Well streaming shouldn't have fucking won
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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Can we do a "Cut Off" for CEOs? (French Style 😏)
They would sentence you to death while demanding that you pay for your own execution.
Libertarian police
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Original Credit: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department>>>>>
People wouldn't pirate your shit if it was easily and cheaply available
I may or may not have been pirating media for over 20 years and this song and dance will never end.
Sure, the well known torrent sites have marginally less content and seeds than before but my Plex server may or may not still be packed full of classics and the latest releases.
The above may or may not be purely fictional and victimless. And no, I wouldn’t “steal a handbag.” Handbags aren’t infinite digital replicas, and handbag owners don’t drive supercars.
(I draw the line at software largely due to the risks, and partly due to Mac apps and Adobe suite being locked down pretty well. I’m happy to pay for software regardless. Netflix and Amazon on the other hand…)
Absolutely diabolical. Cutting off internet access is no different than cutting of electricity in modern society. Sure, you can live without it, but everything from paying your bills to getting a job or having a social life just got a whole lot harder. Fuck anyone who thinks this is a reasonable response.
The cruelty is the point
Also, the ignorance regarding VPNs.
Maybe Sony should have some things cutoff for that root kit, hmmm?
Is music piracy is still a major thing these days? I've not even considered it for years, because every music streaming platform has all the music, it seems.
Movie and TV show piracy must be so much more rampant because of the fragmentation creating inconvenience to consumers.
Music piracy isn't rampant at all. It's the "immigrant crime is out of control" of the internet.
If anything, youtube is the biggest sharer of pirated music. You can listen to anything on it for free, from anyone.
Hell I still sometimes find those old "lyrics" videos. Remember those? They all had that bluish teal background? Some of them survive to this day.
It's mostly hipsters with modded iPods, everyone else just streams music. You can stream it in lossless quality on some platforms and download most played songs to your device if your mobile bandwidth is limited.
Hell I'm a weird hipster who likes to have local copies of things and even I've given up.
Audiophiles like me listen to local .flac files through external DAC's for better sound. And I'm not a hipster. Also lots of music I like isn't even on streaming.
I use Foobar and Plexamp to listen to my FLAC collection. I have a lot of magazine CD inserts not readily available on the streaming platforms. Just feels really good knowing companies like Spotify aren’t making a dime off me.
Never heard of foobar, and honestly surprised it doesn't have a linux version. It has a windows phone version, but NOT linux.
I know I shit on linux a lot on this site for having a small userbase, but COME ON!!! You make a windows phone version but NOT a linux version??? At least linux has something like 5% of the pc market userbase. And while that may be mockingly small, windows phone probably only ever had 5 users total!
You know it's bad when I'M the one insulting a program for not having a native linux port.
as digitized almost all societal functions are, we really should define basic internet access as a human right.
Japanese corporate culture is fucking terrible. I don't understand how anyone can support these gaming companies.
Edit: Gaming/Entertainment
UMG and Warner Bros are Japanese? Lol
Japanese corporate culture is atrocious ≠ American corporate culture isn't atrocious
Both need some major reforms in order to be just non-awful, let alone acceptable.
My point is more that what they wrote didn't make sense talking about Japanese corporations when more American companies are listed. The entertainment industry is simply awful, nationalities aside.
Pretty sure sony is Japanese.