I'm going to have to start looking into this. I've never had any problems with my hands in the past, but a few weeks ago I woke up and the first joint of the middle finger on my left hand was numb. Didn't go away... perhaps I should've taken a day off and stopped typing, but asking me to stop programming, surfing, and gaming is sort of silly. Or so I thought. The numbness has subsided a little, but seems to be gradually spreading down the left side of the finger. Maybe I should go to a doctor... because it's not like I'm going to stop using the finger.
I spend almost all of my waking hours in front of a computer nowadays, and I don't want to fuck my career. I think the scary part is how it's so physical. Using a computer is a completely mental activity -- taking in information, reacting to information, creating new information -- that to be limited by a physical injury seems really frightening.
Does PCMCIA work? That's what stopped me from installing Solaris on my second-hand ThinkPad 560X. I was so looking forward to it, too... oh well. Next I tried UnixWare 7, only to discover that my PCMCIA NIC (a Linksys PCMPC100), which is listed as "supported" in SCO's HCL, isn't supported for installation, which makes it pretty fucking useless, since my Addonics CD-ROM wouldn't work during installation either.
I'm currently using Debian GNU/Linux, which supports both the NIC and the CD-ROM out-of-the-box. All the same, I'd still kill to have UNIX on a laptop that doesn't cost $20k (as the UltraSPARC Tadpoles do). But no laptop vendor actually supports this, and I'm not going to buy a laptop only to discover that some miniscule hardware revision means [soup NAZI voice]: "No UNIX for you!"
I've been thinking, would it be possible for IBM to port AIX to a G4 PowerBook? PPC is PPC, right?;-p
I used to use FreeBSD exclusively, and of course it installed fine on the 560X, but its poor Java support eliminates it as a viable option. There's also the issue of its unclear future. I agree with the "*BSD is dying" posts; it's sad but true but there's no room for an x86/Alpha Unix with no commercial software support... a good gauge of a OS's viability is, "can I get Oracle for it?" You can even get Oracle for GNU/Linux these days, but not for FreeBSD.
But I may have found a solution... I'm going to order XiG's AccelX server and CDE for Linux, get reeeeally drunk, slap a Sun sticker on my laptop, and repeat over and over: "This is a Solaris laptop. This is a Solaris laptop. This is a Solaris laptop..."
I had a chance to visit IBM's facilities in Research Triangle recently, and I can vouch for the fact that this "pixie dust" is pretty amazing. It's applied to the disk in units called HITS, or "Hyper-Inductive Transfer Systems". I didn't pick up much of what the engineers were saying, however, because after three or four HITS of dust the damned winged blue monkeys became too distracting.
The monkeys appear to be related to this dust, but the exact nature of the relationship lies just beyond my grasp. Perhaps they have something to do with the genetic experiments conducted by one IBM's former business associates, Germans I believe.
Hopefully these HITS of dust will be available to the mass market soon!
--
Re:Top 10 (11!) Signs You've Over Dosed on Star Wa
on
Star Wars Galaxies
·
· Score: 1
[Strange]
, Eerie voices in your head tell you to use the force.
I used to think I had this, but it turned out to be my GF telling me to "use a fork" when eating at a fancy restaurant.
The job at hand is "reading Slashdot". If you've been here for these past two years thinking that all text in the article introduction is written by the "editor" (I use the term loosely of course, ahem), then apparently it is not the best font for the job.
Or you could just admit that you were mistaken and stop this metaphorical "looking behind myself for a nonexistant obstacle after tripping over my own big feet" nonsense.:-) We all know that MSIE5.5 supports italics, Greyfox.;-p
When are Linux/Open Source going to start producing some ORIGINAL games?
I'm sure I'll be modded down for saying this (hint hint!), but the truth is that's all Open-Source developers ever do. The Linux kernel is half-assed ripoff of the SVr4 UNIX kernel. Bash and the sh-utils are all copies of their UNIX equivalents. The GIMP is a copy of Photoshop. Open-source window managers are all ripoffs of either Windows, MacOS, NeXTstep, or the various Motif-based WMs. Even GNU EMACS is just a copy, though I admit it is much superior to the original.
Open-source isn't about innovation. Open-source is about stealing the ideas from real software and making your own lame version, in the name of "freedom".
The only real open-source software that contributes new ideas rather than just leech off of old ones is the stuff produced by the various Apache projects, and they're only so high quality because of the constant, forced infusion of IP from Sun, IBM, Microsoft (yes! even Microsoft!), and various Internet standards committees.
As has been proven over and over again, "writing open source software for the community! we are so l337 lololol!!!@!" is not a viable business model. And without a clearly defined business interest, open-source projects will continue to be poorly managed and without conceptual integrity. You end up with "software" like the Linux kernel, which I believe does not even have native support for RAM.
The only useful thing to come out of the Open-Source/Free Software movement will be sociological studies regarding "large groups blissfully unaware of their own stupidity". Some good medical research may be produced as well, because if we can manage to destroy the GPL, we will have gained valuable insight into fighting other polymorphic viral infections with high rates of communicability, such as HIV.
This hand-crafted piece of flamebait was brought to you be The_Messenger!
Vipers, especially the ones with that kind of HP, are probably the worst cars you could possibly use for a quarter-mile. They'll be fast as hell once you get them up to speed, but the previously mentioned Accord will probably beat most Vipers on the quarter mile... the Viper takes about as long to accelerate/decelerate as the SR-71.;-) Vipers are for cruising on lonely highways.
If you want "proof" and don't want to wander down to your local Dodge/Chrysler dealer, rent Gran Turismo, get a Viper, get all the proper mods and tune it for power, then try the 1000m timetrial.
Someone posts this every story. Don't worry, King is fine.
Since you seem to be a fan, have you read Dreamcatcher yet? I thought it was pretty good, if a bit odd. I found it interesting how exposure to the Greys makes people's teeth fall out a la Tommyknockers.
The only King book that I've read that I really didn't enjoy is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I was like, "wtf, maybe someone needs to retire?" but Hearts in Atlantis and Dreamcatcher put him back on the right track.
I'd like to see the next book be another collection of short stories or novellas. Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, Different Seasons, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and Four Past Midnight are some of my favorite books. Not only do they range from interesting to suspenseful to gruesome to downright weird, but they show how much he's improved over the many years... I mean, early stories like The Reaper's Image are great, but the improvement in his writing since that was written is really noticable. Some of my favorite King short stories are Dolan's Cadillac, Jersalem's Lot (not to be confused with the novel Salem's Lot), and The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet. I'd also like to see another appearance of the men's club that is the setting for The Breathing Method and The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands... that place has such a wonderful atmosphere, it makes me wish it were real (outside of King's world).
Okay, that's enough offtopic ranting from me. You can tell I like King from how I can rattle off the names of the stories like that. I always keep a few at bedside... they have such excellent "replay" value.:-) I just finished rereading The Stand again, and the exposure to Randall Flagg (he of levitating cowboy boots, clocking down the highway amidst a pack of red-eyed wolves) has me itching to reread Eye of the Dragon in a couple weeks.
What's impressive about this bike isn't the top speed as much as the horsepower. A top-of-the-line CBR gets something like 160HP when you drive it out of the dealership... this bad boy gets 320HP. You can get Hondas and Suzukis that will go this fast, but they won't have as much power behind them.
Oooh, yeah, the PS2 games are so bad, I'm sure they'll never be able to compete with GameCube titles like Super Mario Pokemon Arena DX2 Hyper and LG2surprise! Snowboarder: Bad American Anime for 12-year olds and CmdrTaco.
Ninento used to bee pretty sweet, but they sold their souls to Pikachu and are now about as viable a games company as Hanna Barbara. They'll make plenty more cash with the GameCube and GBA, but don't kid yourself -- they will exist soley as platforms for Pokemon games. Sony, et al have made the transition to mature PC-style gaming and Nintendo is stuck with an audience whose favorite activities include reading Harry Potter books and masturbating to poorly dubbed ten-year-old anime.
The PS2 actually has some nice games out (such as Omnimusha(sp?) Warlords) but they all pale in comparison to Metal Gear Solid 2. I know three people that will buy PS2s this fall for the sole purpose of playing MGS2. I've played the demo. It will own you in the ways that Daikatana promised but couldn't deliver... 1st-class gameplay and mind-fucking graphics. Yes, kids, you will suck it down.
I got a really evil SPAM a few days ago, one that really pissed me off. The guy was selling lists of email addresses, ironically enough, and he was boasting of how his email addresses are filtered for SPAM-proofed addresses, et cetera. Here's the part that pissed me off:
4. Next we used an exclusive database of anti-internet
advertising extremists to clean our lists of every
hacker/terrorist we could identify.
Wtf? People who don't like unsolicited email advertisements are "anti-internet advertising extremists?" If any of you "hackers/terrorists" are reading this, here's the contact information for the trash who sent this... the FAX number is 1-360-242-9913 "or if busy" 1-775-703-2099. I can forward the email to anyone else who wishes to read this bullshit.
Even better, at the bottom of the email, it says this:
REMOVE requests are AUTOMATICALLY processed and implemented
within 10 business days. To be removed from this mailing list, click the link below:
mailto:cmoire@arabia.com?subject=remove
(Insure the word "remove" is in the Subject line or your request cannot be automatically processed):
Ha! Who's going to send email to someone who selles email addresses to spammers?;-D
Well, what kind of coffee would you recommend? I'm used to drinking the American crap, but if I were to pay the big bucks and have some beans air-mailed over from urope, what kind should I get, and where should I get it from?
I don't buy that rubbish about KDE developers advancing faster because of the coffee, though. American sludge coffee is very caffeine-dense, and the amount of sugar you have to dump in the cup to make it drinkable makes up for any chemical deficiencies. The real reason is that GNOME's Mexican element is encouraging heavy indulgence in tequila, marijuana, and siestas.
Hey, it's nothing but the truth. Have you seen Russian women? Now tell me, as a pimp, would you have better luck selling Russian women, or Russian spacecraft? The spacecraft are awe-inspiring displays of pure manly brute strength. So are Russian women, but the spacecraft are more attractive and are less demanding. The only advantage Russian women have over Russian spacecraft is that the women can carry more men on an average mission, thanks to their three extra-large cargo bays.
The ISS is the Heidi Fleiss of oribital habitats! Think of the possibilities!
Your post reminded me of an incredibly offtopic and odd question that occurred to me this past week:
What kinds of text editors and other tools did pre-OSX Mac hackers use?
I use UNIX and NT. On UNIX I use vi and EMACS, and my development environment is rounded out by command-line compilers/debuggers/etc and the usual assortment of UNIX tools. On NT I use EMACS and a variety of "professional" (read: expensive) text editors (yeah, I've spent about $1000 on text editors alone, so shoot me) and my development environment is rounded out by command-line and GUI compilers/debuggers/etc and ports of the usual assortment of UNIX tools. (MS/SFU, Cygwin, and various GNU ports really do wonders for an NT box.) I've always had an interest in the toys^H^H^H^Htools of my craft, and what with MacOS maturing into a Real Operating System, I've started to wonder what kinds of toys^H^H^H^Htools Mac developers used in the past. I know that BBEdit is popular for HTML stuff, but I'm talking about programming stuff.
Any Mac hackers care to enlighten me?
--
Re:The last line was the best...
on
Hi-Tech Repo Man
·
· Score: 1
Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs, is that you? Hey, goodbuddy, why'ntcha get me a cuppa joe? There might be somethin' in it for ya, *wink* *wink*!
Ah, that Stevie, he's a good kid, it's a shame he won't never make nothin' of hisself.
Hey, Stevie, thanks! *sip* mmmm, that's some good coffee. What? Oh yeah, how could I forget! Here's some compensation for ya trouble my boy, a SHINY NICKLE! Hey now, don't spend it all in one place!
Yep, Stevie's a good'un alright. Too bad about Apple, they made some right fine... uh... uh... well, the boxes that the iMacs came in were always very sturdy, yessir, in fact I reckon Stevie was able to put all of his belongings in one when he had to leave the comp'ny. Yessiir, some mighty fine boxes.
Hey now, whassat Stevie? Well, lookit that! Steveie done found hisself a magic rock! Well why dontcha make wish on 'er, Steve? Well, that's just amazin', Steve my boy, y'all just run along now with your magic rock.
Ah tell ya, maybe that Stevie ain't right in the head after all...
Stevie! Whatchoo doin', boy, paintin' that rock in pastel colors like a sissy! Why can'tchoo have painted it black, like you did in the 80s? Why Stevie, mayhap you should lie down and have a little rest.
That Steve Jobs... you never know what he'll do NeXT!
Look, I'm sorry for starting this little mini-flamewar, but I don't think that my original point makes me a "plebe". I just think that it's wrong to teach such young women that dressing in sexy outfits is the best way to get what they want. Aimee's father could have had his daughter give Insightful and Informative discussions on the technical and ethical reasons why Aimster is a Good Thing. Instead, he puts her in a skimpy dress and makes her a mascot. I have absoutely nothing against sexuality, but I think that such actions tend to predispose women to neglect the intellectual aspects of their personality in favor of physical ones. In this day and age, when we should be encouraging young women to become doctors, scientists, engineers, et cetera, such behavior being so easily accepted is a slap in the face to all of the advances that women have made in the past 100 years in being accepted as professionals equal to their male counterparts.
Obviously there will always be teenage sex symbols, but when a man uses it own daughter for such purposes to further his business, it just feels soooo creepy.
I guess I'll have to accept that people like you will always persecute me for my beliefs. Close-minded indeed.
Perhaps the most hypocritical thing of all is how you so-called "liberals" refuse to accept that fact that your ruling status actually makes you The Right. Any so-called "conservative" opposition to your power is met with facist attempts at information supression. In labeling me a "fuckin' plebe" for my beliefs, you are no different than McCarthy oppressing Communists in the 50's. What gives you the right to persecute me for having different opinions? It's just like in China -- the ruling party has been so for many years, making them "conservative", yet they still use the rhetoric of revolutionaries to describe their human-rights abuses. Just like you, they can't accept the fact that they are facists.
If closed-minded information NAZIs like you and Michael don't tone down your cloak-and-dagger offensives against opposing viewpoints, the US will be in the same situation before long.
Slashdot Mirror
I spend almost all of my waking hours in front of a computer nowadays, and I don't want to fuck my career. I think the scary part is how it's so physical. Using a computer is a completely mental activity -- taking in information, reacting to information, creating new information -- that to be limited by a physical injury seems really frightening.
--
--
I'm currently using Debian GNU/Linux, which supports both the NIC and the CD-ROM out-of-the-box. All the same, I'd still kill to have UNIX on a laptop that doesn't cost $20k (as the UltraSPARC Tadpoles do). But no laptop vendor actually supports this, and I'm not going to buy a laptop only to discover that some miniscule hardware revision means [soup NAZI voice]: "No UNIX for you!"
I've been thinking, would it be possible for IBM to port AIX to a G4 PowerBook? PPC is PPC, right? ;-p
I used to use FreeBSD exclusively, and of course it installed fine on the 560X, but its poor Java support eliminates it as a viable option. There's also the issue of its unclear future. I agree with the "*BSD is dying" posts; it's sad but true but there's no room for an x86/Alpha Unix with no commercial software support... a good gauge of a OS's viability is, "can I get Oracle for it?" You can even get Oracle for GNU/Linux these days, but not for FreeBSD.
But I may have found a solution... I'm going to order XiG's AccelX server and CDE for Linux, get reeeeally drunk, slap a Sun sticker on my laptop, and repeat over and over: "This is a Solaris laptop. This is a Solaris laptop. This is a Solaris laptop..."
--
--
FNORD.
--
--
The monkeys appear to be related to this dust, but the exact nature of the relationship lies just beyond my grasp. Perhaps they have something to do with the genetic experiments conducted by one IBM's former business associates, Germans I believe.
Hopefully these HITS of dust will be available to the mass market soon!
--
--
Or you could just admit that you were mistaken and stop this metaphorical "looking behind myself for a nonexistant obstacle after tripping over my own big feet" nonsense. :-) We all know that MSIE5.5 supports italics, Greyfox. ;-p
--
Open-source isn't about innovation. Open-source is about stealing the ideas from real software and making your own lame version, in the name of "freedom".
The only real open-source software that contributes new ideas rather than just leech off of old ones is the stuff produced by the various Apache projects, and they're only so high quality because of the constant, forced infusion of IP from Sun, IBM, Microsoft (yes! even Microsoft!), and various Internet standards committees.
As has been proven over and over again, "writing open source software for the community! we are so l337 lololol!!!@!" is not a viable business model. And without a clearly defined business interest, open-source projects will continue to be poorly managed and without conceptual integrity. You end up with "software" like the Linux kernel, which I believe does not even have native support for RAM.
The only useful thing to come out of the Open-Source/Free Software movement will be sociological studies regarding "large groups blissfully unaware of their own stupidity". Some good medical research may be produced as well, because if we can manage to destroy the GPL, we will have gained valuable insight into fighting other polymorphic viral infections with high rates of communicability, such as HIV.
This hand-crafted piece of flamebait was brought to you be The_Messenger!
--
--
If you want "proof" and don't want to wander down to your local Dodge/Chrysler dealer, rent Gran Turismo, get a Viper, get all the proper mods and tune it for power, then try the 1000m timetrial.
--
Since you seem to be a fan, have you read Dreamcatcher yet? I thought it was pretty good, if a bit odd. I found it interesting how exposure to the Greys makes people's teeth fall out a la Tommyknockers.
The only King book that I've read that I really didn't enjoy is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I was like, "wtf, maybe someone needs to retire?" but Hearts in Atlantis and Dreamcatcher put him back on the right track.
I'd like to see the next book be another collection of short stories or novellas. Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, Different Seasons, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and Four Past Midnight are some of my favorite books. Not only do they range from interesting to suspenseful to gruesome to downright weird, but they show how much he's improved over the many years... I mean, early stories like The Reaper's Image are great, but the improvement in his writing since that was written is really noticable. Some of my favorite King short stories are Dolan's Cadillac, Jersalem's Lot (not to be confused with the novel Salem's Lot), and The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet. I'd also like to see another appearance of the men's club that is the setting for The Breathing Method and The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands... that place has such a wonderful atmosphere, it makes me wish it were real (outside of King's world).
Okay, that's enough offtopic ranting from me. You can tell I like King from how I can rattle off the names of the stories like that. I always keep a few at bedside... they have such excellent "replay" value. :-) I just finished rereading The Stand again, and the exposure to Randall Flagg (he of levitating cowboy boots, clocking down the highway amidst a pack of red-eyed wolves) has me itching to reread Eye of the Dragon in a couple weeks.
--
This is a bike for CowboyNeal.
--
--
Ninento used to bee pretty sweet, but they sold their souls to Pikachu and are now about as viable a games company as Hanna Barbara. They'll make plenty more cash with the GameCube and GBA, but don't kid yourself -- they will exist soley as platforms for Pokemon games. Sony, et al have made the transition to mature PC-style gaming and Nintendo is stuck with an audience whose favorite activities include reading Harry Potter books and masturbating to poorly dubbed ten-year-old anime.
--
--
--
Even better, at the bottom of the email, it says this:
Ha! Who's going to send email to someone who selles email addresses to spammers?--
I don't buy that rubbish about KDE developers advancing faster because of the coffee, though. American sludge coffee is very caffeine-dense, and the amount of sugar you have to dump in the cup to make it drinkable makes up for any chemical deficiencies. The real reason is that GNOME's Mexican element is encouraging heavy indulgence in tequila, marijuana, and siestas.
--
The ISS is the Heidi Fleiss of oribital habitats! Think of the possibilities!
--
What kinds of text editors and other tools did pre-OSX Mac hackers use?
I use UNIX and NT. On UNIX I use vi and EMACS, and my development environment is rounded out by command-line compilers/debuggers/etc and the usual assortment of UNIX tools. On NT I use EMACS and a variety of "professional" (read: expensive) text editors (yeah, I've spent about $1000 on text editors alone, so shoot me) and my development environment is rounded out by command-line and GUI compilers/debuggers/etc and ports of the usual assortment of UNIX tools. (MS/SFU, Cygwin, and various GNU ports really do wonders for an NT box.) I've always had an interest in the toys^H^H^H^Htools of my craft, and what with MacOS maturing into a Real Operating System, I've started to wonder what kinds of toys^H^H^H^Htools Mac developers used in the past. I know that BBEdit is popular for HTML stuff, but I'm talking about programming stuff.
Any Mac hackers care to enlighten me?
--
Ah, that Stevie, he's a good kid, it's a shame he won't never make nothin' of hisself.
Hey, Stevie, thanks! *sip* mmmm, that's some good coffee. What? Oh yeah, how could I forget! Here's some compensation for ya trouble my boy, a SHINY NICKLE! Hey now, don't spend it all in one place!
Yep, Stevie's a good'un alright. Too bad about Apple, they made some right fine... uh... uh... well, the boxes that the iMacs came in were always very sturdy, yessir, in fact I reckon Stevie was able to put all of his belongings in one when he had to leave the comp'ny. Yessiir, some mighty fine boxes.
Hey now, whassat Stevie? Well, lookit that! Steveie done found hisself a magic rock! Well why dontcha make wish on 'er, Steve? Well, that's just amazin', Steve my boy, y'all just run along now with your magic rock.
Ah tell ya, maybe that Stevie ain't right in the head after all...
Stevie! Whatchoo doin', boy, paintin' that rock in pastel colors like a sissy! Why can'tchoo have painted it black, like you did in the 80s? Why Stevie, mayhap you should lie down and have a little rest.
That Steve Jobs... you never know what he'll do NeXT!
--
--
Obviously there will always be teenage sex symbols, but when a man uses it own daughter for such purposes to further his business, it just feels soooo creepy.
I guess I'll have to accept that people like you will always persecute me for my beliefs. Close-minded indeed.
Perhaps the most hypocritical thing of all is how you so-called "liberals" refuse to accept that fact that your ruling status actually makes you The Right. Any so-called "conservative" opposition to your power is met with facist attempts at information supression. In labeling me a "fuckin' plebe" for my beliefs, you are no different than McCarthy oppressing Communists in the 50's. What gives you the right to persecute me for having different opinions? It's just like in China -- the ruling party has been so for many years, making them "conservative", yet they still use the rhetoric of revolutionaries to describe their human-rights abuses. Just like you, they can't accept the fact that they are facists.
If closed-minded information NAZIs like you and Michael don't tone down your cloak-and-dagger offensives against opposing viewpoints, the US will be in the same situation before long.
--