!”What did batman say to robin before they got into the car?
Robin! Get in the car!I have this horrible joke from like middle school about some fruit going up your ass. It’s so stupid, but every time I tell it I start laughing so hard I tear up. It’s embarrassing honestly. And it’s kind of vulgar, so it never seems appropriate.
Edit: Added joke, thanks to request + downvotes. Found it online!
Three men who were lost in the jungle were captured by cannibals. The cannibal king told the prisoners that they could live if they pass a trial.
The first step of the trial was to go to the forest and get ten pieces of the same kind of fruit. So all three men went separate ways to gather fruits. The first one came back and said to the king, “I brought ten apples.” The king then explained the trial to him.”You have to shove the fruits up your butt without any expression on your face or you’ll be eaten.” The first apple went in… but on the second one he winced out in pain, so he was killed. The second one arrived and showed the king ten berries. When the king explained the trial to him he thought to himself that this should be easy. 1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8… and on the ninth berry he burst out in laughter and was killed.
The first guy and the second guy met in heaven. The first one asked, “Why did you laugh, you almost got away with it?” The second one replied,”I couldn’t help it, I saw the third guy coming with pineapples.”Two antennas meet on a roof and fall in love. The wedding wasn’t much but the reception was excellent.
Why don’t blind people skydive?
It scares the hell out of the dog.What do you call a fake noodle?
An impasta.Nice try Carlos Mencia
Not mine, but a coworkers.
My two lesbian neighbours got me a Rolex for my birthday. They misunderstood when I said “I wanna watch.”
He’s been telling this since Christmas.Lady goes to her doc.
“Doc, I have quite the problem. I can’t control my gas. All day long I’m farting and farting. The only good news is they are the ‘silent but deadly’ type.
The Doc pauses for a moment and replies, “first let’s get you fitted for a hearing aid.”A guy walks into a bar, orders six jägermeister shots.
The bartender asks him if it’s a special occation?
The guy answers “yes indeed, my very first blowjob”.
The bartender gets excited and says “Congratulations, I’ll give you the seventh shot on the house”.
The guy answers “Nah, if six jäger shots isn’t enough to get rid of the taste, the seventh wont make much of a difference”.A man is sitting at the bar when he notices a beautiful woman walk in and sit down at a table across the room. After 30 minutes the man finally builds up enough courage to walk up to her and offer her a drink, but before he can finish his sentence she yells “NO I WILL NOT HAVE SEX WITH YOU!”. Confused and embarrassed, the man quietly returns to his seat while the rest of the bar stares at him. Shortly after the woman approaches him and says “I’m sorry to yell at you like that. You see, I’m a grad student and I’m studying peoples reactions to embarrassing situations”. The man shouted “WHAT DO YOU MEAN 200 DOLLARS?!”
What’s the hardest part of eating a vegetable? The wheelchair
