Slashdot Mirror

I refer all readers to the Geek Heirarchy.

...would be complete without links to the Brunching Shuttlecocks' interviews with the planet Pluto?

...would be complete without links to the Brunching Shuttlecocks' interviews with the planet Pluto?

"What is the default level on the geek hierarchy that the new trendy nerds enter at?"

Even furries made it on to CSI...

What is the default level on the geek hierarchy that the new trendy nerds enter at?

As explained here: If you want to become a Force ghost, die while Luke is watching you.

Yes, but then so do the names of most of the "My Little Pony" characters here.

I don't know, he probably wouldn't mind the heat for a while, though.

I don't know, he probably wouldn't mind the heat for a while, though.

Or how about the Mr T Name Generator?

Enter your date of birth, Foo!

How about this: the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act has nothing to do with patriotism; the word patriot is merely dropped into that silly name (a heavy-handed acronym, like some kind of killer robot) because it's a strong word. Keep this in mind and you might have an easier time of understanding where the Act is coming from.

Of course, we already have lots of people (including, ahem, Slashdot editors) who call it The Patriot Act, forgetting that klugey, bias-encumbering acronym. Also of course, the strongest word is still the word free.

But, of course, that's all merely my opinion.

You're probably not a big fan of Alanis Morissette's use of the word irony, either. :)

I want that picture of Bill Kristol from that last site on a t-shirt.

I love the PNAC guys, though. We have to stick a new branch for them somewhere between the live-action RPGers and the fanfic writers. Every inch of that PNAC site is just dripping with long-repressed adolescent rage. Their policy recomendations sound more like a 14 year old writing himself into his GI-Joe fanfic than anything else. It's fucking hilarious.

Although, we coul put one of those "donate a dollar" checkboxes on the income tax forms that would go towards buying them some hookers, to burn off some of that pent-up energy that lets them whip around fucking things up so damn fast. Well, armed hookers, we don't want Dean or whoever to have to spend the first 6 months of his term fishing dead hookers out of the ceilings in the West Wing.

True, but it's like the geek hierarchy, as far as serious astronomers and authors are concerned, we slashdot posters aren't but a few evolutionary steps from the furries. :P

Copyrighting fire

GEEK (n) A person that owns Apple(tm) products and fixates upon Lego(tm) products.

Well, if you want to create the perfect horror movie, just go here!

Can I think of myself as above the goths?

Nope, consult the chart. However, as furries, we can consider ourselves above Comic Book Fans Who Only Read X-Men Spinoffs :) Well, I'm off to see X2 (only the real thing for me)... ciao fur meow :)

Don't be coming to ME about Roshambo. I am the Roshambo fooking MASTER. Got my technique down and everything. No ticklin.

them: . o O (Poor Predictable Immanis. Always picks Rock.)

me : . o O (Good Old Rock! Nothing Beats THAT!

I can be found at immanis AT sfgoth DOT com

My god... I think we've found a new slot for inclusion on the Geek Hierarchy

People Who Draw Anime Webcomics
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People Who Read Anime Webcomics
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People Who Act in Radio Plays Based on Anime Webcomics
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Furries

What you need is a good Buzzword Bingo card. Just print off a page, and then reload to get a fresh card. Print up a stack for your next all-company meeting.

Ahh.. if only you'd let me, this tech I would Horc.

See the brunching shuttlecock's bjork song if you don't get the reference http://www.brunching.com/bjorksong.html

Well, As someone who is trying to break into SF I can say if is far easier to define what makes SF truly awful.

-- Sexual Fetishisim: Any story written to legitimize the authors sexual fetishism will be awful beyond words.

-- The "Tacky Document Theory": Any time the full purpose of the story is to extoll some great historical document, the story will suck. ("we sought out the great ancient secret, and it began 'we the people...'"

-- Mmmm, Cruchy: The old "to serve man is a cookbook" was a great idea. It doesn't need to be written again folks.

-- The Dragon Ball Z effect: Any story where each heroic feat must out-do the previous until each character is destroying planets with a glance, simply must suck.

-- Did I mention sexual fetishisim? Really. It's bad. Don't do it.

Consider This Authoratative Guide to all thigs wrong with SF and SF fandom...

For instance, I will probably never be able to sell my novel unless I subtitle it "Not Gay Porn". The problem is that I have a character who's story arc, to be believable, has to start "very low". To that end, he starts the book naked in a cage. My intent is to make the reader think of him as property. It works quite well. But I know in my soul that any editor will see that and think "oh, god, another 'slave naked in a cage' book" and fire off a rejection without guilt.

(There is no explicit, and less than 100 words of implicit sex in the book, but how do you say that believably to editors that are being burried in alternate-star-trek-universe furry porn? 8-)

There really is a huge body of bad sexual frustration out in the SF community, at least among the "I'll become an author, then people will finally see my mind and accept me, and that will finally show my parents that I'm NOT a freak" crowd.

So, what makes SF "good SF"? The presense of thoughtful insight into the human condition, the presence of internal consistency in the authors vision, the presence of something to say, good punctuation, and the utter absence of Spock-as-a-wombat having sex with the dophinan Captian Kirk.

(Nicked from http://www.brunching.com/fuzzylogic.html)

whatever

This function returns one of the nine neo-boolean values used in fuzzy logic: true, false, maybe, sure, what, whoa, depends, look-let's-talk-about-this-later-when-we're-not-in -public, and elbows. The value returned is determined by standard anti-random vacillation routines.

reconsider

This causes the program to evaluate an expression until such time as it feels reasonably sure of its conclusion. Depending on the system and expression, this may take a fraction of a second or an entire freshman semester.

while holdon

This works like a standard while loop at first, but at some point the function realizes it's been bringing personal issues into the evaluation in an inappropriate manner and begins to evaluate the expression named by holdon instead in an attempt to appear reasonable.

goaway

This causes the program to execute starting at LABEL, while making it clear to the program that you could care less whether it ever returned to the present execution point or not. Calling the apology function later may cause the program to return to the statement directly after the goaway, but it may also cause the program to exit entirely, depending on how much you've been taking it for granted. Use of this function has been generally deprecated since the publication of the landmark essay "'GOAWAY' Considered Thoughtless."

pile

This function takes a LIST and sorts it until the function realizes there are too many items in the "miscellaneous" category and tries to figure out a better sorting scheme, then gets bored and leaves a big pile of unsorted items at the end. Returns a semi-sorted list with a big pile of unsorted items at the end.

grudge

The grudge function causes a program to develop an immediate dislike of the named variable, causing many operations involving that variable to return false for no apparent reason.

pedestal

This causes the program to attach unhealthy significance to VARIABLE. The program will consider the named variable to be a microcosm of its own existence and will fall into a deep depression if the variable is undefined, ignored, or treated poorly. Both grudge and pedestal can be used on the same variable, causing the program to develop a love-hate relationship with the variable in question. This can be fun.

skim

This function quickly looks over the data contained in FILEHANDLE, trying to get the gist of it and looking for any dirty bits or clever quotations it can use at parties to impress people.

oblique

The oblique function uses a form of lossy encryption to convert PLAINTEXT into a witty-but-obscure cultural or social reference which will only make sense to people or processes that share a similar background with the calling program. WIT is a number between 0 and 7 which determines the cleverness and obscurity of the reference, where 0 will return a catchphrase from a recent television advertisement and 7 will return a reference to The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. With careful application, this function can be used to create entire online humor magazines.

This isn't one of the best acronyms i've seen recently (but it's far from the worst). I'm assuming it breaks down as Simputer: Simple Inexpensive Multilingual comPUTER? If they wanted to call it Simputer, why do a halfass job of backsolving the acronym? If they wanted to use a name which was an acronym for a descriptive title (probably a bad idea 'cause acronyms don't translate well), then call it SIMC (or change the name to Powerful Inexpensive Multilingual Portable).

Which segues into
this , nicely

Brunching Shuttlecocks

Any review of a Keanu movie must start with Keanu himself. Basically, just how bad is he in this one?

Is he playing a role that adeptly hides how unbelievably horrible he is (Parenthood, the Bill and Ted movies)? Or is he playing a role that broadcasts his complete and utter lameness for all to see(everything else)?

Actually, there is a third class of Keanu films. These are films that are so packed with other distractions - explosions, car chases, semi-naked hotties - that Keanu is given little actual acting to do. These movies include Speed... and... and ... did I mention Speed?

Well you can slap The Matrix into that third category. Keanu is so buried in effects and gunfire that he has little to do other than pose. And he poses pretty well.

This is the 10th film. 10 is even, so the film is going to be good.

Given that the TNG cast are all about ready for the knackers yard, can we presume that film 11 will be Voyager, and thus suck royally on at least two counts?

Actually there were lots of things I liked about Voyager, but they're not the things that would make a good movie. Apart from 7 of 9. And it won't be that kind of movie, I'm sure.

The Self-Made Critic has a more detailed scoring scheme for Star Trek movies in his review of Insurrection. We'll see how accurate it is after Nemesis.

This is the 10th film. 10 is even, so the film is going to be good.

Given that the TNG cast are all about ready for the knackers yard, can we presume that film 11 will be Voyager, and thus suck royally on at least two counts?

Actually there were lots of things I liked about Voyager, but they're not the things that would make a good movie. Apart from 7 of 9. And it won't be that kind of movie, I'm sure.

The Self-Made Critic has a more detailed scoring scheme for Star Trek movies in his review of Insurrection. We'll see how accurate it is after Nemesis.

Brunching Shuttlecocks

The Brunching Shuttlecocks have made the some of the worst humor-quadriplegics laugh.

Here...

A few days ago, an article on The Brunching Shuttlecocks featured these three recipes. Really funny, and so true to life (my life at least...) Check that "Summertime Watermelon Sherbet," the "Salsa Fresca" and the "Omelet Florentine!"

And, of course, Pluto expressed his opinion on the whole matter here.

"The project, called Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman, would consist of a network in which the highest-flying of the A. V.'s 'will communicate with headquarters, transmitting data and receiving commands."

Hm... I wonder where they got their name?

--

Tell you what...ditch the robots, get someone who can make cool acronyms and go from there.

Like these guys?

I think this story is a firestarter. Debian is fucking old. Honestly. Get something minimal: slack.

that said... everyone go here, and type in your name... it returns with a cyborg acronym :)

link
a

Oh yes, in 2003, to be exact.

This seems to be their most effective method at the moment.

Sounds a lot like TuneBlock (TM)

How is [a weblog] different from an online journal?

Weblogs do not contain little graphics at the end of each entry telling you that the author is "feeling bummed."

Just number me among the many who went to see AOTC hoping against hope to really enjoy more than just the pretty fight scenes. But if you caught this quote from Anakin, er, Hayden Christiansen, that should really sum up all you need to know about George Lucas.

Jack

"You see Mr Lucas, you suck as a writer. Really awful. And your directing...it's not very good either. So here's the deal. You write up an outline (no dialogue allowed) of Episode Three. You then hire a competent and hip writer, someone younger than, say, fifty. Said writer writes Episode Three, based on your notes. Then, you go and hire yourself a hot, fresh director--or Steven Spielberg, he'd do. You let them direct the movie while you sit back and collect lots of money. Everybody wins.

If you do that, we promise to go see it. And we will not burn you in effigy."

Personally, I only pay attention to the SMC. Then again, I can always choose not to agree with the sentiments expreseed therein.

"THIS looks like a job for emergency pants!" - Torg

Yes,

Use your favorite snmp tool, and with the DOCSIS-IF-MIB loaded do something like:

snmpget -m all 192.168.100.1 public docsIfQosProfMaxUpBandwidth.0

and

snmpget -m all 192.168.100.1 public docsIfQosProfMaxDownBandwidth.0

My modem is set for 256K up and 3M down. From what I've been hearing in the rest of the discussion this does seem on the high-end.

But Adelphia service still sucks. What I do is make sure that I call support and create a case every time the cable modem is down, and schedule to get someone out here. They typically say that it will take a WEEK to get someone out here, so I make them give me a week's worth of discont on my cable bill. I know that the problem is NOT on my end and that the cable modem will come up within a few hours to a day or two at the most, but it's not my fault if they can't figure out what is wrong with their Cisco 7200UBR routers or their headend equipment. Hell, I even offered to create a case with Cisco for them under my contract, but the people you get on the line are basically entry-level phone people and really don't know their ass from a hole in the ground and apparently are so stupid that they can't even transfer you to a level 2 or level 3 person. Believe me, the most frustrating thing is being an experienced network management specialist and having to deal with idiot ISP support people who simply read off a check list and schedule for an on-site visit if that doesn't work (i.e., no real analysis of what is going on)...

Pluto has been fairly bitter about our attitude toward it in times past. The Brunching Shuttlecocks have interviewed Pluto on two previous occasions [ first interview, second interview ], on the second of which it complained about the lack of attention we've been giving it, and also claimed to support life. I wonder whether these latest developments will change its tune at all.

Pluto has been fairly bitter about our attitude toward it in times past. The Brunching Shuttlecocks have interviewed Pluto on two previous occasions [ first interview, second interview ], on the second of which it complained about the lack of attention we've been giving it, and also claimed to support life. I wonder whether these latest developments will change its tune at all.

Pluto has been fairly bitter about our attitude toward it in times past. The Brunching Shuttlecocks have interviewed Pluto on two previous occasions [ first interview, second interview ], on the second of which it complained about the lack of attention we've been giving it, and also claimed to support life. I wonder whether these latest developments will change its tune at all.

Hey, the Brunching Shuttlecocks just published an article relevant to this one: The Twelve Least Surprising AP Headlines.