on our hard drives. Porn. That will keep them scratching their heads for years.
"This primitive race seemed to be preoccupied with sex. So how did they fail to reproduce and let their race die out?"
Way back in the ancient times, only important stuff was carved into stone. Now everyone on our planet is squirreling away all kinds of useless crap on digital media.
Future alien archeologists will have a hell of a job sorting out the crap from the, well, stuff that is just a little less than crap.
If nonprofits have too much money at the end of the year, I guess they have to pay it out in bonuses and retro-active benefits to their executives, right? As long as their bottom line shows no profit, who cares what, for whom, their expenses were?
. . . well, that's at least my opinion, after three decades of touch typing. I learned to type back in my teens in the 70's on my mom's Underwood mechanical portable. It was a model that you see international corresponds and sports reporters lugging around in old movies. It had a light touch, but you got a certain feel for full motion of the stroke. It just felt right. Like when I do a full motion backhand in tennis, and I just know that I hit it right.
My high school had an IBM punch card machine, electric, of course, which I used to type out FORTRAN II programs. It had a small footprint, and the keys didn't have much motion at all. It just didn't feel right.
On the other hand, those Teletypes, for the time sharing BASIC system, with the round keys, and the crisp, light touch, and just the right amount of motion were great.
In the meantime, I have typed on all types of varmints and critters, whether I had a choice or not. I don't care about the noise, for me, it's the feel. And I believe that's because of that good old Underwood portable.
Oh, and to disappoint typewriter aficionados, I
was never really impressed with the IBM Selectric.
Is that new releases of Java and Solaris will be EBCDIC only!
. . . and distributed in the new, innovative punch card format. An excellent secure media, free from all those meddling kids on the Internet. Or has anyone seen a punch card torrent?
I'd better start looking on eBay for an old punch card reader. Although, I'd prefer a new one, with a USB interface, of course.
Oh, wait I guess it has been getting internal and external vanity surgery for a long time, and is now know as z/OS. It's still around, but not really what it used to be, but still can't get rid of nasty habits, like JCL and little boys.
I guess it's kind of sort of like the Michael Jackson of operating systems. Or maybe Doctor Who.
IAs someone who lived through the 70s and 80s, it sounds like the old "dumb terminal" and "smart central computer" model, and we abandoned that because it sucked.
Well, it might have sucked for you (as it did for me), but I can imagine that some particular companies thrived very well on that model, and would love to lock in customers to mainframes that way again, in the guise of a wolf in "cloud clothing."
That would be a return to the good old days for them.
Anyone old enough here to remember that? Bill Gates responded to Ellison's claim that the PC was dead, by saying, "I like my PC."
I think a lot of folks still like the freedom of being able to install what *they* want, not what is available in some cloud, or what their company's IT folks claim to be "the standard application set" that is more than anyone else might need.
Now, whether Jim Whitehurst can make money off how *I* like to handle my computing needs, well, that's his problem.
they sh*t everywhere and you'd have to feed it bananas for directions.
Well, if you run out of bananas, the chimp might be happy to eat your face and hands as a substitute, as recently happened in Connecticut. Those tomtoms are looking like a better deal all the time.
...a fancy way of saying "remembering where stuff is relative to other stuff"?
Yeah, I was thinking that this is just a bit of "dead reckoning," combined with old salty pirate skills:
"Arrrgh, when yee see the rock, that looks like the skull of a monkey, turn left, take twenty paces, and the treasure is buried below. But beware the curse . .."
I guess she's got "cat GPS" and/or is "using internal distance transform maps"...
Just to be on the safe side, see if your cat can perform the same trick, while wearing a tinfoil hat. And please get back to us if she can. Maybe those felines are up to something behind our backs.
I can't imagine anyone in Germany would buy a computer called "eine Delle" (a dent).
On a vaguely, unfeasibly related matter, my girlfriend (a graphic artist) returned from a customer site and stated: "Sie arbeiten mit Dosen!" (they work with cans!)
I was confused until she explained that people who do not use Apple (heresy for graphics folks) use "Win-dose", and hence, "Dosen."
Now, here you could somehow put a "Delle" in your "Dose," but I really don't know why.
Back in the 1960's Captain Kirk couldn't swing a dead cat around his head without hitting a "Class 'M'" planet every week. Can't NASA lure him back out of retirement?
Gee, I guess I've jumped on this party a bit late, but, do you have a steady job . . . have you paid your taxes . . . and provided for your family . . . not delinquent on your mortgage ?
Give yourself a bonus. Deduct it from your income.
Usually folks tend to turn to religion and mystic stuff, when their whole existence is in total disorder. But the UN looking at a science fiction series for advice?
We're doomed.
Are there any rockets scheduled to leave the Earth real soon? Now I know what motivated that bat on the space shuttle.
Would you take your business to bank that announced that they had recently caught an embezzler? That's why banks rarely press charges against embezzlers.
Same deal with Internet security. If someone catches them with their pants down, they are not likely to wave and scream, "Hey, everyone! Look over here at me!"
Slashdot Mirror
on our hard drives. Porn. That will keep them scratching their heads for years.
"This primitive race seemed to be preoccupied with sex. So how did they fail to reproduce and let their race die out?"
Way back in the ancient times, only important stuff was carved into stone. Now everyone on our planet is squirreling away all kinds of useless crap on digital media.
Future alien archeologists will have a hell of a job sorting out the crap from the, well, stuff that is just a little less than crap.
One man's waste is another man's treasure. Some say, "The world is my oyster." I say, "The world is my dumpster."
Wasted bandwidth, indeed.
Even worse, it's state subsidized tax evasion.
If nonprofits have too much money at the end of the year, I guess they have to pay it out in bonuses and retro-active benefits to their executives, right? As long as their bottom line shows no profit, who cares what, for whom, their expenses were?
. . . me, too!
Only old USENET hands and kibologists will get the, admitting lame, joke.
. . . well, that's at least my opinion, after three decades of touch typing. I learned to type back in my teens in the 70's on my mom's Underwood mechanical portable. It was a model that you see international corresponds and sports reporters lugging around in old movies. It had a light touch, but you got a certain feel for full motion of the stroke. It just felt right. Like when I do a full motion backhand in tennis, and I just know that I hit it right.
My high school had an IBM punch card machine, electric, of course, which I used to type out FORTRAN II programs. It had a small footprint, and the keys didn't have much motion at all. It just didn't feel right.
On the other hand, those Teletypes, for the time sharing BASIC system, with the round keys, and the crisp, light touch, and just the right amount of motion were great.
In the meantime, I have typed on all types of varmints and critters, whether I had a choice or not. I don't care about the noise, for me, it's the feel. And I believe that's because of that good old Underwood portable.
Oh, and to disappoint typewriter aficionados, I was never really impressed with the IBM Selectric.
Is that new releases of Java and Solaris will be EBCDIC only!
. . . and distributed in the new, innovative punch card format. An excellent secure media, free from all those meddling kids on the Internet. Or has anyone seen a punch card torrent?
I'd better start looking on eBay for an old punch card reader. Although, I'd prefer a new one, with a USB interface, of course.
Do (or did) many people use OS/360 at home? In small businesses?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-based_IBM-compatible_mainframes
Oh, wait I guess it has been getting internal and external vanity surgery for a long time, and is now know as z/OS. It's still around, but not really what it used to be, but still can't get rid of nasty habits, like JCL and little boys.
I guess it's kind of sort of like the Michael Jackson of operating systems. Or maybe Doctor Who.
I'll tune in when they start messing around with 500 pounds of Nitrogen Tri-Iodide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_tri-iodide
Could enough of this placed on a toilet seat at a local university really blow a student right off the seat?
Well, I thought that it was a Big Blue Elephant checking out Sun, by kicking the tires, before it puts up the cash for a used Sun.
Given the results, Sun should be expecting a huge check in the mail, real soon.
Unfortunately, it will probably mean a bunch of pink slips for people in *both* companies.
IAs someone who lived through the 70s and 80s, it sounds like the old "dumb terminal" and "smart central computer" model, and we abandoned that because it sucked.
Well, it might have sucked for you (as it did for me), but I can imagine that some particular companies thrived very well on that model, and would love to lock in customers to mainframes that way again, in the guise of a wolf in "cloud clothing."
That would be a return to the good old days for them.
Anyone old enough here to remember that? Bill Gates responded to Ellison's claim that the PC was dead, by saying, "I like my PC."
I think a lot of folks still like the freedom of being able to install what *they* want, not what is available in some cloud, or what their company's IT folks claim to be "the standard application set" that is more than anyone else might need.
Now, whether Jim Whitehurst can make money off how *I* like to handle my computing needs, well, that's his problem.
they sh*t everywhere and you'd have to feed it bananas for directions.
Well, if you run out of bananas, the chimp might be happy to eat your face and hands as a substitute, as recently happened in Connecticut. Those tomtoms are looking like a better deal all the time.
...a fancy way of saying "remembering where stuff is relative to other stuff"?
Yeah, I was thinking that this is just a bit of "dead reckoning," combined with old salty pirate skills:
"Arrrgh, when yee see the rock, that looks like the skull of a monkey, turn left, take twenty paces, and the treasure is buried below. But beware the curse . . ."
I guess she's got "cat GPS" and/or is "using internal distance transform maps"...
Just to be on the safe side, see if your cat can perform the same trick, while wearing a tinfoil hat. And please get back to us if she can. Maybe those felines are up to something behind our backs.
I can't imagine anyone in Germany would buy a computer called "eine Delle" (a dent).
On a vaguely, unfeasibly related matter, my girlfriend (a graphic artist) returned from a customer site and stated: "Sie arbeiten mit Dosen!" (they work with cans!)
I was confused until she explained that people who do not use Apple (heresy for graphics folks) use "Win-dose", and hence, "Dosen."
Now, here you could somehow put a "Delle" in your "Dose," but I really don't know why.
Is there an umlaut?
Hmm . . . then it would be spelled something like "Doeuell."
... the little green men...
Back in the 1960's Captain Kirk couldn't swing a dead cat around his head without hitting a "Class 'M'" planet every week. Can't NASA lure him back out of retirement?
. . . and his little green men were always platinum blond chicks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STGameTrisk.jpg
I nominate "Shahna" as the official Slashdot mascot, because she is wears a tinfoil bikini . . . and she wields a giant can-opener.
Now, where is my "rogue" source code? Does a giant can-opener do more damage than a two-handed sword?
. . . why can't these scientists just devote their work to curing the common cold or the flu?
Although, their work seems to be pretty fun and cool, so who am I to complain?
. . . they are spies, they are supposed to be spying. What else do you expect them to do? Tend to the gardens at Lenin's tomb?
If these spies were being controlled by the late Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria and Kim Philby, . . . well, *that* would be news!
. . . the Spanish Inquisition!
"Our two main weapons are fear surprise, and the Holy Hand Grenade . . . oh, wait . . ."
Gee, I guess I've jumped on this party a bit late, but, do you have a steady job . . . have you paid your taxes . . . and provided for your family . . . not delinquent on your mortgage ?
Give yourself a bonus. Deduct it from your income.
. . . is it too late to put a rider on the AIG Exec bonus tax bill? Make the bastards ride to work on these things.
Or would that be "cruel and unusual punishment?"
Fuck'em, that's what they deserve.
So when the good folks at CERN are smashing up particles in the LHC, the particles *want* to be smashed up?
I think I may need to brush up on my Euthanasia Laws of Physics.
Usually folks tend to turn to religion and mystic stuff, when their whole existence is in total disorder. But the UN looking at a science fiction series for advice?
We're doomed.
Are there any rockets scheduled to leave the Earth real soon? Now I know what motivated that bat on the space shuttle.
Would you take your business to bank that announced that they had recently caught an embezzler? That's why banks rarely press charges against embezzlers.
Same deal with Internet security. If someone catches them with their pants down, they are not likely to wave and scream, "Hey, everyone! Look over here at me!"