No, cliches already were that. Cliches have been taking arguments for a long, long time. Some self-important blogger thought he'd come up with something new, but it's old news, and totally doesn't deserve a new word. Especially not a stupid word that a self-important blogger has come up with.
I am undoubtedly one of these dead bloggers. But somehow don't feel bad about making posts like this once a year, when looking at the site of the guy who's posting every day about what his dog eats!
Brief impressions: The author is Steria. Steria aren't so bad. I know they employ some top-tier formal verification experts, and they have a tool ("Atelier B") which implements the famous B method for constructing verifiable programs. They also make software for bank terminals (which I've had the pleasure of interfacing with in my old job), so they should be qualified for this sort of stuff (something you can't always assume when governments put out tenders)
Yet... this appears to be a C++ application running in DOS. And some of the copyright notices refer to Bull - that would have to be written 6 years ago at the latest. Strange that the notices haven't been updated.
In its defense, it appears to be a very small, neat application. Only 7000 source lines of code according to SLOCCount.
I don't think that's what he was trying to do. What you both seem to have missed is that in the video, they wrote in Obama, and were disappointed when nothing happened. I merely thought it would be cool if an Obama figure turned up. I wasn't even trying to make a joke (and you can see, I'm not modded funny at present)
The Uighurs are a group of people living in China who are not remotely chinese - they are turkish, in looks, speech and religion. Their homeland was annexed by Mao in 1949. They are a lot like Tibetans, in that
1. Their distinct culture has been brutally supressed 2. The Chinese government has promoted settlement in their homelands by majority (Han) Chinese. 3. They desire independence.
The Chinese government labels them terrorists. The Bush regime happily accepted that designation in order to soften Chinese opposition to an attack on Iraq. A handful of Uighur refugees, most of which weren't even particularly concerned about independence, ended up in a village in Afghanistan. They worked there for a while, building houses and learning to dismantle and reassemble the village's single firearm. Then they were turned in by some bounty hunters. Apparently, half of them were returned to China, and half taken to Guantanamo. I don't know what happened to those who were returned to China, but they are most probably dead.
The Bush regime found out that they were innocent - even their own Combatant Status Review Commissions concluded that, so they must have known by 2003. What they endured before that, God knows. After, they were still kept, because it wasn't safe to return them to China, where they would almost certainly be tortured and killed.
I've never liked the animated look of "Curse" or these sequels. Guybrush should look like he could fit on the cover of an eighties pirate move cover, like this one:
Look at that haircut! It's cool, It's part of what makes him dorky. But as a cartoon character, it doesn't work. It's just another exaggregated feature.
Yes, but the Scientologists hate their guts. These "freezoners" (as they call themselves) or "squirrels" (what Hubbard called them) do not call themselves Scientologists, because that is a trademark of the Religious Technology Center etc. etc.
"Wouldn't being "depressed" probably be a legitimate diagnosis of someone who does *anything* and goes and kills themselves two hours later?"
Yes, and she had that diagnosis already. What the CoS told her was far more than "you're depressed". They use so-called "hard-sell" techniques, which they practice extensively. "I look at these stats, and I see death. Only death." Imagine how it feels to hear that if you're depressed, and think the person telling you is a legitimate scientific authority. They are pretty good at presenting that image, you know. In all likelihood, Kaja was told that she was a human wreck, a truly hopeless case, and the only thing that could have a slight chance of saving her was [the scientology intro course they were selling that week].
"If you leave this room after seeing this film and walk out and never mention scientology again you are perfectly free to do so. It would be stupid, but you can do it. You could also dive off a bridge or blow your brains out. That is your choice." If that's what they tell healthy people (and they do, it's the final punchline for a common intro video), what do you think they say to someone who is plainly having real troubles?
Haven't played Super Monkey Ball, but in the apparently SMB-inspired Linux game Neverball, there are also some people who enjoy solving levels in various extreme ways. Since the game has a video recording mode, you can show off not just your time, but how you did it too.
"Beyond that, there is tremendous variation in the way Japanese look (yes, I get the joke, but still)."
This is really obvious to anyone who's taken a look. I admit it, I'm bad at distinguishing faces of people with other ethnicities than mine (I'm actually pretty lousy at my own ethnicity too!), but japanese? Except for hair and eye colour, they look just as varied as us to my unsophisticated eyes.
Still don't get it? Ok, I'll try again, with a real world example of how stupid sysadmins can be.
To get unemployment benefits in Norway, you have to fill out a lot of paperwork every 14 days. Fortunately, this can be done online. Unfortunately, if some idiot has your username, and tries to guess your password three times, the account locks completely for 30 minutes.
So there you have it. For three connections every 30 minutes, you can make sure an unemployed Norwegian won't eat the next two weeks. Cute, eh?
There are denial of service attacks, and there are denial of service attacks. Sometimes you need a botnet of thousands of machines. Sometimes you need one machine, a perl script and insignificant bandwith. The latter is a bit more aggravating.
In brief, because it doesn't work like that. The people who built Apollo would not have a clue about curing cancer, because rocket building and molecular biology have bloody little in common. Nor can they reliably make Einstein-like leaps of genius. No one can.
If there's any problem with educational priorites, it is that "intelligence" is valued over hard-earned competence, and leaps of genius are romanticised at the expense of all the small, important steps.
"Until the next generation of kids passes through schools that encourage thought, discipline, and creativity and not just feel-good, everyone wins"
Ah-ha, so THAT's who's to blame, the feel-good everyone wins liberals!
I don't think that's very insightful. Sinking educational standards are a product of many forces. But keep some perspective.
First, whether NASA has a pool of 12000 qualified people to choose from, or 11000 doesn't really matter very much - the benefit of hiring an extremely qualified person over another marginally less qualified person is so small, it hardly matters.
Second, hiring the right person is hard. If you were trying to decide between the best and the second best of those 12000, I bet you would choose the "wrong" person half the time.
Third, space exploration, like most science, isn't particularly genius-driven. Just because you use your head in your job doesn't mean you aren't replaceable.
Fourth, the kind of genius that could potentially make a big difference was never reliably produced by any school system.
"c) When you are addicted, just stopping is not a choice you have (otherwise it would not be called addiction)."
Actually, this is not always true. Inability to stop is one of the typical diagnostics criteria for addictions, but it's not always there. There are, for instance, drug or alcohol addicts who regularly sober up for special events like Christmas, yet have a high, destructive level of use.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's got permadeath. Or technically... I suppose I'll find out when I lose this character.
No, cliches already were that. Cliches have been taking arguments for a long, long time. Some self-important blogger thought he'd come up with something new, but it's old news, and totally doesn't deserve a new word. Especially not a stupid word that a self-important blogger has come up with.
This is so true.
Don't get me started on "snowclone", which is just a fancy and incredibly stupid word for cliche.
The last post I made on my blog looked like this:
http://vintermann.paranoidkoala.org/archives/000108.html
I am undoubtedly one of these dead bloggers. But somehow don't feel bad about making posts like this once a year, when looking at the site of the guy who's posting every day about what his dog eats!
By a very high amount, even taking into account wrong use.
Very cute!
Brief impressions: The author is Steria. Steria aren't so bad. I know they employ some top-tier formal verification experts, and they have a tool ("Atelier B") which implements the famous B method for constructing verifiable programs. They also make software for bank terminals (which I've had the pleasure of interfacing with in my old job), so they should be qualified for this sort of stuff (something you can't always assume when governments put out tenders)
Yet... this appears to be a C++ application running in DOS. And some of the copyright notices refer to Bull - that would have to be written 6 years ago at the latest. Strange that the notices haven't been updated.
In its defense, it appears to be a very small, neat application. Only 7000 source lines of code according to SLOCCount.
...and by corollary, the system that works.
I don't think that's what he was trying to do. What you both seem to have missed is that in the video, they wrote in Obama, and were disappointed when nothing happened.
I merely thought it would be cool if an Obama figure turned up. I wasn't even trying to make a joke (and you can see, I'm not modded funny at present)
I hope they add Obama for the final version.
They're not full-on Al Quaeda, you got that right. They aren't remotely Al Quaeda.
The Uighurs are a group of people living in China who are not remotely chinese - they are turkish, in looks, speech and religion. Their homeland was annexed by Mao in 1949. They are a lot like Tibetans, in that
1. Their distinct culture has been brutally supressed
2. The Chinese government has promoted settlement in their homelands by majority (Han) Chinese.
3. They desire independence.
The Chinese government labels them terrorists. The Bush regime happily accepted that designation in order to soften Chinese opposition to an attack on Iraq. A handful of Uighur refugees, most of which weren't even particularly concerned about independence, ended up in a village in Afghanistan. They worked there for a while, building houses and learning to dismantle and reassemble the village's single firearm. Then they were turned in by some bounty hunters. Apparently, half of them were returned to China, and half taken to Guantanamo. I don't know what happened to those who were returned to China, but they are most probably dead.
The Bush regime found out that they were innocent - even their own Combatant Status Review Commissions concluded that, so they must have known by 2003. What they endured before that, God knows. After, they were still kept, because it wasn't safe to return them to China, where they would almost certainly be tortured and killed.
I've never liked the animated look of "Curse" or these sequels. Guybrush should look like he could fit on the cover of an eighties pirate move cover, like this one:
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2702481152/tt0099816
and indeed he does, on the original cover:
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/dos-games/1703-1.jpg
Look at that haircut! It's cool, It's part of what makes him dorky. But as a cartoon character, it doesn't work. It's just another exaggregated feature.
Yes, but the Scientologists hate their guts. These "freezoners" (as they call themselves) or "squirrels" (what Hubbard called them) do not call themselves Scientologists, because that is a trademark of the Religious Technology Center etc. etc.
"Wouldn't being "depressed" probably be a legitimate diagnosis of someone who does *anything* and goes and kills themselves two hours later?"
Yes, and she had that diagnosis already. What the CoS told her was far more than "you're depressed". They use so-called "hard-sell" techniques, which they practice extensively. "I look at these stats, and I see death. Only death." Imagine how it feels to hear that if you're depressed, and think the person telling you is a legitimate scientific authority. They are pretty good at presenting that image, you know. In all likelihood, Kaja was told that she was a human wreck, a truly hopeless case, and the only thing that could have a slight chance of saving her was [the scientology intro course they were selling that week].
"If you leave this room after seeing this film and walk out and never mention scientology again you are perfectly free to do so. It would be stupid, but you can do it. You could also dive off a bridge or blow your brains out. That is your choice." If that's what they tell healthy people (and they do, it's the final punchline for a common intro video), what do you think they say to someone who is plainly having real troubles?
Since you know so little about Java (based on ECMAscript? get real!), your dislike of it can hardly be based on anything reasonable.
Is your local comic book store Outland? If it is... admit it: even though age and gender varies, it's got a pretty high freak factor.
Not that there's anything wrong with it.
"A) Slashdot has a very vocal group of whiney emotionally reactive girls"
You, you... you INSENSITIVE CLOD!
Haven't played Super Monkey Ball, but in the apparently SMB-inspired Linux game Neverball, there are also some people who enjoy solving levels in various extreme ways. Since the game has a video recording mode, you can show off not just your time, but how you did it too.
What do you mean racist?! It's a fact that pigeons are gentle, intelligent, civilised little things, while seagulls are stinking, obnoxious bullies!
"Beyond that, there is tremendous variation in the way Japanese look (yes, I get the joke, but still)."
This is really obvious to anyone who's taken a look. I admit it, I'm bad at distinguishing faces of people with other ethnicities than mine (I'm actually pretty lousy at my own ethnicity too!), but japanese? Except for hair and eye colour, they look just as varied as us to my unsophisticated eyes.
Still don't get it? Ok, I'll try again, with a real world example of how stupid sysadmins can be.
To get unemployment benefits in Norway, you have to fill out a lot of paperwork every 14 days.
Fortunately, this can be done online.
Unfortunately, if some idiot has your username, and tries to guess your password three times, the account locks completely for 30 minutes.
So there you have it. For three connections every 30 minutes, you can make sure an unemployed Norwegian won't eat the next two weeks. Cute, eh?
There are denial of service attacks, and there are denial of service attacks. Sometimes you need a botnet of thousands of machines. Sometimes you need one machine, a perl script and insignificant bandwith. The latter is a bit more aggravating.
"Others will lock you out after 3-5 attempts."
Yeah, I know the type. They are for people who are truly paranoid about break-ins, and incredibly unconcerned about denial of service attacks.
In brief, because it doesn't work like that. The people who built Apollo would not have a clue about curing cancer, because rocket building and molecular biology have bloody little in common. Nor can they reliably make Einstein-like leaps of genius. No one can.
If there's any problem with educational priorites, it is that "intelligence" is valued over hard-earned competence, and leaps of genius are romanticised at the expense of all the small, important steps.
"Until the next generation of kids passes through schools that encourage thought, discipline, and creativity and not just feel-good, everyone wins"
Ah-ha, so THAT's who's to blame, the feel-good everyone wins liberals!
I don't think that's very insightful. Sinking educational standards are a product of many forces. But keep some perspective.
First, whether NASA has a pool of 12000 qualified people to choose from, or 11000 doesn't really matter very much - the benefit of hiring an extremely qualified person over another marginally less qualified person is so small, it hardly matters.
Second, hiring the right person is hard. If you were trying to decide between the best and the second best of those 12000, I bet you would choose the "wrong" person half the time.
Third, space exploration, like most science, isn't particularly genius-driven. Just because you use your head in your job doesn't mean you aren't replaceable.
Fourth, the kind of genius that could potentially make a big difference was never reliably produced by any school system.
"c) When you are addicted, just stopping is not a choice you have (otherwise it would not be called addiction)."
Actually, this is not always true. Inability to stop is one of the typical diagnostics criteria for addictions, but it's not always there. There are, for instance, drug or alcohol addicts who regularly sober up for special events like Christmas, yet have a high, destructive level of use.