Want to write to the president? Or anybody in office? Like everything else in the government, this should be handled in the true bureaucratic style.
The first requirement is that you must obtain an Officer Communication Number, or OCN. This is accomplished by filing form 88249-OCN with the Official Communication Request Service (OCRS) office of the Department of Justice. Include a check for $493.77 with your request. This request is then "processed" as follows: It arrives at the mail room of the Department of Justice, where all items destined for the OCRS are placed in a special pile. When 10,000 items have accumulated, they are taken on a cart to another office in another building on the other side of the state, where one person is responsible for sorting them by the last name of the officer to whom you are writing. When 10,000 items addressed to a single individual have accumulated, they are delivered to another building 1,000 miles away. There, a single individual is responsible for scanning each item separately in a special machine that tests the envelope for traces of germ warfare or something. After each item has been scanned, it is delivered to another office, where the name of the sender is copied from the return address on the envelope. If a file exists for this person, the letter is filed in this file. If a file does not exist for this person, the person is mailed a letter, printed on blue paper and with an orange signature, telling them that they must file form 88250-OCN, along with a check for $184.38, at the nearest County Controller's office. This form cannot even be obtained without showing the blue paper with the orange signature. For your convenience, this letter is sometimes printed on white paper, if they're out of blue paper on that particular day, and just signed with any color ink. You're not told this until you go to the County Controller's office, of course, so you must at that point try to call the OCRS and request a copy on blue paper. Of course, all the lines are always busy because all calls are directed to an answering service where one person answers the phone, and is not allowed to answer more than one call in an hour or six calls in any given three day period. You're not told this on the phone. Instead, you're simply told that your business is important to us and please wait on the line for just a minute until the next customer service representative is available. If by chance, you manage to get a hold of someone, you can ask for the paper, and they'll tell you to mail a form 827741-OCN-D, to request this paper, which you must do at your nearest state capital. The state capital will request to see the paper you have, which is the wrong color, and they'll take the form 827741-OCN-D and process it for you using whichever method they happen to use. The time taken to do this varies. Oh yeah, and your letter, which could not be filed for lack of a file, has been placed in a pile of letters that could not be filed for lack of a file. When the OCRS receives your form 827741-OCN-D, they'll send someone to sift through the letters to see if there really is a letter from you in there. If there is, it is taken from the pile and sent back to the Department of Justice mailroom to restart the process. You may or may not receive the correct color form this time. When you finally do, you will be able to file form 88250-OCN, Request for a File Folder. This request is routed through the same Department of Justice mailroom to a different OCRS office, where a file folder has your name placed on it. This is then mailed to the OCRS office where your letter is waiting in a pile of letters. Someone is sent to find the letter, which is sent back to the Department of Justice mailroom, where the process starts over, only you have a file this time. When the letter arrives at the appropriate OCRS office, it is placed in the file. At this point, someone at the OCRS office goes through the file folders in alphabetical order, up to 80 folders in a day, and checks if there is a letter pending. If there is, a letter is m
For this reason, I don't throw away shredded papers. I had memory holes installed in my home, a la 1984, and whenever I throw away a paper, all I do is throw it in the memory hole and a vacuum sucks it away and into a furnace that burns the paper until it nothing but dust. I mix it with dirt, soil and fertilizer, and then I spread it all over my yard. The plants love it.
I have an idea. Pass a worldwide law that enslaves all musicians. They shall have no rights. They shall have no food. They shall be beaten and tortured on a regular basis.
Of course, that's all being done behind the scenes. In public, they would be required to perform and make billions in revenue, all of which would, of course, go to the record labels. The musicians themselves would never see any profit of any kind from their work. But if it's not good, they'll be tortured. If it doesn't bring in a quota of a specified number of millions by a certain deadline, they would be tortured. If they don't perform to record label standards, they would be tortured.
Of course, all music and/or any form of audible sound, now known or later developed, which is considered music by any record label, would be illegal unless the person composing and/or performing the sounds is a slave of a record label and working under their authorization. Punishable by a fine required to exceed one billion dollars and prison terms of at least 50 years per offense.
This wouldn't even be a felony. They'd have to make up a legal term for a crime worse even than 1st degree murder, because that is what theft from a multinational corporation essentially boils down to, and if you dare to make a sound, listen to music, or even fart without the record labels making an enormous profit on you at your expense, than theft is what you have essentially done. Shame on you. You are unfair competition because your making an audible sound may undermine their ability to make the profits that to which they are rightfully entitled by virtue of being a multinational corporation in a position of power.
For your convenience, laws like this will eventually be passed for other types of businesses, such as the food mass-production industry (growing and/or cooking your own food constitutes THEFT from the multinational food conglomerates).
I think a system should be devised where you could queue a big upload or download, and the network will "know" how to send big chunks of it when things are relatively idle. By queueing things for what basically amounts to "background" transmittal, the network might be more fully utilized.
The station wagon comment reminded me of an idea that I had a long time ago, when I first read about how the Internet routes packets around. You know how you can ship stuff UPS overnight? It can get pretty expensive, depending on how big and heavy the package is. And sometimes, businesses would pay an even greater price to have a package delivered even faster. Why not introduce a system for getting things delivered extremely fast, and I do mean fast, all around the world?
Imagine this: Put together a network of railroad-like tracks that are enclosed in concrete tunnels. In a vacuum. Individual cars would travel on these tracks at greater than mach speeds. They would essentially go from one switching station to another, kind of like the telephone network or the Internet. They might come in several sizes, these cars. When you need something delivered fast from, say Los Angeles to New York, the package would be placed on a dedicated car which would take it at blazing speeds through, say, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City and Louisville, to New York. At each station, equipment would adjust switch tracks to route the car to its next switching station; the car would not even have to stop or slow down. The package might be there in four hours, counting the time it takes to bring the package to a station, have it loaded, unloaded, and then transporting it to its final destination.
This might actually make shipping cheaper rather than more expensive. Automatic equipment sorts mail at the USPS. If this mail were collected, say, once every hour (during business hours), taken to the nearest major USPS distribution center, where it is sorted, placed in boxes heading to the same destinations, and then shipped (tunneled?) through the above method, mail going to a distant location might arrive faster than mail going across town. This could be done with collections of packages that are all going from one major city to another together. Load them in a container and bust them all over there. Sure, it'll still take, say, 24 hours to ship packaged in such groups, to save money, since you have to wait for enough packages, sort them, group them, etc., but if you want something shipped right friggin now, the option to get a dedicated car is still available. This might reduce use of gasoline and use of air and ground traffic. If computers can control the cars on these tracks so that cars are going mach 2 almost bumper to bumper, that would allow for extremely great throughput.
Back to the station wagon comment, supposing this could be done, (running more tracks all over the world and installing these switching stations at each major city), you could load hundreds of terabytes of data onto a big friggin raid system and then get that data across the world faster than shit going through a tin horn.
The network supplying the power for the computer? Kind of like the telephone network supplying the power for the telephone. This reminds me of a story: Actual dialogue of a former WordPerfect Customer Support employee:
"Ridge Hall computer assistant; may I help you?"
"Yes, well, I'm having trouble with WordPerfect."
"What sort of trouble?"
"Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away."
"Went away?"
"They disappeared."
"Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type."
"Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?"
"How do I tell?"
"Can you see the C: prompt on the screen?"
"What's a sea-prompt?"
"Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?"
"There isn't any cursor: I told you, it won't accept anything I type."
"Does your monitor have a power indicator?"
"What's a monitor?"
"It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it's on?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's plugged into the wall."
"... Yes, it is."
"When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?"
"No."
"Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable."
"... Okay, here it is."
"Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of your computer."
"I can't reach."
"Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?"
"No."
"Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?"
"Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle - it's because it's dark."
"Dark?"
"Yes -the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window."
"Well, turn on the office light then."
"I can't."
"No? Why not?"
"Because there's a power outage."
"A power A power outage? Aha, Okay, we've got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?"
"Well, yes, I keep them in the closet."
"Good. Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from."
"Really? Is it that bad?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it is."
"Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?"
"Tell them you're too fucking stupid to own a computer."
This brings me to two conclusions:
There are a group of people in the world known as StupidPeople. These people lack any shadow of common sense. Examples include people who drive those huge SUVs through traffic infested cities, getting at most 8 miles per gallon, when they never use the capacity of the SUV for hauling around passengers or property. They drive unsafely, turning at excessive speeds, braking too late, etc., since they are unqualified to operate these vehicles (I think there should be an SUV class driver license required by the state, with 200 additional hours of instruction required, as these are generally the unsafest drivers on the road), but at the same time, they are afraid of semi drivers, who do have the experience operating their vehicle and are probably by far the safest drivers on the road, excepting a tiny percentage of those who end up getting their license revoked and losing their job as a truck driver.
The person in the story above (yes, a perfect example of StupidPeople) thought that since the phones work (as they are on a "separate system"), the computers ought to work, too. Now, this kind of operation might become reality. If wireless doesn't take over in the meantime. But of course, that's what batteries are for.
Dude... You want quiet?! Here's how you can get a computer to run SILENTLY:
Ok, the truth is that it doesn't really run silently, but you won't hear a damn thing. Modify a desk by removing some drawers from it to make enough space for your computer to sit inside. Drill a hole at the top for the wires. A monitor, keyboard, speakers and rat are all you need on top of the desk. The best insulator is air, and there's air around the computer inside the desk. If you need to access the CD-ROM drive or something, set it up so that in place of the drawers, there is a door you can open. This has other uses, like physical layer security. You could put a lock on the damn thing or simply make it so inconspicuous (by putting a shoddy computer case next to the monitor that doesn't do anything) to fool anyone who might otherwise jack your comp. It is so silent that nobody will ever even know it is there.
You could go further, if you're like me and you've kept every old computer you've ever had. Put them in a walk-in closet and run a network cable to your desk. Run applications on all the computers and access them all from the one on your desk, via X, VNC, or other software. When your friends come over, they'll think your computer is 10 times as fast as it actually is since you can run tons of applications all at once and they all seem to operate at full speed. Little do they know that you've actually got 10 computers (or however many) doing the work. Even at work we don't put computers out of commission and continue using them to run old applications, and new ones that don't use up 200% of system resources in order to display stupid useless graphics.
Microsoft, hear now and hear well!! Release ALL source code, internal documentation and trade secrets, whether you have the right to do so or not (due to licensing agreements or deals with subcontractors) to the public domain, make sure it is widespread by sending CDs containing the information to every address in the world, a la AOL, and then pay all of your programmers to develop free software until all your money runs out and you go bankrupt, or else... WE WILL TOILET PAPER BILL G'S HOUSE!! WITH PINK TOILET PAPER!! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!Bwaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!
You have 24 hours to respond... You have been warned.
(Disclaimer: This post is funny.)
This convenient cell phone would create value for all kinds of consumers. I think the powers of this phone should be extended to allow it, without your permission and without even telling you, to gamble the money in your bank accounts through online gambling, and send the winnings (if any) to the phone company as a gift. Losses are, of course, incurred by the consumer, as this is only fair.
A law, known as the Cellular Provider Financial Access Act (CPFAA) would be passed, similar to the DMCA but more restrictive to consumers and more flexible for corporations, which would require all cell phone customers to supply bank account information to their service providers for this purpose. This would definitely be "neat!"
I have an idea. Put a chip in each person's body that is used to regulate their critical functions (heart, lungs, brain, etc.) through the Internet.
Then make "real life" versions of all the guns in Doom, like the Super Shotgun, etc. Then, make up a video game where you can go around with these guns and shoot at real-life people. There are no real life bullets; no projectiles to fire... but if you shoot at someone, a packet (the Ping of Death) is sent through the Internet to the chip in their body, based on GPS coordinates, as measured by the gun, that instructs the chip to kill that process, er, person.
This technology would be useful for enterprise integration applications, military, government, the video game market, and for inventory tracking in commercial stores, like Walmart, which will be implementing RFID in its products by 2005: If you jack a product from their store, a ping of death immediately kills you as you exit their store. This takes place even if you paid for the product, but the clerk who rang you up didn't properly demagnetize it. A law called the Consumer Safety and Inventory Convenience Act (similar to the DMCA but more restrictive for consumers and more flexible for corporations) would be passed to facilitate the use of this technology to, uh, make things more convenient for consumers. Also, someone could make up an e-Voodoo website, like the one in the insurance commercial, where you can go online, type any person's name, and stick virtual pins (implemented by the chip in their body, of course) into any part of their body to give them agonizing pain, once again, through the Internet.
Yup, this technology is definitely going to be useful.
Here is a more correct proposal: By law, every new computer must ship with explosives inside. Under the new law, the explosives would have to be powerful enough to destroy anything within a 100 meter radius of the affected computer.
If the user tampers with the explosives or tries to remove them, the explosives go off.
If the user downloads copyrighted materials and the copyright holder doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
If the user links to a web page and the owner of the web page doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
If the user uses profane language in an email and the ISP doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
If the user criticizes the operation, functionality, completeness or reliability of any software program and the software maker doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
If the operating system in the user's computer crashes, the explosives go off.
If the user runs any software that competes with Microsoft's software and Microsoft doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
This new technology, in conjunction with telescreens, cameras and microphones in every room, a government agency that randomly spies on people, and a ministry that tortures those who don't conform, the world can be made a much happier place to live.
Such information could be vital to firefighters battling a blazing skyscraper...
Oh, yeah, that's great. If the technology in this brick is so great, how come they can't just make the entire building out of fireproof materials and not have to worry about battling the damn thing in the first place???
I don't know. Fireproof Christmas trees have been around for a long time. They didn't have to put a computer in every brick to make buildings the same way.
Here's a lesson for your company: Management fscked up. The customer waited a month to sign the work order. So your managers should have said to the customer, "Gentlemen, you fscked up." Sure, we said you could have it by whatever date, but that was contingent on you signing the work order. Since you waited to sign the work order, the shipment date is now changed by a corresponding amount. The customer doesn't like it? Then fsck 'em. Because you know what? Impossible ship dates cause politics inside the company, politics with the customer, decreased morale, unmotivated employees, and all the other problems in the world. Haste does not bring success! If your management doesn't understand this, then your management sucks because they are going to ruin your company.
Now, this situation has already taken place, so get everyone who will work 12/7 on this project and together demand that until the project is completed to the customer's satisfaction, all of your salaries will be increased to 175% of what they are normally. (By increasing the day from 8 hours to 12, the salary must go up to 150%, and for adding Saturday and Sunday, the salary should go up a little more.) Tell management that by working the additional hours, you are creating value for the company and are therefore going to be compensated for the extra work involved. Tell them that reduced morale and motivation will only ruin the company and therefore the pay must be increased to compensate. This is how you do business. If they don't like it, tough shit. They are the ones who fscked up, not you. If they accept your proposal, you'll make more money.
If they deny your proposal, then they are being unreasonable managers and you should teach your fscking company a lesson. Pretend to accept the situation as it is, but you and all your coworkers sabotage the project to such an extent that the company loses the customer and bring the entire company down. Pretend it was not deliberate and was simply a result of mismanagement. They obviously don't appreciate you and the value you are creating for them, so fuck 'em.
"Costs more, less useful?" It will succeed for the very same reason I'm about to explain.
Just remember this simple marketing rule. It especially applies in Los Angeles, where my uncle lives, and where most of the population consists of "stupid people." I'll give the example first and then explain the marketing behind it:
I was there (in L.A.) with some friends a few months ago, and one of them insisted on going to the "clubs" on Sunset Blvd., where a parking space costs twenty dollars. Mind you, they park the cars so close to each other, to save space, that the door barely opens. Then, you go in the bar, and drinks cost nearly 10 dollars each. Something possessed my friend to buy everyone a round of beer, and when he met a two girls (who were pretty... pretty ugly, that is), he bought shots for everyone. This totals 8 drinks, right? He got a bill for over a hundred dollars. The place was crowded. The service was crappy. Security guards yelled at everybody and treated everybody like garbage. Everything was expensive as hell... And yet, everybody and his uncle was there, happily spending their money. Why?
This is a simple rule of marketing that I call, "The Rule of Value." It goes like this: In a market full of "stupid people" (exactly like nearly all of the population of L.A.), a product that costs too much and gives little benefit creates value. The more it costs, and the less benefit it gives, the more value it creates. In order for this rule to work, the benefit of the product must be inversely proportional to the price, where the price is greater than the benefit. The price must outweigh the benefit by a large margin. This creates a situation in which the consumer feels that they are investing in a product that creates value because it costs a lot and is shit, yet everybody else is doing it.
In other words, if the product produces a lot of benefit and costs a little, it won't succeed, because it doesn't create value. If the product costs about the same as its benefit, or even twice as much as its benefit, it won't succeed, because it doesn't create value. But if the product is extremely expensive and is truly shitty, then it will be extraordinarily successful.
This is, of course, an oversimplification. There are other variables. For example, time utility: If you have to wait in a long line and pay too much for a worthless product, the product will be even more successful. Customer satisfaction is another variable: If the business treats you like a piece of shit, so shitty that even a piece of dogshit deserves infinitely more respect than you, the business will be even more successful. And if finding a parking space is nearly impossible, and if you have to pay for parking in order to go into the business and spend your money, and if the conditions related to this parking mess are extra shitty, then the business will be even more successful.
That is why those bars on Sunset are so successful! You have to pay outrageous prices for parking; parking attendants are assholes; and parking conditions are shitty as they park your car in some alley full of nails, where gangsters are likely to break into your car. They charge exhorbitant amounts of money for a "drink." (Like a "drink" is so damn complicated to make that it should cost 10 dollars. Or like the materials in the drink actually cost the bar more than 10 cents. As if you can't get the same drink for 2 dollars at a bar in a nearby city.) The lines are long and people are elbowing each other, getting each other's all important "drinks" spilled. Bar employees, especially security, treat you like you're the garbage of the earth.
This is why so many people in L.A. drive all kinds of stupid SUVs and do it in an unsafe manner because they are not qualified to drive those cars. This is why many people in L.A. have to eat at expensive restaurants where the food is just as crappy as in the cheap restaurants. This is why people in L.A. rent houses that cost incredible sums of money, in order to be in
Dude. When I was in elementary school, there was this thing called penmanship. It was enforced throughout everything we did. We had to handwrite everything. (Some students did have computers (it wasn't that long ago) but everything was done with pencils, pens and papers. You could type things if you were doing a fancy project and wanted to make an impact, but that was about it.) More importantly, teachers made sure that you actually wrote legibly. If you wrote an "O" that wasn't closed properly, they made you fix it. If you turned in something that wasn't legible, with proper spaces between letters and words, they made you redo it. If your math homework didn't have the numbers lined up properly, you got busted.
By the time I finished high school, computers started to become more widespread in schools and some teachers required essays to be typed. Now, I hear that teachers are requiring pretty much everything to be typed, which I think is an outrage. They're doing it because peoples' handwriting is so terrible that they don't want to try to read it... so they're compounding the problem by requiring people to do the very same thing that caused the problem in the first place.
The only way to solve this problem is to require everything in K-12 to be handwritten neatly. If the letters aren't all the same size; if the spaces between letters or words isn't right; if it isn't to the teacher's satisfaction, the paper should be returned to the student for rewriting... and the student loses points. People will HAVE to practice writing with pencils and paper.
Because you know what? This will cause the muscles in people's hands to develop for doing other tasks, and it will prevent all kinds of wrist problems. Not to mention that I firmly believe that the keyboard is on its way to the history books. Soon, you will NOT have to type at a keyboard to get shit done, and there will be other methods for doing work on a computer, even if it involves writing a lot. This isn't the 1800's, this is almost the year 2000. It's about time these friggen keyboards disappeared.
Guinness. Because friends don't let friends drink Bud Light.
One day, we're gonna live in the world of Johnny Nmuemonic (sp?)... There's gonna be all kinds of weird diseases caused by pollution in the airwaves caused by tons of wireless devices everywhere... The only major difference between the movie and real life will be that 80 gigs won't be enough space to store jack by then.
Besides, think of the security implications and whatnot. Why not just run wires all over the friggen house and plug your friggen laptop into the nearest outlet? Is it that friggen hard to do? Damn, people are lazy.
I don't have that big of a problem with spam. You know why? Because:
I give out my address only to thoughtfully selected individuals. I check mail here several times a day.
I have a second address, which I call my "public" address, which I give away freely (and check about once or twice a week).
For both addresses, I set up a whitelist which includes all the people that I have given the address to. All other messages get filtered to the trash. I empty the trash occasionally, quickly perusing the "From:" lines in the list of unread messages before doing so.
Very few "wanted" messages end up in the trash. My "wanted" message traffic is pretty high, too.
I have an idea to extend the whitelist policy: Each person would set up a "deposit" sum on their email address. This deposit could be any amount you want, from a few cents to billions of dollars. Each person's email address would be tied to some sort of payment system. If you want to send a message to someone whose whitelist you're not on, the system will charge that person's deposit fee to you. If that person accepts your message, your deposit is refunded. If that person rejects your message, they get to keep your deposit. Get paid to reject SPAM mail! What do people do who don't have credit cards, bank accounts, etc.? They'll deposit some sum of money (like a hundred bucks) with their mail service provider, and deposits will be deducted from that amount. People in the spam business will be out of business, really damn quick. Yes, this would require changes to the mail protocol. People who continue to use the old protocol will continue to receive spam and will be unable to send mail to people with the new protocol unless they're on their whitelists.
Guinness. Because friends don't let friends drink Bud Light.
For corporations, marketing should be abolished by law. A formal method for announcing products and services will be put in place. Companies will provide product information through a specific format, which will be moderated by volunteers for conformance.
When searching for a product or service, consumers will be presented a list of competing possibilities, along with price and clearly spelled out advantages and disadvantages of each. Consumers will always request this information (i.e., through the Internet, etc.) and will never be given it without asking (commercials, ads, junk mail, etc.)
Large companies (those with over 5 million dollars or more than 100 employees) that do not donate 99% of their revenue to the EFF will not be allowed to list any advantages, and will be required to exaggerate the disadvantages.
Large companies (like those mentioned above) will be required to provide free maintainance, service, repair and otherwise support for every product they sell for as long as it is in existance, even if it has changed owners multiple times since being purchased. Both parts and labor are paid for by the large company.
Individuals will be allowed to market their products, and will be encouraged to do so through a tax waiver that waives all taxes and even reimburses sales tax for all items for which a receipt is supplied.
Hey, I think we oughta code this up and make an mmorpg out of it!
Hey! That's not a bad idea. You could play any of the moves you mentioned (poison pills, white/gray knights, green mail)... This could actually be a fun game!
Seems to me that all you have to do is work out a winning sequence for a given machine at home on your emulator, or, if the RNG is different for each machine, on the machine itself, then make sure you're the first one in the casino every morning when they turn the things on. You'll clean up every time.
Now who's cheating?
And guess what... When YOU are the one using this "feature" to gain money, the casino owners will kick you out of the casino. It's ok when they cheat you by controlling the outcome of slots, but when you cheat them, they kick you out. That's why:
I don't go to casinos.
Except when I go to Indian casinos (for the food) and when I do, I do not "gamble."
Never drink U.S. "factory beer" (Bud, Miller, Coors). As much as I advocate the purchase of American products, this stuff is shit and should be banned. Every time I drink one of these beers, I end up hung over, sick and with the shits, like you describe.
Guinness just leaves me feeling good. And although I don't drink 14 of them in one sitting, I do drink a good two or three pints, and I usually leave the bar (an hour or so later) feeling sober and normal, as opposed to drunkenpuken.
And that's Guinness... Not "extra stout." That stuff is shit, IMO. Because of it, I thought I hated Guinness for years. When I discovered the difference, I realized that if I was stuck in the middle of the ocean in a tiny wooden boat and the entire ocean was turned to Guinness, I'd have to piss in the boat.
Guinness. Because friends don't let friends drink Bud Light.
It's time to drink.
on
PeltierBeer
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· Score: 3, Funny
Mmmmmmm... Guinness. I am getting thirsty.
Forget all kinds of contraptions. There is this thing called a bar. You go in there, get a Guinness, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, and eventually run out of money and go back home. That's the way to live a happy life.
If we really are living in a simulation, I think we need to send someone outside to hook up a NAT server, so we can connect the Internet to the world that encloses ours.
Advantages: We will be able to communicate with the people who run our world from the "real" world. I can already see people on IRC asking all kinds of favors, like "I want to be rich. Someone important. Like an actor."
Disadvantages: Script kiddies will get into the machines of the "real" world and they'll perform a DOS attack. Next thing you know, you're just walking down the street minding your own business when suddenly the street you were on turns into a toxic waste dump and a couple of identical cats walk by.
But anyway, if we ever do build a simulation, we should definitely connect our Internet into the world we make. That way, people who figure it out will be able to communicate with us. We'll tell 'em we're God... Screw the Prime Directive.
I think this can tie into religion really well. Consider, for example, the idea of a spiritual world. Supposedly, you have a spirit that exists forever. You're born into this physical world and live a life, and then you croak and return to the spiritual world. During your time here, your spirit continues to exist in the spiritual world, while your physical body exists in the physical world.
Kind of like when a program allocates memory for a structure. The memory always exists. Then, you allocate a structure from the chaos and put stuff into it. Eventually you deallocate the structure and all returns to the chaos that was before. During this time, the physical memory continuously existed, but the structure came to exist within it for some time.
What is the physical world, as opposed to the spiritual world? In the spiritual world, everything "flows" there are no boundaries between objects. It's just one big "light." (Kind of like how computer memory is a long string that starts at address 0 and goes until whatever.) Everything is a concept in the spiritual world. But in the physical world, everything is defined. A cup is a cup, a light bulb is a light bulb, and a house is a house. (Kind of like how a struct tm is different from a struct FILE.) Everything is so well defined, actually, that objects cannot occupy the same space as one another. (Kind of like the aforementioned two structures, which occupy different regions of memory or would overwrite each other. Of course, God is a Real Programmer, so that doesn't happen in the physical world, unless you're flying over the Bermuda Triangle or something, of course.)
Which brings me to my point: What if the spiritual world is the "real" world, and the physical world exists only in the "imagination" of the spiritual world? What if there really is no spoon? Not because we're running inside a computer, but because the spiritual world acts as a sort of "computer" that processes this world?
What if the spiritual world is only a simulation inside a larger world that exists outside of it?
I don't think this has anything to do with time travel. If it did, then how come we don't meet people from the past? After all, they must have been simulated.
Unless... what if all the knowledge of the universe has just been loaded, 2 microseconds ago, that makes us think that we've been around for a long time. How do you know that what happened a minute ago really happened and wasn't just a memory that was fabricated?
As for the 13th floor... I just drove to the edge of town over here and guess what I saw? Except it looks a little different from the movie. It was like the floor turned into a grid of yellow lines, about an inch wide, that extended outward for what must have been ten miles and then rose directly upward to form a wall that disappears into the sky above. I think we're in a really Star Trek holodeck.
Slashdot Mirror
The first requirement is that you must obtain an Officer Communication Number, or OCN. This is accomplished by filing form 88249-OCN with the Official Communication Request Service (OCRS) office of the Department of Justice. Include a check for $493.77 with your request. This request is then "processed" as follows: It arrives at the mail room of the Department of Justice, where all items destined for the OCRS are placed in a special pile. When 10,000 items have accumulated, they are taken on a cart to another office in another building on the other side of the state, where one person is responsible for sorting them by the last name of the officer to whom you are writing. When 10,000 items addressed to a single individual have accumulated, they are delivered to another building 1,000 miles away. There, a single individual is responsible for scanning each item separately in a special machine that tests the envelope for traces of germ warfare or something. After each item has been scanned, it is delivered to another office, where the name of the sender is copied from the return address on the envelope. If a file exists for this person, the letter is filed in this file. If a file does not exist for this person, the person is mailed a letter, printed on blue paper and with an orange signature, telling them that they must file form 88250-OCN, along with a check for $184.38, at the nearest County Controller's office. This form cannot even be obtained without showing the blue paper with the orange signature. For your convenience, this letter is sometimes printed on white paper, if they're out of blue paper on that particular day, and just signed with any color ink. You're not told this until you go to the County Controller's office, of course, so you must at that point try to call the OCRS and request a copy on blue paper. Of course, all the lines are always busy because all calls are directed to an answering service where one person answers the phone, and is not allowed to answer more than one call in an hour or six calls in any given three day period. You're not told this on the phone. Instead, you're simply told that your business is important to us and please wait on the line for just a minute until the next customer service representative is available. If by chance, you manage to get a hold of someone, you can ask for the paper, and they'll tell you to mail a form 827741-OCN-D, to request this paper, which you must do at your nearest state capital. The state capital will request to see the paper you have, which is the wrong color, and they'll take the form 827741-OCN-D and process it for you using whichever method they happen to use. The time taken to do this varies. Oh yeah, and your letter, which could not be filed for lack of a file, has been placed in a pile of letters that could not be filed for lack of a file. When the OCRS receives your form 827741-OCN-D, they'll send someone to sift through the letters to see if there really is a letter from you in there. If there is, it is taken from the pile and sent back to the Department of Justice mailroom to restart the process. You may or may not receive the correct color form this time. When you finally do, you will be able to file form 88250-OCN, Request for a File Folder. This request is routed through the same Department of Justice mailroom to a different OCRS office, where a file folder has your name placed on it. This is then mailed to the OCRS office where your letter is waiting in a pile of letters. Someone is sent to find the letter, which is sent back to the Department of Justice mailroom, where the process starts over, only you have a file this time. When the letter arrives at the appropriate OCRS office, it is placed in the file. At this point, someone at the OCRS office goes through the file folders in alphabetical order, up to 80 folders in a day, and checks if there is a letter pending. If there is, a letter is m
For this reason, I don't throw away shredded papers. I had memory holes installed in my home, a la 1984, and whenever I throw away a paper, all I do is throw it in the memory hole and a vacuum sucks it away and into a furnace that burns the paper until it nothing but dust. I mix it with dirt, soil and fertilizer, and then I spread it all over my yard. The plants love it.
Of course, that's all being done behind the scenes. In public, they would be required to perform and make billions in revenue, all of which would, of course, go to the record labels. The musicians themselves would never see any profit of any kind from their work. But if it's not good, they'll be tortured. If it doesn't bring in a quota of a specified number of millions by a certain deadline, they would be tortured. If they don't perform to record label standards, they would be tortured.
Of course, all music and/or any form of audible sound, now known or later developed, which is considered music by any record label, would be illegal unless the person composing and/or performing the sounds is a slave of a record label and working under their authorization. Punishable by a fine required to exceed one billion dollars and prison terms of at least 50 years per offense.
This wouldn't even be a felony. They'd have to make up a legal term for a crime worse even than 1st degree murder, because that is what theft from a multinational corporation essentially boils down to, and if you dare to make a sound, listen to music, or even fart without the record labels making an enormous profit on you at your expense, than theft is what you have essentially done. Shame on you. You are unfair competition because your making an audible sound may undermine their ability to make the profits that to which they are rightfully entitled by virtue of being a multinational corporation in a position of power.
For your convenience, laws like this will eventually be passed for other types of businesses, such as the food mass-production industry (growing and/or cooking your own food constitutes THEFT from the multinational food conglomerates).
The station wagon comment reminded me of an idea that I had a long time ago, when I first read about how the Internet routes packets around. You know how you can ship stuff UPS overnight? It can get pretty expensive, depending on how big and heavy the package is. And sometimes, businesses would pay an even greater price to have a package delivered even faster. Why not introduce a system for getting things delivered extremely fast, and I do mean fast, all around the world?
Imagine this: Put together a network of railroad-like tracks that are enclosed in concrete tunnels. In a vacuum. Individual cars would travel on these tracks at greater than mach speeds. They would essentially go from one switching station to another, kind of like the telephone network or the Internet. They might come in several sizes, these cars. When you need something delivered fast from, say Los Angeles to New York, the package would be placed on a dedicated car which would take it at blazing speeds through, say, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City and Louisville, to New York. At each station, equipment would adjust switch tracks to route the car to its next switching station; the car would not even have to stop or slow down. The package might be there in four hours, counting the time it takes to bring the package to a station, have it loaded, unloaded, and then transporting it to its final destination.
This might actually make shipping cheaper rather than more expensive. Automatic equipment sorts mail at the USPS. If this mail were collected, say, once every hour (during business hours), taken to the nearest major USPS distribution center, where it is sorted, placed in boxes heading to the same destinations, and then shipped (tunneled?) through the above method, mail going to a distant location might arrive faster than mail going across town. This could be done with collections of packages that are all going from one major city to another together. Load them in a container and bust them all over there. Sure, it'll still take, say, 24 hours to ship packaged in such groups, to save money, since you have to wait for enough packages, sort them, group them, etc., but if you want something shipped right friggin now, the option to get a dedicated car is still available. This might reduce use of gasoline and use of air and ground traffic. If computers can control the cars on these tracks so that cars are going mach 2 almost bumper to bumper, that would allow for extremely great throughput.
Back to the station wagon comment, supposing this could be done, (running more tracks all over the world and installing these switching stations at each major city), you could load hundreds of terabytes of data onto a big friggin raid system and then get that data across the world faster than shit going through a tin horn.
Ok, the truth is that it doesn't really run silently, but you won't hear a damn thing. Modify a desk by removing some drawers from it to make enough space for your computer to sit inside. Drill a hole at the top for the wires. A monitor, keyboard, speakers and rat are all you need on top of the desk. The best insulator is air, and there's air around the computer inside the desk. If you need to access the CD-ROM drive or something, set it up so that in place of the drawers, there is a door you can open. This has other uses, like physical layer security. You could put a lock on the damn thing or simply make it so inconspicuous (by putting a shoddy computer case next to the monitor that doesn't do anything) to fool anyone who might otherwise jack your comp. It is so silent that nobody will ever even know it is there.
You could go further, if you're like me and you've kept every old computer you've ever had. Put them in a walk-in closet and run a network cable to your desk. Run applications on all the computers and access them all from the one on your desk, via X, VNC, or other software. When your friends come over, they'll think your computer is 10 times as fast as it actually is since you can run tons of applications all at once and they all seem to operate at full speed. Little do they know that you've actually got 10 computers (or however many) doing the work. Even at work we don't put computers out of commission and continue using them to run old applications, and new ones that don't use up 200% of system resources in order to display stupid useless graphics.
Microsoft, hear now and hear well!! Release ALL source code, internal documentation and trade secrets, whether you have the right to do so or not (due to licensing agreements or deals with subcontractors) to the public domain, make sure it is widespread by sending CDs containing the information to every address in the world, a la AOL, and then pay all of your programmers to develop free software until all your money runs out and you go bankrupt, or else... WE WILL TOILET PAPER BILL G'S HOUSE!! WITH PINK TOILET PAPER!! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!Bwaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!
You have 24 hours to respond... You have been warned. (Disclaimer: This post is funny.)
A law, known as the Cellular Provider Financial Access Act (CPFAA) would be passed, similar to the DMCA but more restrictive to consumers and more flexible for corporations, which would require all cell phone customers to supply bank account information to their service providers for this purpose. This would definitely be "neat!"
Then make "real life" versions of all the guns in Doom, like the Super Shotgun, etc. Then, make up a video game where you can go around with these guns and shoot at real-life people. There are no real life bullets; no projectiles to fire... but if you shoot at someone, a packet (the Ping of Death ) is sent through the Internet to the chip in their body, based on GPS coordinates, as measured by the gun, that instructs the chip to kill that process, er, person.
This technology would be useful for enterprise integration applications, military, government, the video game market, and for inventory tracking in commercial stores, like Walmart, which will be implementing RFID in its products by 2005: If you jack a product from their store, a ping of death immediately kills you as you exit their store. This takes place even if you paid for the product, but the clerk who rang you up didn't properly demagnetize it. A law called the Consumer Safety and Inventory Convenience Act (similar to the DMCA but more restrictive for consumers and more flexible for corporations) would be passed to facilitate the use of this technology to, uh, make things more convenient for consumers. Also, someone could make up an e-Voodoo website, like the one in the insurance commercial, where you can go online, type any person's name, and stick virtual pins (implemented by the chip in their body, of course) into any part of their body to give them agonizing pain, once again, through the Internet.
Yup, this technology is definitely going to be useful.
That does it! Henceforth, I shall demand support for USB 3!
- If the user tampers with the explosives or tries to remove them, the explosives go off.
- If the user downloads copyrighted materials and the copyright holder doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
- If the user links to a web page and the owner of the web page doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
- If the user uses profane language in an email and the ISP doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
- If the user criticizes the operation, functionality, completeness or reliability of any software program and the software maker doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
- If the operating system in the user's computer crashes, the explosives go off.
- If the user runs any software that competes with Microsoft's software and Microsoft doesn't like it, the explosives go off.
This new technology, in conjunction with telescreens, cameras and microphones in every room, a government agency that randomly spies on people, and a ministry that tortures those who don't conform, the world can be made a much happier place to live.Oh, yeah, that's great. If the technology in this brick is so great, how come they can't just make the entire building out of fireproof materials and not have to worry about battling the damn thing in the first place???
I don't know. Fireproof Christmas trees have been around for a long time. They didn't have to put a computer in every brick to make buildings the same way.
Now, this situation has already taken place, so get everyone who will work 12/7 on this project and together demand that until the project is completed to the customer's satisfaction, all of your salaries will be increased to 175% of what they are normally. (By increasing the day from 8 hours to 12, the salary must go up to 150%, and for adding Saturday and Sunday, the salary should go up a little more.) Tell management that by working the additional hours, you are creating value for the company and are therefore going to be compensated for the extra work involved. Tell them that reduced morale and motivation will only ruin the company and therefore the pay must be increased to compensate. This is how you do business. If they don't like it, tough shit. They are the ones who fscked up, not you. If they accept your proposal, you'll make more money.
If they deny your proposal, then they are being unreasonable managers and you should teach your fscking company a lesson. Pretend to accept the situation as it is, but you and all your coworkers sabotage the project to such an extent that the company loses the customer and bring the entire company down. Pretend it was not deliberate and was simply a result of mismanagement. They obviously don't appreciate you and the value you are creating for them, so fuck 'em.
Just remember this simple marketing rule. It especially applies in Los Angeles, where my uncle lives, and where most of the population consists of "stupid people." I'll give the example first and then explain the marketing behind it:
I was there (in L.A.) with some friends a few months ago, and one of them insisted on going to the "clubs" on Sunset Blvd., where a parking space costs twenty dollars. Mind you, they park the cars so close to each other, to save space, that the door barely opens. Then, you go in the bar, and drinks cost nearly 10 dollars each. Something possessed my friend to buy everyone a round of beer, and when he met a two girls (who were pretty... pretty ugly, that is), he bought shots for everyone. This totals 8 drinks, right? He got a bill for over a hundred dollars. The place was crowded. The service was crappy. Security guards yelled at everybody and treated everybody like garbage. Everything was expensive as hell... And yet, everybody and his uncle was there, happily spending their money. Why?
This is a simple rule of marketing that I call, "The Rule of Value." It goes like this: In a market full of "stupid people" (exactly like nearly all of the population of L.A.), a product that costs too much and gives little benefit creates value. The more it costs, and the less benefit it gives, the more value it creates. In order for this rule to work, the benefit of the product must be inversely proportional to the price, where the price is greater than the benefit. The price must outweigh the benefit by a large margin. This creates a situation in which the consumer feels that they are investing in a product that creates value because it costs a lot and is shit, yet everybody else is doing it.
In other words, if the product produces a lot of benefit and costs a little, it won't succeed, because it doesn't create value. If the product costs about the same as its benefit, or even twice as much as its benefit, it won't succeed, because it doesn't create value. But if the product is extremely expensive and is truly shitty, then it will be extraordinarily successful.
This is, of course, an oversimplification. There are other variables. For example, time utility: If you have to wait in a long line and pay too much for a worthless product, the product will be even more successful. Customer satisfaction is another variable: If the business treats you like a piece of shit, so shitty that even a piece of dogshit deserves infinitely more respect than you, the business will be even more successful. And if finding a parking space is nearly impossible, and if you have to pay for parking in order to go into the business and spend your money, and if the conditions related to this parking mess are extra shitty, then the business will be even more successful.
That is why those bars on Sunset are so successful! You have to pay outrageous prices for parking; parking attendants are assholes; and parking conditions are shitty as they park your car in some alley full of nails, where gangsters are likely to break into your car. They charge exhorbitant amounts of money for a "drink." (Like a "drink" is so damn complicated to make that it should cost 10 dollars. Or like the materials in the drink actually cost the bar more than 10 cents. As if you can't get the same drink for 2 dollars at a bar in a nearby city.) The lines are long and people are elbowing each other, getting each other's all important "drinks" spilled. Bar employees, especially security, treat you like you're the garbage of the earth.
This is why so many people in L.A. drive all kinds of stupid SUVs and do it in an unsafe manner because they are not qualified to drive those cars. This is why many people in L.A. have to eat at expensive restaurants where the food is just as crappy as in the cheap restaurants. This is why people in L.A. rent houses that cost incredible sums of money, in order to be in
Dude. When I was in elementary school, there was this thing called penmanship. It was enforced throughout everything we did. We had to handwrite everything. (Some students did have computers (it wasn't that long ago) but everything was done with pencils, pens and papers. You could type things if you were doing a fancy project and wanted to make an impact, but that was about it.) More importantly, teachers made sure that you actually wrote legibly. If you wrote an "O" that wasn't closed properly, they made you fix it. If you turned in something that wasn't legible, with proper spaces between letters and words, they made you redo it. If your math homework didn't have the numbers lined up properly, you got busted.
By the time I finished high school, computers started to become more widespread in schools and some teachers required essays to be typed. Now, I hear that teachers are requiring pretty much everything to be typed, which I think is an outrage. They're doing it because peoples' handwriting is so terrible that they don't want to try to read it... so they're compounding the problem by requiring people to do the very same thing that caused the problem in the first place.
The only way to solve this problem is to require everything in K-12 to be handwritten neatly. If the letters aren't all the same size; if the spaces between letters or words isn't right; if it isn't to the teacher's satisfaction, the paper should be returned to the student for rewriting... and the student loses points. People will HAVE to practice writing with pencils and paper.
Because you know what? This will cause the muscles in people's hands to develop for doing other tasks, and it will prevent all kinds of wrist problems. Not to mention that I firmly believe that the keyboard is on its way to the history books. Soon, you will NOT have to type at a keyboard to get shit done, and there will be other methods for doing work on a computer, even if it involves writing a lot. This isn't the 1800's, this is almost the year 2000. It's about time these friggen keyboards disappeared.
Guinness. Because friends don't let friends drink Bud Light.
One day, we're gonna live in the world of Johnny Nmuemonic (sp?)... There's gonna be all kinds of weird diseases caused by pollution in the airwaves caused by tons of wireless devices everywhere... The only major difference between the movie and real life will be that 80 gigs won't be enough space to store jack by then.
Besides, think of the security implications and whatnot. Why not just run wires all over the friggen house and plug your friggen laptop into the nearest outlet? Is it that friggen hard to do? Damn, people are lazy.
Yes. Try using Windows some time, and you'll see that they are.
- I give out my address only to thoughtfully selected individuals. I check mail here several times a day.
- I have a second address, which I call my "public" address, which I give away freely (and check about once or twice a week).
- For both addresses, I set up a whitelist which includes all the people that I have given the address to. All other messages get filtered to the trash. I empty the trash occasionally, quickly perusing the "From:" lines in the list of unread messages before doing so.
I have an idea to extend the whitelist policy: Each person would set up a "deposit" sum on their email address. This deposit could be any amount you want, from a few cents to billions of dollars. Each person's email address would be tied to some sort of payment system. If you want to send a message to someone whose whitelist you're not on, the system will charge that person's deposit fee to you. If that person accepts your message, your deposit is refunded. If that person rejects your message, they get to keep your deposit. Get paid to reject SPAM mail! What do people do who don't have credit cards, bank accounts, etc.? They'll deposit some sum of money (like a hundred bucks) with their mail service provider, and deposits will be deducted from that amount. People in the spam business will be out of business, really damn quick. Yes, this would require changes to the mail protocol. People who continue to use the old protocol will continue to receive spam and will be unable to send mail to people with the new protocol unless they're on their whitelists.Very few "wanted" messages end up in the trash. My "wanted" message traffic is pretty high, too.
Guinness. Because friends don't let friends drink Bud Light.
When searching for a product or service, consumers will be presented a list of competing possibilities, along with price and clearly spelled out advantages and disadvantages of each. Consumers will always request this information (i.e., through the Internet, etc.) and will never be given it without asking (commercials, ads, junk mail, etc.)
Large companies (those with over 5 million dollars or more than 100 employees) that do not donate 99% of their revenue to the EFF will not be allowed to list any advantages, and will be required to exaggerate the disadvantages.
Large companies (like those mentioned above) will be required to provide free maintainance, service, repair and otherwise support for every product they sell for as long as it is in existance, even if it has changed owners multiple times since being purchased. Both parts and labor are paid for by the large company.
Individuals will be allowed to market their products, and will be encouraged to do so through a tax waiver that waives all taxes and even reimburses sales tax for all items for which a receipt is supplied.
And guess what... When YOU are the one using this "feature" to gain money, the casino owners will kick you out of the casino. It's ok when they cheat you by controlling the outcome of slots, but when you cheat them, they kick you out. That's why:
- I don't go to casinos.
- Except when I go to Indian casinos (for the food) and when I do, I do not "gamble."
Gambling is just plain stupid anyway.Guinness just leaves me feeling good. And although I don't drink 14 of them in one sitting, I do drink a good two or three pints, and I usually leave the bar (an hour or so later) feeling sober and normal, as opposed to drunkenpuken.
And that's Guinness... Not "extra stout." That stuff is shit, IMO. Because of it, I thought I hated Guinness for years. When I discovered the difference, I realized that if I was stuck in the middle of the ocean in a tiny wooden boat and the entire ocean was turned to Guinness, I'd have to piss in the boat.
Guinness. Because friends don't let friends drink Bud Light.
Forget all kinds of contraptions. There is this thing called a bar. You go in there, get a Guinness, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, get another, drink it, and eventually run out of money and go back home. That's the way to live a happy life.
Advantages: We will be able to communicate with the people who run our world from the "real" world. I can already see people on IRC asking all kinds of favors, like "I want to be rich. Someone important. Like an actor."
Disadvantages: Script kiddies will get into the machines of the "real" world and they'll perform a DOS attack. Next thing you know, you're just walking down the street minding your own business when suddenly the street you were on turns into a toxic waste dump and a couple of identical cats walk by.
But anyway, if we ever do build a simulation, we should definitely connect our Internet into the world we make. That way, people who figure it out will be able to communicate with us. We'll tell 'em we're God... Screw the Prime Directive.
Kind of like when a program allocates memory for a structure. The memory always exists. Then, you allocate a structure from the chaos and put stuff into it. Eventually you deallocate the structure and all returns to the chaos that was before. During this time, the physical memory continuously existed, but the structure came to exist within it for some time.
What is the physical world, as opposed to the spiritual world? In the spiritual world, everything "flows" there are no boundaries between objects. It's just one big "light." (Kind of like how computer memory is a long string that starts at address 0 and goes until whatever.) Everything is a concept in the spiritual world. But in the physical world, everything is defined. A cup is a cup, a light bulb is a light bulb, and a house is a house. (Kind of like how a struct tm is different from a struct FILE.) Everything is so well defined, actually, that objects cannot occupy the same space as one another. (Kind of like the aforementioned two structures, which occupy different regions of memory or would overwrite each other. Of course, God is a Real Programmer, so that doesn't happen in the physical world, unless you're flying over the Bermuda Triangle or something, of course.)
Which brings me to my point: What if the spiritual world is the "real" world, and the physical world exists only in the "imagination" of the spiritual world? What if there really is no spoon? Not because we're running inside a computer, but because the spiritual world acts as a sort of "computer" that processes this world?
What if the spiritual world is only a simulation inside a larger world that exists outside of it?
I don't think this has anything to do with time travel. If it did, then how come we don't meet people from the past? After all, they must have been simulated.
Unless... what if all the knowledge of the universe has just been loaded, 2 microseconds ago, that makes us think that we've been around for a long time. How do you know that what happened a minute ago really happened and wasn't just a memory that was fabricated?
As for the 13th floor... I just drove to the edge of town over here and guess what I saw? Except it looks a little different from the movie. It was like the floor turned into a grid of yellow lines, about an inch wide, that extended outward for what must have been ten miles and then rose directly upward to form a wall that disappears into the sky above. I think we're in a really Star Trek holodeck.