If you want to save a few clicks, here's a torrent with "v.1 of the 44kHz samples (with 80% of the files)":
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1276284 (via http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples )

I'm a bit confused about how the economy works...

People are losing their homes because the economy is in bad shape. To save the economy, money will be pumped into banks and/or the stock market etc.

So, to help the poor, money must be given to the rich?

I think it would be a better idea to give money to the people who've lost their homes and other poor people. They would probably inject all that money straight into the economy (by buying food and renting a place)...

Is the system this fucked up or what is my major misunderstanding here?

Hmpf... Why don't they just let in some more refugees instead to solve the people-shortage.

Being part of a well known band sounds better than being supporting actor in a gazillion movies.

(Then again, I recognize the face (after checking imdb) from the movies and not the band, but still...)

What kind of a stupid headline would it be to say "Close-up toy photography by Edson, character actor in Ferris Bueller" ... ?!?

Wow... I hope that, at the end, someone will use git and merge everything into one, but that's just me, I want everyone to get along... Can't wait for the next part.

I haven't listened to this yet, but usage of the word "gonzo" in describing one of the authors sounds really promising.

And about sauna. Yes, that is very much more finnish than swedish. In Finland many apartment blocks are built with a sauna in *each* flat. You're not likely to find a sauna in an apartment in sweden unless it was put there by a finn living in Sweden.

"Lutfisk" (Swedish), "Lipeäkala" (finnish) is eaten in both sweden and finland too. "Lut" means lye, otherwise not used much in cooking, I'd presume.

Saunas in finland are more naked than in sweden. Also, finns slap themselves and eachothers with branches of birch (with the leaves on, it's very nice). Unrelatedly, Björk means birch.

The Nobel Peace prize winner is chosen by norwegians, the rest of the nobels are chosen by swedes.

Nowadays, on tv in sweden the lobbyists don't advertise downloading as stealing, but liken it more to getting into the tanning booth with a paying customer or peeing next to someone who paid to use the public toilet. So, I guess they're now trying to say downloaders are leeching off of paying customers and paying customers should be annoyed by it.

As propaganda, I think that kind of angle is maybe more effective than saying that downloaders steal (from mega-rich faceless multinationals)...

And as with any commercial, the "better" it is, the worse it is, since it can dupe more people.

#14: "... unlikely that this will be a problem for anyone but Gold farmers and advanced guild bank characters."

And someone whose name is "meth".

Never heard of this kind of diagramming. Do they do this in all English-speaking coutries? Do other languages have this kind of thing?

#22: Maybe he borrowed or rented the car. I've known rappers to borrow cars and dogs. Also, they didn't seem to be surrounded by women all the time in real life either.

Whatever opinions we have on this issue or any, ultimately everything should be decided democratically, right?

When most people think culture should be free, it should be free.

If most people think the world should be controlled by the rich, then it should stay that way.

I think everyone should have a say in every decision everywhere, if they feel like it.

You might argue that it's none of anybodys business what you decide to have for breakfast and it won't be, since the majority would probably vote that you should have whatever you want. Similarly, all other freedoms and responsibilities would be decided by all.

All we need is some sort of global network of computers.

There's audio of a nice talk entitled "Desgn noir" among the clips from the 24th Chaos Communication Congress of Chaos Computer Club.

ladyada talks about TV-Be-Gone and other subversive gadgets.

Among the talks that are on video (as well as audio) Mitch (creator of TV-Be-Gone?) talks about making gadgets.

link to talks audio:
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/24c3_mp3.html

videoed talks:
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/24c3_m4v.html

ps. If you don't want people messing with your tv via remote, cover the ir-reciever with black tape or something.

Will the free (in both senses of the word) information and information infrastructure lead to a more distributed form of democracy? Are we moving towards the "super-democratic-being-nice-to-each-others" utopia? (I just made that description of a society up, others might call it "anarcho-syndicalism" or whatever)

So, it wouldn't be illegal state aid if the state did it themselves with tax money? That's nice to hear.

Even so, free market proponents have been known to whine about unfairness even when the issue at hand would not be illegal according to the above definition.

An example that springs to mind at the moment is when right wing politicians and capitalists in a town here in Sweden whined about the catering-"business" of the town (i.e. a "business" in the same sense as the public hospital or school) being able to provide a "too cheap" service of preparing food, so capitalists could not compete fairly and get rich feeding children and the elderly. (And the towns own caterer was not being unfairly subsidized with taxes, it just didn't need to make a profit.)

Funny how capitalists say deregulation and outsourcing will save/make money and be better and cheaper for the people too (which has been shown to be untrue in the cases of deregulation of various things in Sweden), but when an entity that is not out to make a profit is a cheaper alternative (how is that possible!?!), they bitch and whine about unfairness.

I'm pleasantly surprised that these MP:s belong to the largest of the right wing coalition parties that are in power.

Since coming to power some 15 months ago, the government has consistently taken from the poor(er) and given to the rich(er).

Of course, these MP:s do not represent the party line on this issue, but it gives some hope of stopping the proposed new file sharing laws.

In the opposition (Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Green Party) this kind of sentiment is probably more common, especially among leftists and greens.

Corporations must make money for their shareholders. If a corporation does something that is good, it's because doing good happens to be the most profitable thing to do according to their calculations.

Gpl-licenced terminatorx application springs to mind. It's a 'realtime audio synthesizer that allows you to "scratch" on digitally sampled audio data'

You can just use your mouse to scratch, but some people have tuned turntables into mouse devices to be used with it: http://terminatorx.org/turntable.html

"We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."
-Kurt Vonnegut

About linking to a blogpost on a story:

If the blog about the story has interesting analysis or something else that adds value, it's ok.

In this case I haven't got an opinion, since I didn't rtfa.

The concept of "anti-[name-of-country]-ism" should not belong in a democracy. It is ridiculous, anti-democratic bullshit, common in dictatorships.

What other democratic countries have this concept? Not for example Finland or Sweden. (Well, there is the concept of "unswedish" in Sweden, but that is used for describing something the user of the word feels is better in the other culture, such as maybe talking to your neighbours. (I feel this is a silly thing to say too, but atleast it's not ridiculous, anti-democratic bullshit.))

I'm not saying the kid should not have been caught. I said I felt sorry for the kid. While that did require me to try to see things from his perspective, it wasn't very much hard work.

#15: To make sure he doesn't steal again should surely not contain labeling him as a thief, but forgiving him and making sure that he feels he is welcome and that he wants to belong to the community.

#16: Kids can act out other problems than being poor by stealing.

I don't think an attitude of "Poor little kid? He's a thief!", as Jack puts it, is the right attitude to handle this. Again, I believe further stigmatization by adding insult to injury is counterproductive.

And yes, the adults at the school seem to have not done their job.

Sorry about the flame, Jack. I reacted rashly and harshly to your lack of sympathy for the child who presumably hurt his hand and was then subjected to a "witch-hunt".

My first reaction to the story was glee, that it served him right. Humans enjoy punishing others that break social rules, but that doesn't mean we should. Imagine the pain, shame and fear he probably felt.

Of course he should not have been stealing. I wonder why he was.

I don't think this child needs adults shouting "Thief!" at him or saying that it was ok to hurt him physically. In fact, I think not showing sympathy and understanding, but instilling shame and trying to make "thief" a label that describes his identity is counterproductive if we want to have less thieves.

Great show. I'm thinking of learning German so I could understand the rest of their shows.

#9 Childabuser.

I hope the trap didn't hit the poor little kid too hard. I don't like it when children are injured. I hope next time people come up with some sort of device that could dispense colour without the assault.

@ #20

That sounds a bit too clever. Maybe he was told to say that by some hip spindoctor... :)

For fairness and balance, I'd like to point out that also great things come from the US.

Many of my favourite people that I don't know personally are Americans; Kurt Vonnegut, Bill Hicks, Jello Biafra, Noam Chomsky...

You say "Link to Swedish article", but the article is in Norwegian.

Beautiful.

This takes me back to an imaginary world of my childhood. At the time I thought it was true, that the Soviet Union was paradise on earth, where equality and peace and all things nice ruled. It was a beautiful dream.

I didn't grow up under communism, so I just saw what I wanted to see, which was what the respective leaders of those countries wanted me to see.

Since it dawned on me that things were less than rosy I've reevaluated my stance on communism. I still dream of equality and peace and no possessions and all that, but you shouldn't put power in the hands of a few.