I too am a fan of Slackware, and am typing this on a Slackware
10.2 system with a 2.6.16.9 SMP kernel (built from the
kernel source), to support
one of those new dual-core Pentium 4 gizmos. In other words,
it goes like stink...
Even though I can
download the CD images, I always buy a copy of each new release.
It's not a crime for a Linux system to look like Unix, and
if your hardware barfs over a text-based install, you really
do have a problem. I like being able to download source
(including kernels), build it and it just works. I still
have nightmares about the time I tried to help somebody
upgrade a kernel on a Fedora Core box. Shudder.
Slackware isn't a pre-packaged Linux system in a can: open
the can and pour it out, ready to go. It's a construction
set for building any kind of Linux system you want. And it's all
the better for it.
As for remembering strong passwords, my method is this: think of a phrase, take the first letter of every word, substitute in some h4x0r numbers for letters, and make a few letters uppercase. It takes an afternoon or so before I can type it without thinking.
This is one of my faves.
It's immune to a dictionary attack, and any good password will be. It's also
largely immune to social engineering, i.e. somebody looking over your shoulder as you
type. You think "Now I'm possessive it isn't nice. You've heard me say
that smoking is my only vice...", and they
see NIpiinYhmstsimov, random garbage with no pattern. Much harder to remember.
Until this year I always steered non-technical computer
users (including most family members) to Windows 98SE. Good
functionality, runs well on less than a P4, USB works.
Some people claim there is a USB implementation on Windows
95, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion that
they are mistaken...
It's only now, mainly due to new hardware not supporting
Windows 98, that I've moved the family to XP. When
my Mom's computer's power supply packed up, for example, the
replacement box came with XP. I considered buying her a Mac,
but the new XP box was the path of least resistance, and maintains
compatibility with her favourite apps.
My old Pentium 3 system at home, which dual-boots Windows 98SE
(for a few legacy apps) and Slackware,
is the last Windows 98 box in the family. I have a nice shiny new P4 box
(assembled from components) plugged in to my KVM switch, and when I get
around to it will
load Slackware on it and make it dual boot Linux and XP. At that point the
Windows 98 era will be over in our family. I may yet end up using a Sun Ultra 5
(bought for the hell of it on EBay; it runs Debian) as my main Internet box, since there is little the hackers can
do to it.
Here in the Great White North we made an
abortive attempt
at rolling out L band DAB.
The Powers That Be seem to have shelved the whole idea
(they never promoted it anyway) in favour of satellite radio.
We still have two multiplexes on the air here in Vancouver, but
I have no idea how long they'll stay on the air. It's a credible first
effort, but needs work (and more transmitter power) to be really viable.
It ain't gonna happen. Not now. A shame: I bought one of the
little Perstel DAB radios at Radio Shack and it actually works decently.
I've heard the suggestion that part of the U.S. rejection
of DAB is the requirement that radio stations (who are ordinarily
competitors) cooperate
to be on the same multiplex. NIH may be a factor too.
What we need is to get out of the always-on-the-go
worker bee mentality. Sure, some people are constant
hives of activity, and work so hard all the time - but do they actually get more
done than those who take the time to smell the roses along
the way? And who has the better life while they're doing it?
Which is more important, anyway?
I've always felt that the best way to get something
done efficiently is to get a lazy person
to do it. They will find the way that involves the least
amount of work.
Think of the French notion of système D. The art/science/national
sport of landing on your feet and getting what you want,
preferably with
a minimum of effort.
Smart people, those French folks. They get lots of holidays, too.
Remember all the excitement over
PSK31? It was the
first taste of what people could do with a sound card
and the processing power of even a crummy computer.
I first ran it on a Pentium 233MMX (my 486/66 couldn't
quite do it). With Linux, of course.:-)
People have now built
stripped down little radios that
plug in to a sound card and use software to make all sorts of interesting
noises.
I'd be surprised if even one ham in 1000 could tell you exactly
how PSK31 works, but that's other matter...
We are surrounded, indeed, inundated with technology,
but for the vast majority of people, their only interest is
to consume it. They don't care how it works. Hams care how
things work.
You can do some incredibly cool things with ham radio,
and my ham background (VE7LDH) has served me well in my
work (telecommunications). But as an active ham? I haven't attended a ham club
meeting in years. The same old grey haired people (almost all
men), the same
old cliques, the same old conversations (many of which were
more about computers than ham radio anyway). Too many throwbacks
stuck in the Good Old Days of the 1950s. Transistors? DSP? What's that?
AMSAT has enormous
geek potential, but in my entire involvement with
ham radio (since 1993) the party line has been "give us more
money and maybe some day we'll launch the super-duper
satellite of your dreams". They launched one, all-but-bankrupted
the organization doing it, it worked for a while, then it partially
stopped
working, then it packed up completely. Now they're back in Give Us Money mode.
I want ham radio to be interesting. I think it's a great
incubator for techies. Real in-depth geeks,
not techie-as-fashion-statement. But at the
moment, I'm not finding it as interesting as I'd like to. I think
that's a shame. I wonder what happened.
I'm sorry, I'm not a scientist and perhaps that's why I can't graps how the hell they came to this genius conclusion.
Let's sample a sphere at two pinpoint locations, and make all sorts of conclusions on the shape of an entire hemisphere of it...??? It rained today, and it was sunny yesterday, so that means that there's a 50% chance of it raining? Insufficient data...
You expect the termination shock
to be symmetric, with the Sun at the centre. There will be
interstellar influences, but the Voyagers are still only a tiny fraction of
a percent on their way even to Alpha Centauri.
Yes, there aren't
many data points, but when the first two show the
termination shock is not symmetric, so close to the solar
system, there is clearly
something else going on.
This Is Interesting (tm).
...laura, who was in high school when Voyager 2 was launched. Sigh.
This isn't my field of study, but I believe the second is defined as a certain number of oscillations between two hyperfine levels of the cesium-133 atom. This was done in the late sixties to get the definition of the second away from earth rotations and tie it to something more reliable and easy to measure.
It is. But depending on the application, there are several different time scales. A few off the top of my head:
Most people who measure things time-related need a time scale that runs at a constant rate.
UTC, derived from vibrating atoms, is the way to go. Time was originally derived from
Earth's rotation, but since it wobbles around so much, we use more accurate
time sources now.
People who do things like navigation need time that is synchronized to
Earth's rotation. This is the application of stuff like UT1, which
is derived from UTC, but is measured and adjusted to track Earth's rotation
very precisely. The double ticks at the top of the minute on WWV
are the current UTC-UT1 offset, in 100 millisecond increments.
People who play with things in space need a time scale that runs
at a constant rate, but is aware of relativistic effects. This is Dynamical Time, currently about 65 seconds off UTC. Instead of leap seconds
these space folks just keep track of the offset, called delta T.
Among other things, predictions of eclipses and planet positions
work in Dynamical Time.
How about no commercials would save TV? It's the commercials that people hate, so remove them.
Sure, there are public networks like the
BBC. They
get their money from the government, though radio and
television license fees. No ads, except for their own promos between programs.
I'd be happy to pay extra for BBC Canada
if they'd ditch their ads.
It's a business model that works, though folks in the U.K. grumble
about it. It can produce excellent television. But it's also a model the U.S.A.
rejected about 1790, opting for wide-open free markets with as little
government involvement as possible. Could it work with cable television?
The Powers That Be in Canada, both Federal and Provincial, can
already pass a law without running it by Parliament. It's called
an
Order in Council. Theoretically an OIC is used for little things
like political appointments, but it can be used for big things too.
If anybody objects, there is always the
Notwithstanding
Clause
(it's Section 33). It was used for Bills 101 and 178 in Quebec, and
Alberta keeps threatening to use it against same-sex marriage.
It's been used a number of other times too.
I'm reminded of John Howard's apology in
The Games.
Except that in that apology the distinguished,
official-looking gentleman delivering
the speech never claimed
to be anybody other than John Howard,
speaking from Sydney Australia.
This was perfectly true: he
really was John Howard,
just not theJohn Howard. But
few people outside of Australia know what the John Howard
who hangs out in Canberra looks like...
I'm reminded of what I've read about the car industry in the teens
and twenties, which had also saturated and stopped growing.
By that time everybody who wanted a car had one. The only
new cars the makers were selling were replacements for old
ones that had worn out.
The solution was forced upgrades, by instituting the model
year change. "Oh, your car is a 1926? Mine is the new 1927.
You're a loser!"
In the computer biz, forced upgrades sell hardware, but they don't
necessarily sell Internet. Price (high-speed is lots cheaper
here in Canada, BTW: I pay $CDN34.95 a month for ADSL), content and applications sell Internet. The latest broadband convert in our family is my Mum,
and her killer app is VOIP, chatting with various relatives (including
me). I set her up with a headset and web camera and she's
having a ball with it. She's 67. Didn't have her own computer until she
was 60. Never even used a computer before she was 55.
She is particularly fond of lot of the streaming media, like
BBC Radio 3.
Broadband has been a whole new experience for her, after 56k dialup.
When I was a kid, my Mom and Dad used to let me stay up late on Thursday
night to watch a strange new show,
Star
Trek. Star Trek's view of the universe, science and technology
stuck. Like many people I meet of my generation (I'm 44),
I was inspired to a scientific/technical career by
Star Trek, the space race, and so on, while I was a kid. This has to be
A Good Thing, IMHO.
The one real issue in all of this is the way that lots of
mildly autistic engineering folks (most engineering types live
life their own way, in their own world) are meeting and mating
with other mildly autistic engineering folks, producing profoundly
autistic kids.
Some years ago I owned a chunky silver chain necklace,
long before the hip hop morons started sporting such things.
It had a definite Klingon look to it, and if anybody asked
I would tell them I had had a relationship with the Klingon
Ambassador's daughter, and it was a going-away present when her
dad was posted back to Kronos. An interesting relationship.
If anybody asked about the bruises, I looked them right in the
eye and told them.:-)
The city is at its darkest and quietest just before dawn,
and the astronomy is as good as its going to get. Sometimes
I actually set my alarm and pad out to the back yard to
see what's up.
I still think it's neat that the stars at dawn are
the evening stars of the next season. Perhaps I need
to get out more.
A couple of years ago at a star party I remember
watching Orion rise at dawn in August. Magic!
I get the impression that this is exactly like how the auto
industry works in Japan. If your car is more than a couple
of years old it's not going to pass vehicle inspection - no
matter what sort of shape it's in - and you
will have no choice but to buy a new one.
Now they're doing it with electronics. Will this mean a flood
of cheap used Japanese electronics, just like the flood of cheap
used Japanese cars? Or just lots of gomi for college students
to pick over?
Sure, language changes. One of the best ways to see
what's happening is to see what the old fuddy-duddies
are grumbling about what the kids are doing to the
language this time. There are writings from Roman
times on this subject. It's nothing new.
The biggest
grammatical change in the English language in the last 100
years is probably the loss of the subjunctive mood. We
still express the idea, but we say it differently. Dig
up a tape of somebody really old (say, The Queen Mum in
her latter years) and
listen to how the language has changed.
The latest has been
the loss of distinction between adjectives and adverbs,
particularly in spoken English.
Very few people distinguish
between "good" (adjective) and "well" (adverb) anymore.
I've noticed this one in my own lifetime. Does this
affect the ability to communicate? Or is context enough,
without those silly -ly endings?
When I hear the younger generation (teens, twenties) talk I hear an
excessive reliance on fill words ("kind of", "sort of", "um",
etc.) and lots of use of excessively general terms ("that thing", etc.).
I'm open enough to not grumble (much:-) about the
bastardization of the language; maybe it is
just different. I still wonder if I'm missing nuances, or if the level of communication
really is at a low level.
The less said about spelling and grammar (especially the online version)
the better.
...laura, once a member of the younger generation. Now, at 44, a member of the older generation.
At least for me, this is always the way. After a certain
point, there is nothing to be gained from continuing to bach
away at something. Do something else; play with
something; get some sleep and look at it fresh in the morning.
I always like to have a couple of background projects at
work for just this purpose. Some of them have actually
turned out to be useful.
Reminds me of the job offer that produced my current position.
I told my boss-to-be that the offer was good and I was inclined
to accept it. But on general principles I would sleep on it and
make it official the next morning.
Reminds me also of a spectral analysis simulation I did
in one of my grad courses. One part of it just didn't work. The
results were nonsensical, but I had a deadline, wrote it up anyway,
and included a mention that the results in one section were suspect.
I then did other things over the weekend, looked at it again,
saw the problem immediately, reran the simulation, got good results,
wrote them up and handed them in. The professor was pleased, saying that
this was just what a grad student should do. I got an A in
the course.
You might want to make contact with some local hams and
local ham clubs. The
Burnaby and
North Shore ham clubs are fairly
happening affairs (as ham clubs go), though that also
means they tend to be very white, very male, and very grey,
with few members below the age of 50. C'est la vie, I suppose.
The Burnaby club's
swap meet is later this month, and is
the biggest and best in Western Canada. Be there! The Sun Run
is coming up too, and they are always desperate for bodies.
Try the ham
radio stores. Burnaby Radio are nice folks. Haven't heard much
of Com West lately.
Bear in mind, too, that unlike some other countries
(including our southern neighbours), you can listen
to anything that's on the radio, and you don't need a license
to do so. However, with fairly narrow
exceptions, it's a crime to tell anybody what you heard.
the Dominatrix Scotty ordering her latex clad slaves around
CLICK
Thus illustrating the problem at hand (not you personally, but the whole setup): Scotty Chapman was never portrayed as sexy or even particularly
decorative. She was a member of the build
team who was very good with power tools, and just happened to be a woman.
So what's the first thing that comes to some peoples' minds? A sexually exploitative fantasy that had nothing to do with the show.
So what would happen if one of the geek faves, say,
Mythbusters
was hosted by a man and a woman (cf.
Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars? Or by two women - say, Scottie and Cathy Rogers hosting,
while Jamie and Adam do the dirty work.
I suspect people would find the latter scary, and possibly
dangerous. Like what happened when they made a movie
about two women shooting their way across the west.
I remember that morning. As a space nut I was watching
the launch preparations (and delays) on TV as I got ready for work.
They hadn't launched by the time I left.
Later that morning one of our part-time students came in
and asked if everybody had heard that Challenger
had blown up. I felt myself go grey, went home sick,
and spent the afternoon glued to the TV.
So, no, I didn't see it live. Probably just as well.
Apollo 1 was a little before my time - I was only 5 in 1966.
I distinctly remember a couple of years later, though, thinking how badly
it would suck to be away from home for Christmas while watching coverage
of Apollo 8.
...no major problems with running MySQL on Windows. I have seen it done lots of times without problems.
I took a MySQL training course last August, and the rented computer
training facility (in Portland, Oregon) only had Windows XP
available. So we had to run MySQL on Windows XP, whether we
liked it or not.
Not one of the people in the class had ever used MySQL on XP,
so there was lots of head scratching over where Windows hid things.
We compared notes on our favourite Linux distros and read Slashdot.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I too am a fan of Slackware, and am typing this on a Slackware 10.2 system with a 2.6.16.9 SMP kernel (built from the kernel source), to support one of those new dual-core Pentium 4 gizmos. In other words, it goes like stink...
Even though I can download the CD images, I always buy a copy of each new release.
It's not a crime for a Linux system to look like Unix, and if your hardware barfs over a text-based install, you really do have a problem. I like being able to download source (including kernels), build it and it just works. I still have nightmares about the time I tried to help somebody upgrade a kernel on a Fedora Core box. Shudder.
Slackware isn't a pre-packaged Linux system in a can: open the can and pour it out, ready to go. It's a construction set for building any kind of Linux system you want. And it's all the better for it.
Thanks, Patrick.
...laura
I don't care what MySpace get up to. They send me spam. Accordingly, they should rot in hell.
...laura
This is one of my faves.
It's immune to a dictionary attack, and any good password will be. It's also largely immune to social engineering, i.e. somebody looking over your shoulder as you type. You think "Now I'm possessive it isn't nice. You've heard me say that smoking is my only vice...", and they see NIpiinYhmstsimov, random garbage with no pattern. Much harder to remember.
Just don't hum the tune while you type. :-)
...laura, probably showing her age again
Until this year I always steered non-technical computer users (including most family members) to Windows 98SE. Good functionality, runs well on less than a P4, USB works. Some people claim there is a USB implementation on Windows 95, but after careful study I have come to the conclusion that they are mistaken...
It's only now, mainly due to new hardware not supporting Windows 98, that I've moved the family to XP. When my Mom's computer's power supply packed up, for example, the replacement box came with XP. I considered buying her a Mac, but the new XP box was the path of least resistance, and maintains compatibility with her favourite apps.
My old Pentium 3 system at home, which dual-boots Windows 98SE (for a few legacy apps) and Slackware, is the last Windows 98 box in the family. I have a nice shiny new P4 box (assembled from components) plugged in to my KVM switch, and when I get around to it will load Slackware on it and make it dual boot Linux and XP. At that point the Windows 98 era will be over in our family. I may yet end up using a Sun Ultra 5 (bought for the hell of it on EBay; it runs Debian) as my main Internet box, since there is little the hackers can do to it.
...laura
Here in the Great White North we made an abortive attempt at rolling out L band DAB.
The Powers That Be seem to have shelved the whole idea (they never promoted it anyway) in favour of satellite radio. We still have two multiplexes on the air here in Vancouver, but I have no idea how long they'll stay on the air. It's a credible first effort, but needs work (and more transmitter power) to be really viable. It ain't gonna happen. Not now. A shame: I bought one of the little Perstel DAB radios at Radio Shack and it actually works decently.
I've heard the suggestion that part of the U.S. rejection of DAB is the requirement that radio stations (who are ordinarily competitors) cooperate to be on the same multiplex. NIH may be a factor too.
...laura
What we need is to get out of the always-on-the-go worker bee mentality. Sure, some people are constant hives of activity, and work so hard all the time - but do they actually get more done than those who take the time to smell the roses along the way? And who has the better life while they're doing it? Which is more important, anyway?
I've always felt that the best way to get something done efficiently is to get a lazy person to do it. They will find the way that involves the least amount of work.
Think of the French notion of système D. The art/science/national sport of landing on your feet and getting what you want, preferably with a minimum of effort.
Smart people, those French folks. They get lots of holidays, too.
...laura
In Soviet Russia MS bashes YOU!
Remember all the excitement over PSK31? It was the first taste of what people could do with a sound card and the processing power of even a crummy computer. I first ran it on a Pentium 233MMX (my 486/66 couldn't quite do it). With Linux, of course. :-)
People have now built stripped down little radios that plug in to a sound card and use software to make all sorts of interesting noises.
I'd be surprised if even one ham in 1000 could tell you exactly how PSK31 works, but that's other matter...
...laura
We are surrounded, indeed, inundated with technology, but for the vast majority of people, their only interest is to consume it. They don't care how it works. Hams care how things work.
You can do some incredibly cool things with ham radio, and my ham background (VE7LDH) has served me well in my work (telecommunications). But as an active ham? I haven't attended a ham club meeting in years. The same old grey haired people (almost all men), the same old cliques, the same old conversations (many of which were more about computers than ham radio anyway). Too many throwbacks stuck in the Good Old Days of the 1950s. Transistors? DSP? What's that?
AMSAT has enormous geek potential, but in my entire involvement with ham radio (since 1993) the party line has been "give us more money and maybe some day we'll launch the super-duper satellite of your dreams". They launched one, all-but-bankrupted the organization doing it, it worked for a while, then it partially stopped working, then it packed up completely. Now they're back in Give Us Money mode.
I want ham radio to be interesting. I think it's a great incubator for techies. Real in-depth geeks, not techie-as-fashion-statement. But at the moment, I'm not finding it as interesting as I'd like to. I think that's a shame. I wonder what happened.
...laura
You expect the termination shock to be symmetric, with the Sun at the centre. There will be interstellar influences, but the Voyagers are still only a tiny fraction of a percent on their way even to Alpha Centauri.
Yes, there aren't many data points, but when the first two show the termination shock is not symmetric, so close to the solar system, there is clearly something else going on.
This Is Interesting (tm).
...laura, who was in high school when Voyager 2 was launched. Sigh.
It is. But depending on the application, there are several different time scales. A few off the top of my head:
Most people who measure things time-related need a time scale that runs at a constant rate. UTC, derived from vibrating atoms, is the way to go. Time was originally derived from Earth's rotation, but since it wobbles around so much, we use more accurate time sources now.
People who do things like navigation need time that is synchronized to Earth's rotation. This is the application of stuff like UT1, which is derived from UTC, but is measured and adjusted to track Earth's rotation very precisely. The double ticks at the top of the minute on WWV are the current UTC-UT1 offset, in 100 millisecond increments.
People who play with things in space need a time scale that runs at a constant rate, but is aware of relativistic effects. This is Dynamical Time, currently about 65 seconds off UTC. Instead of leap seconds these space folks just keep track of the offset, called delta T. Among other things, predictions of eclipses and planet positions work in Dynamical Time.
...laura
Sure, there are public networks like the BBC. They get their money from the government, though radio and television license fees. No ads, except for their own promos between programs. I'd be happy to pay extra for BBC Canada if they'd ditch their ads.
It's a business model that works, though folks in the U.K. grumble about it. It can produce excellent television. But it's also a model the U.S.A. rejected about 1790, opting for wide-open free markets with as little government involvement as possible. Could it work with cable television?
...laura
The Powers That Be in Canada, both Federal and Provincial, can already pass a law without running it by Parliament. It's called an Order in Council. Theoretically an OIC is used for little things like political appointments, but it can be used for big things too.
If anybody objects, there is always the Notwithstanding Clause (it's Section 33). It was used for Bills 101 and 178 in Quebec, and Alberta keeps threatening to use it against same-sex marriage. It's been used a number of other times too.
...laura
I'm reminded of John Howard's apology in The Games. Except that in that apology the distinguished, official-looking gentleman delivering the speech never claimed to be anybody other than John Howard, speaking from Sydney Australia.
This was perfectly true: he really was John Howard, just not the John Howard. But few people outside of Australia know what the John Howard who hangs out in Canberra looks like...
...laura
I'm reminded of what I've read about the car industry in the teens and twenties, which had also saturated and stopped growing.
By that time everybody who wanted a car had one. The only new cars the makers were selling were replacements for old ones that had worn out. The solution was forced upgrades, by instituting the model year change. "Oh, your car is a 1926? Mine is the new 1927. You're a loser!"
In the computer biz, forced upgrades sell hardware, but they don't necessarily sell Internet. Price (high-speed is lots cheaper here in Canada, BTW: I pay $CDN34.95 a month for ADSL), content and applications sell Internet. The latest broadband convert in our family is my Mum, and her killer app is VOIP, chatting with various relatives (including me). I set her up with a headset and web camera and she's having a ball with it. She's 67. Didn't have her own computer until she was 60. Never even used a computer before she was 55. She is particularly fond of lot of the streaming media, like BBC Radio 3. Broadband has been a whole new experience for her, after 56k dialup.
...laura
When I was a kid, my Mom and Dad used to let me stay up late on Thursday night to watch a strange new show, Star Trek. Star Trek's view of the universe, science and technology stuck. Like many people I meet of my generation (I'm 44), I was inspired to a scientific/technical career by Star Trek, the space race, and so on, while I was a kid. This has to be A Good Thing, IMHO.
The one real issue in all of this is the way that lots of mildly autistic engineering folks (most engineering types live life their own way, in their own world) are meeting and mating with other mildly autistic engineering folks, producing profoundly autistic kids.
Some years ago I owned a chunky silver chain necklace, long before the hip hop morons started sporting such things. It had a definite Klingon look to it, and if anybody asked I would tell them I had had a relationship with the Klingon Ambassador's daughter, and it was a going-away present when her dad was posted back to Kronos. An interesting relationship. If anybody asked about the bruises, I looked them right in the eye and told them. :-)
...laura
The city is at its darkest and quietest just before dawn, and the astronomy is as good as its going to get. Sometimes I actually set my alarm and pad out to the back yard to see what's up.
I still think it's neat that the stars at dawn are the evening stars of the next season. Perhaps I need to get out more. A couple of years ago at a star party I remember watching Orion rise at dawn in August. Magic!
...laura
I get the impression that this is exactly like how the auto industry works in Japan. If your car is more than a couple of years old it's not going to pass vehicle inspection - no matter what sort of shape it's in - and you will have no choice but to buy a new one.
Now they're doing it with electronics. Will this mean a flood of cheap used Japanese electronics, just like the flood of cheap used Japanese cars? Or just lots of gomi for college students to pick over?
...laura
Sure, language changes. One of the best ways to see what's happening is to see what the old fuddy-duddies are grumbling about what the kids are doing to the language this time. There are writings from Roman times on this subject. It's nothing new.
The biggest grammatical change in the English language in the last 100 years is probably the loss of the subjunctive mood. We still express the idea, but we say it differently. Dig up a tape of somebody really old (say, The Queen Mum in her latter years) and listen to how the language has changed.
The latest has been the loss of distinction between adjectives and adverbs, particularly in spoken English. Very few people distinguish between "good" (adjective) and "well" (adverb) anymore. I've noticed this one in my own lifetime. Does this affect the ability to communicate? Or is context enough, without those silly -ly endings?
When I hear the younger generation (teens, twenties) talk I hear an excessive reliance on fill words ("kind of", "sort of", "um", etc.) and lots of use of excessively general terms ("that thing", etc.). I'm open enough to not grumble (much :-) about the
bastardization of the language; maybe it is
just different. I still wonder if I'm missing nuances, or if the level of communication
really is at a low level.
The less said about spelling and grammar (especially the online version) the better.
...laura, once a member of the younger generation. Now, at 44, a member of the older generation.
At least for me, this is always the way. After a certain point, there is nothing to be gained from continuing to bach away at something. Do something else; play with something; get some sleep and look at it fresh in the morning. I always like to have a couple of background projects at work for just this purpose. Some of them have actually turned out to be useful.
Reminds me of the job offer that produced my current position. I told my boss-to-be that the offer was good and I was inclined to accept it. But on general principles I would sleep on it and make it official the next morning.
Reminds me also of a spectral analysis simulation I did in one of my grad courses. One part of it just didn't work. The results were nonsensical, but I had a deadline, wrote it up anyway, and included a mention that the results in one section were suspect. I then did other things over the weekend, looked at it again, saw the problem immediately, reran the simulation, got good results, wrote them up and handed them in. The professor was pleased, saying that this was just what a grad student should do. I got an A in the course.
...laura
Your options are only limited by your creativity.
You might want to make contact with some local hams and local ham clubs. The Burnaby and North Shore ham clubs are fairly happening affairs (as ham clubs go), though that also means they tend to be very white, very male, and very grey, with few members below the age of 50. C'est la vie, I suppose.
The Burnaby club's swap meet is later this month, and is the biggest and best in Western Canada. Be there! The Sun Run is coming up too, and they are always desperate for bodies.
Try the ham radio stores. Burnaby Radio are nice folks. Haven't heard much of Com West lately.
Bear in mind, too, that unlike some other countries (including our southern neighbours), you can listen to anything that's on the radio, and you don't need a license to do so. However, with fairly narrow exceptions, it's a crime to tell anybody what you heard.
Have fun.
...laura
CLICK
Thus illustrating the problem at hand (not you personally, but the whole setup): Scotty Chapman was never portrayed as sexy or even particularly decorative. She was a member of the build team who was very good with power tools, and just happened to be a woman.
So what's the first thing that comes to some peoples' minds? A sexually exploitative fantasy that had nothing to do with the show.
Sigh.
...laura
So what would happen if one of the geek faves, say, Mythbusters was hosted by a man and a woman (cf. Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars? Or by two women - say, Scottie and Cathy Rogers hosting, while Jamie and Adam do the dirty work.
I suspect people would find the latter scary, and possibly dangerous. Like what happened when they made a movie about two women shooting their way across the west.
...laura
20 years ago? Yikes!
I remember that morning. As a space nut I was watching the launch preparations (and delays) on TV as I got ready for work. They hadn't launched by the time I left.
Later that morning one of our part-time students came in and asked if everybody had heard that Challenger had blown up. I felt myself go grey, went home sick, and spent the afternoon glued to the TV.
So, no, I didn't see it live. Probably just as well.
Apollo 1 was a little before my time - I was only 5 in 1966. I distinctly remember a couple of years later, though, thinking how badly it would suck to be away from home for Christmas while watching coverage of Apollo 8.
...laura
I took a MySQL training course last August, and the rented computer training facility (in Portland, Oregon) only had Windows XP available. So we had to run MySQL on Windows XP, whether we liked it or not.
Not one of the people in the class had ever used MySQL on XP, so there was lots of head scratching over where Windows hid things. We compared notes on our favourite Linux distros and read Slashdot. :-)
...laura