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You called for it:

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

- Peter Rothman

http://baetzler.de/humor/haiku...

Windows ... : http://baetzler.de/humor/haiku...

One of my favorites:

Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working
Windows is like that.

Windows is not an operating system, it is a menace to society.

However that puts the Linux movement into a bad 'catch up' (with what?) situation. A shame it is not more prevalent meanwhile.

Markets are not driven by price or functionality ... regarding what we 'could' do with computers/software everything you perceive right now is 30 years behind what *I* did 20 years ago at the university.

The last 50 years of research have no impact at all at current day computing, except for silicon and SOCs etc.

Ah, trolling. :)

Back in the days of USENET, it was (once) an art form. It served the purpose of getting a good giggle at the expense of blind ideologues (of any subject), and to force the lurking observers to mentally dig deeper - to more thoroughly examine their beliefs and what they thought they knew. It was an excellent way to explore concepts outside of orthodoxy, and challenged the status quo. At its highest expression, a good troll will spark further research into a subject (if only to win an argument), and served the noble purpose of everyone learning something new in the end.

Now? Bah - in most cases, it's become pedestrian at best, and often shows the low intelligence of the troll.

Interestingly enough, it is nowadays employed by corporate and political entities via mechanical turk - like astroturfing, but in reverse. For instance, take politics: Lurker sees a bucket of misspelled repugnant garbage posted in opposition to a particular viewpoint, and thinks that it represents nearly everyone else who opposes said viewpoint. Suddenly, that 'team' is tainted, swaying the lurker towards the troll's real viewpoint. It's an effective way to create discord in the ranks of those whom you want to diminish, and is employed quite often. It also provides "proof" that The Other Side is a bunch of racists/pedophiles/whatever, thus their motives are evil, wrong, etc.

Dishonest as hell, but hard to see through from the casual lurker's eye. And, well, TFA proves that a lot of it works.

So what was once a sport that some of us did long ago for a bit of intellectual fun, has now become either the epitome of lame-assed prose, or has become serious cash-money business to further (or retard) a cause.

Since they will have evolved in a completely different way, it's unlikely they would think we were very tasty. Think about how nasty spiders and scorpions would taste, we could even be a deadly poison to them. They may not even be made out of meat!

Someone swallowed the advertising Apple sells them. I have never had any of the problems you have had with Windows for well over 1.5 years since I got Win 7, and before that with XP I had to reinstall maybe once or twice in 4-5 years.

You Sir, are an idiot.
First of all I never saw an Apple advertisement regarding OS installs.
Second: I don't care how often you had to reinstall a MS OS. Fact is that 90% of the ppl I meet in the internet (I play online games, too, you know ... I'm not sitting isolated in a lab on mars) reinstall windows (yes even windows 7) every few months, if not weeks. Why? I don't know!! Mysteriously something is broken ... no one knows what was wrong. Look at this for instance: http://baetzler.de/humor/haiku_error.var
Yes, those are jokes! But they are so awfully true ...
So Mr. Supersmart. Insulting me for being some idiot who fell into the "advertizing trap". Do you really think it is "normal" to reinstall an OS every 4-5 YEARS ... as you did?
I use (besides PCs/Windows, which I did use often enough, and Linux and Solaris, and DEC Ultrix, and AIX) Macs since over 20 years. So certainly no "advertizing trap", and guess what?
How often do you think I had to reinstall an Mac OS X (not to talk about OS 6 to OS 9) the last 15 years?
What would you bet? Once? Twice? Ten Times?
I tell you what: no single Mac user ever has reinstalled his OS because it miraculary suddenly ceased to work.
If you think using a Windows PC is so super easy then please come over and install the WiFi (WLAN) for my mother in law ... rofl it is ridiculous complicated.
Or you can explain me why my GFs computer, or better her account, only works if she has admin rights. She cant even access her own files if her account is stripped from admin rights. That is on windows XP. It happend "after we had to reinstall the OS .. for a reason we don't know why ... it just ceased working".
No, I have never SWITCHED ... I was forced to use PCs while I had preferred to use a Mac during that time. I watched 25 years of fucking Windows development from Win 3.11 (the pseudo 32 bit version) over Win 95 (wich was useable) and Win NT (which was useable) to Win 98 (which was useable) to Win ME (which was not useable at all) to Win XP (which is just a mess) and over to Vista (which no company in germany actually is using - because it is "beyond a mess") and if you look at all this you have the feeling: how could MS manage to hold the core industrie of this planet back in the stone age of computing?
Do *you* even know about other OSes? Mainframe OSes? BeOS? Linux? Or any other Unix? Do you even know that a Mac is running "Unix"?
Your post is such an outraging miss judging of me that it really badly pisses me of. Just because you don't understand why a Mac is "better" than a PC, it long long long does not make *me* an idiot, as you imply in your post.
I put in my USB Stick on a random PC. Either some Photo Program starts or the music player starts or it pops up a fucking window asking me which program to start ... Hello? Anyone Listening? THIS IS MY COMPUTER!!!! I DONT WANT IT TO DO STUPID IDIOTIC SHIT WHEN I PUT IN AN USB STICK!!! I just want it to mount it as a DRIVE!!! I don't want my Adresses stored in OUTLOOK! I dont want my Appointments stored in OUTLOOK! I want my addresses in a random of my choice address program, I want my appointments in my program of choice calendar ... and so on.
I want to be able to open a "dos shell" and enter "netstat -Abi", I want to be able to type "traceroute 'IP'" to a randome IP address that I find in my netstat output. I want to use pipes, I want to have a man program and ...
Do I really need to continue?

Windows Vista is useable? So why did everyone fall ba

Everyone thinks a sentient machine will be built, and I'll agree that sentience can be easily faked; I've written fake AI that seems real. There is no artificial sentience on earth, why is it supposed that machines can be made sentient?

Seth Shostak's probably read They're made out of meat., but I doubt he's read We still haven't found extraforgostnic life.

"Why was that, Doctor Fielgud? Did you detect electromagnetic communications or something?"

"Of course not. Any electromagnetic communications would be completely drowned out by the radiation from the system's star. 'Listening' for electromagnetic radiation is futile; no way would we ever hear another intelligence's electromagnetic communication, and even if we did it would appear to be random noise."

"Why would it appear to be random noise?"

"How would we decode it? We can't even decode our own prehistoric writings from the arthrolothic age without some sort of clue. Were it not for the bugatti stone, we never would have been able to intrerpret the Argostnic's writings."

I do have to agree with this, though --

Many involved in Seti have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they would not at a biological level even work like us.

However, Seti searchers have mostly still worked under the assumption - as a starting point for a search of the entire cosmos - that ETs would be "alive" in the sense that we know.

That has led to a hunt for life that is bound to follow at least some rules of biochemistry, live for a finite period of time, procreate, and above all be subject to the processes of evolution

This short story is relevant to your comment and well worth a read:
http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.htmlThey're Made Out of Meat

My bet is that the vast majority of those planets have run away from having a habitual environment by turning into planets like Venus or Mars.

I'm wondering how close to Earth's size a planet has to be to be an "Earth sized" planet. Venus is an Earth sized planet, and as you say, is in no way habitable. Mars isn't that much smaller, but has little atmosphere and no magnetic field; I don't see how life could exist on a planet without a magnetic field to keep stellar radiation out.

There are a whole lot more variables than size to consider.

we aren't getting any visitors

Maybe Doctor Fielgud and his colleagues will figure out that a "moon sized double planetoid" can harbor life if it has an iron core, and that oxygen isn't a poison to all species. And maybe the NASA people will start looking at satellites of gas giants around other stars. Meanwhile, that bit of fiction I linked gives a possible explanation as to why nobody's calling. Here's another bit of fiction with an alternative suggestion.

"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

Because we disgust them.

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

Maybe they're not made out of meat.

... after all, we're made out of meat

[citation needed]

So Independance Day and Armageddon aren't science fiction? They're made out of Meat by Terry Bisson isn't science fiction?

I'm sorry, but you don't personally get to define broadly-used terms for the rest of English-speaking society; you have to accept words the way they're used by most people.

"Sci Fi" redirects here. For various television networks with this name, see Sci Fi Channel. For the video game, see Science fiction (video game).

Science fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically-established or scientifically-postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation). Exploring the consequences of such differences is the traditional purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas".[1] Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternate possibilities.[2] The settings for science fiction are often contrary to known reality.

These may include:

• A setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts
• known facts of history or the archaeological record
• A setting in outer space, on other worlds, or involving aliens[3]
• Stories that involve technology or scientific principles that contradict known laws of nature[4]
• Stories that involve discovery or application of new scientific principles, such as time travel or psionics, or new technology, such as nanotechnology, faster-than-light travel or robots, or of new and different political or social systems (e.g., a dystopia, or a situation where organized society has collapsed)[5]

They're Made Out of Meat.

I thought exactly the same thing. We have no idea if life requires carbon or even matter (ala "They're Made Out Of Meat" http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html).

today is spelling optional day.

To communicate via writing, you must spell. Just not correctly. Perhaps "Today is spelling correctly optional day." would be more accurate.

They're made out of Meat

The C+-* Language

* pronounced "C, more or less."

Unlike C++, C+- is a subject oriented language. Each C+- class instance known as a subject, holds hidden members, known as prejudices or undeclared preferences, which are impervious preferences, which are impervious to outside messages, as well as public members known as boasts or claims. The following C operators are overridden as shown:

> better than
  < worse than
  >> much better than
  << forget it
  ! not on your life
  == comparable, other things being equal

C+- is a strongly typed language based on stereotyping and self-righteous logic. The Boolean variables TRUE and FALSE (known as constants in less realistic languages) are supplemented with CREDIBLE and DUBIOUS, which are fuzzier than Zadeh's traditional fuzzy categories. All Booleans can be declared with the modifiers strong and weak. Weak implication is said to "preserve deniability" and was added at the request of the D.O.D. to ensure compatability with future versions of Ada. Well-formed falsehoods (WFFs) are assignment-compatible with all Booleans. What-if and why-not interactions are aided by the special conditional evenifnot X then Y.

C+- supports information hiding and, among friend classes only, rumor sharing. Borrowing from the Eiffel lexicon, non-friend classes can be killed by arranging contracts. Note that friendships are intransitive, volatile, and non-Abelian.

Single and multiple inheritance mechanisms are implemented with random mutations. Disinheritance rules are covered by a complex probate protocol. In addition to base, derrived, virtual, and abstract classes, C+- supports gut classes. In certian locales, polygamous derivations and bastard classes are permitted. Elsewhere, loose coupling between classes is illegal, so the marriage and divorce operators may be needed:

marriage (MParent1, FParent1);
// child classes can now be derrived
    sclass MySclass: public MParent1, FParent1
// define MySclass
    sclass YourSclass: public MParent1, FParent2
// illegitimate
    divorce (MParent1, FParent1);
    marriage (MParent1, FParent2);
    sclass YourSclass: public MParent1, FParent2
// OK now

Operator precedence rules can be suspended with the directive #pragma dwim, known as the "Do what I mean" pragma. ANSIfication will be firmly resisted. C+-'s slogan is "Be Your Own Standard."

http://baetzler.de/humor/c_more_or_less.html

found it: The Devil and David Webster

That they are there but that they're avoiding us

Maybe aliens are everywhere, aware of us, and simply choosing not to communicate.

Would you want to communicate with sentient meat?

Maybe we're the only intelligent species that's made out of meat.

Why would they talk to us? Presumably they're interested in intelligent life, and we're questionable there.

Seriously, we're made of meat for crying out loud! What kind of self respecting alien would want to talk to someone who communicates by flapping thier meat together?

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html/

One of my favorite Sci-Fi short stories.

Really, just contemplating the whole idea of DNA when it's really just a wet, sloppy pile of chemicals blows my mind.

Maybe that's the problem "everybody else" has with us:

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

Terry Bisson wrote a short story called They're made out of Meat that I found amusing.

Someone at slashdot pointed me to it once. It is about your very premise.

"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars."

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."

Never before has the slashdot junk character filter been so unfortunate.

Moo.

http://www.baetzler.de/cgi-bin/country.pl

http://www.outofservice.com/country/

Such a species cannot survive

Not if they're made of meat.

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

> why we didn't _eat_ the conquered

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

Ob Joke Reference - "They're made out of meat"

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

Just imagine how we must look the the super-intelligent galactic gas clouds. . .

http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

Second, it is essential to select the proper filter for your coffee maker. It is generally acknowledged that a metal type filter is far superior to any other types available, because this type of filter will not impart any strange flavors into your coffee. These metal types are often gold colored, but silver colored ones can be found too. It is also generally acknowledged that using a paper filter yields a superior pot of coffee, because metal filters tend to let sediment pass into the coffee. Above all, it is most important to remember make sure you're actually using a filter, or else you might end up with a mug full of coffee grounds and dark colored water.

Ah, so it's coded in C+-?

Suck my balls.

Or, don't. (Warning, goatse link)

I always loved the Haiku that were all the rage a few years back.
They did get a little overdone on /., but no more than In Russia and pWn3d. Some more I found on google.

Poor troll. Trying reading the trollers FAQ next time.

The power

The Power of Shift

If you don't know what a sysadmin goes through for you, look at:

Adminspotting

A Day in the Life of a Sysadmin

Sysadmin's voicemail