I'm getting really tired about hearing all these new moons. First it's Jupiter, then it's Saturn. Oh wait, Uranus and Neptune have to get into the act. I think we just blow them up, the moons not the planets. Gotta be careful though when blowing up a moon. Especially if it's too close to one of those gas giants. They are full of highly flammable hydrogen and we wouldn't want to accidentally set one of them on fire. They'd probably burn a really long time like one of those garbage dump tire fires. Those really stink.
It's a never ending moon's race. All these big planets do is keep capturing wandering asteroids and make them moons. It's not like the asteroids wanted to become a moon. They were perfectly happy just orbiting the Sun by themselves. I think we as the human race should collectively drop our pants and show those big planets that we have 6 billion moons. That'll show them. Right!
Those bastards aren't going to use Harlan Ellison's screenplay. So don't bother. I'm not surprised. Will Smith's version should be better than the execrable adaptation of Nightfall whose only dubious distinction is that it was filmed at Arcosanti, but it probably won't be better than Robin William's super-schmaltzy Bicentennial Man.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Motion Picture could be so bad that you'll need to wrap a towel around your head to avoid having your eyes and ears bleed. Or drink a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster before the opening credits.
I've heard it will open with a reading of Vogon poetry. Since they can't find any Vogons they'll use a movie studio executive instead. I realize this isn't being nice to the Vogons, but who wants to be?
And finally did anyone have the foresight install a tachometer on Douglas' headstone so we can see how fast he's spinning in his grave when H2G2:TMP is released?
So now Superman will say "Excellent!" If they want to follow in the tradition of the Batman movies and have a different Superman for each one they can use these actors in no particular order: John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey, and Christian Bales.
Using Microsoft and crippled in the same sentence is overkill. If some people had as many defects as Microsoft software they'd have to have a telethon to raise money for a cure. Dig deep into your pockets to help Bill's kids.
Like Neelix the actor who plays Phlox is good. But their characters are annoying and should be shoved out the nearest airlock. I thought V'ger was bad (except for 7 of 9). When I stopped thinking of it as Star Trek I could watch it. But Enterprise blows. I forced myself to watch several episodes and I kept hoping it would get better. The only one that was tolerable was the one with the Andorians and that wasn't very good.
The only thing good on it was T'Pol and the detox gel scene. Though her name should be T'Schwing!. I think what would spice it up is have a time travel episode where T'Schwing! must hot oil wrestle Six of Nine while Captain Kirk is forced to watch while strapped to a table sans shirt.
The turning point of the whole Trek saga had to be the amazingly asinine episode of ST:TNG when they found out their warp drive was wearing out the fabric of spacetime.
There are no stupid questions only stupid people. But I must make an exception in this case. It is also a stupid question. Just have another beer and don't worry about it!
I've been told by a reliable source that in large doses Scotch Whisky enhances your ability to see UFO's. This probably explains why some people can see them and other's can't.
If Jar Jar wasn't in Episode I, you would have noticed how annoying Annikin was. Since Jar Jar had such a minimal role in Episode II. C3PIO filled the role of the annoying character admirably.
Did anyone else notice how perky Natalie Portman looked in the tight white outfit that later had a Captain-Kirk-gets-his-shirt-ripped-off maneuver done to it to expose her tummy?
I scarfed these from a website whose URL I lost. I hope they are in the public domain since they are over 4,000 years old. And yes I read _Snow Crash_ by Neal Stephenson.
Ancient Sumerian Proverbs
These gems of wisdom are more than 4,000 years old, but many of them still have relevance to us today.
In a city that has no watch dogs,the fox is the overseer.
Who possesses much silver may be happy; who possesses much barley may be glad; but he who has nothing at all may sleep.
Flatter a young man, he give you anything; Throw a scrap to a dog, he'll wag his tail.
The poor men are the silent men in Sumer.
Writing is the mother of eloquence and the father of artists.
Pay heed to the word of your mother as though it were the word of a god.
A sweet word is everybody's friend.
Friendship lasts a day, kinship forever.
For a man's pleasure there is marriage; on thinking it over, there is divorce.
Conceiving is nice; pregnancy is irksome.
The wife is a man's future; the son is a man's refuge; the daughter is a man's salvation; the daughter-in-law is a man's devil.
If you take the field of an enemy,the enemy will come and take your field.
Who builds like a lord, lives like a slave. Who builds like a slave, lives like a lord.
Be gentle to your enemy as to an old oven.
Do not return evil to your adversary; maintain justice for your enemy, do good things, be kind all your days. What you say in haste you may regret later.
Making loans is as [easy] as making love, but repaying them is as hard as bearing a child.
Go up to the ancient ruin heaps and walk around; look at the skulls of the lowly and the great. Which belongs to someone who did evil and which to someone who did good?
A thing which has not occurred since time mmemorial: a young woman broke wind in her husband's embrace.
Who has not supported a wife or child, his nose has not borne a leash.
Eat no fat and you will not have blood in your excrement.
Commit no crime, and fear [of your god] will not consume you.
Has she become pregnant without intercourse? Has she become fat without eating?
Bride, [as] you treat your mother-in-law, so will women [later] treat you.
If the beer mash is sour, how can the beer be sweet?
He who changes, neglects, transgresses, erases the words of this tablet, may the great gods of heaven and earth, who inhabit the world, all those that are named in this tablet, strike you down, look with disfavor upon you, may they chase you away from both shade and sunlight so that you cannot take refuge in a hidden corner, may food and drink forsake you, and hunger, want, famine and pestilence never leave you, may the bellies of dogs and pigs be your burial place, let tar and pitch be your food, donkey urine your drink, naphtha your ointment, river rushes your covers, and evil spirits, demons, and lurkers select your houses (as their abode).
The gods alone live forever under the divine sun; but as for mankind, their days are numbered, all their activities will be nothing but wind.
You can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector!
I posted this story to a list I subscribe to. One of the members posted this, for which I am eternally grateful. And I've decided it was too good not to share, though some of you may have seen it before.
The Twelve Steps of IT Unemployed
1--We admitted we were powerless over Windows--that our networking skills had become unmarketable.
2--Came to believe a resume better than our own could restore us to IT employment.
3--Made a decision to turn over our references to the care of Human Resources, as we are underestimated.
4--Made a searching and fearless mental inventory of the certifications and training we have that are now obsolete.
5--Admitted to a headhunter, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our layoff.
6--Were entirely ready to have the headhunter remove all defects in our work records.
7--Humbly sought to upgrade our software certifications.
8--Made a list of all former bosses we had badmouthed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9--Made direct amends where it would do the most good, except when doing so would hurt our chances of IT employment or consulting jobs.
10--Continued to take personally our layoffs, and when we were denied unemployment or severance, promptly appealed.
11--Sought through networking to make contact with our potential IT employer as we understood him, praying only for insurance, a workstation, and a paycheck.
12--Having had a rude awakening as a result of the dotcom bust, we tried applying for help desk positions we never would have considered, and forget whatever principles we still had.
Duplicity Prayer
Bill grant me the duplicity to accept the job I cannot stand, the courage to send out my resume again, and the wisdom to pass more certs.
It's no mystery who wrote the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back. It was Leigh Brackett. It says so in the credits. Go and watch them again.
As for Campbell and other influences, Lucas didn't write with the intent of impressing him. He was clearly paying homage to the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. It's even more obvious in the Phantom Menace. Lucas borrowed the storyline from Akira Kurasawa's The Hidden Fortress for A New Hope. When you see it, you will know who R2D2 and C3PO are based on.
If you really want to know where George Lucas got his inspiration watch the short film George Lucas in Love.
I think MSN, AT&T, Jabber, Trillian, and anyone else who wants to get in on the act should get together and all work on making themselves interoperable with AOL Instant Messenger. They could tag team each other and go round the clock. AOL will do one of two things. Sue or give up after wasting all that effort on being assholes.
AOL buying Red Hat is probably a bad deal for the Linux community, but since no one actually owns Linux, it will survive. If I were Red Hat I'd take the money and feel guilty all the way to the bank. Other distributions will fill in the gap left by Red Hat's demise, er, ah, purchase. There is no telling when the economy is going to improve. I know what AOL did to Netscape and the same will happen to Red Hat. In spite of that, I say sell. Squeeze every penny you can out of AOL you possibly can.
Even if I could afford one I'd wait. With a progressive scan DVD player and a wide screen HDTV (Yes, Virginia, there are non-wide screen HDTVs. Though what's the point?) you can get some awesome pictures. Oh, and don't forget the Dolby 5.1 system. But if you love TiVo even at the highest quality it looks like crap on HDTV, though it looks fine on a regular television. I have heard that DirectTV TiVo has better video quality than a standard TiVo unit but I've not seen one on a regular TV nor an HDTV.
The details on hacking (with lots of pictures) the cuecat can be found at this URL:
http://www.i-hacked.com/cuecat/
Unfortunately, I haven't had an opportunity to play with my cuecat under Linux, yet. I discovered that the output from the cuecat going into any editing window by accident. I suspect it will treat the data the same under Linux as if it were coming from the keyboard.
I did a google search using the keywords javascript and cuecat to find webpages that could look up UPC and ISBN barcodes.
Thanks to Mr. Philyaw, I now own a bar code scanner to catalog my music with.
Ditto. I cut the trace on my CueCat, thus disabling the serial number, and, wala, I too have a free barcode scanner. Since it's inline with the keyboard, the input from the barcode will be dumped into any window opened for editing. So you can dump raw barcode into, say, Notepad. Most of the barcodes I tried worked.
Slashdot Mirror
thank for pointing out the obvious.
I'm getting really tired about hearing all these new moons. First it's Jupiter, then it's Saturn. Oh wait, Uranus and Neptune have to get into the act. I think we just blow them up, the moons not the planets. Gotta be careful though when blowing up a moon. Especially if it's too close to one of those gas giants. They are full of highly flammable hydrogen and we wouldn't want to accidentally set one of them on fire. They'd probably burn a really long time like one of those garbage dump tire fires. Those really stink.
It's a never ending moon's race. All these big planets do is keep capturing wandering asteroids and make them moons. It's not like the asteroids wanted to become a moon. They were perfectly happy just orbiting the Sun by themselves. I think we as the human race should collectively drop our pants and show those big planets that we have 6 billion moons. That'll show them. Right!
I'm sure that Tony Soprano will be the first in line to buy one of these guns.
Gloria: Is it loaded?
Tony: There is nothing more useless then an unloaded gun.
"No officer, I'm not carrying a dirty bomb. I just had a Barium enema. Would you like to check my ass with your radiation detector?"
Those bastards aren't going to use Harlan Ellison's screenplay. So don't bother. I'm not surprised. Will Smith's version should be better than the execrable adaptation of Nightfall whose only dubious distinction is that it was filmed at Arcosanti, but it probably won't be better than Robin William's super-schmaltzy Bicentennial Man.
Think of all those lonely business travelers who need a little relief. This will certainly boost the phone sex industry.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Motion Picture could be so bad that you'll need to wrap a towel around your head to avoid having your eyes and ears bleed. Or drink a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster before the opening credits.
I've heard it will open with a reading of Vogon poetry. Since they can't find any Vogons they'll use a movie studio executive instead. I realize this isn't being nice to the Vogons, but who wants to be?
And finally did anyone have the foresight install a tachometer on Douglas' headstone so we can see how fast he's spinning in his grave when H2G2:TMP is released?
So now Superman will say "Excellent!" If they want to follow in the tradition of the Batman movies and have a different Superman for each one they can use these actors in no particular order: John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey, and Christian Bales.
Using Microsoft and crippled in the same sentence is overkill. If some people had as many defects as Microsoft software they'd have to have a telethon to raise money for a cure. Dig deep into your pockets to help Bill's kids.
It's too expensive right now. If I had a lot of disposable income then I'd probably splurge and pay too much for DSL or Cable.
from the Thermian (see Galaxy Quest) archives of Earth's historical documents:
Skipper: "Gilligan, people can't fly."
Gilligan: (flying) "They can't?"
Skipper: "No they can't."
Gilligan: "Oh" (thump)
Have them show samples of code they've written and see if they can explain it to you, preferably not stuff they did in school but on the job.
Like Neelix the actor who plays Phlox is good. But their characters are annoying and should be shoved out the nearest airlock. I thought V'ger was bad (except for 7 of 9). When I stopped thinking of it as Star Trek I could watch it. But Enterprise blows. I forced myself to watch several episodes and I kept hoping it would get better. The only one that was tolerable was the one with the Andorians and that wasn't very good.
The only thing good on it was T'Pol and the detox gel scene. Though her name should be T'Schwing!. I think what would spice it up is have a time travel episode where T'Schwing! must hot oil wrestle Six of Nine while Captain Kirk is forced to watch while strapped to a table sans shirt.
The turning point of the whole Trek saga had to be the amazingly asinine episode of ST:TNG when they found out their warp drive was wearing out the fabric of spacetime.
There are no stupid questions only stupid people. But I must make an exception in this case. It is also a stupid question. Just have another beer and don't worry about it!
The question is: Are there large blancmanges from the Andromeda galaxy turning Englishmen into Scotsment? Monty Python's Science Fiction Sketch.
I've been told by a reliable source that in large doses Scotch Whisky enhances your ability to see UFO's. This probably explains why some people can see them and other's can't.
If Jar Jar wasn't in Episode I, you would have noticed how annoying Annikin was. Since Jar Jar had such a minimal role in Episode II. C3PIO filled the role of the annoying character admirably.
Did anyone else notice how perky Natalie Portman looked in the tight white outfit that later had a Captain-Kirk-gets-his-shirt-ripped-off maneuver done to it to expose her tummy?
I scarfed these from a website whose URL I lost. I hope they are in the public domain since they are over 4,000 years old. And yes I read _Snow Crash_ by Neal Stephenson.
Ancient Sumerian Proverbs
These gems of wisdom are more than 4,000 years old, but many of them still have relevance to us today.
In a city that has no watch dogs,the fox is the overseer.
Who possesses much silver may be happy;
who possesses much barley may be glad;
but he who has nothing at all may sleep.
Flatter a young man, he give you anything;
Throw a scrap to a dog, he'll wag his tail.
The poor men are the silent men in Sumer.
Writing is the mother of eloquence and the father of artists.
Pay heed to the word of your mother as though it were the word of a god.
A sweet word is everybody's friend.
Friendship lasts a day, kinship forever.
For a man's pleasure there is marriage;
on thinking it over, there is divorce.
Conceiving is nice; pregnancy is irksome.
The wife is a man's future;
the son is a man's refuge;
the daughter is a man's salvation;
the daughter-in-law is a man's devil.
If you take the field of an enemy,the enemy will come and take your field.
Who builds like a lord, lives like a slave.
Who builds like a slave, lives like a lord.
Be gentle to your enemy as to an old oven.
Do not return evil to your adversary; maintain justice for your enemy, do good things, be kind all your days. What you say in haste you may regret later.
Making loans is as [easy] as making love, but repaying them is as hard as bearing a child.
Go up to the ancient ruin heaps and walk around; look at the skulls of the lowly and the great. Which belongs to someone who did evil and which to someone who did good?
A thing which has not occurred since time mmemorial: a young woman broke wind in her husband's embrace.
Who has not supported a wife or child, his nose has not borne a leash.
Eat no fat and you will not have blood in your excrement.
Commit no crime, and fear [of your god] will not consume you.
Has she become pregnant without intercourse? Has she become fat without eating?
Bride, [as] you treat your mother-in-law, so will women [later] treat you.
If the beer mash is sour, how can the beer be sweet?
He who changes, neglects, transgresses, erases the words of this tablet, may the great gods of heaven and earth, who inhabit the world, all those that are named in this tablet, strike you down, look with disfavor upon you, may they chase you away from both shade and sunlight so that you cannot take refuge in a hidden corner, may food and drink forsake you, and hunger, want, famine and pestilence never leave you, may the bellies of dogs and pigs be your burial place, let tar and pitch be your food, donkey urine your drink, naphtha your ointment, river rushes your covers, and evil spirits, demons, and lurkers select your houses (as their abode).
The gods alone live forever under the divine sun; but as for mankind, their days are numbered, all their activities will be nothing but wind.
You can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector!
I posted this story to a list I subscribe to. One of the members posted this, for which I am eternally grateful. And I've decided it was too good not to share, though some of you may have seen it before.
The Twelve Steps of IT Unemployed
1--We admitted we were powerless over Windows--that our networking skills had become unmarketable.
2--Came to believe a resume better than our own could restore us to IT employment.
3--Made a decision to turn over our references to the care of Human Resources, as we are underestimated.
4--Made a searching and fearless mental inventory of the certifications and training we have that are now obsolete.
5--Admitted to a headhunter, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our layoff.
6--Were entirely ready to have the headhunter remove all defects in our work records.
7--Humbly sought to upgrade our software certifications.
8--Made a list of all former bosses we had badmouthed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9--Made direct amends where it would do the most good, except when doing so would hurt our chances of IT employment or consulting jobs.
10--Continued to take personally our layoffs, and when we were denied unemployment or severance, promptly appealed.
11--Sought through networking to make contact with our potential IT employer as we understood him, praying only for insurance, a workstation, and a paycheck.
12--Having had a rude awakening as a result of the dotcom bust, we tried applying for help desk positions we never would have considered, and forget whatever principles we still had.
Duplicity Prayer
Bill grant me the duplicity to accept the job I cannot stand, the courage to send out my resume again, and the wisdom to pass more certs.
It's no mystery who wrote the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back. It was Leigh Brackett. It says so in the credits. Go and watch them again.
As for Campbell and other influences, Lucas didn't write with the intent of impressing him. He was clearly paying homage to the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. It's even more obvious in the Phantom Menace. Lucas borrowed the storyline from Akira Kurasawa's The Hidden Fortress for A New Hope. When you see it, you will know who R2D2 and C3PO are based on.
If you really want to know where George Lucas got his inspiration watch the short film George Lucas in Love.
What does a hooker say during sex?
"Harder. Faster!"
A girlfriend?
"Slower, deeper."
A housewife?
"Beige, I think I'll paint the ceiling beige."
I think MSN, AT&T, Jabber, Trillian, and anyone else who wants to get in on the act should get together and all work on making themselves interoperable with AOL Instant Messenger. They could tag team each other and go round the clock. AOL will do one of two things. Sue or give up after wasting all that effort on being assholes.
AOL buying Red Hat is probably a bad deal for the Linux community, but since no one actually owns Linux, it will survive. If I were Red Hat I'd take the money and feel guilty all the way to the bank. Other distributions will fill in the gap left by Red Hat's demise, er, ah, purchase. There is no telling when the economy is going to improve. I know what AOL did to Netscape and the same will happen to Red Hat. In spite of that, I say sell. Squeeze every penny you can out of AOL you possibly can.
Even if I could afford one I'd wait. With a progressive scan DVD player and a wide screen HDTV (Yes, Virginia, there are non-wide screen HDTVs. Though what's the point?) you can get some awesome pictures. Oh, and don't forget the Dolby 5.1 system. But if you love TiVo even at the highest quality it looks like crap on HDTV, though it looks fine on a regular television. I have heard that DirectTV TiVo has better video quality than a standard TiVo unit but I've not seen one on a regular TV nor an HDTV.
The details on hacking (with lots of pictures) the cuecat can be found at this URL:
http://www.i-hacked.com/cuecat/
Unfortunately, I haven't had an opportunity to play with my cuecat under Linux, yet. I discovered that the output from the cuecat going into any editing window by accident. I suspect it will treat the data the same under Linux as if it were coming from the keyboard.
I did a google search using the keywords javascript and cuecat to find webpages that could look up UPC and ISBN barcodes.
Thanks to Mr. Philyaw, I now own a bar code scanner to catalog my music with.
Ditto. I cut the trace on my CueCat, thus disabling the serial number, and, wala, I too have a free barcode scanner. Since it's inline with the keyboard, the input from the barcode will be dumped into any window opened for editing. So you can dump raw barcode into, say, Notepad. Most of the barcodes I tried worked.