I'm afraid that with 'self healing' my computer can install things I don't want installed, uninstall things I do want and send all my information to Big Brother.
When I worked at BigCorp everyone was networked, and you couldn't log on until you'd installed the latest gimcrack they had pushed to your desktop - never mind if it rucked up your other programs. And they would interrupt whatever you were doing to "push" news broadcasts onto your screen every time they made a sale -- at least that was back when they were actually making sales. It seemed kind of Big Brotherish. (Of course, it was their gear.)
I don't even like it when someone comes into my cube and looks over my shoulder, much less sharing all my files.
As far as my own gear goes, I'd rather sit in a cave alone and scratch images into the sand with a sharp stick than be connected to the kind of all-encompassing network you describe.
There's no guarantee that any calculations you did won't have to be redone with valid data. It's a bit of a gamble, but can pay handsomely if you speculate wisely. Architecture imitates life.
It was worth reading a long article to come across this nugget of wisdom. I think i'll embroider it on a sampler and hang it in my cube.
Oatmeal sqares? Are you out of your mind? Unless you know for a fact she really prefers them, it's chocolate, baby, chocolate. The flower and Valey-gram are nice in a non-commital, anonymous kind of way, but she won't know it's from you, and besides, she might receive several. The Furby would show off your hacking skills. "Happy Valentine's Day" is not exactly a declaration of undying love, so even if she hates you she would probably think it's cute and keep it. Maybe she's even shyer than you are and waiting for you to make the first move. Actually, for your sake, I hope she does read/.
... sounds like it's time to spring for the big diamond ring, buddy, if you want her to stick around till next V-Day. If you're already married, you're home free. Flowers, chocolates, a couple of steaks on the grill with a bottle of cheap wine, just about anything will do.
Antarctic Marathon; creature comforts
on
The Coldest March
·
· Score: 2
Thai food, Kahlua and cream, rock music - you guys really suffered. I made it down to the tip of the continent in Jan. '95 accompanying the first Antarctica Marathon. Looks like Thom still has a couple of spots open for this year's run. (I didn't run; I stood around and watched.) At least around the edges, Antarctica isn't so bad in January. Everyone jumped in the sea just to say they had done it (well, it was in a spot where a hot spring vents into the ocean near the beach). I remember seeing thousands upon thousands of penguins. Apparently they have a 50% fat content; you can use them for both food and fuel if you're desperate. I felt a little guilty enjoying hot meals and a heated cabin on the trip, thinking about how those early explorers suffered. Shackleton's Valiant Voyage a/k/a Endurance was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. Too bad Scott didn't take Shackleton along - they might have got out alive.
I can imagine doing that. It would, after all, be the longest day of the year there. You would have total daylight. The champagne might freeze, though.
The (absolutely) last time I tried to book an airline ticket with a travel agent my family had done business with for years, they told me they could no longer make reservations over the phone unless I came in and filled out a profile. It was a whole lot of marketing crap about what brand of hotel and rental car you prefer (the cheaper the better), would you rather sit by the window or aisle (like you have a choice), food preferences (why, little packets of pretzels and peanuts, of course), checklist of countries you'd like to visit (didn't see any choices for Antarctica or the Solomon Islands), package tours, cruises and casinos (wouldn't be caught dead on any of them) etc. This was definitely not being done for MY convenience.
I book all my own trips online now. Travel agents may be OK for people who enjoy travelling in herds, but I'd rather just buy my own ticket and decide what I'm going to do once I get there.
The U.S. government and FAA are usually pretty far behind the curve on information systems, so I doubt they would get their terrorist profiling system up and running any time in the foreseeable future. I wonder if they will have any more luck with this than making sure people's baggage goes to right destination.
... a mirror in a baroque gilt frame which dissolves into a to do list and urgent video e-mails.
It's bad enough looking in the mirror and seeing my own mug, much less a "to-do list" staring back. And what's an "urgent video e-mail?" Urgent to whom? My boss? Spammers? Stalkers?
...has there been such an engrossing movie about Americans getting their butts kicked (well, yeah, there was Pearl Harbor, but we kicked theirs by the end of the film). I've never been in combat or in Mogadishu either, but Black Hawk Down made me feel like I was there, at least for a couple of hours.
But it's pretty funny that Katz had to warn of plot spoilage for a movie based on a historical event. What next, a plot spoilage warning on the History Channel?
The ability to protect and secure information is vital to the growth of electronic commerce and to the growth of the Internet itself.
You are absolutely right. I'm surprised that sheer profit motive alone hasn't pushed big software corporations and their pals in Congress to permit and even encourage the export of more sophisticated encryption. Using weak encryption makes about as much sense as guarding your premises with flimsy locks and corrugated fences. I'm just as interested in keeping the government out of my business as I am keeping out competitors.
So what if better code-making leads to better code-breaking? You build better bullet-proof glass, and someone comes up with better bullets. (Likewise missile shield: missiles; mousetrap: mouse, etc.) It's progress. It's full employment for developers, programmers and marketers. I think profit motive will trump "patriotism" on this issue.
Sounds like what most of us have been consuming during the holidays. I thought you were pulling our leg until I ran across this. I don't think that moniker would cut it the diet-obsessed U.S. of A.
I agree that everything video looks better in the store. They're always showing you how great a DVD of "Bug's Life" or some video of a ballgame looks on a giant screen or a flat screen, but when you ask them to switch over to your local Channel 5 or whatever to see how regular TV would look, they have some excuse about how they're not set up to show it.
I used to not have a TV either, but then I got a job.
Clean it yourself. With soap (anti-bacterial?) and water. While you're at it, turn yr. keyboard upside down and give it a few thumps and watch all the crumbs and indescribable junk fall out. And blot the keys with a paper towel or Kleenex.
Yesterday I got up early, made omelettes, cooked a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, set out the good china, served up the food, played board games with the kids, visited relatives, etc., having spent the previous three days baking, shoppping, wrapping, scrubbing, entertaining, refereeing, etc. Today I'm back at "work" at the office, sitting in a comfortable chair in front of a computer screen all day with few distractions. Last Christmas I had plenty of time to spend with the family because I was in the middle of being downsized, so I was glad to have a job to go to this morning, although I could have used a little more sleep.
Didn't J.R.R. Tolkien himself say that it all began when he was grading exam papers at Oxford, and someone turned in a blank paper. Tolkien supposedly scrawled on it, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," and the story kind of spun out from there.
I loved the Father Christmas letters he wrote for his children. If they hadn't been published years later, no one else would have been able to enjoy his vision of the North Pole and the evolution of the characters who came to inhabit it.
(speakingof college, at the risk of sounding like an English lit. major, I would be remiss not to point out that it's "overwhelm.")
If you're in that big a hurry, why bother? And who wants to self-select for sober realists, pragmatists, etc. I'd prefer the "giddy happenstance" option and whatever leads from there. The timeframe could extend very happily to the rest of your life under the right circumstances.
Try this. (1 or 2 shots of espresso, 12 oz. heated eggnog, dash each of nutmeg & cinnamon.
Combine the espresso, nutmeg, and cinnamon in the bottom of a mug. Add the heated egg nog.) Maybe for you, more coffee, less eggnog. Use pasteurized eggnog that comes in a carton. Making it from scratch is a nasty process involving raw egg yolks that you don't want to know about.
Myself, I would skip the coffee, add one shot each of bourbon and rum to cold eggnog, let it sit in the fridge for awhile, and drink it with 1 ice cube.
Hurricanes, wildfires, shark attacks, dengue fever, FSU's sucky 6-2 season, Janet Reno - the place is a portal to hell, I tell ya. (And where was Dubya on Sept. 11? huh? huh?)
Of course Al Gore invented packet switching, but the Supreme Court unfortunately gave all the credit to Dubya after that whole chad thing down in Florida
Re:I'd have a hard time taking this book seriously
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I've learned more from Scott Adams' books, comic strips and LOTD forum than all the corporate seminars, hot-shot management guides and corporate CEO puff biographies I've attended or read all rolled into one. He can say more in a few short sentences or cells than most of these windbags say in a ponderous volume of prose. Who says comic books and graphic novels aren't a legitimate forum for art and ideas? Satire is wasted on some people.
Rolling in the leaves and sin and ecstasy will take your mind off all your other problems, and the resulting emotional cross-currents will create new ones that will absorb much of your attention. Yessirree, a mad, passionate affair right about now is guaranteed to give you a new lease on life, take up all your spare time, fill your head with new ideas and add new complications to your existence. You'll still be dragging yourself to class all right, but only because you'll be so worn out from rockin' the night before. You'e a senior now, for crying out loud, you should be at the top of the social pecking order. Try to hook up with senior girls; the same ones who wouldn't spit on you when you were both freshmen may be a lot friendlier now that they've been upstaged by new waves of younger, cuter freshmen.
Stick your head outside the computer lab. English lit. and anthropology majors are a good bet. They spend their whole academic careers focusing on stuff like "Psychosexual imagery in the religious poems of Robert Herrick" and "mating rituals in Samoa." This may be your last sojourn among thousands of unattached young ladies in a carefree, party-centric college environment. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. (And if you knock one of them up, boy, will you ever have a motivation to get a job and start making money.)
The New York Times had this article A Crystal Beacon Atop a 20's Curiosity about a 42-story glass and steel structure -- inspired by the Crystal Palace built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London - that is going to be built atop Hearst Corporation's headquarters at 959 Eighth Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets in New York. The existing building, completed in 1928, was originally designed as the base of a taller structure.
Architectural critic Herbert Muschamp thinks it's a great project, something the New York skyline has been waiting for. "The possibilities for integrity are limited only by the mind's capacity to hold unity and complexity together. That is the capacity that distinguishes architecture from real estate," he says.
(Yes, I know that reading this entire article requires a dollar for a print copy or a free registration, but in my opinion it was well worth it.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid that with 'self healing' my computer can install things I don't want installed, uninstall things I do want and send all my information to Big Brother.
When I worked at BigCorp everyone was networked, and you couldn't log on until you'd installed the latest gimcrack they had pushed to your desktop - never mind if it rucked up your other programs. And they would interrupt whatever you were doing to "push" news broadcasts onto your screen every time they made a sale -- at least that was back when they were actually making sales. It seemed kind of Big Brotherish. (Of course, it was their gear.)
I don't even like it when someone comes into my cube and looks over my shoulder, much less sharing all my files.
As far as my own gear goes, I'd rather sit in a cave alone and scratch images into the sand with a sharp stick than be connected to the kind of all-encompassing network you describe.
There's no guarantee that any calculations you did won't have to be redone with valid data. It's a bit of a gamble, but can pay handsomely if you speculate wisely. Architecture imitates life.
It was worth reading a long article to come across this nugget of wisdom. I think i'll embroider it on a sampler and hang it in my cube.
Oatmeal sqares? Are you out of your mind? Unless you know for a fact she really prefers them, it's chocolate, baby, chocolate. The flower and Valey-gram are nice in a non-commital, anonymous kind of way, but she won't know it's from you, and besides, she might receive several. The Furby would show off your hacking skills. "Happy Valentine's Day" is not exactly a declaration of undying love, so even if she hates you she would probably think it's cute and keep it. Maybe she's even shyer than you are and waiting for you to make the first move. Actually, for your sake, I hope she does read /.
... sounds like it's time to spring for the big diamond ring, buddy, if you want her to stick around till next V-Day. If you're already married, you're home free. Flowers, chocolates, a couple of steaks on the grill with a bottle of cheap wine, just about anything will do.
Thai food, Kahlua and cream, rock music - you guys really suffered. I made it down to the tip of the continent in Jan. '95 accompanying the first Antarctica Marathon. Looks like Thom still has a couple of spots open for this year's run. (I didn't run; I stood around and watched.) At least around the edges, Antarctica isn't so bad in January. Everyone jumped in the sea just to say they had done it (well, it was in a spot where a hot spring vents into the ocean near the beach). I remember seeing thousands upon thousands of penguins. Apparently they have a 50% fat content; you can use them for both food and fuel if you're desperate. I felt a little guilty enjoying hot meals and a heated cabin on the trip, thinking about how those early explorers suffered. Shackleton's Valiant Voyage a/k/a Endurance was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. Too bad Scott didn't take Shackleton along - they might have got out alive.
I can imagine doing that. It would, after all, be the longest day of the year there. You would have total daylight. The champagne might freeze, though.
The (absolutely) last time I tried to book an airline ticket with a travel agent my family had done business with for years, they told me they could no longer make reservations over the phone unless I came in and filled out a profile. It was a whole lot of marketing crap about what brand of hotel and rental car you prefer (the cheaper the better), would you rather sit by the window or aisle (like you have a choice), food preferences (why, little packets of pretzels and peanuts, of course), checklist of countries you'd like to visit (didn't see any choices for Antarctica or the Solomon Islands), package tours, cruises and casinos (wouldn't be caught dead on any of them) etc. This was definitely not being done for MY convenience.
I book all my own trips online now. Travel agents may be OK for people who enjoy travelling in herds, but I'd rather just buy my own ticket and decide what I'm going to do once I get there.
The U.S. government and FAA are usually pretty far behind the curve on information systems, so I doubt they would get their terrorist profiling system up and running any time in the foreseeable future. I wonder if they will have any more luck with this than making sure people's baggage goes to right destination.
... a mirror in a baroque gilt frame which dissolves into a to do list and urgent video e-mails.
It's bad enough looking in the mirror and seeing my own mug, much less a "to-do list" staring back. And what's an "urgent video e-mail?" Urgent to whom? My boss? Spammers? Stalkers?
The letter distribution is based on frequency of use. You only get one z and q but a lot of e's and a's.
...has there been such an engrossing movie about Americans getting their butts kicked (well, yeah, there was Pearl Harbor, but we kicked theirs by the end of the film). I've never been in combat or in Mogadishu either, but Black Hawk Down made me feel like I was there, at least for a couple of hours.
But it's pretty funny that Katz had to warn of plot spoilage for a movie based on a historical event. What next, a plot spoilage warning on the History Channel?
The ability to protect and secure information is vital to the growth of electronic commerce and to the growth of the Internet itself.
You are absolutely right. I'm surprised that sheer profit motive alone hasn't pushed big software corporations and their pals in Congress to permit and even encourage the export of more sophisticated encryption. Using weak encryption makes about as much sense as guarding your premises with flimsy locks and corrugated fences. I'm just as interested in keeping the government out of my business as I am keeping out competitors.
So what if better code-making leads to better code-breaking? You build better bullet-proof glass, and someone comes up with better bullets. (Likewise missile shield: missiles; mousetrap: mouse, etc.) It's progress. It's full employment for developers, programmers and marketers. I think profit motive will trump "patriotism" on this issue.
Somebody is actually concerned about not pissing off the customer? What next, tea and sympathy for the poor end-user?
Sounds like what most of us have been consuming during the holidays. I thought you were pulling our leg until I ran across this. I don't think that moniker would cut it the diet-obsessed U.S. of A.
I agree that everything video looks better in the store. They're always showing you how great a DVD of "Bug's Life" or some video of a ballgame looks on a giant screen or a flat screen, but when you ask them to switch over to your local Channel 5 or whatever to see how regular TV would look, they have some excuse about how they're not set up to show it.
I used to not have a TV either, but then I got a job.
Clean it yourself. With soap (anti-bacterial?) and water. While you're at it, turn yr. keyboard upside down and give it a few thumps and watch all the crumbs and indescribable junk fall out. And blot the keys with a paper towel or Kleenex.
Yesterday I got up early, made omelettes, cooked a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, set out the good china, served up the food, played board games with the kids, visited relatives, etc., having spent the previous three days baking, shoppping, wrapping, scrubbing, entertaining, refereeing, etc. Today I'm back at "work" at the office, sitting in a comfortable chair in front of a computer screen all day with few distractions. Last Christmas I had plenty of time to spend with the family because I was in the middle of being downsized, so I was glad to have a job to go to this morning, although I could have used a little more sleep.
Merry Christmas to all.
Wow! White boxes with little red X's! Now that's what I call festive!
Didn't J.R.R. Tolkien himself say that it all began when he was grading exam papers at Oxford, and someone turned in a blank paper. Tolkien supposedly scrawled on it, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," and the story kind of spun out from there.
I loved the Father Christmas letters he wrote for his children. If they hadn't been published years later, no one else would have been able to enjoy his vision of the North Pole and the evolution of the characters who came to inhabit it.
(speakingof college, at the risk of sounding like an English lit. major, I would be remiss not to point out that it's "overwhelm.")
If you're in that big a hurry, why bother? And who wants to self-select for sober realists, pragmatists, etc. I'd prefer the "giddy happenstance" option and whatever leads from there. The timeframe could extend very happily to the rest of your life under the right circumstances.
Try this. (1 or 2 shots of espresso, 12 oz. heated eggnog, dash each of nutmeg & cinnamon.
Combine the espresso, nutmeg, and cinnamon in the bottom of a mug. Add the heated egg nog.) Maybe for you, more coffee, less eggnog. Use pasteurized eggnog that comes in a carton. Making it from scratch is a nasty process involving raw egg yolks that you don't want to know about.
Myself, I would skip the coffee, add one shot each of bourbon and rum to cold eggnog, let it sit in the fridge for awhile, and drink it with 1 ice cube.
Hurricanes, wildfires, shark attacks, dengue fever, FSU's sucky 6-2 season, Janet Reno - the place is a portal to hell, I tell ya. (And where was Dubya on Sept. 11? huh? huh?)
It's 'cause all those /. geeks went to Hope College, so everything they do is done hopefully, which when you think about it is better than hopelessly.
Of course Al Gore invented packet switching, but the Supreme Court unfortunately gave all the credit to Dubya after that whole chad thing down in Florida
I've learned more from Scott Adams' books, comic strips and LOTD forum than all the corporate seminars, hot-shot management guides and corporate CEO puff biographies I've attended or read all rolled into one. He can say more in a few short sentences or cells than most of these windbags say in a ponderous volume of prose. Who says comic books and graphic novels aren't a legitimate forum for art and ideas? Satire is wasted on some people.
Vote today on Dilbert's List of Top 822 Most Unhelpful Statements From the Help Desk
Rolling in the leaves and sin and ecstasy will take your mind off all your other problems, and the resulting emotional cross-currents will create new ones that will absorb much of your attention. Yessirree, a mad, passionate affair right about now is guaranteed to give you a new lease on life, take up all your spare time, fill your head with new ideas and add new complications to your existence. You'll still be dragging yourself to class all right, but only because you'll be so worn out from rockin' the night before. You'e a senior now, for crying out loud, you should be at the top of the social pecking order. Try to hook up with senior girls; the same ones who wouldn't spit on you when you were both freshmen may be a lot friendlier now that they've been upstaged by new waves of younger, cuter freshmen.
Stick your head outside the computer lab. English lit. and anthropology majors are a good bet. They spend their whole academic careers focusing on stuff like "Psychosexual imagery in the religious poems of Robert Herrick" and "mating rituals in Samoa." This may be your last sojourn among thousands of unattached young ladies in a carefree, party-centric college environment. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. (And if you knock one of them up, boy, will you ever have a motivation to get a job and start making money.)
The New York Times had this article A Crystal Beacon Atop a 20's Curiosity about a 42-story glass and steel structure -- inspired by the Crystal Palace built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London - that is going to be built atop Hearst Corporation's headquarters at 959 Eighth Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets in New York. The existing building, completed in 1928, was originally designed as the base of a taller structure.
Architectural critic Herbert Muschamp thinks it's a great project, something the New York skyline has been waiting for. "The possibilities for integrity are limited only by the mind's capacity to hold unity and complexity together. That is the capacity that distinguishes architecture from real estate," he says.
(Yes, I know that reading this entire article requires a dollar for a print copy or a free registration, but in my opinion it was well worth it.)