Saw the inside of his house once, it was about the same as the description of the Katz guy... incredible amounts of useless junk piled up everywhere, some places stacked as high as the ceiling..Cliff was quite at home in all of it, even entertained by the sight of it, it seemed. The woman living with him didn't seem to mind it either.
According to the article, this guy lived in a luxury condo filled waist-high with rotting food and garbage, infested with insects and mice..Found dead in a hotel room with 5 empty bottles of booze at the age of 37.
An absolute and total waste. It just makes me wonder why he was trying to drown his sorrows.. For a guy with that much success in life, and for someone who actually managed to do something halfway important, why he'd slowly kill himself.
Genius isnt linked with tragedy. Genius is linked with madness.
I did the same thing for a year, actually. Except I wasnt Fry Clerk at McDonalds. I was the Network Manager for the Chem department's visualization lab.
Oh, and by the way, you're welcome. I'm glad you enjoy my work.
Because I dont want _that_ much feedback. 800,000 people dont need to know that i'm scratching my chin today. That puts me on a level with Elian Gonzales coverage.:)
I honestly dont know how many shirts Copyleft is has made. I havent recieved any cashflow from them, although they have told me that sales were "moderate". Heh.
100 shirts means $300 bucks in my pocket from royalty checks. That would make me happy. My landlord too.:)
1) I'm not sure that its a de facto part of the definition of a reptile that it necessarrilly needs to be cold-blooded.
2) Cows, and other cattle, are domesticated animals. Theyre bred to be complacent, sedentary, and fat. Similar animals in the wild are quite capable of roaming miles per day, and rather quickly at that. Watch Animal Planet sometime.:)
3) Re-read what I wrote. You're way off. Not all herbivores are cold-blooded. Not all carnivores are warm blooded.
This article isn't trying to assert that all dinosaurs were either cold-blooded or they were all warm-blooded. They were almost certainly members of both groups.
If you look at modern reptiles, the larger species tend lead more or less sedentary lives, whereas the smaller ones tend to be far more active. They are specialized to handle whatever environment they exist within..Larger herbivorous dinosaurs (hey look, I used my big word for the day..herbivorous!) would generally have no need for long, sustained periods of activity. They dont hunt. Meanwhile, other species depend on hunting and scavanging for a living, and perhaps could benefit from the advantage of being warm-blooded.
Also, when talking about a period of time as large as this, there were no doubt adaptations from cold to warm-blooded. After the mass extinction that signaled the beginning of the Cretaceous era, generally the only forms of life which thrived were those which were small, warm-blooded, and smart.:)
Anyway, all that science mumbo-jumbo is beside yje point. If I were a dinosaur, I would prefer being warm-blooded to escape predation. Its kinda hard to hide behind a palm tree when you're 5 stories tall, and as wide as a house.:)
Down here in Tucson, we have a wonderful little thing called "The Graveyard". The local Air Force base (Davis-Monthan AFB) carries out a strange task....Portions of the base are used as a gigantic graveyard for decomissioned aircraft, and other aircraft destroyed due to arms-control treaties.
There is a gigantic guillotine-like device which basically chops up aircraft out there -- bombers, fighter planes, etc. What happens is, periodically, some planes are chopped up, and then left out in the desert for a few days so that Russian spy satellites can photograph it. The Russians are basically doing the same thing on their end..chopping up planes and leaving them out in the open so our spy satellites can confirm that they are keeping up their end of the bargain.:)
There are places you can drive outside of Tucson, public roads that run near the perimeter of the graveyard -- 747's with their heads cut off as far as the eye can see, literally hundreds of mothballed F-14s and F-15 Strike Eagles, lots of bizzare stuff. Its all cordoned off with barbwire and periodically patrolled by military police with teams of guard dogs.
You can have a look at a portion of the aircraft graveyard right here.
The truth is always much, much stranger than fiction.:)
Yes, IBM.:) Meant as an "anti-rape" device for women, this little gem will clamp down on a rapist's dick and shred it to pieces. Better have a strong stomach before you view this document --- its basically a dick blender. Leave it to IBM to come up with it, eh?;) Makes you wonder who road-tested it...heheheheh
I simply wouldn't know what to do if Phantom Menace wasn't released on DVD. Thanks to Georgie, now all of us can be irritated and annoyed by Jar Jar in full digital sound and video!:)
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll wait for Lucas to release a 100% Jar-Jar Free Directors Cut of the film. Oh wait, he already did. That was the 2-minute trailer.:)
Here's an excerpt from an email conversation between Rob and I which took place in April of 1999. It echoes the same sort of sentiments that this (today's) post does. He isn't kidding.
( Me: )
> (or yours) for granted. We were just looking for a creative way to drum up a > little support, and have some fun in the process.:) The "Beer For Rob Malda" > poll turned out to be one of the most popular user polls we've ever had.:)
( Rob: )
*laugh*. No problems. I just get annoyed occasionally. You should see the submissions box. Not posting a story usually == Conspiracy on my part according to some people. Its annoying;)
And here's an excerpt out of a different email, two weeks later in early May of '99..
( Me: )
> Yeah, sometimes. The fun isn`t so much in painting the stuff, as it is in > actually delivering it, and seeing people use and enjoy it. Much of it is > just plain hard work..Prop for E alone took me well over a month to > produce. Making it was an ordeal--but delivering it, and seeing people's > chins drop was a joy.:)
( Rob: )
*laugh*
Its a little different for me. So much of my feedback is typically negative that I just ignore most of it. I do what I like- I always have, but that 'jaw dropping' doesn't work to well here-- I've posted 3500+ stories, and 3400 were fine, but once a week I post one that someone disagrees with and WHAM;)
Maybe that gives you a little window on what it might be like to be on Rob's side of the table. The rest of you can give the guy a fucking break and sit on your hands if you have nothing better to do than bitch. If you think about the combined effect of thousands of people whining a similar whine, you wouldn't want to be on the recieving end either. If you appreciate Slashdot, great, show your appreciation by not adding to the noise. Consider using your brain and doing something useful with it.
Well, youre right. It may not be symptomatic of all Linux companies. It may only affect those companies which are publically held versus privately held. Time will tell..but you have to admit..The crowd has grown unruly in the past year..even more than it used to be.
The fact that Stampede is currently having a few top-level disputes isn't really the main problem here..The fact that another crack has developed in the Linux foundation, however, is.
I think we're in the middle of an interesting time, really. It used to be, a few years ago, that we were all doing this for fun...We didn't care about getting rich. Now, we all wake up and realize that money is starting to get in the way of ideas. The free exchange of ideas and been limited by the fear of getting screwed. Consequently, people are getting pissed off. After all, why should they work for free, when someone else is profiting from what they do?
While I don't think this will eventually spell out an epitaph for the whole Linux movement, it still remains true that a minority of people with less than pure intentions are driving the majority of people apart rather than uniting them under a common umbrella.
Instead of developers doing what they do for fun, now there are nameless people at the top raking in money off their work, and making alot of people very, very sour in the process..It breeds distrust and resentment in a community that bases its whole existance on mutual trust and cooperation.
Stampede's issues are an indicator of a much bigger problem that supercedes what distribution you run, or what platform you use. It comes down to an issue of people, and how they work together. We all have to agree to play one game, not two. We either continue as we have traditionally, or we become suspicious of eachother and suffer the consequences of doing so.
In an industry where hard disks capacities are still measured in 1,000,000 bytes per megabyte, and 19" monitors are still 17.9" viewable, what makes you think that any company would adopt a benchmarking standard that was actually impartial to their product? The whole point of benchmarking your own product is to give the marketing department something to crow about. So, logically, they gear their hardware (and choose their benchmarks) accordingly.
Sure, its a great thing for the rest of us, because we dont have anything we're trying to sell. Just dont expect anyone on the outside to hop on the bandwagon.
Actually, it would probably be a better idea to wait a little while before turning France into a parking lot for EuroDisney. Once the stock market cools off, and the new administration takes over later this year, the economy will be in the toilet. Since everyone knows that war is good for the economy, we should put our national labor force to work on producing bars of soap, to airdrop them in France. We can also put our printing industry to work printing instructions in French on how to use soap.
Then, once France smelled a little better, we'd move all the people we dont want over there, offering them political asylum. Alanis Morissette, Gerard Depardieu, The Backstreet Boys, Elian Gonzales -- all of em, just move em over to France. Then nuke it, pave it, and charge admission to worship Mickey.
Sounds good to me.;) I'm all for a healthier economy!
So somebody is sleeping with someone they shouldnt sleep with. It happens... My first real job as a mighty FORTRAN printout-stacking, xerox-fetching, laserprinter-unjamming boy at the College of DuPage gave me a good idea of how it works. Some women sleep their way to the top. Some men let women think theyre sleeping their way to the top.
Had this guy I worked with (We'll call him Chris, because that was the guys name.. Heh) who I saw enter a darkened classroom with a female coworker of mine once, they stayed in there a good half an hour or so before attempting to sneak back out without seeming suspicious. And wouldnt you know it, I got passed up for hours like a week later, by this very girl. Wonder why.:)
Something tells me this guy in the article got passed up for an important spot by the woman now taking over for him. Arent rumors fun?:)
Even after reading the buzzword-laden write up for this, its still not abundantly clear how they can insure that individual coders will get a significantly large enough slice of the pie to warrant them even embarking on the task in the first place.
As a coder or project manager, you're probably just as well off securing hosting space on a third-party server with no vested interest in what you're developing.
Besides, this sort of ant-farm implementation seems a little flawed straight out of the gate -- By sheer math, the larger the project, the more people you've got contributing to work, and the smaller the divisions of profit become. The process becomes entirely self-defeating as the size of a project increases. Lay ontop of that the inherent risk of developing openly, and the odds are already stacked even more heavilly against you. No thanks, i'll pass.
Popeyeronic adj. [pop-AYE-rah-nik] -- The tendency of small Linux companies to become destructive and threatening once they get their hands on the green stuff. See: Andover.net, VA Linux Systems, Red Hat.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to take a course in Abnormal Psych..One of the first things they told us before giving us our textbooks was, "Do NOT, I repeat, Do NOT thumb through this book, in an attempt to diagnose yourself. Chances are, there are 20 or 30 different illnesses in this book that you'll think you have. You dont. The process of diagnosing mental illness must be done by a qualified professional with years of training and experience.", or words to that effect.
IMHO, its been a fairly common experience..Getting too heavy into anything, computers included, will eventually drive you to the brink of mental illness. Coupled with the sort of lifestyle that hardcore geeks tend to exhibit, its no big surprise.
Human beings need sunlight, interaction, comfort, quiet, good food, clean air, and clear water. If any of combination of those turns bad, it will take a toll on you. It may not be when youre 15, or 20, or 25, but it will ultimately kick your ass.
Speaking from experience (I've had my share of extreme episodes of burn-out..) Human beings were not physiologically meant to intake egregious amounts of caffiene, engadge in countless hours of intense, non-stop stimulation and stress. The body simply isn't equipped to handle that sort of thing for extended periods of time.
Well, actually..If you look at a cross-section of the people who are involved with computers, a disproportionately large number of them are gay. I can't exactly speak for those people (silly me, i'm straight..heh) but there are quite a few.
Im not too particularly fond of that sort of "lifestyle" either, but, throwing God into the ring is just as boneheaded as Emmett introducing this sort of topic in the first place. Its fine if you believe in God. Just do us a favor and don't add to the problem.
Traditional, or non-traditional, your sexual orientation is your own business. Even if you're straight, making what you do in your own bedroom a matter of public record is as equally pointless as it is stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember Clifford Stoll? ...Einsteinic hair, Cuckoo's Egg author turned luddite?
Saw the inside of his house once, it was about the same as the description of the Katz guy... incredible amounts of useless junk piled up everywhere, some places stacked as high as the ceiling..Cliff was quite at home in all of it, even entertained by the sight of it, it seemed. The woman living with him didn't seem to mind it either.
Then suddenly, Cliff goes luddite. Go figure.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
According to the article, this guy lived in a luxury condo filled waist-high with rotting food and garbage, infested with insects and mice..Found dead in a hotel room with 5 empty bottles of booze at the age of 37.
An absolute and total waste. It just makes me wonder why he was trying to drown his sorrows.. For a guy with that much success in life, and for someone who actually managed to do something halfway important, why he'd slowly kill himself.
Genius isnt linked with tragedy. Genius is linked with madness.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
I did the same thing for a year, actually. Except I wasnt Fry Clerk at McDonalds. I was the Network Manager for the Chem department's visualization lab.
Oh, and by the way, you're welcome. I'm glad you enjoy my work.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Because i'm in school, you nugget. Now scurry back into your cave, troll. Sheesh
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Because I dont want _that_ much feedback. 800,000 people dont need to know that i'm scratching my chin today. That puts me on a level with Elian Gonzales coverage. :)
:)
I honestly dont know how many shirts Copyleft is has made. I havent recieved any cashflow from them, although they have told me that sales were "moderate". Heh.
100 shirts means $300 bucks in my pocket from royalty checks. That would make me happy. My landlord too.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
1) I'm not sure that its a de facto part of the definition of a reptile that it necessarrilly needs to be cold-blooded.
:)
2) Cows, and other cattle, are domesticated animals. Theyre bred to be complacent, sedentary, and fat. Similar animals in the wild are quite capable of roaming miles per day, and rather quickly at that. Watch Animal Planet sometime.
3) Re-read what I wrote. You're way off. Not all herbivores are cold-blooded. Not all carnivores are warm blooded.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
This article isn't trying to assert that all dinosaurs were either cold-blooded or they were all warm-blooded. They were almost certainly members of both groups.
:)
:)
If you look at modern reptiles, the larger species tend lead more or less sedentary lives, whereas the smaller ones tend to be far more active. They are specialized to handle whatever environment they exist within..Larger herbivorous dinosaurs (hey look, I used my big word for the day..herbivorous!) would generally have no need for long, sustained periods of activity. They dont hunt. Meanwhile, other species depend on hunting and scavanging for a living, and perhaps could benefit from the advantage of being warm-blooded.
Also, when talking about a period of time as large as this, there were no doubt adaptations from cold to warm-blooded. After the mass extinction that signaled the beginning of the Cretaceous era, generally the only forms of life which thrived were those which were small, warm-blooded, and smart.
Anyway, all that science mumbo-jumbo is beside yje point. If I were a dinosaur, I would prefer being warm-blooded to escape predation. Its kinda hard to hide behind a palm tree when you're 5 stories tall, and as wide as a house.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Down here in Tucson, we have a wonderful little thing called "The Graveyard". The local Air Force base (Davis-Monthan AFB) carries out a strange task....Portions of the base are used as a gigantic graveyard for decomissioned aircraft, and other aircraft destroyed due to arms-control treaties.
There is a gigantic guillotine-like device which basically chops up aircraft out there -- bombers, fighter planes, etc. What happens is, periodically, some planes are chopped up, and then left out in the desert for a few days so that Russian spy satellites can photograph it. The Russians are basically doing the same thing on their end..chopping up planes and leaving them out in the open so our spy satellites can confirm that they are keeping up their end of the bargain.
There are places you can drive outside of Tucson, public roads that run near the perimeter of the graveyard -- 747's with their heads cut off as far as the eye can see, literally hundreds of mothballed F-14s and F-15 Strike Eagles, lots of bizzare stuff. Its all cordoned off with barbwire and periodically patrolled by military police with teams of guard dogs.
You can have a look at a portion of the aircraft graveyard right here.
The truth is always much, much stranger than fiction.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Just incase you thought the severed-head patent was weird, have a look at this:
IBM's "Penis Locking And Lacerating Vaginal Insert" Patent.
Yes, IBM.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
I simply wouldn't know what to do if Phantom Menace wasn't released on DVD. Thanks to Georgie, now all of us can be irritated and annoyed by Jar Jar in full digital sound and video! :)
:)
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll wait for Lucas to release a 100% Jar-Jar Free Directors Cut of the film. Oh wait, he already did. That was the 2-minute trailer.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Here's an excerpt from an email conversation between Rob and I which took place in April of 1999. It echoes the same sort of sentiments that this (today's) post does. He isn't kidding.
( Me: )
> (or yours) for granted. We were just looking for a creative way to drum up a
> little support, and have some fun in the process.
> poll turned out to be one of the most popular user polls we've ever had.
( Rob: )
*laugh*. No problems. I just get annoyed occasionally. You should see the
submissions box. Not posting a story usually == Conspiracy on my part
according to some people. Its annoying
And here's an excerpt out of a different email, two weeks later in early May of '99..
( Me: )
> Yeah, sometimes. The fun isn`t so much in painting the stuff, as it is in
> actually delivering it, and seeing people use and enjoy it. Much of it is
> just plain hard work..Prop for E alone took me well over a month to
> produce. Making it was an ordeal--but delivering it, and seeing people's
> chins drop was a joy.
( Rob: )
*laugh*
Its a little different for me. So much of my feedback is typically
negative that I just ignore most of it. I do what I like- I always
have, but that 'jaw dropping' doesn't work to well here-- I've posted
3500+ stories, and 3400 were fine, but once a week I post one that
someone disagrees with and WHAM
Maybe that gives you a little window on what it might be like to be on Rob's side of the table. The rest of you can give the guy a fucking break and sit on your hands if you have nothing better to do than bitch. If you think about the combined effect of thousands of people whining a similar whine, you wouldn't want to be on the recieving end either. If you appreciate Slashdot, great, show your appreciation by not adding to the noise. Consider using your brain and doing something useful with it.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
What, you run around hugging bunnies with an assortment of different compliments at your disposal that you can pick up during the game? ;)
Something tells me Carmack may be feeling a little guilty for all the bloody years. Heh.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
I'd moderate you up if I could. The whole idea behind ICANN is pretty bizzaro to begin with, let alone with Queen Esther at the helm of it.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Hehehe..I hope so.
BTW, thanks for reading my original post carefully. Your response shows that you did.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Well, youre right. It may not be symptomatic of all Linux companies. It may only affect those companies which are publically held versus privately held. Time will tell..but you have to admit..The crowd has grown unruly in the past year..even more than it used to be.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
The fact that Stampede is currently having a few top-level disputes isn't really the main problem here..The fact that another crack has developed in the Linux foundation, however, is.
I think we're in the middle of an interesting time, really. It used to be, a few years ago, that we were all doing this for fun...We didn't care about getting rich. Now, we all wake up and realize that money is starting to get in the way of ideas. The free exchange of ideas and been limited by the fear of getting screwed. Consequently, people are getting pissed off. After all, why should they work for free, when someone else is profiting from what they do?
While I don't think this will eventually spell out an epitaph for the whole Linux movement, it still remains true that a minority of people with less than pure intentions are driving the majority of people apart rather than uniting them under a common umbrella.
Instead of developers doing what they do for fun, now there are nameless people at the top raking in money off their work, and making alot of people very, very sour in the process..It breeds distrust and resentment in a community that bases its whole existance on mutual trust and cooperation.
Stampede's issues are an indicator of a much bigger problem that supercedes what distribution you run, or what platform you use. It comes down to an issue of people, and how they work together. We all have to agree to play one game, not two. We either continue as we have traditionally, or we become suspicious of eachother and suffer the consequences of doing so.
Time to make up our minds, I say.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
In an industry where hard disks capacities are still measured in 1,000,000 bytes per megabyte, and 19" monitors are still 17.9" viewable, what makes you think that any company would adopt a benchmarking standard that was actually impartial to their product? The whole point of benchmarking your own product is to give the marketing department something to crow about. So, logically, they gear their hardware (and choose their benchmarks) accordingly.
Sure, its a great thing for the rest of us, because we dont have anything we're trying to sell. Just dont expect anyone on the outside to hop on the bandwagon.
Yours In Science,
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
I've actually had a few MRE's.. Theyre not bad, not big, and dont really weigh much.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Sorry to spoil your fun, but, I get an auto +1 on any response I write..In addition to the +1 everyone else gets when posting using their real name.
No, I have no special priveldges here. And only one account. How do I get +2 on everything? Its called having good karma. 30+ usually. Look into it.
And have a _great_ day.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Actually, it would probably be a better idea to wait a little while before turning France into a parking lot for EuroDisney. Once the stock market cools off, and the new administration takes over later this year, the economy will be in the toilet. Since everyone knows that war is good for the economy, we should put our national labor force to work on producing bars of soap, to airdrop them in France. We can also put our printing industry to work printing instructions in French on how to use soap.
Then, once France smelled a little better, we'd move all the people we dont want over there, offering them political asylum. Alanis Morissette, Gerard Depardieu, The Backstreet Boys, Elian Gonzales -- all of em, just move em over to France. Then nuke it, pave it, and charge admission to worship Mickey.
Sounds good to me.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
So somebody is sleeping with someone they shouldnt sleep with. It happens... My first real job as a mighty FORTRAN printout-stacking, xerox-fetching, laserprinter-unjamming boy at the College of DuPage gave me a good idea of how it works. Some women sleep their way to the top. Some men let women think theyre sleeping their way to the top.
:)
:)
Had this guy I worked with (We'll call him Chris, because that was the guys name.. Heh) who I saw enter a darkened classroom with a female coworker of mine once, they stayed in there a good half an hour or so before attempting to sneak back out without seeming suspicious. And wouldnt you know it, I got passed up for hours like a week later, by this very girl. Wonder why.
Something tells me this guy in the article got passed up for an important spot by the woman now taking over for him. Arent rumors fun?
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
I've said enough. If you weren't listening back when it was important, well..
Good luck.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Even after reading the buzzword-laden write up for this, its still not abundantly clear how they can insure that individual coders will get a significantly large enough slice of the pie to warrant them even embarking on the task in the first place.
As a coder or project manager, you're probably just as well off securing hosting space on a third-party server with no vested interest in what you're developing.
Besides, this sort of ant-farm implementation seems a little flawed straight out of the gate -- By sheer math, the larger the project, the more people you've got contributing to work, and the smaller the divisions of profit become. The process becomes entirely self-defeating as the size of a project increases. Lay ontop of that the inherent risk of developing openly, and the odds are already stacked even more heavilly against you. No thanks, i'll pass.
Popeyeronic adj. [pop-AYE-rah-nik] -- The tendency of small Linux companies to become destructive and threatening once they get their hands on the green stuff. See: Andover.net, VA Linux Systems, Red Hat.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
A great article, but one thing worthy of note:
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to take a course in Abnormal Psych..One of the first things they told us before giving us our textbooks was, "Do NOT, I repeat, Do NOT thumb through this book, in an attempt to diagnose yourself. Chances are, there are 20 or 30 different illnesses in this book that you'll think you have. You dont. The process of diagnosing mental illness must be done by a qualified professional with years of training and experience.", or words to that effect.
IMHO, its been a fairly common experience..Getting too heavy into anything, computers included, will eventually drive you to the brink of mental illness. Coupled with the sort of lifestyle that hardcore geeks tend to exhibit, its no big surprise.
Human beings need sunlight, interaction, comfort, quiet, good food, clean air, and clear water. If any of combination of those turns bad, it will take a toll on you. It may not be when youre 15, or 20, or 25, but it will ultimately kick your ass.
Speaking from experience (I've had my share of extreme episodes of burn-out..) Human beings were not physiologically meant to intake egregious amounts of caffiene, engadge in countless hours of intense, non-stop stimulation and stress. The body simply isn't equipped to handle that sort of thing for extended periods of time.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)
Well, actually..If you look at a cross-section of the people who are involved with computers, a disproportionately large number of them are gay. I can't exactly speak for those people (silly me, i'm straight..heh) but there are quite a few.
Im not too particularly fond of that sort of "lifestyle" either, but, throwing God into the ring is just as boneheaded as Emmett introducing this sort of topic in the first place. Its fine if you believe in God. Just do us a favor and don't add to the problem.
Traditional, or non-traditional, your sexual orientation is your own business. Even if you're straight, making what you do in your own bedroom a matter of public record is as equally pointless as it is stupid.
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://metalab.unc.edu/propaganda)