As today's Slashdot Pedant (TM) I must point out that it was too long - about 120 words - so it's no wonder your submission wasn't accepted. Otherwise, you would have won, on grammar and spelling alone.
Goddam that was great! If I had any points I would give them all to you. I too have lost patience with the human race and their constant whining. Thank you for ranting.
After we moved three years ago, I sucked it up and switched nearly every bulb in my new house (3500 sq. ft. or so) to compact fluorescent. My "budget billing" electric bill was reduced by about $35/month. I figure this pays for about a ten-pack of decent CFL bulbs, which is far less than I ever need to buy. There is only one bulb I haven't replaced - the enclosed ceiling-fan fixture fits a CFL bulb just fine, but the CFL light makes the warm "goldenrod" paint color in that room look a sort of sickly green. Even the "natural light" CFL didn't seem to help, so I put the incandescent back in. Yes, even a zealot like me can sacrifice a few watts for aesthetics so that one room looks nicer for the short period each day that it's artificially lit.
Since the transition, a few of the lower-quality bulbs have burned out. I stick these in a bag and swing by the city hazardous waste dropoff center every year or so. The rest have been burning for thousands of hours while tolerating frequent switching on-off-on-off-on-off (yes, I have kids). A couple of my bulbs have been with me since the mid-1990s. I anticipate that most of them will last long enough that LED bulbs will be cheap by the time the CFLs do burn out.
Do I stumble around in darkness enduring long start-up times? Is there any conceivable reason to switch back? Does anyone even notice my house is "different" when they visit? The answers are no, hell no, and no (but secretly I sometimes wish they would - meanwhile I'll settle for posting about it on Slashdot).
> There was a post here some years back by someone who claimed to be able to do this. > He [?] said he only found it useful for long-distance road trips.
> As I recall, his method worked through totally relaxing (via self hypnosis) half the body at a time.
We haven't heard from that guy in a while. Apparently, he was killed in a single-car accident at 4 a.m. on I-80 in central Nevada. Misjudged a curve due to a lack of depth perception while his left eye was sleeping.
Signed, Any one of hundreds of thousands of gloriously beatiful gold-diggers who would sleep with anyone on Earth if there were a reasonable chance of, say, a $500 million payout in just three years, after the divorce.
There was a well-known book (and film) from the early 1960s called "Sex and the Single Girl". If I recall correctly, it was kind of a manifesto and call for young women to get out and have a career, be independent and (horror of horrors, just coming out of the 1950s) enjoy the delights of sex outside the sacred covenants of marriage!
Anyway, I guess "security" in the title reminded the summarizer of "sex", and "$100 laptop" reminded him of "single girl". Makes you wonder.
Agreed... also the second, third,... , up through thirty-second instances of both zero-G and two-G surgeries were successful! Tumor was removed, despite continual barfing from patient.
Travel, young grasshopper. If you can manage to save up even $2000 in that hectic job of yours, you can quit and buy the cheapest ticket to the furthest destination you can find on cheaptickets.com (or whatever). Get a Lonely Planet guidebook and go there.
Take a journal (this is sort of like a blog, only made of paper and much more private). Take a couple of fantastic fiction books. Stay in cheap youth hostels. Ride on buses or trains from place to place. Enter nightclubs filled mostly with locals. Chat with all the young Dutch and Australian travelers you meet in the oddest of far-flung places. See different oceans, different mountains, and cities you never even knew about that have a culture all their own. Write in the aforementioned journal. If you run out of money, take a job washing dishes for a couple of days, or just come back home, if you're ready.
You will gain insights into yourself that you will never get from reading self-help books on weekends. $2000 will easily get you to Tierra del Fuego and back, $3000 will stretch your vacation over the entire summer. At the end of this, you may or may not know what to do with your life. But it's worth a shot.
Memories, indeed... I lived in Chicago at the time, took half a day off work and took the train downtown at 6 a.m. to get a place in line for the big Gates keynote speech/demo. That moment of shocked silence when that BSOD came up, followed by the uncontrollable laughter, made it all worth it.
Only later, when watching the video, did I catch what Bill said after the crash - "...that's why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet." Credit where it's due, that was quick thinking, and a statement that's hard to refute.
I second that emotion! I've used Macs since mid-1984, and Crystal Quest ruled! Who cares if the screen was 9 inches? It was fun and it was playable for hours and hours.
C is for Chief, as in Chief Information Officer, Chief Executive Office, etc.
In America, it also refers to the grade-point average they barely managed to maintain while drinking their way through college and bonding with their frat brothers' dads so they could get hired onto corporate management tracks at age 23 so they could schmooze their way up to officer-level positions by age 46 and make outrageous salaries "providing leadership" for the rest of us and offering cushy internships to their sons' marginally-literate frat brothers. Not that I'm bitter.
You should over-engineer that counter to a ridiculous degree. It's not a bridge made out of expensive steel, it's just bits and bytes. Memory is cheap, disk space is cheap, and bandwith is becoming cheap. If something calls for the number of meters in an Olympic pool (50), size it to accommodate the number of millimeters across the known universe. Over-engineer first, then slim it down only if it causes performance problems.
Picture this: In five years, the stores have RFID tags or faster machines that reduce the POS transaction time to 1 second. The stores are popular and quadruple in number. To match their new inventory system, they artifically track each item bought as a separate sale (average 5 items per customer). Voila, you are up to 1,728,000 possible transactions in a day already.
Customers will always find new and unpredictable ways to use and abuse their software, rather than go through the pain and expense of an upgrade. By 2009, the client will have forgotten your name, but they'll (probably) never have to hunt you down if that counter goes to 100 million or so.
That works great and is very motivating *if* you have a manager that also values time away from work, to be spent with family, friends or cool stuff, as much as you do. Then you both feel pain, so overtime doesn't happen very often.
On the other hand, if you have a manager whose kids are grown, whose spouse left him long ago, and who is fully intent on getting *you* to produce more output so he can cash in his stock options before his early heart attack comes, then it's a drag. "Sure, I'll stay with you all night again, and buy you dinner too!" (Dang, I'd rather go read my kid a bedtime story, drink some decaf, and watch the 11:30 p.m. re-run of Seinfeld.)
Sure it only weighs 125 pounds now, but what about when you load it up with all those terabytes of data?
(This would be funny, except I stole that joke from a customer of mine who came up with that innocent question when we were speccing out the floor strength of his server room).
Slashdot Mirror
As today's Slashdot Pedant (TM) I must point out that it was too long - about 120 words - so it's no wonder your submission wasn't accepted. Otherwise, you would have won, on grammar and spelling alone.
Goddam that was great! If I had any points I would give them all to you. I too have lost patience with the human race and their constant whining. Thank you for ranting.
After we moved three years ago, I sucked it up and switched nearly every bulb in my new house (3500 sq. ft. or so) to compact fluorescent. My "budget billing" electric bill was reduced by about $35/month. I figure this pays for about a ten-pack of decent CFL bulbs, which is far less than I ever need to buy. There is only one bulb I haven't replaced - the enclosed ceiling-fan fixture fits a CFL bulb just fine, but the CFL light makes the warm "goldenrod" paint color in that room look a sort of sickly green. Even the "natural light" CFL didn't seem to help, so I put the incandescent back in. Yes, even a zealot like me can sacrifice a few watts for aesthetics so that one room looks nicer for the short period each day that it's artificially lit.
Since the transition, a few of the lower-quality bulbs have burned out. I stick these in a bag and swing by the city hazardous waste dropoff center every year or so. The rest have been burning for thousands of hours while tolerating frequent switching on-off-on-off-on-off (yes, I have kids). A couple of my bulbs have been with me since the mid-1990s. I anticipate that most of them will last long enough that LED bulbs will be cheap by the time the CFLs do burn out.
Do I stumble around in darkness enduring long start-up times? Is there any conceivable reason to switch back? Does anyone even notice my house is "different" when they visit? The answers are no, hell no, and no (but secretly I sometimes wish they would - meanwhile I'll settle for posting about it on Slashdot).
> researchers have tried using tiny bubbles
And I assume that when the ship arrives, instead of "Land Ho!", they are required to shout "Don Ho!"
> There was a post here some years back by someone who claimed to be able to do this.
> He [?] said he only found it useful for long-distance road trips.
> As I recall, his method worked through totally relaxing (via self hypnosis) half the body at a time.
We haven't heard from that guy in a while. Apparently, he was killed in a single-car accident at 4 a.m. on I-80 in central Nevada. Misjudged a curve due to a lack of depth perception while his left eye was sleeping.
> SOMEONE TELL ME BALLMER IS HOT -- I DARE YOU.
Ballmer is hot hot hot!!!
Signed,
Any one of hundreds of thousands of gloriously beatiful gold-diggers who would sleep with anyone on Earth if there were a reasonable chance of, say, a $500 million payout in just three years, after the divorce.
There was a well-known book (and film) from the early 1960s called "Sex and the Single Girl". If I recall correctly, it was kind of a manifesto and call for young women to get out and have a career, be independent and (horror of horrors, just coming out of the 1950s) enjoy the delights of sex outside the sacred covenants of marriage!
Anyway, I guess "security" in the title reminded the summarizer of "sex", and "$100 laptop" reminded him of "single girl". Makes you wonder.
Agreed... also the second, third, ... , up through thirty-second instances of both zero-G and two-G surgeries were successful! Tumor was removed, despite continual barfing from patient.
Apparentamentally, it was George Bush.
Alrighty then Alex, I'll take "Who All Your Base Are Belong To" for $8,000.
Whoddya mean, "someone seems to have hacked in and changed the screens?"
Travel, young grasshopper. If you can manage to save up even $2000 in that hectic job of yours, you can quit and buy the cheapest ticket to the furthest destination you can find on cheaptickets.com (or whatever). Get a Lonely Planet guidebook and go there.
Take a journal (this is sort of like a blog, only made of paper and much more private). Take a couple of fantastic fiction books. Stay in cheap youth hostels. Ride on buses or trains from place to place. Enter nightclubs filled mostly with locals. Chat with all the young Dutch and Australian travelers you meet in the oddest of far-flung places. See different oceans, different mountains, and cities you never even knew about that have a culture all their own. Write in the aforementioned journal. If you run out of money, take a job washing dishes for a couple of days, or just come back home, if you're ready.
You will gain insights into yourself that you will never get from reading self-help books on weekends. $2000 will easily get you to Tierra del Fuego and back, $3000 will stretch your vacation over the entire summer. At the end of this, you may or may not know what to do with your life. But it's worth a shot.
Also, it was for 9 years in the 60s. Geez, your brain really is shot.
> Is there a bot on this site that posts stupid mindless two line replys to peoples posts?
Yes.
So by your logic it's ok if communists eat your puppies
Memories, indeed... I lived in Chicago at the time, took half a day off work and took the train downtown at 6 a.m. to get a place in line for the big Gates keynote speech/demo. That moment of shocked silence when that BSOD came up, followed by the uncontrollable laughter, made it all worth it.
Only later, when watching the video, did I catch what Bill said after the crash - "...that's why we're not shipping Windows 98 yet." Credit where it's due, that was quick thinking, and a statement that's hard to refute.
I second that emotion! I've used Macs since mid-1984, and Crystal Quest ruled! Who cares if the screen was 9 inches? It was fun and it was playable for hours and hours.
OK, my AIM score is zero, but I promise I'm super-popular on Yahoo chat ... you insensitive clods!
On IFilm, a very amusing three-minute infomercial for the new Bullshit Bingo game!
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/1317509
Not in Australia it's not! :-)
C is for Chief, as in Chief Information Officer, Chief Executive Office, etc.
In America, it also refers to the grade-point average they barely managed to maintain while drinking their way through college and bonding with their frat brothers' dads so they could get hired onto corporate management tracks at age 23 so they could schmooze their way up to officer-level positions by age 46 and make outrageous salaries "providing leadership" for the rest of us and offering cushy internships to their sons' marginally-literate frat brothers. Not that I'm bitter.
...you insensemetive clodhopper!
So that explains why certain people are always sitting in the front row in my classes!
Dang, you beat me to it. I was thinking of a version with a hyperthread-supporting local application protocol (BitCH-SLAP).
You should over-engineer that counter to a ridiculous degree. It's not a bridge made out of expensive steel, it's just bits and bytes. Memory is cheap, disk space is cheap, and bandwith is becoming cheap. If something calls for the number of meters in an Olympic pool (50), size it to accommodate the number of millimeters across the known universe. Over-engineer first, then slim it down only if it causes performance problems.
Picture this: In five years, the stores have RFID tags or faster machines that reduce the POS transaction time to 1 second. The stores are popular and quadruple in number. To match their new inventory system, they artifically track each item bought as a separate sale (average 5 items per customer). Voila, you are up to 1,728,000 possible transactions in a day already.
Customers will always find new and unpredictable ways to use and abuse their software, rather than go through the pain and expense of an upgrade. By 2009, the client will have forgotten your name, but they'll (probably) never have to hunt you down if that counter goes to 100 million or so.
That works great and is very motivating *if* you have a manager that also values time away from work, to be spent with family, friends or cool stuff, as much as you do. Then you both feel pain, so overtime doesn't happen very often.
On the other hand, if you have a manager whose kids are grown, whose spouse left him long ago, and who is fully intent on getting *you* to produce more output so he can cash in his stock options before his early heart attack comes, then it's a drag. "Sure, I'll stay with you all night again, and buy you dinner too!" (Dang, I'd rather go read my kid a bedtime story, drink some decaf, and watch the 11:30 p.m. re-run of Seinfeld.)
Sure it only weighs 125 pounds now, but what about when you load it up with all those terabytes of data?
(This would be funny, except I stole that joke from a customer of mine who came up with that innocent question when we were speccing out the floor strength of his server room).
I, for one, welcome our new impenetrable, goo-covered overlords.
(Hey, someone had to say it).