Free Republic

People are sick of the arrogant stupidly on full display here. Yes, when I first arrived many years ago, the quality of discourse was far beyond where we find ourselves today. At this point I mostly just start threads about computers and technology to try and stimulate some form of intelligent conversation. When one tries to discuss the true results of the last administration's blatant corruption and reckless abandon, the nose pickers immediately pounce using their meaningless insults and nonexistent reasoning. All they really want to do is cheerlead for war against Russia, Russia, Russia. It is really sad to witness the morons begging for their own destruction.

The reactions of the idiots among us remind me a great deal of the videos about the cat Henri 2, https://youtu.be/Q34z5dCmC4M

There is nothing scarier to me than the reactions here from those whose tender sensibilities will not let them accept the reality of the actual scope of Russia's ability to completely annihilate the world which is not a new or an unknown development. They prefer to live in their Pollyana fantasies and pretend that this somehow makes them tough guys. All it actually does is confirm their already known status as complete gullible fools.

“Life in prison” in California? That likely means that this animal will be roaming the streets again in three to four years. I am surprised that Newscum hasn’t already given him a pardon. Since there is absolutely zero information in any news story about where this person is from... I think it is safe to assume he is likely a foreigner. He had been recently released from stabbing another person on a train. If he was from this country wouldn’t news organizations have found his relatives who would have told us how he was just getting his life back together before this horrible racist woman provoked him into stabbing and robbing her dying body.

The bickering in the thread is amusing but has caused some to lose sight of what the intended discussion was originally supposed to be about. Although there are few here who have gone off on a tangent as often as I have.

If one is using Linux for the typical tasks that most people use a computer for... web browsing, producing or reading a document or e-book, editing images or video, watching videos, listening to music, or videoconferencing, the GUI is obviously much easier for nearly everyone to use. However, when one is initially setting up a computer for tasks like serving web pages or running AI models locally or externally, etc, etc... there typically is no substitute for a terminal aka the command line.

In some ways I feel lucky to have started out before GUIs were used for almost everything. But I have to admit that these days I am still much more comfortable using Ubuntu Server after getting XFCE which is the most popular lightweight GUI chosen for that platform. It is just so much easier to have all of your tools represented by icons that you can select with a mouse. I even like to set it up on a rented remote VPS (Virtual Private Servers) such as Hostinger’s KVM series https://www.hostinger.com/vps-hosting#pricing . But even then, you still have to go into a terminal to accomplish many tasks when you are setting something up no matter which environment that you choose.

Even trying to use terms that most people around here likely have some familiarity with... People whose contact with a computer is using Windows or a Mac almost immediately zone out when you try to talk about anything that they can’t double click on to start up.

The picture you included is worth 10,000 words... This isn’t your father’s FBI.

Why would he want to close his money laundry?

This is worth repeating in every thread. Money is what this is all about, and has always been about on every side of the equation. Let's try not to kid ourselves. The poor Ukrainian population especially the men have been caught in the middle while their country crumbles around them.

As an example... I entered a prompt into https://suno.com/
and it came up with the following song. No fancy graphics, but just shows what you can do in a few minutes.

https://youtu.be/S1iUePPNUVQ

If you enable closed captioning you can see the words so you can sing along.

Sorry I had a typo, I didn’t mean to imply that you were a professional musician.

The interesting thing is that you professional musicians can use AI to edit actual demo tracks into something useable as well as just having fun. You can also remove the primary voice track and use the tune as a karaoke style accompaniment.

I have been using Band in a Box for many years and spent a lot of money on this to generate songs and accompaniment, but this has now morphed to a completely different level. And the capabilities come at much less expense. My guess is that https://www.pgmusic.com/bbwin.packages.htm will have to lower their prices to compete.

Song generation is one of my favorite uses of AI. I bought a year of https://suno.com/ for around $4 a month on a black Friday special. It is back to the normal price now. I haven’t bothered to make many videos out of my “creations”. But I do appreciate being able to easily make music of pretty much all genres for to add to drone video, etc... without paying for royalty free songs or getting my videos on YouTube flagged for copyright violations.

The quality has gotten pretty amazing!

Her career was basically over... she never was very funny to begin with other than just being a fat, obnoxious clown. This is just another ploy to call attention to herself. Rosie, you are a washed-up has-been give it up. Nobody cares. Try to find some constructive outlet and live your life.

Why aren’t the usual suspects calling Donald Jr. a Puty Lover and accusing him of being on the Russian payroll? Of course, Hunter was giving a percentage of his ill-gotten gain from corrupt Ukrainian leadership which actually came from US taxpayers back to the “big guy”. Yet our all-knowing Zeepers still worship the corrupt ground under Hunter and the Big Guy, along with their idiotic policies.

People like the Bidens and their buddies view a conflict such as this one, as the perfect opportunity to pull in $100s of Billions of unaccounted funds into their coffers. None of this is what it seems and because of the way the reactions to this have shifted the world economic system to the point where BRICS now controls more assets and trade than G7... it is going to cost us far more than the $100s of Billions spent directly on this lunacy.

It bears repeating that if President Trump had not been cheated in the 2020 election, none of this would have happened.

Ok, I figured it out! V-ger = Voyager.

The unforgettable Harry Mudd bringing babes to a mining planet to be miners’ wives.

Now that one rings a bell. As far as civilians go.. I can remember encounters with government officials on other planets as well as the OK Corral episode and one with them on earth in the 1930s. I am pretty sure that I have seen all the episodes from the original series but that was all decades ago.

For whatever reason my wife has mostly prevented me from watching much Star Trek from any time period for the past 35 years. So, I am just not that familiar these days with the lingo. But by the 60s Hollywood had already hired a bunch of writers who were young socialists, so I am sure whatever point you were making is completely valid.

I assumed that there was some type of joke associated with your post. I further assume that ST stands for Star Trek and TOS stands for The Original Series. But I am not familiar with V’ger and do not know what that means. So, I still am not sure what you are referring to.

As far as jobs go... it is supposed to be like an aircraft carrier that travels to different parts of the universe. The original Star Trek mission was the five-year mission of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), focused on exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no man has gone before. How many civilian jobs do you find on an aircraft carrier?

They took V’ger and turned it into a super successful Bitcoin mining operation. Result wealth for all! That’s why no one has a job in the Star Trek universe.

You would have to explain your post to me, because I have no idea what you are even referring to.

My next-door neighbor is a software engineer for Amazon; he spent a bunch of money on a small crypto-mining operation that he had in his garage before he moved here. He said he made enough money to get back his initial investment, but that was about it. He sold most of his equipment on eBay before moving here.

That type of work not only is hard on computer equipment, and costs a lot for power... it has to be updated fairly frequently to stay competitive

Speaking of Star Trek....

I totally love it. It is a good example of the way you can come up with an idea and turn it into something that other people can enjoy with comparably little expense or effort.

I purchased my first software AI tool in the late 1990s. It was contained on several 3.5” floppies. I cannot recall what exactly it was called, but I almost never throw old software packaging away. It probably already has collector value, so I am going to find it someday soon.

One of the real value of AI tools these days is that depending on the model that you are using and the platform it has the ability to recall your previous discussions. So, you don't have to keep rehashing the same points. This is especially true if you are running models locally (on your own computer equipment).

I really enjoy using song writing, along with video and audio creation AI models. It is astounding how much the tools can expand your own creative desires that have not been exploited for decades. It allows one to go in completely different directions than you did not realize were even possible previously.

Here is an example of a silly prompt that I started with that actually resulted in several very amusing and actually pleasant-sounding songs when input into Suno AI.

“Theme song for large cuddly Teddy the ginger Siberian Tomcat's YouTube channel which covers his amazing adventures as a small-town western Sherrif fighting criminal racoons and coyotes. With slow laid-back whistling, harmonica and banjo in a folk style ballad with soft low 40s style tenor male and alto female harmonized trio vocals similar to an old black and white tv series.”

Here is one of the songs that came from this with a little tweaking:

https://teddycat.fun/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Teddy-the-Ginger-Sheriff.mp3

Will it make money or be found entertaining by others, probably not. But yet it seems amazing to me how you come up with prompts that produce songs that come close to what you initially imagined and then sculpt them into something that is pretty entertaining. The process and the use of your own imagination is what I find so interesting.

These were my only words in this thread up until your idiotic comment.

“After spending 25 years responding to idiots who have destroyed their health with frequent pot use... I have learned that mentioning the crap that I saw goes in one ear and out the other of the potheads who post here.”

“But believe it or not even in a society that basically worships alcohol use, habitual consumption, smoking or vaping marijuana is somehow a bigger threat to most peoples’ health than pickling your brain with alcohol.”

“Why? Hell, if I know, but it is the God’s honest truth.”

I am curious. What about that post triggered your delicate sensitivities?