That's what you're calling defining marriage now? So it's cool for 3 or 4 or 5 people to "marry" each other (yes, it will lead to that, people are doing it in other areas of the country). Got it.
It's called gay bashing when you disagree, but it's called tolerance when I disagree, right? I have to tolerate it while you can just call me a bigot, right?
Prop 8 changed the state constitution to take away the right of gay people to get married. It was a purposely and specifically targeted assault on the rights of a minority.
You want to "protect marriage"* from all the horrors of those icky homos who have the gall to love each other and think that they deserve the same legal protections that those of us who happen to love members of the opposite gender are entitled to, then that's your right. But don't sit there and act all offended because I called a spade a spade -- there's absolutely no logical reason why the government should not allow gay people to get married, ergo you're a bigot for supporting removal of their rights.
* And what a great phrase that is, eh? I love how it implies that marriage is somehow under assault, like it's going to change somehow if we allow 'dem queers to get hitched. Thing is, though, I sure didn't notice a change in my marriage when same-sex couples were getting married at city hall....
I love that San Francisco made the list -- I was just thinking last night about how I love everything about San Francisco except for the idea of living there. I'll take the Oakland hills any day and twice on Tuesday.
I'm starting to wonder about California overall. The entire state is slowly sliding downhill (and not in a earthquake-into-the-ocean sense) thanks largely to the proposition system where any shitheaded idea can be made law by a simple majority vote -- I mean, if you ever need evidence that direct democracy is a terrible idea, look no further than CA.
Institutionalized gay bashing? Check. Costly mandates we have no way to pay for? Check. And then there's my personal favorite, a short-sighted effort to limit property taxes whose only real effect is to hurt younger people just starting out and drive the schools into the shitter? You know it.
I mean, maybe having worked with users for all these years, it's a little more obvious to me that people are (by and large) stupid assholes, but I feel there's enough evidence to convince any reasonable person at this point. Which is why we still have the proposition, I suppose.
Plus you get paid to live there by the Federal government. Of course, night life is somewhat limited and then there's always the Sarah Palin thing.
The mistake this article makes it the classic one of assuming that IT folks (a) all want the same sort of things from life and (b) need to live within commuting distance of work. In reality, we cover the spectrum pretty well from TINKs to nuclear family members to shit-crazy Unibomber types to living in our mothers' basements.
My fondest hope is to eventually work myself to a point where I can telecommute regularly and just live within an hour or two of a significant airport (aka, I need to be valuable enough to get away with this).
I'm sure these are well optioned-out and checked over before they're sent out, but modern cars almost never run into issues in the first few thousand miles anyhow -- if you want to talk build quality, you need to put 20 or 30k on the odometer.
Giving your product out free to people you've identified as key opinion leaders is hardly a new idea -- heck, dollar-wise Ford's getting off pretty easy just giving out a few of these cars.
With that said, I would like to take this opportunity to point out everyone reading this post, especially those in decision-making posts at large companies, that I am obviously an influential and important member of the community. I am respected because I have a low NUID and excellent karma, I'm occasionally funny and (most importantly) I am completely and utterly for sale -- exceed my embarrassingly low price and I'll pimp anything on the shmucks who read this site.
I don't see the GOP making gains in the Valley or moving in the right direction to do so. On the contrary, the GOP is actively moving further and further away from being the party of the well-educated, tech-savvy individual living in an urban area (aka, the Valley).
If we were to see an actual return towards fiscal conservatism and keeping government out of peoples' private business, we might have something to discuss. So long as the GOP chooses to base itself on gay bashing, anti-scientific rhetoric and hating on immigrants (legal and otherwise), they'll never see gains here.
Oh, and having Carly Fiorina on their side doesn't exactly improve their image, either.
'Professional'-level sporting events have been a constant for the entire span of human civilization, from the guys getting paid big bucks in the NFL now to the chariot races of Rome to the well-moviated players of the mesoamerican ballgame.
Going out on a limb here I'm going to guess that, your feelings on the subject aside, sports do fill a certain basic requirement in human society.
I feel bad now, I could have saved him years of work -- I still have an original Antikythera 01 on my desk here at work.
I keep asking my boss for a new machine, but apparently the quad-core boxes are reserved for managers with important work to do like using Powerpoint and surfing for softcore pornography.
I'll sleepwalk when I'm stressed
on
Sleep Mailing
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I have a history of sleepwalking from time to time, usually when very stressed.
Back in 2000 when I was trying to find a job before college ended, I got up, logged into my Linux box, sudo'ed to root and changed the root password -- to this day, I have no idea what I reset that sucker to.
In 2002 when I was (rightly) worried I was about to be laid off, I crawled into our closet, started tossing my wife's shows out and screaming about needing to rewire to stop my idiot users. I have no idea.
Anyhow, based on the few times I've woken up during this, it's like I'm acting in a way that makes perfect sense but obviously does not -- I'm operating from a completely made-up set of rules for my reality.
The type of manager I want to work for gives me ridiculous annual raises, lets me expense pretty much anything without a receipt and lets me take days off whenever the weather's nice.
I'm not sure that's a prescription for on-time product delivery or a successful career, however.
That's a great model for delivering late and over-budget.
Developers are like creative people the world over -- you've got to keep them on track, and that means managing them properly. Again, I recommend the Scrum model.
Go with a standard working approach, at least until you get your legs under you.
A lot of very smart people have put a lot of time in figuring out good methods of managing development, so there's no need to come in and re-invent the wheel.
I recommend finding an Agile training class someplace and learning how to manage a team using Scrum development -- it's a dandy way to go about things, developers tend to like it and it'll keep your business-side guys happy. I'd also pick up and read "Scrum from the Trenches" by Henrik Kniberg, which helped me with implementation of ideas I knew in concept.
Once you've got a grounding, you can move on from there and make tweaks.
My advice: Don't get too fancy. Titanium makes a dandy wedding band for a bunch of reasons:
1. It's inexpensive. My ring ran something like $99, so I can afford to have a backup living in my filing cabinet in case I ever lose this one (people lose their rings all the time -- ask that one beach volleyball player from the Olympics this year). Also, if my fingers get fatter in my old age, I can replace the ring for cheap. Overspending? Not geeky.
2. It's hard enough that it'll shatter before it deforms. Most ring-related injuries are a result of the ring bending into the finger. That's bad. My ring won't deform easily and will probably shatter before deforming, so I have a better chance of keeping my finger than someone with a gold wedding band. Inability to hit the "S" key due to a missing finger? Not geeky.
3. It can be cut off. Hospitals can cut off a 6-4 titanium band, so if I ever injur my finger badly enough that it swells up I can, again, keep my finger and continue hitting the "S" key freely. See #2.
4. It's light. I hardly know I have it on. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on what sort of person you are. It's also completely hypoallergenic, which I understand is different than simply nonreactive. Not having your ring cause you weird skin issues? Geeky.
5. It's geeky. Go rent The Abyss if you have to. While I haven't stopped any hydraulic doors with mine, it is in perfect shape after four fantastic years. The finish gets a little scuffed, but it's still in perfect shape despite some significant abuse. You want geeky? I have "Don't Panic" inscribed in the inside of mine (and "Panic" inscribed in the backup ring I mentioned in #1). Sound advice, that.
I understand the drive to be unique, but take it from me (I moonlight as a wedding photographer): Weddings are already stupid-expensive. You should get immediately out of the habit of overspending when cheaper and perfectly satisfactory alternatives exist. As for your other point: *all* rings are starstuff -- gold, platinum, titanium, whatever -- so your last point there is complete hyperbole. Again, not excessively geeky.
I was 20 when Slashdot started registering NUIDs -- signed up while I was surfing the internet during my internship at Cray Research (well, SGI). I did that quite a bit, what with my regular gig consisting primarily of the rather depressing task of disabling the accounts of old-school techies who SGI had decided were redundant.
I, for example, cut off access for a guy who had helped hand-wire the first Cray-1. Disabled the login of a man who'd written the first implementation of Telnet on COS. Told the man who'd designed the Cray logo that I had to change the username that he'd used for a dozen years because there was an admin assistant in Mountain View with the same name who already had it.
It was a good formative experience -- I was all set when 2002 rolled around.
Registering for accounts is what took a while -- I'm fairly certain that Slashdot itself had more than a thousand semi-regular readers back when they introduced the user accounts, its just that a lot of them liked the relatively greater anonymity of just entering a name when they posted.
As I recall, I registered the first day they started doing it (paranoid about someone stealing my handle since I'm clearly such a respected member of the community), and I still ended up in the low 500s.
Power losses can cause data loss? Gee, you mean that my system that relies on electricity for everything it does can be adversely effected by power outages even if I take precautions? That's some good admin work there, Lou -- if only there was some sort of law that covered the tendency of things that can go wrong to go wrong...
Next week: Fires can make things warm, floods can make things wet.
If I held my company's systems hostage everytime some idiot started messing them up, I wouldn't have time for any of my other work -- hell, I wouldn't even have time to go to lunch.
In seriousness, though, I think the "nut job" (or at least "has issues") assessment is valid when you're talking about a guy who wouldn't give up the passwords even after being fired, even after being threatened with jail. After all, this is a city network, not a nuclear launch system or hospital's MRS. There's no immediate dire calamity that's going to happen, just more wasted dollars (which, and I say this as someone who loves this area deeply, we're used to in San Francisco).
There have literally been millions who have acted from intentions which are contrary to self-preservation.
Sure, but generally you'll find it difficult to get a few hundred of them together in one place at random.
The prisoner's ship scenario was more believable, IMO, because you had a situation that only required on person to stand up and do the 'right thing' (get the remote and then chuck it) in order to result in the desired outcome.
The 'normal citizen' ship scenario, on the other hand, didn't cut it with me. You had a situation where the remote was up for grabs to ~500 people, only requiring one of them to display the proper moral flexibility to send the prisoners to the bottom of the lake.
I mean, for example, I consider myself a fairly good person, but I don't have to think too hard about it to know my reaction: If my wife or (hypothetical) kids were on the boat with me, I'd have blown up the prisoners in a heartbeat. There isn't a shadow of a doubt in my head -- priorities, after all.
Slashdot Mirror
Alternatively, it could just be that a simplistic all-or-nothing solution doesn't fit either situation.
I'm certain that this will convince all the 20-somethings out there who've been weaned on free internet hardcore to subscribe to Playboy.
That's what you're calling defining marriage now? So it's cool for 3 or 4 or 5 people to "marry" each other (yes, it will lead to that, people are doing it in other areas of the country). Got it.
It's called gay bashing when you disagree, but it's called tolerance when I disagree, right? I have to tolerate it while you can just call me a bigot, right?
Prop 8 changed the state constitution to take away the right of gay people to get married. It was a purposely and specifically targeted assault on the rights of a minority.
You want to "protect marriage"* from all the horrors of those icky homos who have the gall to love each other and think that they deserve the same legal protections that those of us who happen to love members of the opposite gender are entitled to, then that's your right. But don't sit there and act all offended because I called a spade a spade -- there's absolutely no logical reason why the government should not allow gay people to get married, ergo you're a bigot for supporting removal of their rights.
* And what a great phrase that is, eh? I love how it implies that marriage is somehow under assault, like it's going to change somehow if we allow 'dem queers to get hitched. Thing is, though, I sure didn't notice a change in my marriage when same-sex couples were getting married at city hall....
I love that San Francisco made the list -- I was just thinking last night about how I love everything about San Francisco except for the idea of living there. I'll take the Oakland hills any day and twice on Tuesday.
I'm starting to wonder about California overall. The entire state is slowly sliding downhill (and not in a earthquake-into-the-ocean sense) thanks largely to the proposition system where any shitheaded idea can be made law by a simple majority vote -- I mean, if you ever need evidence that direct democracy is a terrible idea, look no further than CA.
Institutionalized gay bashing? Check. Costly mandates we have no way to pay for? Check. And then there's my personal favorite, a short-sighted effort to limit property taxes whose only real effect is to hurt younger people just starting out and drive the schools into the shitter? You know it.
I mean, maybe having worked with users for all these years, it's a little more obvious to me that people are (by and large) stupid assholes, but I feel there's enough evidence to convince any reasonable person at this point. Which is why we still have the proposition, I suppose.
Plus you get paid to live there by the Federal government. Of course, night life is somewhat limited and then there's always the Sarah Palin thing.
The mistake this article makes it the classic one of assuming that IT folks (a) all want the same sort of things from life and (b) need to live within commuting distance of work. In reality, we cover the spectrum pretty well from TINKs to nuclear family members to shit-crazy Unibomber types to living in our mothers' basements.
My fondest hope is to eventually work myself to a point where I can telecommute regularly and just live within an hour or two of a significant airport (aka, I need to be valuable enough to get away with this).
Nor can you beat the cost of replacement once the thing goes.
Using illegally gathered information to effectively blackmail politicians? Ah, that takes me back to the good 'ol days -- J Edgar would be proud.
I wonder how well Robert Mueller pulls off a sun dress...
I'm sure these are well optioned-out and checked over before they're sent out, but modern cars almost never run into issues in the first few thousand miles anyhow -- if you want to talk build quality, you need to put 20 or 30k on the odometer.
Giving your product out free to people you've identified as key opinion leaders is hardly a new idea -- heck, dollar-wise Ford's getting off pretty easy just giving out a few of these cars.
With that said, I would like to take this opportunity to point out everyone reading this post, especially those in decision-making posts at large companies, that I am obviously an influential and important member of the community. I am respected because I have a low NUID and excellent karma, I'm occasionally funny and (most importantly) I am completely and utterly for sale -- exceed my embarrassingly low price and I'll pimp anything on the shmucks who read this site.
I don't see the GOP making gains in the Valley or moving in the right direction to do so. On the contrary, the GOP is actively moving further and further away from being the party of the well-educated, tech-savvy individual living in an urban area (aka, the Valley).
If we were to see an actual return towards fiscal conservatism and keeping government out of peoples' private business, we might have something to discuss. So long as the GOP chooses to base itself on gay bashing, anti-scientific rhetoric and hating on immigrants (legal and otherwise), they'll never see gains here.
Oh, and having Carly Fiorina on their side doesn't exactly improve their image, either.
Going out on a limb here I'm going to guess that, your feelings on the subject aside, sports do fill a certain basic requirement in human society.
I keep asking my boss for a new machine, but apparently the quad-core boxes are reserved for managers with important work to do like using Powerpoint and surfing for softcore pornography.
Back in 2000 when I was trying to find a job before college ended, I got up, logged into my Linux box, sudo'ed to root and changed the root password -- to this day, I have no idea what I reset that sucker to.
In 2002 when I was (rightly) worried I was about to be laid off, I crawled into our closet, started tossing my wife's shows out and screaming about needing to rewire to stop my idiot users. I have no idea.
Anyhow, based on the few times I've woken up during this, it's like I'm acting in a way that makes perfect sense but obviously does not -- I'm operating from a completely made-up set of rules for my reality.
I'm not sure that's a prescription for on-time product delivery or a successful career, however.
Developers are like creative people the world over -- you've got to keep them on track, and that means managing them properly. Again, I recommend the Scrum model.
A lot of very smart people have put a lot of time in figuring out good methods of managing development, so there's no need to come in and re-invent the wheel.
I recommend finding an Agile training class someplace and learning how to manage a team using Scrum development -- it's a dandy way to go about things, developers tend to like it and it'll keep your business-side guys happy. I'd also pick up and read "Scrum from the Trenches" by Henrik Kniberg, which helped me with implementation of ideas I knew in concept.
Once you've got a grounding, you can move on from there and make tweaks.
Men have wedding bands, women have wedding rings. It's just one of those things.
My advice: Don't get too fancy. Titanium makes a dandy wedding band for a bunch of reasons:
1. It's inexpensive. My ring ran something like $99, so I can afford to have a backup living in my filing cabinet in case I ever lose this one (people lose their rings all the time -- ask that one beach volleyball player from the Olympics this year). Also, if my fingers get fatter in my old age, I can replace the ring for cheap. Overspending? Not geeky.
2. It's hard enough that it'll shatter before it deforms. Most ring-related injuries are a result of the ring bending into the finger. That's bad. My ring won't deform easily and will probably shatter before deforming, so I have a better chance of keeping my finger than someone with a gold wedding band. Inability to hit the "S" key due to a missing finger? Not geeky.
3. It can be cut off. Hospitals can cut off a 6-4 titanium band, so if I ever injur my finger badly enough that it swells up I can, again, keep my finger and continue hitting the "S" key freely. See #2.
4. It's light. I hardly know I have it on. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on what sort of person you are. It's also completely hypoallergenic, which I understand is different than simply nonreactive. Not having your ring cause you weird skin issues? Geeky.
5. It's geeky. Go rent The Abyss if you have to. While I haven't stopped any hydraulic doors with mine, it is in perfect shape after four fantastic years. The finish gets a little scuffed, but it's still in perfect shape despite some significant abuse. You want geeky? I have "Don't Panic" inscribed in the inside of mine (and "Panic" inscribed in the backup ring I mentioned in #1). Sound advice, that.
I understand the drive to be unique, but take it from me (I moonlight as a wedding photographer): Weddings are already stupid-expensive. You should get immediately out of the habit of overspending when cheaper and perfectly satisfactory alternatives exist. As for your other point: *all* rings are starstuff -- gold, platinum, titanium, whatever -- so your last point there is complete hyperbole. Again, not excessively geeky.
31 here.
I was 20 when Slashdot started registering NUIDs -- signed up while I was surfing the internet during my internship at Cray Research (well, SGI). I did that quite a bit, what with my regular gig consisting primarily of the rather depressing task of disabling the accounts of old-school techies who SGI had decided were redundant.
I, for example, cut off access for a guy who had helped hand-wire the first Cray-1. Disabled the login of a man who'd written the first implementation of Telnet on COS. Told the man who'd designed the Cray logo that I had to change the username that he'd used for a dozen years because there was an admin assistant in Mountain View with the same name who already had it.
It was a good formative experience -- I was all set when 2002 rolled around.
Registering for accounts is what took a while -- I'm fairly certain that Slashdot itself had more than a thousand semi-regular readers back when they introduced the user accounts, its just that a lot of them liked the relatively greater anonymity of just entering a name when they posted.
As I recall, I registered the first day they started doing it (paranoid about someone stealing my handle since I'm clearly such a respected member of the community), and I still ended up in the low 500s.
Newbie.
No, you're old. Slashdot has been registering user IDs since, what, the summer of 1997? That's 11 years, dude.
Eleven years ago I didn't even have any gray hair. Hell, I couldn't even drink legally. Talk about a long time ago...
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts.
As a former sysadmin, I would think that any machine reliant on 'happy thoughts' would be the most crash-prone system in the history of computing.
Power losses can cause data loss? Gee, you mean that my system that relies on electricity for everything it does can be adversely effected by power outages even if I take precautions? That's some good admin work there, Lou -- if only there was some sort of law that covered the tendency of things that can go wrong to go wrong...
Next week: Fires can make things warm, floods can make things wet.
If I held my company's systems hostage everytime some idiot started messing them up, I wouldn't have time for any of my other work -- hell, I wouldn't even have time to go to lunch.
In seriousness, though, I think the "nut job" (or at least "has issues") assessment is valid when you're talking about a guy who wouldn't give up the passwords even after being fired, even after being threatened with jail. After all, this is a city network, not a nuclear launch system or hospital's MRS. There's no immediate dire calamity that's going to happen, just more wasted dollars (which, and I say this as someone who loves this area deeply, we're used to in San Francisco).
There have literally been millions who have acted from intentions which are contrary to self-preservation.
Sure, but generally you'll find it difficult to get a few hundred of them together in one place at random.
The prisoner's ship scenario was more believable, IMO, because you had a situation that only required on person to stand up and do the 'right thing' (get the remote and then chuck it) in order to result in the desired outcome.
The 'normal citizen' ship scenario, on the other hand, didn't cut it with me. You had a situation where the remote was up for grabs to ~500 people, only requiring one of them to display the proper moral flexibility to send the prisoners to the bottom of the lake.
I mean, for example, I consider myself a fairly good person, but I don't have to think too hard about it to know my reaction: If my wife or (hypothetical) kids were on the boat with me, I'd have blown up the prisoners in a heartbeat. There isn't a shadow of a doubt in my head -- priorities, after all.