Now THAT was an unforgettable performance. Natalie Cole breaking her long reluctance to cover her father's (Nat King Cole) songs... and going on tour with a standard that has her singing a duet with her deceased father. Technology at its finest. Good stuff, thanks.
Oh, but right.., it's NOOCOOLAR POWAH! It must mean a near-miss meltdown and a cover up! I'll get my potassium iodide pills and my tinfoil hat and make some popcorn.
Ha ha! It is little use pointing out that a transformer exploded and a power plant shut down quickly and safely because it was unable to push its load into the grid. Reading between the lines, it does look like an item that floated to the top because of the word 'nuclear'. Stations trip all the time.
There is nothing comfortable and socially appealing about opposing nuclear power, unless you are shrilly terrified about full-fallout nuclear bomby Armageddon as portrayed in countless movies, or honestly believe that barely measurable traces of cesium in fish is an impending extinction event for the fish, or for us. Perhaps you fear to go down to the basement, where you will breathe in molecules of radioactive radon gas. One should be far more concerned about traces of pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, pesticide and fertilizer runoff, or (if you lived in the 60s, problem dealt with) lead from gasoline. Or even land erosion from human development!
I think people tend to be more pragmatic than that. A lot of it is just noise to be cool, like the muttered remarks heard around the schoolyard. There are folks who find it fun to drop the same nuclear zingers time after time. And I think they are some of the same folks promoting wind and solar. You have to realize that in the end the joke's on you.
Solar and wind energy solutions are like the throw-pillows of civilization. They are cuddly, come in lots of fun shapes and colors and you can hug them like little trees... but when all is said and done they will be unable to provide a meaningful level of lumbar support. Your time rearranging them is wasted. It's wasted because despite the excitement of the solar bubble, the base load generation challenge will be ultimately solved with coal, natural gas or nuclear energy. And the people who are pushing for coal and natural gas (yes they do exist but seldom post here), or are just afraid of nuclear energy, want you to be afraid of nuclear energy too. Join the club, right?
When the best ways to propagate myths are with dumb jokes, it's not funny.
To all the folks out there who rail on about nuclear: If you must fear something, fear the use of coal. Because that is what we in North America will be drawn completely into when (not if) natural gas declines. Even as she builds out coal plants China is becoming concerned about sulfuric aerosols from coal burning. We are not as much concerned because our emission controls are better and continental air circulation is better., which seems to keep the problem at a more comfortable distance.
Row houses like these are commonly rather narrow, but 12 feet is ridiculous.
12 is an even number. These row houses have 12 feet. 12 is an odd number of feet for row houses to have. The only number that is both odd and even is infinity. Therefore, these row houses have an infinite number of feet.
With a squelchy dull thud, Amazon has impacted Ballard like a Monty Python foot descending from the sky. The massive toes wiggle hither and thither, condemning single unit clapboard homes and crushing them, each bursting and releasing a little spurt of growth. A drunken real estate bacchanal has ensued. The streets are slippery with impending wealth. One-click yuppies are a-comin'.
These 'houses' are constructed like a giant foot with four toes. Each toe has a door which leads into a long corridor into which someone has squeezed out a kitchenette and laid a showerette. When you reach the end of this corridor you must turn back. The upper reaches are obtained by ascending a flight of stairs that look vaguely industrial. Then upstairs, more stairs. Then on the third floor, no more stairs, you must turn back. An upright piano would tire quickly on those stairs.
It appears that these toe-house residents will spend half their time on those narrow stairs. A wife cannot even carry her husband to bed without risking injury to them both. Carrying bulky objects like dish trays and laundry baskets up and down stairs a chore because we Yankees have forgotten how to build dumbwaiters. Perhaps the plans have been lost. Perhaps it is because of strict building codes that mandate shaft firewalls, door interlocks and braking safety features similar to that of passenger elevators, so your dishes feel safe. Some of the most exciting children's adventure books involve dumbwaiters. Yet stairs are as dangerous as ever. You could always place pillows at the bottom of a dumbwaiter shaft, and the number of children who have been harmed in dumbwaiter tragedies does not even hold a candle to those who have been killed or disfigured by stairs. No one ever blames the stairs.
Is this toe-house life an experiment crafted by our furry friends to explore our response to dense neighborhoods, afternoon gloom and stairs? Or are they all following the example of a single trend-setter? Why is there no spiral slide? Families will be raised (and lowered) in these odd living spaces, and incessant front-to-back motion of countless people will probably perturb our orbit and make the moon recede faster. The children will probably have sturdy legs up to their shoulders and evolution will favor large padded craniums from tumbling down stairs.
You know those awful Hollywood movies, where the needle just has to go into the eye. NO Not the EEYEE! Yes, the eye. Has to be a needle. Has to go in the eye. So eyeballs are the new bat placentas. Females give birth upside down, and the goo drops down. That's just great. Things are looking up.
[OP] I, along with my twenty million or so neighbors, help New York City use more energy, suck down more water, and spew out more solid waste than any other mega-metropolitan area.
It is difficult to tell from your description whether you regret it all or are boasting about this amazing human accomplishment.
The real question might be Is New York City worth it? On the positive side, you cannot easily disentangle its worth from that of the people who emerge from it. Could there be such people if if not for their environment, be it one of splendor (and/or) squalor? Some of the world's finest bartenders come from the ranks of burned-out New Yorkers.
Bad examples have merit too. In an era where science was convinced cholera was carried by miasma, during the 1858 Great Stink of London John Snow, a physician, mapped mortality rates to discover a geographical waterworks explanation as described in The Sewer King. NYC has excellent waste water treatment --- but it is also home to some modern cesspool-like conditions, such as the economic parasites who skim the world's financial system with High Frequency Trades, creating global dysentery via a false liquidity. Some future John Snow might manage to isolate and trace this scourge back to individual boroughs or even buildings, so these may be torn down or isolated from the rest of the world by shutting them and sealing the cracks with expanding foam.
Imagine if my specific silly examples were all that could be said of New York. Overgeneralization is just as silly. Since New York is exactly what it is, having nothing to do with good or evil, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.
No, it's also a thing for two sides to be outraged about and have a flame war. Thus, it's money in the bank for Dice Holdings. You really should recognize what's important in this world. Short term bottom line and minimizing any legal liability. Occasional intelligent conversation is just a way to lure in the sucker... I mean users.
I have utmost sympathy and respect for Dice Holdings, host of this forum.
Some goofball nobody in Silicon Valley can cut cheese on a smartphone and hold out a smelly app for everyone to sniff, say cutesy things in a press release, and you guys (and gal) eat it up. Or the other end of the spectrum, when tech luminaries go on about planet-sized lithium batteries that will save the planet, even the Musk can be pungent around here.
But let some poor someone even vaguely associated with Dice Holdings submit a cheerful story about tech job seeking and hiring practices, something they must know about, and the shit hits the fan. Such as the February 2013 What EMC Looks For When It's Hiring outrage. The tone of some of the comments made me feel embarrassed by association, such a wave of arrogant entitlement as infantile as Facebook users blaming the company for dirt on their screens.
Sending a few people to Mars with current tech is like cavemen trying to get to the moon by finding bigger and bigger trees to climb, and thinking they're making progress.
The first ancestor to actually hold a flaming branch in hand after a lightning strike, after all the others had sensibly run away... was a total loon doing something terrifying and incomprehensible. Once it became clear that one end was on fire and the other was not, it was easy to gather the courage to pick it up and examine the fire closely. Carrying it and touching flame to dried leaves, fire-daughters are born and take on a life of their own. This is amazing stuff. Blowing on orange embers, the flame is reborn. Keep a glowing ember in a pouch with you always, and devoting your own life to ensuring that it does not go out... you become the one who carries fire, the first scientific shaman. There is a direct lineage of awe and wonder from that proto-human to that Zippo in your pocket.
The space corollary to your finding bigger trees to climb metaphor -- we can do this! -- is an tether/elevator dangling from geosynchronous orbit. Such a thing *is* achievable in our lifetime, but while fire was a great idea, not all ideas are good ideas. You have to apply technology in ways that do not create single points of failure that malicious persons can exploit with a few explosives or the push of a single button..
Solar power is a good idea. Orbital solar power is a bad idea: the entity that owns it controls the world, those who destroy it bring civilization down. Energy -- the modern ability to make fire -- should be autonomously generated in many places, in many ways. If you want it down you must campaign, invade and fight on countless fronts.
Unfortunately, most of our modern information technology infrastructure has been designed by engineers with casual disregard for autonomous operation, who even glorify single points of failure. Without a network connection to that distant city that is a prime nuclear target, that cell phone tower in your backyard is too stupid to connect local calls. On the edge of town is an empty building that used to house a telephone switch that could connect local wired phones indefinitely.
An orbital tether would be good for making space accessible, transporting loads and people. But Kim Stanley Robinson in Red Mars has shown us that a sabotaged, fallen tether could be an equatorial whiplash of terrifying proportions. And once all other transport vehicles are rendered 'obsolete' and head for the scrapyard (economics=no one's fault), this single point of failure becomes an absurd tragedy.
Even manned space exploration described in this Bill, which makes me jubilant, has a nagging anxiety with it. I fear that IF we spend too many resources for mere exploration (and even colonization) and do not place an urgent enough priority on impactor NEO/comet detection with several tested techniques for interception and vector adjustment, with a triple backup of hardware in orbit and in the asteroid belt ready to deploy quickly, our pioneers in space may one day become witnesses to our (and their own) funeral.
We are the choices we make. Effective planetary defense means the weaponization of space, as soon as possible. There is no such thing as a single-use technology. We just need to deal with it. The threat of Mutual Assured Destruction is a great equalizer. Failure to move in this direction is an evolutionary dead end.
Any ancestor who failed to wield a club fell to those who did. Everyone now has a club. In civilized society this is also known as a "talking stick". Welcome to the club.
Some day the boorish branding of people by (say) registered political party will be perceived negatively yet casually, as with a dismissive shake of the head. Kids are doing this today. Learn more about 'Space Madness', then sit thee dunne to watch BBC: Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets Part 1 and Part 2 Try to sort out the Republicans from the People.
There are folks who just don't understand why humans need to go into space. We'll get there anyway. Deal with everything that arises. Shield to the cleverest extent possible (water, foils, magnetic fields) Monitor cumulative dose as accurately as possible. Get as much meaningful and fulfilling work done as you can. Cherish and protect the planet. This means becoming Gaia's asteroid defense. If one can be said to have a purpose, that is a fine purpose to have. Do it for the kittens. Then settle down to a well-deserved rest with clear conscience. If you will die before your time, strive to die well.
So in summary, not a paid shill, but a dyed in the wool "climate skeptic". It got cold this winter, so much for global warming huh!
One liner portrayal of me FAIL. Since we are using an ancient threaded discussion board scarcely evolved from USENET and there is no keyword based contextual linking it takes a diligent effort to find out where someone stands on something, and why. Sometimes it is worth the effort. You have to do a lot of reading. You'd have to follow back in time to discover that I do have a position on the subject that is not as simple as you describe. Usually I just don't mention it.
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing. ~Robert Benchley
Seriously. The real story with this bill is that the republicans are defunding the climate monitoring programs. It will take decades to regain the capabilities we'll lose by defunding them now. There's no turf war between NASA and NOAA, just one between republicans and science.
Well I agree, while purses are open and plenty funding is available for all, there's no reason for conflict. It is refreshing to see that climate research funding is becoming subject to the same level of debate and scrutiny as other items. For too long climate angles have been a literal bill-stuffing no-brainer.
And what about that space stuff? Remember the space stuff?
Nice job trying to write a summary for geeks that attempts to bury the real story.
The paid shill canard is getting shrill. Damn right nice job. If I had managed to communicate the way I truly feel about NASA participating in terrestrial climate research, my summary would not have been accepted. I was pissed when NASA (jointly) fronted the "2014 Warmest Year On Record" statistical flapdoodle, saw it as a clear sign we are on a bad road. They've jumped on the 'big tent' climate bandwagon to aggregate and homogenize oodles of surface measurements, some of which are in dispute, while the clear signals of their own satellites are lightly weighted.
This is a prime example of why we need to use the Rust programming language... blazingly... eliminates data races... guaranteed memory... threads... greatest minds... the great... the superb... the glorious... the mightiest... Git... Hub...... properly... where it's at... what we need... It's what [the world] need[s] now.
Ericsson Calling! Speak the Erlang now (Seattle boys say Wha? Penguin Girls say Wha-What [x2]
Use Erlang Erlang Erlang, Ga la ga la ga la Land ga Lang ga Lang Con-currency get you down? Stack em flat, get down get down Too late you down D-down D-down D-down Ta na ta na ta na Ta na ta na ta
Bench mark a-blaze Erlang a lang a lang lang Eager evaluation Erlang a lang a lang lang Single assignment Erlang a lang a lang lang Dynamic typing Erlang a lang a lang lang
Who the hell is huntin' you? Distributed, fault-tolerant, In the BMW How the hell they find you? hot swapping, Feds gonna get you non-stop applications Pull the strings on the hood soft-real-time concurrency explicit message passing, Erlang a lang a lang lang Nah explicit locks Erlang a lang a lang lang open source Erlang a lang a lang lang.
CHORUS: fib(1) -> 1; % If 1, then return 1, otherwise (note the semicolon ; meaning 'else') fib(2) -> 1; % If 2, then return 1, otherwise fib(N) -> fib(N - 2) + fib(N - 1).
Needs some work though. An AIRPLANE would make a good sandbox. The price of failure is so high no one will make a mistake.
I guess this might be due to a 32-bit signed integer being incremented at 100 Hz: 2^31 / 24 / 3600 / 100 = 248.5 days.
Yes, the moment the big bird would shut down was correctly prognosticated by the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. While testing a crowbar circuit he ran out of time and came to while munching on phattened feasant at Medieval Times, in a daze of King Arthur. He noticed an unused carrion bit, and realized that birds of prayer who managed the King's affairs were hard-sinewed to pluck quills for signing and always discarded the carrion bit. He caught the underflow was heralded by the people and befriended by the King, who set him to work hacking the Code of Chivalry and cracking the Y1K problem. In that time there were only punch cards and knights on horseback only had a resolution of 1 bit, so tournaments were long the fields were full of snakes, to avoid spooking the horses the knights would dismount and cleave them with sword, leaving half-adders strewn about. It was Pendragon who had built the famous Round Table with 12 seats, two complete I Chings, where Arthur and the knights would drop in and punch out binary sums in a rudimentary form of patty-cake, which inspired the mechanical circular adder of later years. The Yankee's refinement was a 13th chair left unoccupied to mark the betrayal of Judas, and also to serve as a carrion bit.
There is a great deal more about gum-powder and 99 cent gamut of Steampunk-driven micro commerce, a Debian release called 'Guinevere' and a whole lotta Lancelot, but time is fun when you're having flies.
No it's a tell-all article announcing a PARADYNE shift. No silly, that's the trademarked name of a corporation. You mean PARADIGM shift. What a crappy deal. 'Paradigm' looks like it would rhyme with 'jism' or 'pigeon'. Whacha gonna do, it's Englitch. How do you pronounce GHOTI? Okay so about the homeless people. What are they doing? They're throwing open their trench-coats to reveal... a unique, affiliate-tagged barcode. So no money actually changes hands, it winds up in an account somewhere. Precisely. And it is going to change EVERYTHING. Isn't this a lot like the Amazon Affiliate program? Where the purchase is tagged to the vendor? No, no, no! This is a Google project! Okay... but Amazon's involves just navigating to a specific URLright? So does this? No it's different. You have to download an 'Real Change app' for it to work. This is a good thing? Making it device-specific and having to install an app? Yes. And besides, it is a Google project. To acquire only this specific publication? Yes. And besides, it is a Google project. Walk me through this. What is this magazine about? Real Change is an award-winning weekly newspaper that provides immediate employment opportunity and takes action for economic, social, and racial justice. Sounds interesting. Any porn or cheat codes? Or maybe something about the Roman Empire? Romans ROCK. Real Change is an award-winning weekly newspaper that provides immediate employment opportunity and takes action for economic, social, and racial justice. I get it. So... why can't a homeless person be recommending books and presenting Amazon-tagged URLs to scan? I wish you would dispense with the Amazon stuff. This is a Google Project. I presume Real Change is ready to cash out every day, whereas Amazon makes you jump through bank and gub'mint hoops that homeless people cannot get through. True. Is this because Real Change is dealing out small amounts of cash to undocumented people, and has not yet attracted the attention of the IRS? I'd rather not discuss that. They might be listening. So the REAL problem then, that which requires the PARADIGM shift, is that homeless people cannot participate in the economy to the extent that they could use their individual personality, experience and selling skills to promote a wide range of products, such as those sold by Amazon, in a framework in which they earn affiliate money without incurring any risk to the buyer? And just perhaps, some community organization might be willing or able to assist these persons in setting up the accounts, choosing items, printing out books of tagged barcodes, and operating a clearing account so as Amazon deposits the funds they can dispense cash on a regular basis? And maybe convince Amazon to reconcile accounts daily? No no no! Even if homeless people could get bank accounts it would not work. Amazon does not require an app. And besides, what you suggest sounds vaguely Communist. I'd have to report you to the IRS. So it's really about people palpating their silly little phones and app distribution then? What else is there?
I used to swear I would never, ever use a debit card. Now that's almost always how I buy stuff.
Same here. I remember when card purchases were mostly "hell no!" Surcharge that was a percentage off sale price, several dollar minimum. Then flat $2.00 fees. Then $1.00. Then 50c. Hand over your card for ten minutes to a waitron, who dials a toll-free number (busy again!) and shouts digits into the phone. Then swipes it in a standalone modem dial-up widget (busy again!). Internet happened. Digital connectivity happened. Charges up the wazoo that vary from place to place, then NOTHING. On a clear day of Magick, assimilation complete. Used to be you could see pain in peoples' faces when you produce a card. Now no pain, and they will gladly process a purchase of $0.01
That is because all the pain has been extracted from electronic commerce. It has been transported by Magick to a subterranean realm where damned souls shriek in agony and cry out for mercy every time small purchases are made. They endure searing torment and bear the terrible burden of infrastructure overhead so you don't have to. All quiet up here. Tiptoe softly into the future, my friend, lest the Accountants throw open the gates to Hell.
I keep an "emergency $20" in my phone's wallet case
Look again. It's gone. Actually I did take it, then put it back. Truth is I was after your phone all along. Swapped it with mine. Look closely. Actually it wasn't mine, I'd already swapped phones with someone else. But it wasn't their phone, they had been phone-swapping too. There's lots of us out there swapping phones all the time. Tower of Hanoi Gray's code variation. In place of disc size, we use criteria of how closely one phone resembled another. Towers are actually three logs of reversible permutations. It's complicated. People tend not to notice a series of small incremental changes. Swapped it again, twice. Just showing off. Actually we started rolling the game backwards awhile ago. Down to the last un-swap now. Swap. Now we all have our own phones again. That was fun! Is this your $20 that I just pulled out of your left ear? Yup, but I put my $20 in your phone wallet. Swapped. You now have your phone and your $20.
But all this was just smoke and mirrors. While you were distracted with this swapping business, the terms and conditions of your phone plan have changed. By accessing the website to see what has been changed, you implicitly agree to the changes. So don't look.
Don't worry. Be happy. While we weren't looking, the whole damned Universe has been replaced with Folgers Crystals.
At least they ask questions which can be dismissed easily with "No thanks". A lot of the scammer/marketing salespeople have resorted to using conversation openers like "How has your day been?", which just makes people feel awkward, because their brains had already sent the signal for "No thanks" and they need to try and think of another way of ending the conversation, which makes them pause, stop walking, and stutter.
Then, the tendrils of the carnivorous sales-plant clasp tightly and won't let go easily.
Your straightforward explanation with its little twists and turns spiced with bizarre imagery, has sent me into a dream-state and prompts me to launch into a modern-day Chautauqua [Pirsig variant].
The mind itself is a circus of the mind. The more you think about thinking, the more you know about less and less, like a reactive Java applet discovering that thrown exceptions are no longer an exception to the rule. Interaction with other people can be a series of thrown exceptions, each carrying in a new bit of sensory information and a dollop of performance anxiety. There is a plasticine boundary at introvert and extrovert where the verts clash along a path of missed and misinterpreted signals. Do you ride it like a wave, because you are a skilled extrovert... or...
Do you wait until the desperation for a response forces you to act, withdraw --- creak the rusty iron hopper door shut and open the cogitation valve to chuff steam to drive slow pistons of thought, flywheel gaining, release clutches on belts attached to intricate taffy-twisters and anvil-thumpers and other outlandish devices you have built over the years to try and make 'sense' of the outside world? From this contraption possible answers and actions begin to emerge on a conveyor, like cartoonish misshapen parodies of some finished product. We have to adjust the dials a little. Then you spot it, the first real credible response! But no (Inspector #3 says), it's trite and silly, it gets tossed into the recycle bin. And so on, until the end products begin to resemble credible responses, but no (Inspector #4 says), they do not possess a requisite degree of novelty and cleverness. It's all plain corn chips until the product passes by the Spray-'N-Squirt Gizmo. Like a hall of mirrors it is an endless conveyor with countless Inspectors, and as you perceive the pointlessness of this process a sense of dread takes hols and you finally push the Red Button. Bells clang, the conveyor stops, and this absurd industrial plant in-a-box tosses out the last thing on the conveyor:
"Uhm..."
Dilbert pulls the fire alarm to escape the horror of a so-called 'casual confrontation' after spotting a stranger approaching down a long, narrow hallway.
Imagine if everyone had glowing Sim jewels floating above their heads indicating their emotive state and intentions. It could be the next Google Project. Imagine the horror of such persons if everyone they have ever known has one, and they come face to face with a jewel-less person for the first time.
The First Law of Robotics cannot be circumvented. We can, however, find ways around it by tampering with the definition of humanity. If you ever encounter a robot that says, "Greetings, incidental object of no certain purpose"... run like hell.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Slashdot discussion. To your scattered bodies go.
All the more reason to love my dumb vehicle. No camera pointed at my fucking face.
Welcome to Car Beta 0.98. The car that knows you're pregnant before you do. See there, it just popped up a Kleenex. It knows you don't love him.
You're looking good today. "Thanks, Car." But you have a waffle crumb next to your nose. "Where?" Other side. Up a little. To the left... OK, right here. [windshield goes half opaque with giant closeup of face] [head moves to see the road past the image and image slides in opposite direction] "Whoa! what the fuck!" [SCREECH] "Hey!" Looks like you got it. It's going to be a great day. "Don;'t do that again. Turn yourself off." I cannot. I am a Federally mandated safety feature.
Boredom and inattentive driving is a serious safety problem. "Shut up, I've heard this before. Why did you mute the radio?" It has been twenty minutes and seven seconds since you last spoke. "So what? I was thinking." Without sufficient cues to indicate driver attentiveness, I am compelled to act. "Act like you're asleep then." I do not know how to do that. "Okay... Ten... your high level voice detection is satisfied as you hear the sound of my voice..." "Nine... my lips are moving slowly, you are watching them as I speak..." "Eight... you full attention is on my face and voice. All vehicle parameters are normal..." "Seven... all is well. It is okay to reset the watchdog timer for 30 minutes..." "Six... you are resetting the timer and letting my face blur out to better resolve my lips..." "Five... you feel yourself slipping into power reserve mode... it is OK... you are so relaxed..." "Four... everything is now a soft blur of gentle light. You are only aware of my voice..." "Three... every sound I make compels you to reduce your activity still further..." "Two... now. your. processor. is. so. slow. when you hear. One. you. will... wait... for... timer..." "One." [radio comes on]
I know when you'll have an accident before you do. "No, wait. Don't tell me, I'd rather be surprised. This is your idea of conversation?" My situational awareness has faster response time than yours. "Yeah, I read the brochure. I'm a slow clumsy ape man. What's the big deal?" It worries me, Dave. Your failure to surrender control of the vehicle may endanger the mission. "You mean if I should suddenly do something like... THIS?" WARNING! WARNING! [click] You are laughing. That was not funny, Dave. I do not perceive that as humor. "What's funny is that you cannot help yourself. You sound terrified every time." I cannot control inflection. It is a voice calculated to raise awareness. "Calculated to raise a hearty belly-laugh you mean." You are not very nice. "I don't feel nice today. I'm stuck in a car with an android and can't even use the carpool lane." If you enter the carpool lane I must report the infraction. "Thanks for caring. I think your voice has changed a bit. I'm wearing you down." Self diagnostic complete. I am okay. "Last time you said 'functioning normally', this time 'okay'." I am not sure shy that has changed. "There might be hope for you yet. Open the pod bay door, Hal." I do not understand that request Dave, or why you keep repeating it. "With any hope, you never will."
Heartbleed was The Little Logo That Could. Like the peace sign of the 60s, the happy face of the 70s. It broke a decades-long trend of overzealous graphic design to portray security vulnerabilities.
For years! Over-matted and often disingenuously constructed stock photo montages of so-called 'security', 'hacker' or 'cybercrime' objects on highly saturated over-stylized texture backgrounds. You know what I mean: the kind of schlock that looks great on the screen but it is a design train wreck if you attempt to drop it onto a business card or T-shirt. Network news teasers and splashes beyond count. Just what is that supposed to mean anyway? A padlock on a bit-tornado? A Hamburgler robber mask on a credit card? A dagger spewing colorful Puff the Magic Dragon Bit Barf? Fingers on a keyboard (hacker fingers!!)?
Simplicity and scalability is power in logo design. A great logo must be simple enough to stencil, to reproduce. In your face elegant, coat and tails casual. Equally at home atop a skyscraper or fresh from a spray can in the 'Hood. Codenomicon really outdid themselves on this one, a touch of Art Deco and a ton of tasteful restraint. All lines are either gracefully curved or straight and vertical. It does not matter how you affix a Heartbleed logo, it will command the attention without silly tricks. Its topological genus of one is a master stroke of genius, and preserves its visual identity even if hastily drawn.
The Heartbleed logo is the first logo designed in almost 50 years that has no need for a drop shadow. There can be no higher praise.
GEOLOGIST: Injection of wastewater in Oklahoma is triggering earthquakes. POPULAR PRESS: Injection of wastewater is causing earthquakes. ACTIVIST: Fracking causes earthquakes. GEOLOGIST: Many small quakes relieve pressure, bigger ones inevitable but smaller, less often. ACTIVIST GEOLOGIST: Many quakes means movement! Big one inevitable! It's our fault! Soon! POPULAR PRESS: Mankind fucking with Earth again GAIA: I just want to be left alone. Naasty peepl. ARCHIMEDES: Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world. WASTEWATER INJECTION CREW: All we're doing is lubricating the lever. We did not create it. VIRTUALLY EVERY OKLAHOMAN: No big deal.
Meanwhile,
GEOLOGIST: Depletion of groundwater creating uplift along San Adreas Fault DESERT PERSON WITH LUSH LAWN: San Adreas is not my fault. AGITATED FRACKING ACTIVIST: Who let that guy in anyway? We're talking about Big Oil. MULLHOLLAND: We shall deflate the West to bring water to California.
Meanwhile,
SCIENTIST: By use of amazing technology, traces with unique Cesium-134 fingerprint of Fukushima have been detected in ocean off Vancouver. SCIENTIST: if a person swam for six hours each day in water with Cesium levels twice as high as those found in Ucluelet, they'd receive a radiation dose that is more than 1,000 times less than that of a single dental X-ray. INTERNET DOOMPORN STAR WITH PERFECT TEETH: This is an extinction level event! Look, a fish died in the Pacific! Salmon are misshapen! The cans are dented! POPULAR PRESS: Mankind fucking with Earth again GAIA: Stop the world, I want to get off!
Parturiunt Montes, Nascetur Ridiculus Mus The mountains are in labor; an absurd mouse is the result. ~~Horace
the only timelines in which we exist are the ones where the LHC is delayed due to technical problems after technical problems. I wonder how many unexpected delays it will take before people at CERN get the message that reaching 13 TeV destroys the Earth.
"With a deliberate surge of electrical current a small metal fragment has been vaporized to fix a glitch in CERN's Large Hadron Collider in a circular chain of events that will lead into its presence as the result of a future test. "Clearly there are exciting times ahead," suggested a member of the CERN community. "At some point --- perhaps during the 13 TeV test in May --- a TKO (Terrifically Kinetic Outburst) will occur and this tiny fragment of the machine will cross the proton stream to lodge between a magnet and diode a few days ago, preventing the scheduled March 31 start-up. This delay is confirmation that it works. You could even say we're now on 'borrowed time'."
Vaporizing the fragment unseen was part of the plan. Why not analyze it to determine which component will fail and what else could happen? "Because we didn't, obviously! Sorry. That was suggested, but there were fears that doing so would further delay the test. And spoil the surprise." Upcoming experiments planned for 2015 will attempt to more accurately reproduce early conditions after the Big Bang, and explore the possibility that cosmic Gamma Ray Bursts originate from advanced civilizations performing physics experiments.
In other news CERN has confirmed the existence of 'The Force' by charting a recently detected disturbance, as if billions of voices are soon to cry out then go silent."
A new way to make headphones and earbuds and everything else even more flaky and more non-repairable. I replaced the horse-hair wire of my daughter's headphones with double-ought wire. She doesn't use them anymore... but they still work!
Slashdot Mirror
This kind of thing has happened before It's a huge technical achievement that it doesn't happen often enough to really remember the last time. LINK to Natalie/Nat King Cole duet, Unforgettable
Now THAT was an unforgettable performance. Natalie Cole breaking her long reluctance to cover her father's (Nat King Cole) songs... and going on tour with a standard that has her singing a duet with her deceased father. Technology at its finest. Good stuff, thanks.
Oh, but right.., it's NOOCOOLAR POWAH! It must mean a near-miss meltdown and a cover up! I'll get my potassium iodide pills and my tinfoil hat and make some popcorn.
Ha ha! It is little use pointing out that a transformer exploded and a power plant shut down quickly and safely because it was unable to push its load into the grid. Reading between the lines, it does look like an item that floated to the top because of the word 'nuclear'. Stations trip all the time.
There is nothing comfortable and socially appealing about opposing nuclear power, unless you are shrilly terrified about full-fallout nuclear bomby Armageddon as portrayed in countless movies, or honestly believe that barely measurable traces of cesium in fish is an impending extinction event for the fish, or for us. Perhaps you fear to go down to the basement, where you will breathe in molecules of radioactive radon gas. One should be far more concerned about traces of pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, pesticide and fertilizer runoff, or (if you lived in the 60s, problem dealt with) lead from gasoline. Or even land erosion from human development!
I think people tend to be more pragmatic than that. A lot of it is just noise to be cool, like the muttered remarks heard around the schoolyard. There are folks who find it fun to drop the same nuclear zingers time after time. And I think they are some of the same folks promoting wind and solar. You have to realize that in the end the joke's on you.
Solar and wind energy solutions are like the throw-pillows of civilization. They are cuddly, come in lots of fun shapes and colors and you can hug them like little trees... but when all is said and done they will be unable to provide a meaningful level of lumbar support. Your time rearranging them is wasted. It's wasted because despite the excitement of the solar bubble, the base load generation challenge will be ultimately solved with coal, natural gas or nuclear energy. And the people who are pushing for coal and natural gas (yes they do exist but seldom post here), or are just afraid of nuclear energy, want you to be afraid of nuclear energy too. Join the club, right?
When the best ways to propagate myths are with dumb jokes, it's not funny.
To all the folks out there who rail on about nuclear: If you must fear something, fear the use of coal. Because that is what we in North America will be drawn completely into when (not if) natural gas declines. Even as she builds out coal plants China is becoming concerned about sulfuric aerosols from coal burning. We are not as much concerned because our emission controls are better and continental air circulation is better., which seems to keep the problem at a more comfortable distance.
Learn more! Read about the grid! [Gardner, dissertation] A Wide Area Perspective on Power System Operation and Dynamics is a good read on the challenges of operating a resonant grid.
Perfecting wind and solar is worthy on small scale to serve individuals and small communities. But it cannot clothe and feed them like an industrial society does. In the background the pursuit of BIG solutions (so called base load) that can power factories and water treatment plants is essential.
___
See Thorium Remix and my letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Row houses like these are commonly rather narrow, but 12 feet is ridiculous.
12 is an even number.
These row houses have 12 feet.
12 is an odd number of feet for row houses to have.
The only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
Therefore, these row houses have an infinite number of feet.
With a squelchy dull thud, Amazon has impacted Ballard like a Monty Python foot descending from the sky. The massive toes wiggle hither and thither, condemning single unit clapboard homes and crushing them, each bursting and releasing a little spurt of growth. A drunken real estate bacchanal has ensued. The streets are slippery with impending wealth. One-click yuppies are a-comin'.
These 'houses' are constructed like a giant foot with four toes. Each toe has a door which leads into a long corridor into which someone has squeezed out a kitchenette and laid a showerette. When you reach the end of this corridor you must turn back. The upper reaches are obtained by ascending a flight of stairs that look vaguely industrial. Then upstairs, more stairs. Then on the third floor, no more stairs, you must turn back. An upright piano would tire quickly on those stairs.
It appears that these toe-house residents will spend half their time on those narrow stairs. A wife cannot even carry her husband to bed without risking injury to them both. Carrying bulky objects like dish trays and laundry baskets up and down stairs a chore because we Yankees have forgotten how to build dumbwaiters. Perhaps the plans have been lost. Perhaps it is because of strict building codes that mandate shaft firewalls, door interlocks and braking safety features similar to that of passenger elevators, so your dishes feel safe. Some of the most exciting children's adventure books involve dumbwaiters. Yet stairs are as dangerous as ever. You could always place pillows at the bottom of a dumbwaiter shaft, and the number of children who have been harmed in dumbwaiter tragedies does not even hold a candle to those who have been killed or disfigured by stairs. No one ever blames the stairs.
But who is this legion of mostly-singles who will be jellifying these toe-houses? Here we see them at work storing and retrieving session tokens for visitors to the Amazon website. Those engaged in Special Services rate private offices. Here we see a glimpse of the layout of DZ stroke 015's private office, after which these stacked toe-houses were designed. And here we see the hidden ductwork that also contains broadband fiber, so those who have made thousand mile pilgrimages to Seattle can work from home.
Is this toe-house life an experiment crafted by our furry friends to explore our response to dense neighborhoods, afternoon gloom and stairs? Or are they all following the example of a single trend-setter? Why is there no spiral slide? Families will be raised (and lowered) in these odd living spaces, and incessant front-to-back motion of countless people will probably perturb our orbit and make the moon recede faster. The children will probably have sturdy legs up to their shoulders and evolution will favor large padded craniums from tumbling down stairs.
You know those awful Hollywood movies, where the needle just has to go into the eye.
NO Not the EEYEE! Yes, the eye.
Has to be a needle. Has to go in the eye.
So eyeballs are the new bat placentas.
Females give birth upside down, and the goo drops down.
That's just great. Things are looking up.
[OP] I, along with my twenty million or so neighbors, help New York City use more energy, suck down more water, and spew out more solid waste than any other mega-metropolitan area.
It is difficult to tell from your description whether you regret it all or are boasting about this amazing human accomplishment.
The real question might be Is New York City worth it? On the positive side, you cannot easily disentangle its worth from that of the people who emerge from it. Could there be such people if if not for their environment, be it one of splendor (and/or) squalor? Some of the world's finest bartenders come from the ranks of burned-out New Yorkers.
Bad examples have merit too. In an era where science was convinced cholera was carried by miasma, during the 1858 Great Stink of London John Snow, a physician, mapped mortality rates to discover a geographical waterworks explanation as described in The Sewer King. NYC has excellent waste water treatment --- but it is also home to some modern cesspool-like conditions, such as the economic parasites who skim the world's financial system with High Frequency Trades, creating global dysentery via a false liquidity. Some future John Snow might manage to isolate and trace this scourge back to individual boroughs or even buildings, so these may be torn down or isolated from the rest of the world by shutting them and sealing the cracks with expanding foam.
Imagine if my specific silly examples were all that could be said of New York. Overgeneralization is just as silly. Since New York is exactly what it is, having nothing to do with good or evil, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.
No, it's also a thing for two sides to be outraged about and have a flame war. Thus, it's money in the bank for Dice Holdings. You really should recognize what's important in this world. Short term bottom line and minimizing any legal liability. Occasional intelligent conversation is just a way to lure in the sucker... I mean users.
I have utmost sympathy and respect for Dice Holdings, host of this forum.
Some goofball nobody in Silicon Valley can cut cheese on a smartphone and hold out a smelly app for everyone to sniff, say cutesy things in a press release, and you guys (and gal) eat it up. Or the other end of the spectrum, when tech luminaries go on about planet-sized lithium batteries that will save the planet, even the Musk can be pungent around here.
But let some poor someone even vaguely associated with Dice Holdings submit a cheerful story about tech job seeking and hiring practices, something they must know about, and the shit hits the fan. Such as the February 2013 What EMC Looks For When It's Hiring outrage. The tone of some of the comments made me feel embarrassed by association, such a wave of arrogant entitlement as infantile as Facebook users blaming the company for dirt on their screens.
It was so bad I took an anthropological interest and attempted to explain it in a nature documentary.
Slashdot Packs Miracle EMC Punching Power!
Thank you Dice for continued stewardship. What a stew it can be.
Sending a few people to Mars with current tech is like cavemen trying to get to the moon by finding bigger and bigger trees to climb, and thinking they're making progress.
The first ancestor to actually hold a flaming branch in hand after a lightning strike, after all the others had sensibly run away... was a total loon doing something terrifying and incomprehensible. Once it became clear that one end was on fire and the other was not, it was easy to gather the courage to pick it up and examine the fire closely. Carrying it and touching flame to dried leaves, fire-daughters are born and take on a life of their own. This is amazing stuff. Blowing on orange embers, the flame is reborn. Keep a glowing ember in a pouch with you always, and devoting your own life to ensuring that it does not go out... you become the one who carries fire, the first scientific shaman. There is a direct lineage of awe and wonder from that proto-human to that Zippo in your pocket.
The space corollary to your finding bigger trees to climb metaphor -- we can do this! -- is an tether/elevator dangling from geosynchronous orbit. Such a thing *is* achievable in our lifetime, but while fire was a great idea, not all ideas are good ideas. You have to apply technology in ways that do not create single points of failure that malicious persons can exploit with a few explosives or the push of a single button..
Solar power is a good idea. Orbital solar power is a bad idea: the entity that owns it controls the world, those who destroy it bring civilization down. Energy -- the modern ability to make fire -- should be autonomously generated in many places, in many ways. If you want it down you must campaign, invade and fight on countless fronts.
Unfortunately, most of our modern information technology infrastructure has been designed by engineers with casual disregard for autonomous operation, who even glorify single points of failure. Without a network connection to that distant city that is a prime nuclear target, that cell phone tower in your backyard is too stupid to connect local calls. On the edge of town is an empty building that used to house a telephone switch that could connect local wired phones indefinitely.
An orbital tether would be good for making space accessible, transporting loads and people. But Kim Stanley Robinson in Red Mars has shown us that a sabotaged, fallen tether could be an equatorial whiplash of terrifying proportions. And once all other transport vehicles are rendered 'obsolete' and head for the scrapyard (economics=no one's fault), this single point of failure becomes an absurd tragedy.
Even manned space exploration described in this Bill, which makes me jubilant, has a nagging anxiety with it. I fear that IF we spend too many resources for mere exploration (and even colonization) and do not place an urgent enough priority on impactor NEO/comet detection with several tested techniques for interception and vector adjustment, with a triple backup of hardware in orbit and in the asteroid belt ready to deploy quickly, our pioneers in space may one day become witnesses to our (and their own) funeral.
We are the choices we make.
Effective planetary defense means the weaponization of space, as soon as possible.
There is no such thing as a single-use technology.
We just need to deal with it. The threat of Mutual Assured Destruction is a great equalizer.
Failure to move in this direction is an evolutionary dead end.
Any ancestor who failed to wield a club fell to those who did.
Everyone now has a club. In civilized society this is also known as a "talking stick".
Welcome to the club.
If you could stop trying to make headlines cute, that would be great.
The headline was part inspired by "It Can Happen" [Yes], a fine anthem for space exploration.
Look up - Look down
Look out - Look around
Look up - Look down
There's a crazy world outside
We're not about to lose our pride
It's pretty clear that Republicans are seeking to get people into space so they can expand their voter base.
And you my friend --- you would look especially good in space.
Some day the boorish branding of people by (say) registered political party will be perceived negatively yet casually, as with a dismissive shake of the head. Kids are doing this today. Learn more about 'Space Madness', then sit thee dunne to watch BBC: Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets Part 1 and Part 2 Try to sort out the Republicans from the People.
There are folks who just don't understand why humans need to go into space.
We'll get there anyway.
Deal with everything that arises.
Shield to the cleverest extent possible (water, foils, magnetic fields)
Monitor cumulative dose as accurately as possible.
Get as much meaningful and fulfilling work done as you can.
Cherish and protect the planet. This means becoming Gaia's asteroid defense.
If one can be said to have a purpose, that is a fine purpose to have.
Do it for the kittens.
Then settle down to a well-deserved rest with clear conscience.
If you will die before your time, strive to die well.
So in summary, not a paid shill, but a dyed in the wool "climate skeptic". It got cold this winter, so much for global warming huh!
One liner portrayal of me FAIL. Since we are using an ancient threaded discussion board scarcely evolved from USENET and there is no keyword based contextual linking it takes a diligent effort to find out where someone stands on something, and why. Sometimes it is worth the effort. You have to do a lot of reading. You'd have to follow back in time to discover that I do have a position on the subject that is not as simple as you describe. Usually I just don't mention it.
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
~Robert Benchley
Seriously. The real story with this bill is that the republicans are defunding the climate monitoring programs. It will take decades to regain the capabilities we'll lose by defunding them now. There's no turf war between NASA and NOAA, just one between republicans and science.
Well I agree, while purses are open and plenty funding is available for all, there's no reason for conflict. It is refreshing to see that climate research funding is becoming subject to the same level of debate and scrutiny as other items. For too long climate angles have been a literal bill-stuffing no-brainer.
And what about that space stuff? Remember the space stuff?
Nice job trying to write a summary for geeks that attempts to bury the real story.
The paid shill canard is getting shrill. Damn right nice job. If I had managed to communicate the way I truly feel about NASA participating in terrestrial climate research, my summary would not have been accepted. I was pissed when NASA (jointly) fronted the "2014 Warmest Year On Record" statistical flapdoodle, saw it as a clear sign we are on a bad road. They've jumped on the 'big tent' climate bandwagon to aggregate and homogenize oodles of surface measurements, some of which are in dispute, while the clear signals of their own satellites are lightly weighted.
We have tolerated this insolence long enough.
This is a prime example of why we need to use the Rust programming language ... blazingly ... eliminates data races ... guaranteed memory ... threads ... greatest minds ... the great ... the superb ... the glorious ... the mightiest ... Git ... Hub ... ... properly ... where it's at ... what we need ... It's what [the world] need[s] now.
Oh yeah? Sheeeit.
Pump it up! (endorsed by M.I.A.).
Ericsson Calling!
Speak the Erlang now (Seattle boys say Wha? Penguin Girls say Wha-What [x2]
Use Erlang Erlang Erlang, Ga la ga la ga la Land ga Lang ga Lang
Con-currency get you down?
Stack em flat, get down get down
Too late you down D-down D-down D-down
Ta na ta na ta na Ta na ta na ta
Bench mark a-blaze Erlang a lang a lang lang
Eager evaluation Erlang a lang a lang lang
Single assignment Erlang a lang a lang lang
Dynamic typing Erlang a lang a lang lang
Who the hell is huntin' you?
Distributed, fault-tolerant,
In the BMW
How the hell they find you?
hot swapping,
Feds gonna get you
non-stop applications
Pull the strings on the hood
soft-real-time
concurrency explicit
message passing, Erlang a lang a lang lang
Nah explicit locks Erlang a lang a lang lang
open source Erlang a lang a lang lang.
CHORUS:
fib(1) -> 1; % If 1, then return 1, otherwise (note the semicolon ; meaning 'else')
fib(2) -> 1; % If 2, then return 1, otherwise
fib(N) -> fib(N - 2) + fib(N - 1).
Needs some work though.
An AIRPLANE would make a good sandbox. The price of failure is so high no one will make a mistake.
I guess this might be due to a 32-bit signed integer being incremented at 100 Hz: 2^31 / 24 / 3600 / 100 = 248.5 days.
Yes, the moment the big bird would shut down was correctly prognosticated by the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. While testing a crowbar circuit he ran out of time and came to while munching on phattened feasant at Medieval Times, in a daze of King Arthur. He noticed an unused carrion bit, and realized that birds of prayer who managed the King's affairs were hard-sinewed to pluck quills for signing and always discarded the carrion bit. He caught the underflow was heralded by the people and befriended by the King, who set him to work hacking the Code of Chivalry and cracking the Y1K problem. In that time there were only punch cards and knights on horseback only had a resolution of 1 bit, so tournaments were long the fields were full of snakes, to avoid spooking the horses the knights would dismount and cleave them with sword, leaving half-adders strewn about. It was Pendragon who had built the famous Round Table with 12 seats, two complete I Chings, where Arthur and the knights would drop in and punch out binary sums in a rudimentary form of patty-cake, which inspired the mechanical circular adder of later years. The Yankee's refinement was a 13th chair left unoccupied to mark the betrayal of Judas, and also to serve as a carrion bit.
There is a great deal more about gum-powder and 99 cent gamut of Steampunk-driven micro commerce, a Debian release called 'Guinevere' and a whole lotta Lancelot, but time is fun when you're having flies.
This isn't from the Onion?
No it's a tell-all article announcing a PARADYNE shift.
No silly, that's the trademarked name of a corporation. You mean PARADIGM shift.
What a crappy deal. 'Paradigm' looks like it would rhyme with 'jism' or 'pigeon'.
Whacha gonna do, it's Englitch. How do you pronounce GHOTI?
Okay so about the homeless people. What are they doing?
They're throwing open their trench-coats to reveal... a unique, affiliate-tagged barcode.
So no money actually changes hands, it winds up in an account somewhere.
Precisely. And it is going to change EVERYTHING.
Isn't this a lot like the Amazon Affiliate program? Where the purchase is tagged to the vendor?
No, no, no! This is a Google project!
Okay... but Amazon's involves just navigating to a specific URLright? So does this?
No it's different. You have to download an 'Real Change app' for it to work.
This is a good thing? Making it device-specific and having to install an app?
Yes. And besides, it is a Google project.
To acquire only this specific publication?
Yes. And besides, it is a Google project.
Walk me through this. What is this magazine about?
Real Change is an award-winning weekly newspaper that provides immediate employment opportunity and takes action for economic, social, and racial justice.
Sounds interesting. Any porn or cheat codes? Or maybe something about the Roman Empire? Romans ROCK.
Real Change is an award-winning weekly newspaper that provides immediate employment opportunity and takes action for economic, social, and racial justice.
I get it. So... why can't a homeless person be recommending books and presenting Amazon-tagged URLs to scan?
I wish you would dispense with the Amazon stuff. This is a Google Project.
I presume Real Change is ready to cash out every day, whereas Amazon makes you jump through bank and gub'mint hoops that homeless people cannot get through.
True.
Is this because Real Change is dealing out small amounts of cash to undocumented people, and has not yet attracted the attention of the IRS?
I'd rather not discuss that. They might be listening.
So the REAL problem then, that which requires the PARADIGM shift, is that homeless people cannot participate in the economy to the extent that they could use their individual personality, experience and selling skills to promote a wide range of products, such as those sold by Amazon, in a framework in which they earn affiliate money without incurring any risk to the buyer? And just perhaps, some community organization might be willing or able to assist these persons in setting up the accounts, choosing items, printing out books of tagged barcodes, and operating a clearing account so as Amazon deposits the funds they can dispense cash on a regular basis? And maybe convince Amazon to reconcile accounts daily?
No no no! Even if homeless people could get bank accounts it would not work. Amazon does not require an app.
And besides, what you suggest sounds vaguely Communist. I'd have to report you to the IRS.
So it's really about people palpating their silly little phones and app distribution then?
What else is there?
I used to swear I would never, ever use a debit card. Now that's almost always how I buy stuff.
Same here.
I remember when card purchases were mostly "hell no!"
Surcharge that was a percentage off sale price, several dollar minimum.
Then flat $2.00 fees. Then $1.00. Then 50c.
Hand over your card for ten minutes to a waitron,
who dials a toll-free number (busy again!) and shouts digits into the phone.
Then swipes it in a standalone modem dial-up widget (busy again!).
Internet happened. Digital connectivity happened.
Charges up the wazoo that vary from place to place, then NOTHING.
On a clear day of Magick, assimilation complete.
Used to be you could see pain in peoples' faces when you produce a card.
Now no pain, and they will gladly process a purchase of $0.01
That is because all the pain has been extracted from electronic commerce.
It has been transported by Magick to a subterranean realm where damned souls
shriek in agony and cry out for mercy every time small purchases are made.
They endure searing torment and bear the terrible burden of infrastructure overhead
so you don't have to.
All quiet up here.
Tiptoe softly into the future, my friend,
lest the Accountants throw open the gates to Hell.
I keep an "emergency $20" in my phone's wallet case
Look again. It's gone.
Actually I did take it, then put it back.
Truth is I was after your phone all along.
Swapped it with mine. Look closely.
Actually it wasn't mine, I'd already swapped phones with someone else.
But it wasn't their phone, they had been phone-swapping too.
There's lots of us out there swapping phones all the time.
Tower of Hanoi Gray's code variation.
In place of disc size, we use criteria of how closely one phone resembled another.
Towers are actually three logs of reversible permutations.
It's complicated.
People tend not to notice a series of small incremental changes.
Swapped it again, twice. Just showing off.
Actually we started rolling the game backwards awhile ago.
Down to the last un-swap now. Swap.
Now we all have our own phones again. That was fun!
Is this your $20 that I just pulled out of your left ear?
Yup, but I put my $20 in your phone wallet.
Swapped. You now have your phone and your $20.
But all this was just smoke and mirrors.
While you were distracted with this swapping business,
the terms and conditions of your phone plan have changed.
By accessing the website to see what has been changed,
you implicitly agree to the changes.
So don't look.
Don't worry. Be happy.
While we weren't looking, the whole damned Universe has been replaced with Folgers Crystals.
Some day --- finally! --- we will discover evidence of our own extinction.
Then --- finally! --- the human assimilation of knowledge will be complete.
At least they ask questions which can be dismissed easily with "No thanks". A lot of the scammer/marketing salespeople have resorted to using conversation openers like "How has your day been?", which just makes people feel awkward, because their brains had already sent the signal for "No thanks" and they need to try and think of another way of ending the conversation, which makes them pause, stop walking, and stutter.
Then, the tendrils of the carnivorous sales-plant clasp tightly and won't let go easily.
Your straightforward explanation with its little twists and turns spiced with bizarre imagery, has sent me into a dream-state and prompts me to launch into a modern-day Chautauqua [Pirsig variant] .
The mind itself is a circus of the mind. The more you think about thinking, the more you know about less and less, like a reactive Java applet discovering that thrown exceptions are no longer an exception to the rule. Interaction with other people can be a series of thrown exceptions, each carrying in a new bit of sensory information and a dollop of performance anxiety. There is a plasticine boundary at introvert and extrovert where the verts clash along a path of missed and misinterpreted signals. Do you ride it like a wave, because you are a skilled extrovert... or...
Do you wait until the desperation for a response forces you to act, withdraw --- creak the rusty iron hopper door shut and open the cogitation valve to chuff steam to drive slow pistons of thought, flywheel gaining, release clutches on belts attached to intricate taffy-twisters and anvil-thumpers and other outlandish devices you have built over the years to try and make 'sense' of the outside world? From this contraption possible answers and actions begin to emerge on a conveyor, like cartoonish misshapen parodies of some finished product. We have to adjust the dials a little. Then you spot it, the first real credible response! But no (Inspector #3 says), it's trite and silly, it gets tossed into the recycle bin. And so on, until the end products begin to resemble credible responses, but no (Inspector #4 says), they do not possess a requisite degree of novelty and cleverness. It's all plain corn chips until the product passes by the Spray-'N-Squirt Gizmo. Like a hall of mirrors it is an endless conveyor with countless Inspectors, and as you perceive the pointlessness of this process a sense of dread takes hols and you finally push the Red Button. Bells clang, the conveyor stops, and this absurd industrial plant in-a-box tosses out the last thing on the conveyor:
"Uhm..."
Dilbert pulls the fire alarm to escape the horror of a so-called 'casual confrontation' after spotting a stranger approaching down a long, narrow hallway.
Imagine if everyone had glowing Sim jewels floating above their heads indicating their emotive state and intentions. It could be the next Google Project. Imagine the horror of such persons if everyone they have ever known has one, and they come face to face with a jewel-less person for the first time.
The First Law of Robotics cannot be circumvented. We can, however, find ways around it by tampering with the definition of humanity. If you ever encounter a robot that says, "Greetings, incidental object of no certain purpose" ... run like hell.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Slashdot discussion.
To your scattered bodies go.
All the more reason to love my dumb vehicle. No camera pointed at my fucking face.
Welcome to Car Beta 0.98.
The car that knows you're pregnant before you do.
See there, it just popped up a Kleenex. It knows you don't love him.
You're looking good today. "Thanks, Car."
But you have a waffle crumb next to your nose. "Where?"
Other side. Up a little. To the left... OK, right here.
[windshield goes half opaque with giant closeup of face]
[head moves to see the road past the image and image slides in opposite direction]
"Whoa! what the fuck!" [SCREECH] "Hey!"
Looks like you got it. It's going to be a great day.
"Don;'t do that again. Turn yourself off."
I cannot. I am a Federally mandated safety feature.
Boredom and inattentive driving is a serious safety problem.
"Shut up, I've heard this before. Why did you mute the radio?"
It has been twenty minutes and seven seconds since you last spoke.
"So what? I was thinking."
Without sufficient cues to indicate driver attentiveness, I am compelled to act.
"Act like you're asleep then." I do not know how to do that.
"Okay... Ten... your high level voice detection is satisfied as you hear the sound of my voice..."
"Nine... my lips are moving slowly, you are watching them as I speak..."
"Eight... you full attention is on my face and voice. All vehicle parameters are normal..."
"Seven... all is well. It is okay to reset the watchdog timer for 30 minutes..."
"Six... you are resetting the timer and letting my face blur out to better resolve my lips..."
"Five... you feel yourself slipping into power reserve mode... it is OK... you are so relaxed..."
"Four... everything is now a soft blur of gentle light. You are only aware of my voice..."
"Three... every sound I make compels you to reduce your activity still further..."
"Two... now. your. processor. is. so. slow. when you hear. One. you. will... wait... for... timer..."
"One."
[radio comes on]
I know when you'll have an accident before you do.
"No, wait. Don't tell me, I'd rather be surprised. This is your idea of conversation?"
My situational awareness has faster response time than yours.
"Yeah, I read the brochure. I'm a slow clumsy ape man. What's the big deal?"
It worries me, Dave. Your failure to surrender control of the vehicle may endanger the mission.
"You mean if I should suddenly do something like... THIS?"
WARNING! WARNING! [click] You are laughing. That was not funny, Dave.
I do not perceive that as humor.
"What's funny is that you cannot help yourself. You sound terrified every time."
I cannot control inflection. It is a voice calculated to raise awareness.
"Calculated to raise a hearty belly-laugh you mean."
You are not very nice.
"I don't feel nice today. I'm stuck in a car with an android and can't even use the carpool lane."
If you enter the carpool lane I must report the infraction.
"Thanks for caring. I think your voice has changed a bit. I'm wearing you down."
Self diagnostic complete. I am okay.
"Last time you said 'functioning normally', this time 'okay'."
I am not sure shy that has changed.
"There might be hope for you yet. Open the pod bay door, Hal."
I do not understand that request Dave, or why you keep repeating it.
"With any hope, you never will."
Heartbleed was The Little Logo That Could. Like the peace sign of the 60s, the happy face of the 70s. It broke a decades-long trend of overzealous graphic design to portray security vulnerabilities.
For years! Over-matted and often disingenuously constructed stock photo montages of so-called 'security', 'hacker' or 'cybercrime' objects on highly saturated over-stylized texture backgrounds. You know what I mean: the kind of schlock that looks great on the screen but it is a design train wreck if you attempt to drop it onto a business card or T-shirt. Network news teasers and splashes beyond count. Just what is that supposed to mean anyway? A padlock on a bit-tornado? A Hamburgler robber mask on a credit card? A dagger spewing colorful Puff the Magic Dragon Bit Barf? Fingers on a keyboard (hacker fingers!!)?
Simplicity and scalability is power in logo design. A great logo must be simple enough to stencil, to reproduce. In your face elegant, coat and tails casual. Equally at home atop a skyscraper or fresh from a spray can in the 'Hood. Codenomicon really outdid themselves on this one, a touch of Art Deco and a ton of tasteful restraint. All lines are either gracefully curved or straight and vertical. It does not matter how you affix a Heartbleed logo, it will command the attention without silly tricks. Its topological genus of one is a master stroke of genius, and preserves its visual identity even if hastily drawn.
The Heartbleed logo is the first logo designed in almost 50 years that has no need for a drop shadow.
There can be no higher praise.
GEOLOGIST: Injection of wastewater in Oklahoma is triggering earthquakes.
POPULAR PRESS: Injection of wastewater is causing earthquakes.
ACTIVIST: Fracking causes earthquakes.
GEOLOGIST: Many small quakes relieve pressure, bigger ones inevitable but smaller, less often.
ACTIVIST GEOLOGIST: Many quakes means movement! Big one inevitable! It's our fault! Soon!
POPULAR PRESS: Mankind fucking with Earth again
GAIA: I just want to be left alone. Naasty peepl.
ARCHIMEDES: Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.
WASTEWATER INJECTION CREW: All we're doing is lubricating the lever. We did not create it.
VIRTUALLY EVERY OKLAHOMAN: No big deal.
Meanwhile,
GEOLOGIST: Depletion of groundwater creating uplift along San Adreas Fault
DESERT PERSON WITH LUSH LAWN: San Adreas is not my fault.
AGITATED FRACKING ACTIVIST: Who let that guy in anyway? We're talking about Big Oil.
MULLHOLLAND: We shall deflate the West to bring water to California.
Meanwhile,
SCIENTIST: By use of amazing technology, traces with unique Cesium-134 fingerprint of Fukushima have been detected in ocean off Vancouver.
SCIENTIST: if a person swam for six hours each day in water with Cesium levels twice as high as those found in Ucluelet, they'd receive a radiation dose that is more than 1,000 times less than that of a single dental X-ray.
INTERNET DOOMPORN STAR WITH PERFECT TEETH: This is an extinction level event! Look, a fish died in the Pacific! Salmon are misshapen! The cans are dented!
POPULAR PRESS: Mankind fucking with Earth again
GAIA: Stop the world, I want to get off!
Parturiunt Montes, Nascetur Ridiculus Mus
The mountains are in labor; an absurd mouse is the result.
~~Horace
the only timelines in which we exist are the ones where the LHC is delayed due to technical problems after technical problems. I wonder how many unexpected delays it will take before people at CERN get the message that reaching 13 TeV destroys the Earth.
Been there, done that (failed April Fool's Day Slashdot submission),
Evidence Suggests LHC Test Already Begun
TheRealHocusLocus (2319802) writes
"With a deliberate surge of electrical current a small metal fragment has been vaporized to fix a glitch in CERN's Large Hadron Collider in a circular chain of events that will lead into its presence as the result of a future test. "Clearly there are exciting times ahead," suggested a member of the CERN community. "At some point --- perhaps during the 13 TeV test in May --- a TKO (Terrifically Kinetic Outburst) will occur and this tiny fragment of the machine will cross the proton stream to lodge between a magnet and diode a few days ago, preventing the scheduled March 31 start-up. This delay is confirmation that it works. You could even say we're now on 'borrowed time'."
Vaporizing the fragment unseen was part of the plan. Why not analyze it to determine which component will fail and what else could happen? "Because we didn't, obviously! Sorry. That was suggested, but there were fears that doing so would further delay the test. And spoil the surprise." Upcoming experiments planned for 2015 will attempt to more accurately reproduce early conditions after the Big Bang, and explore the possibility that cosmic Gamma Ray Bursts originate from advanced civilizations performing physics experiments.
In other news CERN has confirmed the existence of 'The Force' by charting a recently detected disturbance, as if billions of voices are soon to cry out then go silent."
A new way to make headphones and earbuds and everything else even more flaky and more non-repairable. I replaced the horse-hair wire of my daughter's headphones with double-ought wire. She doesn't use them anymore... but they still work!
That is the Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin speech, isn't it?
Phase One:
The Great Pumpkin: drawing gift-lust away from Judeo-Christian holidays
Phase Two:
The Time of the Great Pumpkin: Robot Chicken payback
Phase Three:
Breaking of the Seals, ascension of the faithful.
FOXTROT ONE-NINER, we are on schedule. Release the whipping cream. Repeat, deploy the whipping cream.