Here's the deal...never bother trying to milk the online support for help--any kind of online support. Call the company. Apply this liberally to any company with an address and a phone number and you will get results. Otherwise, you're relying on the "kindness of strangers"...and man, that's a terrible way to exist.
I mention this because it worked with QWEST. After enduring bullshit from my Intel PRODSL adapter for a while I called them up, asked to revert to a dial up, because when you're working with Text (ssh/telnet) you don't need a fat asynchronous pipe. They basically ablated 2.5 months of crappy service (credited my account), and helped me patch the software.
I think they're just getting out from under the boom, and handing off the service to let a corp. with a couple of billion dollars in free-fall money deal with the shakeout. QWEST has a big, busy, plate to deal with. They're a business...and a business like an ISP will pass around customers like they're a commondity. I've seen it done for years.
As long as I don't _have_ to deal with MSN directly (go to some webpage and enter a fresh new set of easily demographed data, describe my kids favorite shows, what magazines I like to read, etc..etc...) I don't care, and unless there's an idealistic streak involved, neither should anyone else.
DSL is a pretty good service, even this "poor man's" DSL Select crap is obviously an improvment, especially when the drivers work.
Not flaming here, but why did you have to look at anything other than control panels to address problems with a connection to the Internet? Sounds like you basically went snooping...and stepped into something.
And has anyone here ever been to Holland, Europe in general, or maybe even Russia? The United States of Fundamentalism has a problem with sex, but most of the people in the world with a healthy attitude about it do not. The US culture has problems...an otherwise modern developed country is flawed with calvinst and puritanical pluralities and conflicts...but human existence and pleasures have a way of skewing and polluting idelogies...please remember that it's the monkeys in the cage that throw shit and mastrubate which keep things interesting.
And another thing about the objectificaiton of humans...humanity objectifies things. Merchants sell things with tits and ass all the time. They sell celebrity, and sell objects. People gladly front their bodies for money because it's not really them being bought and sold, it's the object of them. The same thing goes for online porn. Online, people are dealing with an object, not a person.
History holds many examples of how dealing with each other as "people" is more the ideal than the practice of human existance. It's a false enoblement to think that people care if other people are treated as objects...life is cheap, and easily reproduced. Anyone who decries online porn as being harmful is woefully overestimating the role of porn online.
It's by the very nature of humanity itself, and the "wants and hungers" of the bored, wealthy, and depraved which will forever feed the fount of human carnal offerings and diversions.
There is nothing new to be said about pornography. It's older than history, and because we can access it without leaving our homes should be seen as a good thing, because it might keep people out of the sights of zealots. You know, the kind that kill and demonize.
This is bullshit. Over half of childhood cancers are curable today. We (the part of the human race that gives a toss, unlike your good self) are working on the rest now, whilst all you can do is try and induce despair in anyone reading this who may have cancer.
Party on...but we can't resequence people or their parts (yet). Whatever caused the mutational defect, producing the cancerous tissue, just didn't simply go away. It's still there. Short of complete removal of differentiated tissue which is prone to said genetic mutation, the condition is probably recurring. I guess a butchered existence is still an existence. Let's hear it for the spirit of life! [appy-poly-ologies, it's a geocities link, please ignore the eye-ball sale marque and proceed down the page to the moving lyrics of the song "Spirit". It's worth it, getting the CD is worth it too--a very cathartic work that Passage of Time, is.]
How many humans are on the planet...billions. We're a pretty tough lot...even through abulia and ennui, not to mention a few outrageous laws and all the toxic crap we deluge the world with all the time, I'd say that we're probably breeding towards cancer-resistance in humans, based on the numbers that procreate successfully before their lives are destroyed by the toxic side-effects of their environment. Humanity will survive, and hell, we may even get a few nifty quilts/parades/marches/laws out of the whole affair.
BTW...I didn't make up the word "goddist", I came across it, and for me it made sense--isn't a living language cool!. It's a macro-term which basically describes a huge swath of semi-hairless/hairy homids who actually believe in mythology and the supernatural--with an unshakeable conviction that there has to be _something_ out there that's omniscient and omnipotent. Wouldn't it be a riot if there actually was, and it thought we'd make a good snack?!. That's pretty much how life works, but then this all subjective. YMMV.
Yes there is pain and suffering in the world, but to say "we need it" in order to disparage attempts to reduce it appears to me to be the words of someone who is trying to deal with extreme pain or extreme ignorance.
This sounds like market-speak, or the kind of divisiveness which leads to "us vs. them" situations. I would like to think that letting the terminally ill die without waiting for them to simply "run out of steam" reduces pain and suffering. But for many goddists this is just wrong. Where's the compassion? Well, it's cleverly hidden behind morbid curiosity and the societal acceptance that predestination is something real. I would rather be shot than have to starve to death in order to die. Go hang out at a hospice. Make sure to bring some jerky. Nothing like a meaty-oily film on the roof of your mouth while you're looking at the dying. Yum.
I guess either no-one you love has died of cancer, or you're in the middle of the bereavement process right now. If the latter, my heart goes out to you, but your view of reality will probably change over the next twelve months - I certainly hope it does. If the former, well, I hope you never have to experience it.
I know and have known several people with various forms of cancer. Some of them are/were friends. Some of them suffered tremendous denial, made heroic attempts to believe that what was being done for them/ to them, was helping in some way.
I am not grieving, and I have been to many funerals. I expect to see many more before I'm reduced to a waning shadow of my current self by some meat-defect.
My brother died of a brain tumour at the age of 28. Do you want to stand in front of his wife and repeat your words above to her face ?
Hmmm...you first. After all, she's _your_ sister-in-law. Besides, she would have had to deal with the loss later on when he developed age-related illnessess like stroke, urinary tract problems, and possibly worse. If women weren't strong, the species wouldn't have flourished.
Three other members of my extended family have (or are suspected of having) cancer right now - 1 x breast cancer, 2 x prostate cancer. None of them are people I would term "weak" - by any stretch of the imagination.
Not to play up the role of "heartless bastard", but I'd say that as a species, fitness can be defined like the solution set for a calculus problem...fitness for procreation was a baseline that our ancestors met and that many still meet today, but fitness within a toxic environment, well, that's a horse of a different color. Looking on the bright side, as long as they don't die before they have another generation, I'd say they're not in too much danger of dying out. Have lotsa fun while you can. And remember, just because a program doesn't have any _noticable_ flaws, doesn't mean it's not going to have problems later on.
I'm not talking eugenics here. I'm not talking about the retarded or the mentally ill. When I allude that cancer is a wolf, I do so because technology cannot save your booty once it has a-hold of you.
Period.
Sure they can keep you alive, but what kind of life is it? It's a joke. How many $$$ per stint is acceptable? How valuable is your life to the world--so much so that people refuse to accept that they are going to die and selfishly take themselves and their families through the butchery and half-assed farce of staving off the inevitable. It's sad that people view death in such a poor light...there are worse things than death.
Face it, in our world anyone who is willing to take your money will tell you excactly what you want to hear. In this case, someone has their hand out for a distributed computing project that in the end has the potential to do _something_. It may be a step towards something, but the only sure thing it's going to do is serve as a "proof of concept" for a business model. Nobody is going to cure "cancer"...not in our world, and not in our lifetimes without the goddists going nuts. When people understand and accept that nothing short of changing how we exist is going to make a difference (it's going to take hundreds, maybe thousands of generations) then and only then are we going to make progress.
Of course, we could always alter the germline...but then all the goddists would loose their minds and start slitting throats.
It's kinda fun to watch, but it's really quite sad after a while.
Almost like trying to crowbar sense into tiny minds.
If humanity was scared to death of life itself, we'd have living machines...think about it. I use old computers because I'd rather not buy into the "new computer/new M$ license" scheme.
Just because I use a computer doesn't mean I'm rich, it doesn't place me firmly in the hipocrisy camp. I can't help it that the goddists are all happy to rape anything to obtain whatever sham of happiness they idealize at any moment. I'm just happy to be a minimal contributor to the problem in the big scheme of things.
If you're independently wealthy, at least not being in denial is a good step.
Cancer is being caused by a much bigger problem. Throwing CPU cycles at it won't help. Sure, we will eventually brute-force a treatment, but why should we combat something when the underlying causes are much more destructive to the species.
It's like saying we're developing a sunblock because we want our CFC's--sucks to your ozone depletion and possibility of global Aids due to unfiltered rads.
Western culture, specifically the kind found in the United States, combined with the Big Polluters, like GE, and a army of thousands of corporate entities along with a burgeoning planetary population are the real reason.
Throw all the CPU against that problem that you want but it's going to take something serious decisions on a global scale, sans big-money/politics.
Personally, I'm waiting for someone to invent those wonderful nanites that Bill Joy was flapping about. I want to see the population of monsters with SUV's and cell phones tore down. Sometimes I can't help but feel that as a species are too stupid, too trained to accumulate CRAP to ever really understand how much we're going to have to sacrifice our luxury in order to recover from the mistakes of the idiots who saw us to this untenable position. Humanity has so much more potential, but we'll happily squander it to see our sitcoms, eat our plastic food, drink our caffiene and play our video games...and consume the pablum-sacrament of corporatized news.
I can't be the only bastard who sees cancer for what it is...it's a wolf, it kills the weak. If I get it, I'm not flawed, it's just time to make room for the next mewling consumer. It serves a purpose, and if you think you're supposed to live forever, wake the fu*k up while you still have time and get a clue.
We don't need a risk-free world. We are the monsters, we are the artists and lovers. We need pain and suffering as much as we need air, as much as we need each other. Without life, we're just cattle, slaughtered by the mintue for our eyeballs, spammed into oblivion by fools, and placated and kicked in the head by a system which happily creates a utopia for itself.
You're right. Kids are seizing the quickest most over-the-top ways to deal with assholes these days. I don't blame it on television, I don't blame it on the parents because the blame lies entirely on the punk-ass idiot who thinks that being a strong person means they kill people.We cannot live in a free society if it's impossible for people to die from the actions of an indivdual. My advice for those people out there who wring their hands at the thought of sending their childen to school without force-fields is that they need to wake the hell up, go get in trouble and relearn what it is to be human--we're the most efficient killing machine on two legs. We probably killed all the other monsters long ago. And now there's just ourselves.:-)
I was a gangly, scrawny, goofy fu*k who was picked on for being smarter than all the other idiots. I was demonized, and ridiculed, never had a date while I was in the k12 prison system, and I had to deal with assholes chasing me down on the walk home because I raised my hand one-to-many times in class. I never ran from an evenly matched fight, and nobody ever called me a coward. I had a reputation for being "weird, creepy, and smart". I was poor, wore the same clothes (no more than two pairs of pants and maybe four shirts) and was basically fed by the state. There are legions of people just like me out there who came from single-parent families and had to struggle for _everything_(and probably still do). k12 prison is depressing, it's not meant to _uplift_ anyone, it supposed to make pliant shoppers.
At one point in my k12 sentence I was nearly overwhelmed by the need to lash out and destroy people...but I wouldn't have used a gun. Guns are for pussies. And then I had that "nerd/outsider" ephiany where I realized that I was in a system that I couldn't control and that I would come out of it ok if I didn't try to wage a war on it.
That k12 is fostering killers is just an unexpected side-effect of a few inmates who find their social status untenable to the point of violence, where their self-worth has been tore down to the point where even their own death is inconsequential.
Wait until they start demanding that all children are "chemically controlled" while they're at school...we're already seeing "Orwellian" overtones and thought-policing as schools attempt to somehow create a risk-free environment. Of course they're efforts are futile, but they serve a purpose as long as they're spending money and socializing their inmates.
Let's have a round of applause for another step towards a risk-free society. It doesn't matter where it's cemented, once the mortar dries clever monkeys will cite this as an example whenever/wherever they feel something similar is needed in their own communities. Remember, feeling isn't rational, it's a highly subjective form of thought that only matters to monkeys with inflated egos.
Like every step taken to keep people(tax-paying cattle) safe, in and of itself, it's a worthless, petty restriction. It will give police(suuuuu-ee!) in that state a reason to push-around (extort, threaten, bully) arcade owners, and in general chill the arcade industry in that state. I wonder how many more playstation's will get sold because of this law? The more the merrier...that litte box rocks!
Although it would be nice if this kind of well-intentioned restriction could make the world a better place, my money is on the unhappy monkey's in the cage who jerk off and throw their shit at the audience. No matter how nice the cage is kept, they're going to do whatever it is that makes them happy. It's one of the few things I enjoy in a species...besides their corn-fed flavor.
I'd also like to remind any tax-paying cattle reading this that just because someone with buttloads of official power decides that an expensive form of violent entertainment is a risk to society(the illusion of a working set of rules when applied to tax-paying cattle) doesn't mean that it is. If the reader has any experience with classical mechanics, then they also have experience with the illusion of intuitive solutions.
So when someone(a tax-paying bovine who was created more equal than the others) passes a law based on assumptions (yep, saying videogames are bad is an assumption) they're probably doing so to appease a local/vocal group of idiots(the ones on the greener plots).
If a law is not based on genuine fact then it's based on politics. Remember, when you're not right, but you want to seem right, use politics.
And if you're just not patient enough to kiss all the required ass to repeal a law (it's easier to lose your freedoms than to win them back), you should plan on breeding enough voters to use that other political tool, nepotism. Because if you have to play politics, it helps to hold all the cards.
Good luck, and drive like a maniac. Me, I've got to go rip the spine out of some idiot who thinks being a 12th level paladin is going to save his dumb ass. As an added bonus, he's wearing +3 robes of anti-gaming ordinance. Bruahahahahah! Where's your laws now, little man!!!? Rip/crumple/TEAR.."Yes, those ropy bits hanging off the spine are nerves you little devils! Throw whatever is left to the suffering!! Sss'Blood you maggots! I'll learn ye to gust!"
In the "meat" world we already have concepts for most of things we want in a computer environment. We need to jack-in to the wetware that's already running, find the VBLANK signal, and update the visual space memory with only those items which we want to expect and utilize. The problem with current GUI's is that unlike the mind, where things are mostly out of the way until we need them, everything is in the way or obscured by the last thing, or buried deeper than government Black-ops projects by some popup panel shortcut crap. If we slave a serious external component to the information requests within the mind for applications and information, then only those items need to be within visual space. We'll get there. It may scare the shit out of the small-minded and near-sighted, but the more we hack the genome and eventually the wetware, the less we'll need mice, CRT's, and keyboards. Now if we could only hack the governments and get them to stop using technology as a ratchet to continually restrict and control people we could start making real changes.
Ok, as a parent I'm starting to see a particular value to all of this "mouse tampering"; but they better move quick before the market demographic shifts... All they need to do is start some transgenetic experiments whereby they:
introduce the ability to generate electricity (eels and other aquatics can do this)
introduce the ability for rudimentary speech (something on the order of one word with many inflections, like "Pika!"); probably have to tap human DNA for a rudimentary Broca's construct and modifications to the larynx
Then they need to alter the color/markings of the mouse for yellow fur with black and red jagged line markings and black/red tipped ears and such. As for the intelligence, and size factors, well, they've already been researched. Shouldn't be too hard for some MBA in some biotech firm somewhere to come up with a marketing plan. After that, these little buggers would change everything.:-) "Mom, I want a Pikachu for my (insert present requiring holiday here)!!!
Right. Because the actual scripting model exists from the inside-out (WSH), which gives lamprey's like Gohip and macro-virii the foothold necessary to maniuplate common settings and turn the browser and emailer into an ad machine. Wicked stuff for people with short attention spans and a reflexive [OK] click response.:-) It seems like KDE is boldly going where Win9x has gone, without n levels of obfuscated templates between the developer and the toolkit, and is using the same kind of mechanisms/methodologies. They probably don't have much of a choice because if the technology favors the method then developers have to go with the flow...or reinvent the wheel differently; and reinventing the wheel takes time and money not readily available to people making free software.
Although I use KDE (but at work, I'm having fun with the latest spidermonkey release of Gnome), and would like a better browser, I don't want it at the cost of some script kiddie being able to script through the pipes joining KOffice to Konquerer. I've even dusted off Netscape 4.7 and use it because IE is a scripting paradise unless you take steps to lobotomize scripting(and render the browser an intert piece of crap). Maybe someone who has intimate experience with this scripting in KDE could inject some measure of confidence about how well the sandbox for this scripting has been made...otherwise, it's just another vector for infection and exploitation.
An "M$ Free Office" isn't just a dream, it should be the ideal. It should be the ideal of everyone who works with digital information to uncouple themselves (and their business) from poorly though solutions...and from paying for them. An important aspect of finding a non-M$ method of managing data are potential issues involving licenses which need to be renewed? This has come up many times in talks I've had with MSCE's, and it's something which would seriously impact the bottom line of any company. Could you imagine being a corporate IT manager and suddenly having to make a yearly payment for both upgrades AND site licenses for several WANS? M$ has been making an end-run on the entire corporate business market for the last 10 years, stitching everyone up tight with proprietary OS's and business applications. The only reason they probably haven't done it yet is because of the lawsuits and the emergence of software which will still allow people to get information from their old document formats (StarOffice,WP,others?). Every company should have at least one dedicated individual who is required to kick all the zealots in the ass with the simple but hard to answer questions, like, In 20 years, how are we supposed to manage the information and records (Office/WP/Excel/etc..etc...) being manipulated right now by our coworkers(slaves)? When that person makes sure all the work being done isn't ending up in the digital trashcan, then maybe the choice of office applications becomes less political because the demands of maintaining just the information requires the information be free from proprietary formats (Word,WP,Excel,etc..etc...); at that point, the solutions which permit long-term use of information don't favor "flavor" of the year applications, like Office2000, or Office97. Only the formats which are going to be useful in 20,50, and 100 years are going to be worth investing anything in. Otherwise, it's going to take a small army and a big budget to extract the information from all those proprietary formats. Remember that the next time your company subscribes to the M$ Developer network and faithfully figures out how to deal with the firehose of changes and revisions and fixes and all the other B$. Every IT (netslave) worker should vigorously archive all their efforts in plaintext whenever possible, and use established formats for graphics. Towards this end, GNU/Linux has a host of tools which makes this possible, and free for the inept and the skilled alike. Maybe it's time companies took a stand and instead of presentation concentrated on the substance and the information instead of pushing crappy Power-pointless presentations through overheads to show their motivations.(yeah brother) (hope I'm not just "ranting" to the choir here).
Why doesn't the government just employ him if they don't allow him to get a job in the private sector doing what he's qualified to do? Here's some sad-ass reality. The Government has always specialized in marginalizing citizens. It does this with gag orders, imprisonment, and deportation. It's no better than any other government it claims to be. Torture is torture, whether you're hanging from a ceiling fan being jabbed with a cattle prod, being sodomized by the cops, or being demonized by the press and being told that you cannot use technology to survive.
And yes, being forced to work in some mindless wage-slave job when you're qualified for much better is a form or torture. You gotta degree? Try flipping burgers and see if you don't have something to rant about.
Regardless of cuplability, if there's one "employer" Mr. Mitnick could feel comfortable with, it would be the Federal Government...because regardless of what bad things anyone has done, nobody, with the possible exception of Pol Pot, has ever done anything which would make the federal government blink. Regardless of what they feed the press about outrage and damages, you can bet the Fedz have their own 3133t group that does the same kind of stuff (internationally) that they jail everyone for--and if they're not jailing them, they're paying them to lure/bait people who might not have otherwise even tried it. Be it smoking/dealing/shooting/cracking/phreaking/whatev er...
In this land of the Free to be incarcerated we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that since the United States is really not at war on foreign soil, the United States is at war with its people. It always has been, but in the past it was easier demonizing and rallying support (remember Paul Robeson?) against even popular, eloquent, and correct people. In short, the citizens of the United States have the full attention of a government/buracracy capable of monitoring/manipulating governments around the world. It's adventurous geek season and Uncle Sugar has a whole pack of slavering hounds and a double-aught legal system on his shoulder.
As a citizen of the United States, I wonder what it's going to take before people stop being cattle and realize who's holding the bolt-gun, the prod, and the bit.
How will history remember us for our complacency as we're all quietly emasculated, barcoded, and more thoroughly enslaved than we are today? Will anyone really even bother when the best they can manage after 12 useless years of "consumerism" training camps (public schools--know them for what they are) is something along the lines of "Uh, the porn used to be better."?
"So what did you do before you became a fry-cook?"
BTW...this makes up for not posting for a while. It's so freakin' low on the list nobody's going to read it anyway.
I'm an avatar pilot. Lara is my favorite. Why? It's simple. She's mad, bad and dangerous to know. She can jump higher than anyone in the NBA, perform gymnastics that would kill humans, and she can draw a bead with an arsenal contained in the only bag of holding outside an FRPG. When I first played the Demo on the PC I was very impressed (even for a P-75 it was nice). Unlike many cowards here, I think I shared some of the affection Lara's creators may have had for her. Yes, it's possible to feel responsible, or upset, or even a muted form of love for Lara...if you get careless, she dies. It can get emotional. She's classy. She's eternally unattainable. Oh yeah, she's also got a voice (courtesy of Juddith Gibbins) that makes my heart do shit that I'd really rather not write about. Lara Croft is the _first_ genuinely successful "digital" personality. As such, she's wonderful. As a tool of greed in the hands of idiots she's becoming a nightmare. I've played tr1..tr3 (tr4 is utter rubbish) and it's a shame the chaps at CORE, after performing annual "Lara" deathmarches to the corporate drum of EIDOS, are about completely ambivalent about their star...because even though they're working on other games, TR consistently seems to bring in the $$$. This movie is going to be tragic. Lara is a DIGITAL character. She's not M-E-A-T. Seeing any meatpuppet doing terribly awkward looking poses with weapons in her hands is going suck ass. IT's going to flop because who the hell is going to want to hear Lara's voice coming from the Joile meat-thing? Who the hell is going to want to see some meatpuppet get CGI'd into acrobatics, leaping, falling, etc? Not this breadwinner. If it's anything other than campy, it's going to be crappy. Out of respect for this digital personality, I'll avoid seeing the analog parody of her, and encourage others to also. If asshole companies like EIDOS can't remove their heads long enough to take a breath, they deserve the drubbing they're going to recieve when the drop this movie into a descriminating TR audience. Would I be pissed if the movie was going to be CGI...of course not. But going analog is lame. Instead of doing something ground-breaking they're going to do something out of greed. I hope it bites them in the ass, just like TR4 has (Used PSX TR3=$35, Used PSX TR4=$25) at the local used shop.
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I mention this because it worked with QWEST. After enduring bullshit from my Intel PRODSL adapter for a while I called them up, asked to revert to a dial up, because when you're working with Text (ssh/telnet) you don't need a fat asynchronous pipe. They basically ablated 2.5 months of crappy service (credited my account), and helped me patch the software.
I think they're just getting out from under the boom, and handing off the service to let a corp. with a couple of billion dollars in free-fall money deal with the shakeout. QWEST has a big, busy, plate to deal with. They're a business...and a business like an ISP will pass around customers like they're a commondity. I've seen it done for years.
As long as I don't _have_ to deal with MSN directly (go to some webpage and enter a fresh new set of easily demographed data, describe my kids favorite shows, what magazines I like to read, etc..etc...) I don't care, and unless there's an idealistic streak involved, neither should anyone else.
DSL is a pretty good service, even this "poor man's" DSL Select crap is obviously an improvment, especially when the drivers work.
And has anyone here ever been to Holland, Europe in general, or maybe even Russia? The United States of Fundamentalism has a problem with sex, but most of the people in the world with a healthy attitude about it do not. The US culture has problems...an otherwise modern developed country is flawed with calvinst and puritanical pluralities and conflicts...but human existence and pleasures have a way of skewing and polluting idelogies...please remember that it's the monkeys in the cage that throw shit and mastrubate which keep things interesting.
And another thing about the objectificaiton of humans...humanity objectifies things. Merchants sell things with tits and ass all the time. They sell celebrity, and sell objects. People gladly front their bodies for money because it's not really them being bought and sold, it's the object of them. The same thing goes for online porn. Online, people are dealing with an object, not a person.
History holds many examples of how dealing with each other as "people" is more the ideal than the practice of human existance. It's a false enoblement to think that people care if other people are treated as objects...life is cheap, and easily reproduced. Anyone who decries online porn as being harmful is woefully overestimating the role of porn online.
It's by the very nature of humanity itself, and the "wants and hungers" of the bored, wealthy, and depraved which will forever feed the fount of human carnal offerings and diversions.
There is nothing new to be said about pornography. It's older than history, and because we can access it without leaving our homes should be seen as a good thing, because it might keep people out of the sights of zealots. You know, the kind that kill and demonize.
Party on...but we can't resequence people or their parts (yet). Whatever caused the mutational defect, producing the cancerous tissue, just didn't simply go away. It's still there. Short of complete removal of differentiated tissue which is prone to said genetic mutation, the condition is probably recurring. I guess a butchered existence is still an existence. Let's hear it for the spirit of life! [appy-poly-ologies, it's a geocities link, please ignore the eye-ball sale marque and proceed down the page to the moving lyrics of the song "Spirit". It's worth it, getting the CD is worth it too--a very cathartic work that Passage of Time, is.]
How many humans are on the planet...billions. We're a pretty tough lot...even through abulia and ennui, not to mention a few outrageous laws and all the toxic crap we deluge the world with all the time, I'd say that we're probably breeding towards cancer-resistance in humans, based on the numbers that procreate successfully before their lives are destroyed by the toxic side-effects of their environment. Humanity will survive, and hell, we may even get a few nifty quilts/parades/marches/laws out of the whole affair.
BTW...I didn't make up the word "goddist", I came across it, and for me it made sense--isn't a living language cool!. It's a macro-term which basically describes a huge swath of semi-hairless/hairy homids who actually believe in mythology and the supernatural--with an unshakeable conviction that there has to be _something_ out there that's omniscient and omnipotent. Wouldn't it be a riot if there actually was, and it thought we'd make a good snack?!. That's pretty much how life works, but then this all subjective. YMMV.
This sounds like market-speak, or the kind of divisiveness which leads to "us vs. them" situations. I would like to think that letting the terminally ill die without waiting for them to simply "run out of steam" reduces pain and suffering. But for many goddists this is just wrong. Where's the compassion? Well, it's cleverly hidden behind morbid curiosity and the societal acceptance that predestination is something real. I would rather be shot than have to starve to death in order to die. Go hang out at a hospice. Make sure to bring some jerky. Nothing like a meaty-oily film on the roof of your mouth while you're looking at the dying. Yum.
I guess either no-one you love has died of cancer, or you're in the middle of the bereavement process right now. If the latter, my heart goes out to you, but your view of reality will probably change over the next twelve months - I certainly hope it does. If the former, well, I hope you never have to experience it.
I know and have known several people with various forms of cancer. Some of them are/were friends. Some of them suffered tremendous denial, made heroic attempts to believe that what was being done for them/ to them, was helping in some way.
I am not grieving, and I have been to many funerals. I expect to see many more before I'm reduced to a waning shadow of my current self by some meat-defect.
My brother died of a brain tumour at the age of 28. Do you want to stand in front of his wife and repeat your words above to her face ?
Hmmm...you first. After all, she's _your_ sister-in-law. Besides, she would have had to deal with the loss later on when he developed age-related illnessess like stroke, urinary tract problems, and possibly worse. If women weren't strong, the species wouldn't have flourished.
Three other members of my extended family have (or are suspected of having) cancer right now - 1 x breast cancer, 2 x prostate cancer. None of them are people I would term "weak" - by any stretch of the imagination.
Not to play up the role of "heartless bastard", but I'd say that as a species, fitness can be defined like the solution set for a calculus problem...fitness for procreation was a baseline that our ancestors met and that many still meet today, but fitness within a toxic environment, well, that's a horse of a different color.
Looking on the bright side, as long as they don't die before they have another generation, I'd say they're not in too much danger of dying out. Have lotsa fun while you can. And remember, just because a program doesn't have any _noticable_ flaws, doesn't mean it's not going to have problems later on.
Period.
Sure they can keep you alive, but what kind of life is it? It's a joke. How many $$$ per stint is acceptable? How valuable is your life to the world--so much so that people refuse to accept that they are going to die and selfishly take themselves and their families through the butchery and half-assed farce of staving off the inevitable. It's sad that people view death in such a poor light...there are worse things than death.
Face it, in our world anyone who is willing to take your money will tell you excactly what you want to hear. In this case, someone has their hand out for a distributed computing project that in the end has the potential to do _something_. It may be a step towards something, but the only sure thing it's going to do is serve as a "proof of concept" for a business model. Nobody is going to cure "cancer"...not in our world, and not in our lifetimes without the goddists going nuts. When people understand and accept that nothing short of changing how we exist is going to make a difference (it's going to take hundreds, maybe thousands of generations) then and only then are we going to make progress.
Of course, we could always alter the germline...but then all the goddists would loose their minds and start slitting throats.
It's kinda fun to watch, but it's really quite sad after a while.
Almost like trying to crowbar sense into tiny minds.
And btw...life is the only self-sustaining technology I know about...everything else is flawed.
Just because I use a computer doesn't mean I'm rich, it doesn't place me firmly in the hipocrisy camp. I can't help it that the goddists are all happy to rape anything to obtain whatever sham of happiness they idealize at any moment. I'm just happy to be a minimal contributor to the problem in the big scheme of things.
If you're independently wealthy, at least not being in denial is a good step.
Western culture, specifically the kind found in the United States, combined with the Big Polluters, like GE, and a army of thousands of corporate entities along with a burgeoning planetary population are the real reason.
Throw all the CPU against that problem that you want but it's going to take something serious decisions on a global scale, sans big-money/politics.
Personally, I'm waiting for someone to invent those wonderful nanites that Bill Joy was flapping about. I want to see the population of monsters with SUV's and cell phones tore down. Sometimes I can't help but feel that as a species are too stupid, too trained to accumulate CRAP to ever really understand how much we're going to have to sacrifice our luxury in order to recover from the mistakes of the idiots who saw us to this untenable position. Humanity has so much more potential, but we'll happily squander it to see our sitcoms, eat our plastic food, drink our caffiene and play our video games...and consume the pablum-sacrament of corporatized news.
I can't be the only bastard who sees cancer for what it is...it's a wolf, it kills the weak. If I get it, I'm not flawed, it's just time to make room for the next mewling consumer. It serves a purpose, and if you think you're supposed to live forever, wake the fu*k up while you still have time and get a clue.
We don't need a risk-free world. We are the monsters, we are the artists and lovers. We need pain and suffering as much as we need air, as much as we need each other. Without life, we're just cattle, slaughtered by the mintue for our eyeballs, spammed into oblivion by fools, and placated and kicked in the head by a system which happily creates a utopia for itself.
I was a gangly, scrawny, goofy fu*k who was picked on for being smarter than all the other idiots. I was demonized, and ridiculed, never had a date while I was in the k12 prison system, and I had to deal with assholes chasing me down on the walk home because I raised my hand one-to-many times in class. I never ran from an evenly matched fight, and nobody ever called me a coward. I had a reputation for being "weird, creepy, and smart". I was poor, wore the same clothes (no more than two pairs of pants and maybe four shirts) and was basically fed by the state. There are legions of people just like me out there who came from single-parent families and had to struggle for _everything_(and probably still do). k12 prison is depressing, it's not meant to _uplift_ anyone, it supposed to make pliant shoppers.
At one point in my k12 sentence I was nearly overwhelmed by the need to lash out and destroy people...but I wouldn't have used a gun. Guns are for pussies. And then I had that "nerd/outsider" ephiany where I realized that I was in a system that I couldn't control and that I would come out of it ok if I didn't try to wage a war on it.
That k12 is fostering killers is just an unexpected side-effect of a few inmates who find their social status untenable to the point of violence, where their self-worth has been tore down to the point where even their own death is inconsequential.
Wait until they start demanding that all children are "chemically controlled" while they're at school...we're already seeing "Orwellian" overtones and thought-policing as schools attempt to somehow create a risk-free environment. Of course they're efforts are futile, but they serve a purpose as long as they're spending money and socializing their inmates.
Let's have a round of applause for another step towards a risk-free society. It doesn't matter where it's cemented, once the mortar dries clever monkeys will cite this as an example whenever/wherever they feel something similar is needed in their own communities. Remember, feeling isn't rational, it's a highly subjective form of thought that only matters to monkeys with inflated egos.
Like every step taken to keep people(tax-paying cattle) safe, in and of itself, it's a worthless, petty restriction. It will give police(suuuuu-ee!) in that state a reason to push-around (extort, threaten, bully) arcade owners, and in general chill the arcade industry in that state. I wonder how many more playstation's will get sold because of this law? The more the merrier...that litte box rocks!
Although it would be nice if this kind of well-intentioned restriction could make the world a better place, my money is on the unhappy monkey's in the cage who jerk off and throw their shit at the audience. No matter how nice the cage is kept, they're going to do whatever it is that makes them happy. It's one of the few things I enjoy in a species...besides their corn-fed flavor.
I'd also like to remind any tax-paying cattle reading this that just because someone with buttloads of official power decides that an expensive form of violent entertainment is a risk to society(the illusion of a working set of rules when applied to tax-paying cattle) doesn't mean that it is. If the reader has any experience with classical mechanics, then they also have experience with the illusion of intuitive solutions.
So when someone(a tax-paying bovine who was created more equal than the others) passes a law based on assumptions (yep, saying videogames are bad is an assumption) they're probably doing so to appease a local/vocal group of idiots(the ones on the greener plots).
If a law is not based on genuine fact then it's based on politics. Remember, when you're not right, but you want to seem right, use politics.
And if you're just not patient enough to kiss all the required ass to repeal a law (it's easier to lose your freedoms than to win them back), you should plan on breeding enough voters to use that other political tool, nepotism. Because if you have to play politics, it helps to hold all the cards.
Good luck, and drive like a maniac. Me, I've got to go rip the spine out of some idiot who thinks being a 12th level paladin is going to save his dumb ass. As an added bonus, he's wearing +3 robes of anti-gaming ordinance. Bruahahahahah! Where's your laws now, little man!!!? Rip/crumple/TEAR.."Yes, those ropy bits hanging off the spine are nerves you little devils! Throw whatever is left to the suffering!! Sss'Blood you maggots! I'll learn ye to gust!"
My kids love when I do that!
In the "meat" world we already have concepts for most of things we want in a computer environment. We need to jack-in to the wetware that's already running, find the VBLANK signal, and update the visual space memory with only those items which we want to expect and utilize. The problem with current GUI's is that unlike the mind, where things are mostly out of the way until we need them, everything is in the way or obscured by the last thing, or buried deeper than government Black-ops projects by some popup panel shortcut crap.
If we slave a serious external component to the information requests within the mind for applications and information, then only those items need to be within visual space.
We'll get there. It may scare the shit out of the small-minded and near-sighted, but the more we hack the genome and eventually the wetware, the less we'll need mice, CRT's, and keyboards.
Now if we could only hack the governments and get them to stop using technology as a ratchet to continually restrict and control people we could start making real changes.
All they need to do is start some transgenetic experiments whereby they:
- introduce the ability to generate electricity (eels and other aquatics can do this)
- introduce the ability for rudimentary speech (something on the order of one word with many inflections, like "Pika!"); probably have to tap human DNA for a rudimentary Broca's construct and modifications to the larynx
Then they need to alter the color/markings of the mouse for yellow fur with black and red jagged line markings and black/red tipped ears and such.As for the intelligence, and size factors, well, they've already been researched. Shouldn't be too hard for some MBA in some biotech firm somewhere to come up with a marketing plan.
After that, these little buggers would change everything.
"Mom, I want a Pikachu for my (insert present requiring holiday here)!!!
Right. Because the actual scripting model exists from the inside-out (WSH), which gives lamprey's like Gohip and macro-virii the foothold necessary to maniuplate common settings and turn the browser and emailer into an ad machine. Wicked stuff for people with short attention spans and a reflexive [OK] click response. :-)
It seems like KDE is boldly going where Win9x has gone, without n levels of obfuscated templates between the developer and the toolkit, and is using the same kind of mechanisms/methodologies. They probably don't have much of a choice because if the technology favors the method then developers have to go with the flow...or reinvent the wheel differently; and reinventing the wheel takes time and money not readily available to people making free software.
Although I use KDE (but at work, I'm having fun with the latest spidermonkey release of Gnome), and would like a better browser, I don't want it at the cost of some script kiddie being able to script through the pipes joining KOffice to Konquerer. I've even dusted off Netscape 4.7 and use it because IE is a scripting paradise unless you take steps to lobotomize scripting(and render the browser an intert piece of crap). Maybe someone who has intimate experience with this scripting in KDE could inject some measure of confidence about how well the sandbox for this scripting has been made...otherwise, it's just another vector for infection and exploitation.
An "M$ Free Office" isn't just a dream, it should be the ideal. It should be the ideal of everyone who works with digital information to uncouple themselves (and their business) from poorly though solutions...and from paying for them.
An important aspect of finding a non-M$ method of managing data are potential issues involving licenses which need to be renewed? This has come up many times in talks I've had with MSCE's, and it's something which would seriously impact the bottom line of any company. Could you imagine being a corporate IT manager and suddenly having to make a yearly payment for both upgrades AND site licenses for several WANS?
M$ has been making an end-run on the entire corporate business market for the last 10 years, stitching everyone up tight with proprietary OS's and business applications. The only reason they probably haven't done it yet is because of the lawsuits and the emergence of software which will still allow people to get information from their old document formats (StarOffice,WP,others?).
Every company should have at least one dedicated individual who is required to kick all the zealots in the ass with the simple but hard to answer questions, like,
In 20 years, how are we supposed to manage the information and records (Office/WP/Excel/etc..etc...) being manipulated right now by our coworkers(slaves)?
When that person makes sure all the work being done isn't ending up in the digital trashcan, then maybe the choice of office applications becomes less political because the demands of maintaining just the information requires the information be free from proprietary formats (Word,WP,Excel,etc..etc...); at that point, the solutions which permit long-term use of information don't favor "flavor" of the year applications, like Office2000, or Office97.
Only the formats which are going to be useful in 20,50, and 100 years are going to be worth investing anything in. Otherwise, it's going to take a small army and a big budget to extract the information from all those proprietary formats.
Remember that the next time your company subscribes to the M$ Developer network and faithfully figures out how to deal with the firehose of changes and revisions and fixes and all the other B$.
Every IT (netslave) worker should vigorously archive all their efforts in plaintext whenever possible, and use established formats for graphics. Towards this end, GNU/Linux has a host of tools which makes this possible, and free for the inept and the skilled alike.
Maybe it's time companies took a stand and instead of presentation concentrated on the substance and the information instead of pushing crappy Power-pointless presentations through overheads to show their motivations.(yeah brother)
(hope I'm not just "ranting" to the choir here).
Why doesn't the government just employ him if they don't allow him to get a job in the private sector doing what he's qualified to do?
v er...
Here's some sad-ass reality. The Government has always specialized in marginalizing citizens. It does this with gag orders, imprisonment, and deportation. It's no better than any other government it claims to be. Torture is torture, whether you're hanging from a ceiling fan being jabbed with a cattle prod, being sodomized by the cops, or being demonized by the press and being told that you cannot use technology to survive.
And yes, being forced to work in some mindless wage-slave job when you're qualified for much better is a form or torture. You gotta degree? Try flipping burgers and see if you don't have something to rant about.
Regardless of cuplability, if there's one "employer" Mr. Mitnick could feel comfortable with, it would be the Federal Government...because regardless of what bad things anyone has done, nobody, with the possible exception of Pol Pot, has ever done anything which would make the federal government blink.
Regardless of what they feed the press about outrage and damages, you can bet the Fedz have their own 3133t group that does the same kind of stuff (internationally) that they jail everyone for--and if they're not jailing them, they're paying them to lure/bait people who might not have otherwise even tried it. Be it smoking/dealing/shooting/cracking/phreaking/whate
In this land of the Free to be incarcerated we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that since the United States is really not at war on foreign soil, the United States is at war with its people. It always has been, but in the past it was easier demonizing and rallying support (remember Paul Robeson?) against even popular, eloquent, and correct people. In short, the citizens of the United States have the full attention of a government/buracracy capable of monitoring/manipulating governments around the world. It's adventurous geek season and Uncle Sugar has a whole pack of slavering hounds and a double-aught legal system on his shoulder.
As a citizen of the United States, I wonder what it's going to take before people stop being cattle and realize who's holding the bolt-gun, the prod, and the bit.
How will history remember us for our complacency as we're all quietly emasculated, barcoded, and more thoroughly enslaved than we are today? Will anyone really even bother when the best they can manage after 12 useless years of "consumerism" training camps (public schools--know them for what they are) is something along the lines of "Uh, the porn used to be better."?
"So what did you do before you became a fry-cook?"
BTW...this makes up for not posting for a while. It's so freakin' low on the list nobody's going to read it anyway.
I'm an avatar pilot. Lara is my favorite.
Why?
It's simple. She's mad, bad and dangerous to know. She can jump higher than anyone in the NBA, perform gymnastics that would kill humans, and she can draw a bead with an arsenal contained in the only bag of holding outside an FRPG.
When I first played the Demo on the PC I was very impressed (even for a P-75 it was nice). Unlike many cowards here, I think I shared some of the affection Lara's creators may have had for her. Yes, it's possible to feel responsible, or upset, or even a muted form of love for Lara...if you get careless, she dies. It can get emotional. She's classy. She's eternally unattainable. Oh yeah, she's also got a voice (courtesy of Juddith Gibbins) that makes my heart do shit that I'd really rather not write about.
Lara Croft is the _first_ genuinely successful "digital" personality. As such, she's wonderful. As a tool of greed in the hands of idiots she's becoming a nightmare.
I've played tr1..tr3 (tr4 is utter rubbish) and it's a shame the chaps at CORE, after performing annual "Lara" deathmarches to the corporate drum of EIDOS, are about completely ambivalent about their star...because even though they're working on other games, TR consistently seems to bring in the $$$.
This movie is going to be tragic. Lara is a DIGITAL character. She's not M-E-A-T.
Seeing any meatpuppet doing terribly awkward looking poses with weapons in her hands is going suck ass. IT's going to flop because who the hell is going to want to hear Lara's voice coming from the Joile meat-thing? Who the hell is going to want to see some meatpuppet get CGI'd into acrobatics, leaping, falling, etc? Not this breadwinner. If it's anything other than campy, it's going to be crappy.
Out of respect for this digital personality, I'll avoid seeing the analog parody of her, and encourage others to also. If asshole companies like EIDOS can't remove their heads long enough to take a breath, they deserve the drubbing they're going to recieve when the drop this movie into a descriminating TR audience. Would I be pissed if the movie was going to be CGI...of course not. But going analog is lame. Instead of doing something ground-breaking they're going to do something out of greed. I hope it bites them in the ass, just like TR4 has (Used PSX TR3=$35, Used PSX TR4=$25) at the local used shop.