The gear lever is pretty much a 'dumb hand' job, for the few of us left-handed Americans still using manual transmissions.
The more critical part - the clutch pedal, is operated by the left foot, and this is a place where finesse and fine control pays off.
What I have observed is that lefties are more adaptable due to being constantly forced to use their 'dumb hand' for things designed for the right-handed majority.
And some righties are terminally right-handed, and do stupid things like leaning half out of the car so they can operate the drive-up ATM with their right hand, tossing coins at toll baskets with their right hand and missing, and, of course, complaining about QWERTY keyboards.
Agree... Even more fun - mapping things to a ambidextrous left-side trackball. Especially software that assumes everyone has a mouse-wheel so there is no need to make the zoom in/out or whatever function re-mappable.
My biggest recent rant was at Skyrim. It shipped with no way to remap controls to the number pad, apparently it never occurred to them that people would want to use all of their keyboard.
(Happily a modder posted a fix for that little oversight.)
First thing: I LOVED Dr. Suess. The Good Doctor was my first favorite author, and a joy i shared with my children. Reading Suess to them, and later with them, introduced them to the joy of books, and the playfulness with language that has influenced several generations.
Ever since Mr. Geisel shuffled off to join the Literary Review Eternal the various parasites have been usurping his work for short term gain, primarily in a series of really bad movies. (Often as ego vehicles for comedians.)
Once again they have managed to suck the life out of a Suess story, put a bunch of stars into the cast, and get lots and lots of critical Merchandise Tie Ins and Synergistic Marketing. So Mazda managed to be the high bidder on this one? They must be desperate to sell more kiddie movers. (Here's a hint guys... when chasing the Greener Than Thou crowd it might be best to tone down the 'zoom zoom' a bit.) Good for them.
I am expecting the movie to suck as much as the 'Austin Powers Cat In The Shagging Hat' and 'The Mask Plays Grinchmas'. But it will sell Fast Food Meals and Mazda KIddie Movers and Stuff Guilty Parents Buy. And later a bunch of DVDs/Bluerays/whatever comes next, so that instead of being reading 'The Lorax' with our kids we can just put it on the vid player and go back to ignoring the little rug rats.
Pinball remains my favorite arcade game. There is just so much satisfaction in dealing with the elegant and complex physics engine that manages the movement of that silver ball, coupled with really excellent, lag-free, glitch-free graphics. Hard to believe that the physics have been in place since the vacuum tube era, when relays and solenoids managed the logic and tracked the score.
The only thing that extending copyright past death + 5 years (max) does is protect an industry that actually creates produces nothing. Especially with distribution channels with nearly zero cost.
First - US copyright laws will keep extending the 'after death of creator' time so that The Mouse(tm) will NEVER enter public domain (unless the owners of That Damned Rodent are foolish or impoverished enough that they can no longer afford any Senators).
The SOPA/PIPA laws were never designed to insure that artists and creators are justly compensated... just look at who is bankrolling them: the mass media distribution companies that have made a science out of cheating artists and creators out of the profits.
SOPA/PIPA is an attempt to head off the disintermediation that threatens to allow us to buy our music, movies and books directly from the creators, or via more efficient channels where the cost of product more accurately reflects the distribution plus royalties cost, and minus the many, many lawyers, accountants and various suits that are part of the overhead of the old media empires.
I cannot blame the parasitic classes in Old Tyme Big Media from trying to hold on to their slice of the pie (actually, most of the damned pie, leaving a few crumbs for most artists), as who wants to voluntarily jump off the gravy train? (is that enough mixed metaphors?)
Now for the mandatory car analogy - If a Hundred and Ten Years Ago the Farriers, Harness-makers, Wainwrights and Others in the Horse and Buggy industry had asked Congress to make it a crime to allow anyone to use a "Horseless Carriage' on the public roads, and that any town that contained a Horseless Carriage be cut off from the public road networks.
Bullshit. you are a criminal. look hard enough, you have broken some law, somewhere, sometime. Or you will. There are too many laws to avoid this.
And since your DNA is conveniently on file they will be able to match it up and find you.
Bottom line... Interpol represents police interests, and police would love universal fingerprint and dna databases, automated torture devices, the elimination of defense attorneys and no complex 'rules of evidence'.
Because who doesn't like cutting corners to make their job easier?
Now if we can implant these Identichips and include gps and transponders... even better.
Add a remote-triggered stunner / agonizer and it is a Jackbooted Thug's wet dream.
Because military snipers might not be eager to murder innocent civilians who are just trying to get from a country that sucks a lot into a country that sucks less?
Wouldn't it be easier, and cheaper, to just make your country suck so much that you need to put up a wall to keep people from leaving?
And if they don't manage to get it right, not to despair, because there is a top-secret project that has a bunch of old school COBOL, Fortran and Assembly Language Programmers cyropreserved until the year 9998 so they can save the world. Again.
Yes... and even if geeks and privacy fans manage to avoid being in the particular set of data, who cares... there are plenty of folks (one borne every minute) who have happily posted lots of stuff on FB, etc... It's a gold-mine of demographic data, only an idiot (or someone with ethics) would pass up the chance to use that data to Make Money Fast.
Time to Update Barnum's Philosophy for the 21st Century: 'It is morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep their money or their privacy'
Like the NY Post Sports Page headline "Marv Gets Pink Slip".
If you were likely to look at the NY Post sports section on that day, you would know who Marv (Albert) is, and would get the joke. And the article really was about how sportscaster Marv Albert had been fired from his TV job because of a sex scandal.
And for the Europhiles:
Yes, in France or another enlightened country the kinky sex would have been no big deal. Or possibly even increased his ratings. But he wasn't in France.
Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Climate Change, Wars, Plaques, vanishing bees and the possibility that George Lucas might make another movie? All of these are signs that the 4 Horseman are saddling up and getting ready for a ride.
So "away" is good enough for me.
Hopefully to a planet that was not colonized by the Golgafrincham B Ark.
If they didn't, your TV and radio would be plastic boxes made to look like wood and your car would be a station wagon with wood panels on the side.
On the other hand, my TV is not an enormous picture tube in a 'space-age' frame... instead it is a bunch of LCDs (LC What?) with more computing power than NASA had back in 1964 mounted in a plain black plastic frame.
My car has no tail fins or torpedo-like bumpers or gas turbine engine....but it is sort of a station wagon (OK, it's a hatchback) with some swoopy bits of bodywork (Spoiler, diffuser, slippery shape based on aerodynamic engineering instead of fantasy, with a front end designed to protect struck pedetrians, and not impale them) a really exotic powerplant (DOHC fuel injected Turbocharged engine made of alloys and plastics)... but it still runs on gasoline and it does not fly.
The Future has a tendency to not look like what the dreamers dream.
Folks who use suites for meetings, with a few odd products on display (ie. those who might not have had a booth in the first place), have not been hassled.
Especially folks who have the hotel supply massive quantities of food and drink (at premium prices) for hospitality events.
Getting prospective customers drunk is a time-honored selling technique.
We won't even start on the (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) 'hostesses' that will help important prospects feel more comfortable.
If The New Manager is intent on making their fast-track bones by shaking things up, the entire tech level may soon be outsourced.
What is important is what you want. Do you want to give management a try? Do you want to learn The New Manager's style of managing? Have you ever thought 'if I were running things we would not be doing X, we would do Y'?
I suggest you give it a shot, maybe you will like it.
If you turn it down, be sure to give The New Manager every reason to know that you are just too darn essential in the tech role to be moved out of it.
Either way: Get your resume out there, and start actively looking for a new job.
Raise your hand if you remember when putting "NO CARRIER" in a post was considered Rude as it could make some terminal emulators think the modem had dropped the call.
OK, get your health care aid to help you raise your hand.
Yes, I am a New Yorker.
Yes, I was in the city that day.
My Cellphone was useless, probably due to a combination of losing a major relay point, and everybody in town trying to use their phones at the same time. Landlines were flakey (probably due to losing a major chunk of the infrastructure).
My Obsolete and Archaic text pager kept working.
(I wonder if the pager "I'm OK, R U OK?"messages I exchanged with my sister are in this archive?)
The Freedonia Air and Space Administration covered this topic about 20 years ago...
The cycle is not the end of the World, just a change from the 5th world to the 6th world...
And a return of Magic and Elves and Dragons!
So line up your fixers now, brother and sister deckers!
----
The real goal of the copyright extensions has been to keep The Mouse(tm) from ever entering the public domain.
DisneyCorp(tm)(or whatever alias they are operating under) will unleash hordes of lobbyists armed with bags of cash to insure that the extensions continue, so long as they have the power to do so, or until The Mouse(tm) no longer has enough market value to be worth protecting (don't hold your breath).
The shorter protection for newer stuff is a compromise, as the corporate masters don't really care about anything new.... yet.
I suggest reading the Spider Robinson short story: _Melancholy Elephants_.
No Fantasy?
Shall we go seriously hard-core? Anything that features on Faster-Than-Light travel is also Fantasy.
--
On the other hand: Contemporary Hard SF: Allen Steele.
Some of his Orbital Decay stories might work well.
Slashdot Mirror
The gear lever is pretty much a 'dumb hand' job, for the few of us left-handed Americans still using manual transmissions.
The more critical part - the clutch pedal, is operated by the left foot, and this is a place where finesse and fine control pays off.
What I have observed is that lefties are more adaptable due to being constantly forced to use their 'dumb hand' for things designed for the right-handed majority.
And some righties are terminally right-handed, and do stupid things like leaning half out of the car so they can operate the drive-up ATM with their right hand, tossing coins at toll baskets with their right hand and missing, and, of course, complaining about QWERTY keyboards.
Agree...
Even more fun - mapping things to a ambidextrous left-side trackball. Especially software that assumes everyone has a mouse-wheel so there is no need to make the zoom in/out or whatever function re-mappable.
My biggest recent rant was at Skyrim. It shipped with no way to remap controls to the number pad, apparently it never occurred to them that people would want to use all of their keyboard.
(Happily a modder posted a fix for that little oversight.)
First thing: I LOVED Dr. Suess. The Good Doctor was my first favorite author, and a joy i shared with my children. Reading Suess to them, and later with them, introduced them to the joy of books, and the playfulness with language that has influenced several generations.
Ever since Mr. Geisel shuffled off to join the Literary Review Eternal the various parasites have been usurping his work for short term gain, primarily in a series of really bad movies. (Often as ego vehicles for comedians.)
Once again they have managed to suck the life out of a Suess story, put a bunch of stars into the cast, and get lots and lots of critical Merchandise Tie Ins and Synergistic Marketing. So Mazda managed to be the high bidder on this one? They must be desperate to sell more kiddie movers. (Here's a hint guys... when chasing the Greener Than Thou crowd it might be best to tone down the 'zoom zoom' a bit.) Good for them.
I am expecting the movie to suck as much as the 'Austin Powers Cat In The Shagging Hat' and 'The Mask Plays Grinchmas'. But it will sell Fast Food Meals and Mazda KIddie Movers and Stuff Guilty Parents Buy. And later a bunch of DVDs/Bluerays/whatever comes next, so that instead of being reading 'The Lorax' with our kids we can just put it on the vid player and go back to ignoring the little rug rats.
So it goes...
Pinball remains my favorite arcade game. There is just so much satisfaction in dealing with the elegant and complex physics engine that manages the movement of that silver ball, coupled with really excellent, lag-free, glitch-free graphics. Hard to believe that the physics have been in place since the vacuum tube era, when relays and solenoids managed the logic and tracked the score.
Also, they should decline any invitations to be Guest of Honor at any film festivals 'just across the border' ...
The only thing that extending copyright past death + 5 years (max) does is protect an industry that actually creates produces nothing. Especially with distribution channels with nearly zero cost.
First - US copyright laws will keep extending the 'after death of creator' time so that The Mouse(tm) will NEVER enter public domain (unless the owners of That Damned Rodent are foolish or impoverished enough that they can no longer afford any Senators).
The SOPA/PIPA laws were never designed to insure that artists and creators are justly compensated... just look at who is bankrolling them: the mass media distribution companies that have made a science out of cheating artists and creators out of the profits.
SOPA/PIPA is an attempt to head off the disintermediation that threatens to allow us to buy our music, movies and books directly from the creators, or via more efficient channels where the cost of product more accurately reflects the distribution plus royalties cost, and minus the many, many lawyers, accountants and various suits that are part of the overhead of the old media empires.
I cannot blame the parasitic classes in Old Tyme Big Media from trying to hold on to their slice of the pie (actually, most of the damned pie, leaving a few crumbs for most artists), as who wants to voluntarily jump off the gravy train?
(is that enough mixed metaphors?)
Now for the mandatory car analogy -
If a Hundred and Ten Years Ago the Farriers, Harness-makers, Wainwrights and Others in the Horse and Buggy industry had asked Congress to make it a crime to allow anyone to use a "Horseless Carriage' on the public roads, and that any town that contained a Horseless Carriage be cut off from the public road networks.
Hows that for an analogy?
I just hope that if they are going to end the world, they do it on Monday so as to not screw up my weekend.
Bullshit. you are a criminal. look hard enough, you have broken some law, somewhere, sometime. Or you will.
There are too many laws to avoid this.
And since your DNA is conveniently on file they will be able to match it up and find you.
Bottom line... Interpol represents police interests, and police would love universal fingerprint and dna databases, automated torture devices, the elimination of defense attorneys and no complex 'rules of evidence'.
Because who doesn't like cutting corners to make their job easier?
Now if we can implant these Identichips and include gps and transponders ... even better.
Add a remote-triggered stunner / agonizer and it is a Jackbooted Thug's wet dream.
Because military snipers might not be eager to murder innocent civilians who are just trying to get from a country that sucks a lot into a country that sucks less?
Wouldn't it be easier, and cheaper, to just make your country suck so much that you need to put up a wall to keep people from leaving?
After all, It worked for the GDR..
And if they don't manage to get it right, not to despair, because there is a top-secret project that has a bunch of old school COBOL, Fortran and Assembly Language Programmers cyropreserved until the year 9998 so they can save the world. Again.
Just one more step.
Wimpy masses are easier to manipulate.
-----
And be sure to use hand sanitizer before and after replying to this message.
Yes... and even if geeks and privacy fans manage to avoid being in the particular set of data, who cares... there are plenty of folks (one borne every minute) who have happily posted lots of stuff on FB, etc... It's a gold-mine of demographic data, only an idiot (or someone with ethics) would pass up the chance to use that data to Make Money Fast.
Time to Update Barnum's Philosophy for the 21st Century: 'It is morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep their money or their privacy'
But some of them are informative -and- funny.
Like the NY Post Sports Page headline "Marv Gets Pink Slip".
If you were likely to look at the NY Post sports section on that day, you would know who Marv (Albert) is, and would get the joke.
And the article really was about how sportscaster Marv Albert had been fired from his TV job because of a sex scandal.
And for the Europhiles:
Yes, in France or another enlightened country the kinky sex would have been no big deal. Or possibly even increased his ratings. But he wasn't in France.
Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Climate Change, Wars, Plaques, vanishing bees and the possibility that George Lucas might make another movie? All of these are signs that the 4 Horseman are saddling up and getting ready for a ride.
So "away" is good enough for me.
Hopefully to a planet that was not colonized by the Golgafrincham B Ark.
...What would be the motivation(s) for hacking Apache, anyway? It's not like it's Citibank.
Indeed. Unlike Citibank, the Apache Foundation is solvent, and has not burned through billions of taxpayer's dollars.
(rimshot)
a little bit of comm networking and boom you can easily have people joining up into road trains,
10-4 Good Buddy, Looks like we got us a Convoy.
If they didn't, your TV and radio would be plastic boxes made to look like wood and your car would be a station wagon with wood panels on the side.
On the other hand, my TV is not an enormous picture tube in a 'space-age' frame ... instead it is a bunch of LCDs (LC What?) with more computing power than NASA had back in 1964 mounted in a plain black plastic frame.
My car has no tail fins or torpedo-like bumpers or gas turbine engine....but it is sort of a station wagon (OK, it's a hatchback) with some swoopy bits of bodywork (Spoiler, diffuser, slippery shape based on aerodynamic engineering instead of fantasy, with a front end designed to protect struck pedetrians, and not impale them) a really exotic powerplant (DOHC fuel injected Turbocharged engine made of alloys and plastics)...
but it still runs on gasoline and it does not fly.
The Future has a tendency to not look like what the dreamers dream.
'They promised us flying cars'
Folks who use suites for meetings, with a few odd products on display (ie. those who might not have had a booth in the first place), have not been hassled.
Especially folks who have the hotel supply massive quantities of food and drink (at premium prices) for hospitality events.
Getting prospective customers drunk is a time-honored selling technique.
We won't even start on the (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) 'hostesses' that will help important prospects feel more comfortable.
It really depends on the situation.
If The New Manager is intent on making their fast-track bones by shaking things up, the entire tech level may soon be outsourced.
What is important is what you want.
Do you want to give management a try?
Do you want to learn The New Manager's style of managing?
Have you ever thought 'if I were running things we would not be doing X, we would do Y'?
I suggest you give it a shot, maybe you will like it.
If you turn it down, be sure to give The New Manager every reason to know that you are just too darn essential in the tech role to be moved out of it.
Either way: Get your resume out there, and start actively looking for a new job.
Good Luck!
Raise your hand if you remember when putting "NO CARRIER" in a post was considered Rude as it could make some terminal emulators think the modem had dropped the call.
OK, get your health care aid to help you raise your hand.
Now all of you kids get off my lawn!
Yes, I am a New Yorker. Yes, I was in the city that day. My Cellphone was useless, probably due to a combination of losing a major relay point, and everybody in town trying to use their phones at the same time. Landlines were flakey (probably due to losing a major chunk of the infrastructure). My Obsolete and Archaic text pager kept working. (I wonder if the pager "I'm OK, R U OK?"messages I exchanged with my sister are in this archive?)
The Freedonia Air and Space Administration covered this topic about 20 years ago... The cycle is not the end of the World, just a change from the 5th world to the 6th world... And a return of Magic and Elves and Dragons! So line up your fixers now, brother and sister deckers! ----
The real goal of the copyright extensions has been to keep The Mouse(tm) from ever entering the public domain. DisneyCorp(tm)(or whatever alias they are operating under) will unleash hordes of lobbyists armed with bags of cash to insure that the extensions continue, so long as they have the power to do so, or until The Mouse(tm) no longer has enough market value to be worth protecting (don't hold your breath). The shorter protection for newer stuff is a compromise, as the corporate masters don't really care about anything new.... yet. I suggest reading the Spider Robinson short story: _Melancholy Elephants_.
Had it swallowed, it would not have dropped the baguette, now would it?
It would still drop the baguette, but a bit later on, and in a different form. Probably on a freshly-washed car.
No Fantasy? Shall we go seriously hard-core? Anything that features on Faster-Than-Light travel is also Fantasy. -- On the other hand: Contemporary Hard SF: Allen Steele. Some of his Orbital Decay stories might work well.