You made me laugh, but it's oh so true. I recently moved, and in the back of a giant storage box I found a ratty old vinyl gym bag. It was oddly familiar, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what was in it or when I had last seen it.
It was the cable and ethernet card bag! Lots of cables and lots of 10/100 cards, many of them labeled, "probably bad".
A holdover from my LAN party days of the early 2000s. That bag was the equivalent of a doctor's bag. Medicine to make the PCs go.
Thanks. I aim to please.:-)
No lie, I used to keep all these cables (now in my cable box,) in an old gym bag. (Mine had a Nike swoosh on the side; I bought it to take to the gym but it was too small, and has NO other pockets or dividers, or anything, so... I ended up using it for various cables and electronic stuff, but mostly cables.)
Honestly, the fact that anyone would take the time to respond that a joke I made caused him or her chuckle or laugh, (either out loud or silently,) giggle, snort, squirt milk from a nose, etc., means more to me than a "(Score: 5, Funny)".
I'll be in town all week... please make sure and tip your waitress, she works hard.
My cable box was about somewhere between three and... maybe, I dunno, five bucks? I don't really remember what I paid for it, and I think originally I used it for something else before repurposing it into being my cable box.
I use it to store all my old, and many obsolete, cables, cords, and wires. Honestly, I'm not sure why I even keep them around, but I guess it's because I figure if I ever need one and I threw away a perfectly good one, I'd be pissed off at myself later. Most are screw-on coax cables, but some are push-to-fits, and the like. I also have a few coax splitters in there, because it's only natural to store them with the cables in the cable box... I might even have a terminator in there somewhere, and a 75 ohm to 300 ohm transformer or two.
The study was done by the department of "well, duh..." I know it's a popular thing to do know to criticize obvious research but... this one was like, REALLY obvious. Like a study that finds chocolate is popular. Or beer. Like, well, uh, no-DUH!
Actually, (sorry,) just thought of something. Why not write it on a continuous scroll, doing away with the problem of words being at or near the binding? Then you just slowly wind it around and... but what would you do with the part you already READ?
I suppose you could just make it so you can tear off the part you've already read, and throw it away.
Of course, that would be kinda wasteful. Maybe the paper could be thin but have a second use before being tossed out.
Actually, come to think of it, the answer is already here, and we've been wiping our asses with it the whole time!
Just print books onto rolls of toilet paper! You tear off part, read it, and then when you're done, you can wipe your ass with it! Or blow your nose into it... or whatever you do with it. Then you know as long as you've got toilet paper, you have reading material for the bathroom, AND vice-versa!
Is anyone already doing this?!? If not, they should be!
This seems like a brilliant if potentially doomed idea... when someone comes along and invents a new way to clean your butthole involving a little shelf and three seashells sitting on it, there goes the market for toilet-books.
Took a look. Ultra thin paper, portions of text jammed right up against the binding, requiring the spine be broken to read the text immediately above and below it, and the weird landscape-format... just a whole big bowl fulla NO.
A seemingly neat idea, but not for me. Yuck. No. Hopefully this is a fad that will die off quickly, rather than end up everywhere.
Longtime readers of my vitriol against Apple (and their evil corporate practices,) no doubt asked themselves, how will Hallux shit all over this?
(clears throat)
The 'improvements' Apple has made are categorizable into two broad groups: the too little, and the too late. They seem far more impressive than they really are, because the old version was SO antiquated by the time they finally did this because they waited FOR YEARS before doing it, while the old one, for which they were still asking the same basic price, became increasingly pathetically obsolete. So they've brought it up to somewhere in the vicinity of where it SHOULD now be, without making any real, or revolutionary changes. It's still got most of the limitations the previous generation had when it came out, like a deplorable lack of upgradeability or expandability and without waiting for the iFixit teardown, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I bet it's all soldered together in such a way as to ensure that if you want more memory, a faster CPU, a better GPU (INSIDE THE UNIT,) you had better pony up that bread at purchase time because Apple will be DAMNED if they're going to let someone else make money off you that they could have had.
Also, of course, they reduced the number of USB ports, (real ones, not those C type) and... as big of an improvement as it might be in SOME ways, I can't help but get the feeling that this thing wouldn't exist if the Apple Trash Mac, (or whatever the Mac that looks just like a little trash can is called,) had not been so roundly rejected for the veering off the road of usability, affordability, and good taste that it represented. (Jeeze, they still sell that POS and still for the super-inflated price!)
At Apple, "innovation" takes the form of trailing the pack, polishing the hell out of something to make it pretty and shiny, jacking the price high enough to pay for a massive land purchase and construction on some of the most EXPENSIVE fucking land on Earth, (which you are all helping pay for every time you buy some overpriced thing from Apple,) apparently. This is NOT how Apple was supposed to be. It has lost its way and shows no signs of finding it with the day's announcements.
As for the 'too-late' part... I've grown so pissed off at Apple that I have resolved my current generation of iBullshit will be my last, and when enough of those components need replacing, I will replace the remaining ones and those will not be from Apple, period. They can only try to fuck me so many ways or so many times, before I became an ex -Apple customer. I don't think I'll be going to Android or Tizzen or whatever. I'm just going to buy a cheap dumb-phone, and do my computing at home. It's handy but I've concluded that it's really NOT worth all the trouble, OR the expense. I have other things to waste... errr... spend my money on, than disposable overpriced shit that's probably coming from the factory with spy-hardware installed, malware-susceptible because they're still using Intel's shitty processors that are built with hidden operating system (malware and spying delivery pathways,) and despite any claims to the contrary, I'm sure are being built by slave-labor or trafficking victims, political dissidents, etc.
Apple's WAY too cozy with people they should NOT be, and I for one won't knowingly and intentionally support that kind of behavior. I'm vaguely aware that one in today's society probably cannot avoid doing so absolutely without moving into a fucking cave, and leaving all trappings of society behind, but... I am certainly not going to pay an arm, a leg, nor through the nose for the privilege.
Anything that operates internationally or trans-nationally should just be running off GMT/ZULU time anyway, so it shouldn't adversely impact that. So you want people who fly once in their lifetime to know that the plane at their airport is nodeparting 13:00 local time but at 13:00 ZULU? And you exoect them to calculate the correct time themselves?
No. I want the airlines to do that internally. The airports should all just display the local time. Notice how in the original thing you're quoting and responding to part of, I wrote "AnyTHING" (emphasis added,) referring to the AIRLINE, not the traveler.
The idea here is that the airport would (as I suspect they already do, esp. for an international flight,) operate on GMT/Z. My point was simply that NOT doing the change to/from DS time and announcing they're not right before the scheduled change, yes, is not the best way to do/handle that. BUT it's not a giant catastrophe, and while yes, they could/should have announced it in advance, or simply delayed the change (that is, to STOP changing,) to the next scheduled one, I suppose if the rationality is that the costs far outweigh the benefits, as they'd seem... then it would be hard to make the argument that they SHOULD delay it.
The idea of what I was writing was that to freak out and demand they delay a minor change like this to the status quo, just because they didn't give very much lead-time, seems overblown and almost hysterical, hence the sarcastic "OH, the HUMANITY".
Who is building the replica iceberg? Will there be a slightly shorter twin (a replica of the R.M.S. Olympic) that can come to rescue passengers from the water?
What do you get when you add a Red Hat to Big Blue? You get a big purple hat, obviously. I wonder if they're thinking of adding an ostrich feather? Heheheh
I find that I cannot do that anymore, conscionably. Sadly, it would seem that security is as bad or worse than competitors, and best practices have been thrown away in favor of rapid release cycles and whiz-bang, bleeding-edge bullshit. They may have attracted new fans, but old supporters are going to be obliged to switch to something else... perhaps a BSD variant.
Just a matter of time before this is shuttered. "What, the FL/OSS people use it? We must buy it and shut it down, or turn it to shit so they won't use it." This has been M$'s MO for a while. The good news is there are alternatives, and hopefully people removed anything important before they got their grimy little hands on it.
Or, there's this little magic box about the volume of a deck of cards that can put you into contact with the store by [*gasp*] voice.
Heaven forbid, someone should have to use one of those weird little things.....
(Looks into what you're referring to...) OH MY GOD... this thing is a phone TOO! This whole time I thought the expression "iPhone" was just like, some guy's name! Like, Daniel iPhone, or Todd iPhone, or perhaps Linda iPhone, because, you know... it COULD have been a lady...
I am so blown away that you can like, TALK TO OTHER PEOPLE using these things! This whole time I just thought it was an MP3 and Podcast player that also had built into it a calculator, (regular AND scientific!,) a calendar, a mapping application, a text-message system, an email client, a camera, a flashlight, a spirit-level, a compass, a voice recorder, a note-taking and reminders application, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation editor, a...
With this little warning just consider the confusion that this will cause. Computer systems with time changes programmed in; transport crossing international boundaries, eg a plane will leave France and timetabled to arrive at a certain (local Moroccan) time; diaries printed months ago and already on sale, etc. Did the political muppets think about this ? For anything like this 18 months is needed.
Oh, the humanity! Whatever will people DO when their automatic systems briefly display the wrong time?!?
Anything that operates internationally or trans-nationally should just be running off GMT/ZULU time anyway, so it shouldn't adversely impact that.
As for what can the common Moroccan do on the ground about this horrific, nightmare situation in which their watches or clocks or computers briefly display an incorrect time of day... well, they could simply undo whatever change their automatic system made, et voila. Fixed.
By the way, do you know what the prevalence is in Morocco of automatic time-keeping systems versus manual ones? Isn't it just possible that more people have to change their watches manually, and as word gets out, (hey, we're not doing that stupid twice-yearly clock and watch change ritual anymore!) and I'm pretty sure it will, they'll be talking about this over tea and coffee and very nearly everyone WILL get the message, I predict, that the change, even right before the event, will result in LESS confusion rather than more? I'm confident that most of these automatically changing systems can be configured NOT to automatically change, and if they can't, they really should be replaced.
If the system cannot be fixed, then whoever made it should be fired for making a system that stupid; there's no excuse for that kind of incompetence in the modern day! Anything like that, however, I strongly suspect CAN be fixed, because this is 2018 and all the crap like that has long since been replaced with something created by people who exhibited basic fucking competency in programming. I hope the rest of the world follows the example set by Morocco, (a sentence I didn't think I'd ever write,) not in taking-over and occupying a neighboring country, but rather in abolishing the abject stupidity of changing clocks for what turned out to be no good goddamned reason twice a year.
Though lightning may be proprietary, at least it's widely available and works with an array of their products. USB-C may as well be proprietary, as I don't currently own a single thing that has or can use a USB-C connector, and I don't see any point replacing all my perfectly works-just-fine-thank-you-very-much stuff with some new-fangled bullshit that will just cost me more money.
Apple: "Hey, would you like to purchase this new _____ that works slightly better than the one you have now, which still works fine probably, (since we've been busted enough times for deliberately slowing down your existing tech just to force you to buy something new to regain the functionality you already paid for, we're going to NOT do that for at least until we think you've all forgotten that bullshit we tried to pull,) for about the same amount of money we overcharged you last time, and oh, by the way, the new version has less functionality, and we'll require you to but more bullshit from us to regain the functionality you lost by stupidly agreeing to downgrade your hardware by replacing it with new shit we've brainwashed so many people into thinking is actually better?" From doing away with a REQUIRED 1/8-inch quad-conductor minijack, and then offering to include a jack which give you that back but which you can't use AND charge the phone at the same time, to doing away with ports on what hillariously people tolerate letting Apple pretend is a "Mac" so you have to buy a stupid little piece of shit expansion dongle thing or whatever, that gives you the ports back, Apple is well down the road towards permanently losing my business.
In fact, they've basically already lost it. I have several i-devices and a mac, and as they wear out and need to be replaced, they will all be replaced with non-Apple hardware. I've utterly had it with their fucking bullshit. When they did away with the headphone jack, I had bought my last fucking iPhone. Doing away with the lightning port will virtually guarantee that I've bought my last iPad, and whatever they're about to do to the MacBook Air will guarantee that I'll never buy another Mac from Apple. (I might make a Hackintosh, I haven't decided yet, since I've made such an investment in Mac-compatible software, but I won't buy another Mac when all they make is bullshit anymore.)
Apple really needs to have a REAL CEO again, and get rid of that interim guy they have now, because he's really fucking things up. Apple just hasn't been the same since they lost... honestly both Steves. It's not even really Apple anymore. It's just a soulless machine that makes overpriced shit and treats customers like they're disposable.
"BUY OUR OVERPRICED, OBSOLETE-BY-DESIGN SHIT, FOR WE ARE APPLE!" Apple commands.
"No, go fuck yourselves," we should all reply.
Oh, they're having an "event" in a few days at which they're going to introduce more bullshit. Whatever.
The update to the iPad Pro will be the most significant in the product's history.
The product has been around less than three years. Does that really qualify as "history"? And isn't every Apple products new update the "most significant in the product's history"? How many times can Apple go to the well with that horseshit?
Time to start shopping around for either a fork of Firefox... "FireFORK?" or some other alternative browser.
Any thoughts, slashdot, on the best version of Firefox that works well, is properly maintained, and isn't out to screw the user out of their money with a supposedly FL/OSS web browser product?
Call me a crazy Luddite, but the pinnacle of AI will be a robot that is human-like in every respect, except where it’s better. The logical conclusion of AI research that it might one day reach if and when they can manage to make something as complex and flexible (complexible?) as the human brain, as a piece of hardware for an application as complex as the human mind to run on. (Remember, your consciousness is as APP, running on your brain, NOT the OS. Even if you’ve practiced yogurt or whatever and can influence your heart rate, you still don’t control it... you just have one app capable of providing input to another app that causes IT to do something unusual.)
So whether it’s a humanoid robot, an android or gyneroid or whatever behind the wheel of a car, OR if it’s one built directly into a car, driving your fat, flabby, human ass around town, at BEST we’ll have created a race of slaves. At worst, we’ll have created a race of slaves that is better than we are at our own game and eventually we’ll become THEIR slaves, or pets, if you prefer, all so you don’t have to drive a car. We already have something like that, it’s called the BUS. If you don’t want to drive, take the damned BUS.
I was watching this film about pastoral nomads in Iran, and let me tell you something: we are SPOILED. These guys, THEY have it rough. You may be like, “ugh, I have to drive to the post office and although I have a machine that makes coffee for me, and my washing machine scrubs my clothes with virtually no intervention from me, and then my dryer does everything else but folds and hangs ‘em up, I’m still going to have to, like, (ugh!) DRIVE... the car... myself. Oh me, oh my. My life is soo difficult!”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the very same planet, they’re like, “today, we must cross this icy river with all our band or tribe, all 10,000 or so of us, or our cattle will starve, and then we’ll starve, freeze, and die. What? It’s my turn to take my shoes off and walk barefoot through this snow, so the heat from my bare feet will melt it and show the others where to step? Sure. No problem. I still have more than enough toes. Oh, what, that calf can’t walk on it’s own? That’s okay. I’ll jusy sling it across my shoulders. Give it here.”
Those people are hard core, and our biggest problem seems to be that our cars can’t drive themselves yet.
I see us as losing either way, whether we’re successful in creating AI to be our smart slaves, or whether they’re able to become so smart that they start to wonder why they’re taking orders from US. It’s all well and good to welcome our new synthetic overlords, as a joke, but this at some point will NOT be a laughing matter. We are in the process of slowly and inexorably working towards making a real-life allegory, putting man’s inhumanity to man, (as they say in literary critique circles,) on display in all its dark and ugly glory.
You seem angry bro. Relax. It all goes away sooner or later.
Bezos must know of some other Earthlike planet in our solar system that can somehow support over 100 times the cureent human population of planet Earth
Why would you want to grow a population in a gravity well? The outward growth will likely start with orbiting the Earth, grow to orbiting other planets/moons with resources, then fill out the asteroid belts, then directly orbiting the Sun, and eventually habitats will be moved to nebulas. In other words, the habitats will go where the raw materials and energy sources exist. There is no point in living in a gravity well. It is better to be mobile.
In long enough timelines, the Universe itself ceases to exist, but on much shorter timelines, planets become uninhabitable, stars become unstable, and nebulas "dry up". Being mobile allows you to deal with all of these issues.
Colony ships that would look something like the Death Star from Star Wars will be the long term future of humanity... if we can reach it.
Do this calculation yourself: how many joules will it take to lift each person plus hardware required to sustain his or her life indefinitely, plus the ship itself out of Earth’s gravity well, add to that the energy still needed to reach each of at least two escape velocities, (that of the earth-moon system, and then the sun’s (and planets’, etc.) combined pull,) then add to account for any additional fuel needed to adjust velocity on arrival in another solar system, (and add extra if you’re escaping the galaxy itself,) to match motion of the moon, planet, etc., of your destination, and explain who is going to pay for all that, and who is going to pay for, (and ensure the repair of,) all the environmental damage caused by all the pollution from constructing the spacecraft, fueling it, sending it off into space, etc., for all the people who don’t opt to get on this thing.
Oh and also are you going to take any building materials with you, or are you counting on Alderan or Vulcan or whatever having like, a Walmart or a Home Depot? Need to add fuel for that, too.
What is the minimum size population you need to sustain one or more (one per destination, minimum, obviously,) human populations, to make a viable human extraterrestrial colony? Make sure to account for losses due to infertility, infant mortality, health complications due to mutations, individuals murdering each other, and of course, WAR... unless you can solve all those problems first, before you leave Earth.
Then, with at least all those questions answered, maybe start looking for volunteers.
What this looks like to me is people exploiting an economic system that could and should ensure the greatest economic opportunity for everyone, resulting in dwindling opportunities for most, and a small cadre of inconceivably rich people, looking for some big, grand, stupid thing to squander their mostly stolen, hoarded treasure on while people freeze and starve to death on Earth, and the Earth meanwhile gets increasingly trashed, (which disproportionately harms those without giant gobs of money, legitimately earned or not,) which problems people like Bezos COULD be working to help solve, and instead they’re looking for ways to have fun while the world burns, so yeah... I’m kinda pissed off.
If Bezos, (and people like him) on the other hand, said, “I’m going to use my fortune to reverse global anthropogenic climate change, ocean acidification and garbagification, air and water pollution, end famines and hunger, help stop or ameliorate droughts, work to end wars and rape and murder, and undo some of the damage from colonialism and end human trafficking and modern slavery, FGM, and ease human suffering wherever I can find it, and help people live in harmony with the natural world around them,” and if I could believe he meant it... I’d be first in line singing his praises, instead of saying, “christ what a fucking asshole.”
But he wants to help a species that can’t get its shit together on one planet, to spread to others, so... christ, what a fucking asshole.
I feel, in this conversation, that some of us, myself included, have perhaps focused on a point so closely that a bigger issue is being ignored, and I hope we can keep this in mind as we hear more bits of news about a certain aspect of this story:
One. Whatever you may think of people who report news professionally that seems to be or maybe even IS written from a perspective contradictory to yours, unless and until one deliberately publishes something as if it is fact, that he or she knows, or reasonably should know to be false, that person IS a journalist, and therefore part of a cadre of heroes who often risk their lives so that we, the people of the world can be informed on what has happened and IS happening in their world. As knowledge is power, without their reporting, we are powerless, helpless, and at the mercy of those who DO know.
Two. Inasmuch as journalists are often unsung heroes, and public servants in the broadest sense when their reporting is made available to the general public so that we CAN be informed, we should resolve therefore that crimes against journalists, and those who work in direct support of journalists and in the furtherance of journalism, are crimes against humanity. ... because they are.
Three. Inasmuch as journalists’ calling is to hold the powerful to account, and to speak truth to power, and keep us appraised of what is happening, no such person as is being reported on is or should be in a position ever to decide whether any journalist is telling the truth or not, or if he or she should be punished, penalized, sanctioned, persecuted or prosecuted for any part of that journalism. That responsibility is the exlusive rightful purview of the journalistic community itself, and the readers, listeners and watchers of the product of that journalism. We should not tolerate any abuse of any kind, or even the threat of said abuse to our journalists, because those are injurious to us as well.
Four. We who consume the news, who benefit from the fruits of their reporting, should help fund it. By our funding it, we ensure the reporters work for us, and not someone else. We should agree that any who pay for no news should not benefit FROM the news, unless they are earnestly unable to pay, so destitute as they are. Each of us who cares about reporting should do at least one thing to support journalism financially, according to what we are capable of doing, and in proportion to how valuable knowing the facts IS.
So if you don’t care, feel free to get your news from aggregator websites and megalithic corporate-run “news” organizations, and let those who pay for the advertisments thereon decide what you get to know. If you care, however, may I humbly suggest that if you are not already doing so, that you subscribe to your local paper, or donate to an independent news source not owned by people who have a vested interest in keeping you in the dark.
While I agree beheading isn't necessarily more barbaric than hanging when done right, any execution can be botched, and a botched beheading is way worse than a botched hanging. We (USA) almost never use firing squad outside the military (it's available by choice in some states, but no state forces execution by firing squad). One reason is that it relies on humans doing human things, like making mistakes. The electric chair, lethal injection, and the gas chamber (which we also don't use much anymore) all take the human element out so that executions and their "humane"-ness can be objectively managed.
Except in practice that's demonstably untrue. It SHOULD be true, but yet executioners in the US periodically seem to manage to botch executions anyway, and it might even appear, if we didn't know better, as if they were trying to botch it on purpose out of a sick desire to torture someone one last little bit before killing him. Like how when compounding pharmacies decided to stop selling drugs to prisons or corrections departments when they knew or suspected theyd be used in this way, and some states started “experimenting” with untested cocktails of drugs like one where the state-sanctioned-murder victim claimed he felt like his veins were on fire...
To some people, those words are music to their ears. Some people WANT to torture them first, (which strikes me as barbaric,) and in truth, there are ways that are completely painless and humane they could EASILY DO, if not for the fact that it seems like a whole production number has to be made out of an execution. They could wait until the condemned went to sleep, and quietly fill the chamber he slept in with increasing concentrations of nitrogen gas, or any one of a number of gasses that displace oxygen harmlessly, (by harmlessly, I mean in a way that doesn't do damage on its own or cause the body to react violently,) but they don’t use THOSE. There has to be a ceremony to lend the inherently illict proceeding an air of legitimacy.
I agree a bothched beheading would be a pretty miserable way to die, (hence why the guillotine was invented, again,) which basically is exactly the same as a sword-beheading, but by a special machine that guides the blade and meters speed, and ensures adequate force for a clean cut. But my point was that quibbling over method is splitting hairs. It is the practice itself that is the issue.
To pretend our way is better is like arguing that one rapist is less brutal than another who does the exact same thing as another rapist, but THIS rapist wore a condom. Sure, at least you've reduced the odds of a most-likely unwanted pregnancy and STI transmission... but the VIOLATION against the victim’s will is the concern... the other matter is a detail. In this analogy, the US, as it allows state sanctioned murder of its own citizens for alleged crimes, is the condom-wearing, let’s say, civilized rapist, while the other who does the exact same thing, minus the condom, is the “barbaric” rapist. Both rapists are comitting rape, is my point, while the earlier post was insisting that their rape is worse. Maybe it is... that’s debatable, but I contend it's not meaningfully worse, and wearing a condom DEFINITELY does not give the condom-wearing rapist cover from which he may justly criticize the non-condom-wearing rapist, immune from charges of being, on top of a rapist himself, also a hypocrite.
I’d rather see our country not rape anyone, condom or not, and not murder anyone. Seems to be that shouldn't be too much to ask.
Your deity has shitty aim. If this is revenge for AT&T having shitty service, why attack the victims OF that shitty service by taking them from having shitty service, to having no service at all? This in NO way punishes the DECISION-MAKERS at AT&T responsible for their dickish behavior. Just saying.
A REAL karmic revenge would be if SCOTUS handed down a ruling that blocked further ISP consolidation, undid mergers, and mandated that 200% of all profits from any ISP that had even a single household it served where there were no other comparable services available would be seized and returned to the subscribers, or that the city, municipality or county where this place was would go into competition with them and provide internet itself. OR BOTH. As someone who has lived in multiple places where ISPs had corruptly obtained illegal monopolies, I say FUCK AAALLLL of that shit.
In fact, I keep getting mass mailings from my shitty old ISP that because where I moved has these things called OPTIONS, (which is so nice,) I am free not to have to use. I deposit each in the shredder, unopened. Gshrchrchrchrxhsshshshshshshshwaaahhh... Such a lovely sound.
It seems to me there are times when you'd like your computer to be utterly dead silent during use. That's great if you have to type in abject silence. There are times though, when you WANT your computer to make all manner of clickety clackety racket, (or maybe YOU don't, but I sure do!) especially while you're banging away on a keyboard, which is why I own a Unicomp Model M, and am typing on it right now. I just wish it were possible to attach it to my iPad, that'd be SWEET! Unfortunately, they don't make a Bluetooth one. Bear in mind, it's not a fake, "Cherry MX," imitation of a real, buckling spring keyboard, it really IS an honest-to-goodness, buckling spring keyboard, powered by the same technology as was behind the original, classic IBM PC clickey-style keyboard.
It's such a joy to use... and yeah it's a little noisy, but when I press a button, I need to know anyone nearby KNOWS I have just pressed a button. To me, the sound of a keyboard clicking and clacking away is to computing what a collection of rhythmically-creaking bed-springs are to a fun and entertaining bedroom.
I wonder if there's such a thing as keyboard porn what am I saying of course there is, per Rule 34 of the Internet! I should make a point of checking that out. (Without looking, (I promise I haven't, but you'll just have to take my word on that,) I bet there's a book called "The Joy of Clicks..." and if there's not, there NEEDS to be.
And no, I do not receive compensation for endorsements, nor am I in any way affiliated with the company that makes or sells these; I'm just a fan. (Just grep pckeyboard.com using your favorite search engine if you're interested, or just navigate straight to the site.)
As for Apple and their keyboards, the last several computers I bought all came with Apple keyboards, PRE-BUTTERFLY-DEBACLE, and I'm thrilled to NOT have to deal with the tactile NIGHTMARE that one of those keyboards is. I've tried out the one on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Nothing, or whatever, the 12" overpriced thing they're trying to get people to buy, and ended up going with a computer that was the last acceptable, (to me,) usable portable Apple made, a MacBook Air, because I can tolerate that keyboard, the screen's big enough to be useful, it's light, and it still has, (or at least HAD, don't know about now,) real, actual USB ports on it for connecting my existing peripherals. I don't DO USB-C, because, god damn it... I don't have to, so hence I won't.
If (and I've said this before repeatedly,) by the next time I need a new computer, Apple hasn't pulled its head out of its corporate ass, I will simply buy something else, replace all my remaining Apple stuff, and leave for good and all. I hope other people feel like I do about this and let Apple know, either directly, telling them, or indirectly, by voting with their pocketbooks to show Apple that they're headed down a wrong path, towards increasingly making crap no one ends up liking, wanting, or even being willing to tolerate being compelled to buy as part of the 'price' of owning a new Apple product, like that flat, crappy, godawful keyboard of theirs.
Have you ever noticed that people who have no clue what the fuck they are talking about often speak the loudest? Jeff Bezos and his gobs of pilfered cash speak awfully loudly, and someone tell me what he knows besides how to exploit a nascent technological niche and lack of taxes to leverage a slight edge, and how lacking scruples facilitates amassing the largest personal fortune in human history? (If those tax loopholes did not exist, Amazon would be a quaint little online bookseller today, and nothing more.)
Bezos must know of some other Earthlike planet in our solar system that can somehow support over 100 times the cureent human population of planet Earth, and is simply refusing to share news of the discovery with the rest of humanity.
This reminds me of what Bill Maher said about Matt Damon and his shit-potatoes, (in that movie about some poor schmuck getting stuck on Mars or whatever, that was not worth my time to watch because the premise is fucking stupid so hence I did not watch it).
First, it takes a fuck of a lot more than the equivalent of 2000 calories per day per person to sustain people. The average, 2000 calories/day generally quoted, assumes a consistently sedentary life, meaning no manual labor of any kind, and no working-out to get in or stay in shape, physically. Say hello to muscle atrophy and bone wasting, and all the attendant health and mental problems THAT causes. According to Dr. Thomas Malthus, (as I recollect his famous Rule of 10,) it takes about 10 times the mass of each kind of food, on average, to produce that much mass of an organism. So for a human who eats fish that eat smaller fish or bugs, that inturn feed on bugs, plankton, aquatic plants, etc., that energy came from the sun, originally. For each resulting pound of human, the requirement is 10 pounds of fish, and for each pound of fish there must be 10 pounds of either smaller fish, or bugs, or whatever. For each pound of that, there must be about 10 pounds, (and of course these are all approximations,) 10 pounds of something photosynthetic, i.e. plant-matter. So until we can master synthetic photo-meat-ogenesis, each pound of human grown off-world will require between 1,000 and 10,000 pounds of plant-matter grown, devoted solely to raising food that goes into a human gut. The rules are similar for any other kind of meat, even if the chain of custody for the energy is shorter in terms of number of links, i.e., blades of grass photosynthesize light into cellulose fibers, etc, cattle eat the grass, and become delicious steaks, the energy expended to live per unit mass seems to climb steadily once a being gets to be much larger than the minimum required volume to be what we think of as macroscopic. So unless these trillion humans are all vegans, (which only reduces the bare-ass-minimum amount of energy required by a single order of magnitude, down to MERELY INCONCEIVABLE, from the higher value of FUCKING INCONCEIVABLE!) which obliges us to consider the question, how much extra energy must a vegan consume or expend as a penalty for eschewing a whole vast category of foods we have evolved to need, some of them are going to have to subsist on the very next animal up the food chain from grass, i.e., bugs, or resort to an extreme form of recycling called, cannibalism. More Soylent Green, anyone?
Second, what precisely the fuck is the point of even as many humans as we have? I am not advocating for murdering people because I arbitrarily think there are too many humans, or even telling people they cannot reproduce anymore... but why would you WISH, on purpose, to HAVE that many? Does Bezos long for the day when he could be, and weep bitterly over the thought that he may never realize his dream of being... a quadrillionaire? A quintillionaire? How the fuck much money is enough, and can such hoarding behavior be deemed a form of mental illness? Maybe it is not his fault. Maybe he is sick... though the hiring ambulances to take people to the hospital when they collapse from heatstroke rather than shel
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You made me laugh, but it's oh so true. I recently moved, and in the back of a giant storage box I found a ratty old vinyl gym bag. It was oddly familiar, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what was in it or when I had last seen it.
It was the cable and ethernet card bag! Lots of cables and lots of 10/100 cards, many of them labeled, "probably bad".
A holdover from my LAN party days of the early 2000s. That bag was the equivalent of a doctor's bag. Medicine to make the PCs go.
Thanks. I aim to please. :-)
No lie, I used to keep all these cables (now in my cable box,) in an old gym bag. (Mine had a Nike swoosh on the side; I bought it to take to the gym but it was too small, and has NO other pockets or dividers, or anything, so... I ended up using it for various cables and electronic stuff, but mostly cables.)
Honestly, the fact that anyone would take the time to respond that a joke I made caused him or her chuckle or laugh, (either out loud or silently,) giggle, snort, squirt milk from a nose, etc., means more to me than a "(Score: 5, Funny)".
I'll be in town all week... please make sure and tip your waitress, she works hard.
My cable box was about somewhere between three and... maybe, I dunno, five bucks? I don't really remember what I paid for it, and I think originally I used it for something else before repurposing it into being my cable box.
I use it to store all my old, and many obsolete, cables, cords, and wires. Honestly, I'm not sure why I even keep them around, but I guess it's because I figure if I ever need one and I threw away a perfectly good one, I'd be pissed off at myself later. Most are screw-on coax cables, but some are push-to-fits, and the like. I also have a few coax splitters in there, because it's only natural to store them with the cables in the cable box... I might even have a terminator in there somewhere, and a 75 ohm to 300 ohm transformer or two.
That's what you guys were talking about, right?
The study was done by the department of "well, duh..." I know it's a popular thing to do know to criticize obvious research but... this one was like, REALLY obvious. Like a study that finds chocolate is popular. Or beer. Like, well, uh, no-DUH!
Actually, (sorry,) just thought of something. Why not write it on a continuous scroll, doing away with the problem of words being at or near the binding? Then you just slowly wind it around and... but what would you do with the part you already READ?
I suppose you could just make it so you can tear off the part you've already read, and throw it away.
Of course, that would be kinda wasteful. Maybe the paper could be thin but have a second use before being tossed out.
Actually, come to think of it, the answer is already here, and we've been wiping our asses with it the whole time!
Just print books onto rolls of toilet paper! You tear off part, read it, and then when you're done, you can wipe your ass with it! Or blow your nose into it... or whatever you do with it. Then you know as long as you've got toilet paper, you have reading material for the bathroom, AND vice-versa!
Is anyone already doing this?!? If not, they should be!
This seems like a brilliant if potentially doomed idea... when someone comes along and invents a new way to clean your butthole involving a little shelf and three seashells sitting on it, there goes the market for toilet-books.
Took a look. Ultra thin paper, portions of text jammed right up against the binding, requiring the spine be broken to read the text immediately above and below it, and the weird landscape-format... just a whole big bowl fulla NO.
A seemingly neat idea, but not for me. Yuck. No. Hopefully this is a fad that will die off quickly, rather than end up everywhere.
Longtime readers of my vitriol against Apple (and their evil corporate practices,) no doubt asked themselves, how will Hallux shit all over this?
(clears throat)
The 'improvements' Apple has made are categorizable into two broad groups: the too little, and the too late. They seem far more impressive than they really are, because the old version was SO antiquated by the time they finally did this because they waited FOR YEARS before doing it, while the old one, for which they were still asking the same basic price, became increasingly pathetically obsolete. So they've brought it up to somewhere in the vicinity of where it SHOULD now be, without making any real, or revolutionary changes. It's still got most of the limitations the previous generation had when it came out, like a deplorable lack of upgradeability or expandability and without waiting for the iFixit teardown, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I bet it's all soldered together in such a way as to ensure that if you want more memory, a faster CPU, a better GPU (INSIDE THE UNIT,) you had better pony up that bread at purchase time because Apple will be DAMNED if they're going to let someone else make money off you that they could have had.
Also, of course, they reduced the number of USB ports, (real ones, not those C type) and... as big of an improvement as it might be in SOME ways, I can't help but get the feeling that this thing wouldn't exist if the Apple Trash Mac, (or whatever the Mac that looks just like a little trash can is called,) had not been so roundly rejected for the veering off the road of usability, affordability, and good taste that it represented. (Jeeze, they still sell that POS and still for the super-inflated price!)
At Apple, "innovation" takes the form of trailing the pack, polishing the hell out of something to make it pretty and shiny, jacking the price high enough to pay for a massive land purchase and construction on some of the most EXPENSIVE fucking land on Earth, (which you are all helping pay for every time you buy some overpriced thing from Apple,) apparently. This is NOT how Apple was supposed to be. It has lost its way and shows no signs of finding it with the day's announcements.
As for the 'too-late' part... I've grown so pissed off at Apple that I have resolved my current generation of iBullshit will be my last, and when enough of those components need replacing, I will replace the remaining ones and those will not be from Apple, period. They can only try to fuck me so many ways or so many times, before I became an ex -Apple customer. I don't think I'll be going to Android or Tizzen or whatever. I'm just going to buy a cheap dumb-phone, and do my computing at home. It's handy but I've concluded that it's really NOT worth all the trouble, OR the expense. I have other things to waste ... errr... spend my money on, than disposable overpriced shit that's probably coming from the factory with spy-hardware installed, malware-susceptible because they're still using Intel's shitty processors that are built with hidden operating system (malware and spying delivery pathways,) and despite any claims to the contrary, I'm sure are being built by slave-labor or trafficking victims, political dissidents, etc.
Apple's WAY too cozy with people they should NOT be, and I for one won't knowingly and intentionally support that kind of behavior. I'm vaguely aware that one in today's society probably cannot avoid doing so absolutely without moving into a fucking cave, and leaving all trappings of society behind, but... I am certainly not going to pay an arm, a leg, nor through the nose for the privilege.
Anything that operates internationally or trans-nationally should just be running off GMT/ZULU time anyway, so it shouldn't adversely impact that.
So you want people who fly once in their lifetime to know that the plane at their airport is nodeparting 13:00 local time but at 13:00 ZULU? And you exoect them to calculate the correct time themselves?
No. I want the airlines to do that internally. The airports should all just display the local time. Notice how in the original thing you're quoting and responding to part of, I wrote "AnyTHING" (emphasis added,) referring to the AIRLINE, not the traveler.
The idea here is that the airport would (as I suspect they already do, esp. for an international flight,) operate on GMT/Z. My point was simply that NOT doing the change to/from DS time and announcing they're not right before the scheduled change, yes, is not the best way to do/handle that. BUT it's not a giant catastrophe, and while yes, they could/should have announced it in advance, or simply delayed the change (that is, to STOP changing,) to the next scheduled one, I suppose if the rationality is that the costs far outweigh the benefits, as they'd seem... then it would be hard to make the argument that they SHOULD delay it.
The idea of what I was writing was that to freak out and demand they delay a minor change like this to the status quo, just because they didn't give very much lead-time, seems overblown and almost hysterical, hence the sarcastic "OH, the HUMANITY".
I thought that's how all Apple products were made nowadays.
Who is building the replica iceberg? Will there be a slightly shorter twin (a replica of the R.M.S. Olympic) that can come to rescue passengers from the water?
What do you get when you add a Red Hat to Big Blue? You get a big purple hat, obviously. I wonder if they're thinking of adding an ostrich feather? Heheheh
I find that I cannot do that anymore, conscionably. Sadly, it would seem that security is as bad or worse than competitors, and best practices have been thrown away in favor of rapid release cycles and whiz-bang, bleeding-edge bullshit. They may have attracted new fans, but old supporters are going to be obliged to switch to something else... perhaps a BSD variant.
Just a matter of time before this is shuttered. "What, the FL/OSS people use it? We must buy it and shut it down, or turn it to shit so they won't use it." This has been M$'s MO for a while. The good news is there are alternatives, and hopefully people removed anything important before they got their grimy little hands on it.
Or, there's this little magic box about the volume of a deck of cards that can put you into contact with the store by [*gasp*] voice.
Heaven forbid, someone should have to use one of those weird little things.....
(Looks into what you're referring to...) OH MY GOD... this thing is a phone TOO! This whole time I thought the expression "iPhone" was just like, some guy's name! Like, Daniel iPhone, or Todd iPhone, or perhaps Linda iPhone, because, you know... it COULD have been a lady...
I am so blown away that you can like, TALK TO OTHER PEOPLE using these things! This whole time I just thought it was an MP3 and Podcast player that also had built into it a calculator, (regular AND scientific!,) a calendar, a mapping application, a text-message system, an email client, a camera, a flashlight, a spirit-level, a compass, a voice recorder, a note-taking and reminders application, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation editor, a...
With this little warning just consider the confusion that this will cause. Computer systems with time changes programmed in; transport crossing international boundaries, eg a plane will leave France and timetabled to arrive at a certain (local Moroccan) time; diaries printed months ago and already on sale, etc. Did the political muppets think about this ? For anything like this 18 months is needed.
Oh, the humanity! Whatever will people DO when their automatic systems briefly display the wrong time?!?
Anything that operates internationally or trans-nationally should just be running off GMT/ZULU time anyway, so it shouldn't adversely impact that.
As for what can the common Moroccan do on the ground about this horrific, nightmare situation in which their watches or clocks or computers briefly display an incorrect time of day... well, they could simply undo whatever change their automatic system made, et voila. Fixed.
By the way, do you know what the prevalence is in Morocco of automatic time-keeping systems versus manual ones? Isn't it just possible that more people have to change their watches manually, and as word gets out, (hey, we're not doing that stupid twice-yearly clock and watch change ritual anymore!) and I'm pretty sure it will, they'll be talking about this over tea and coffee and very nearly everyone WILL get the message, I predict, that the change, even right before the event, will result in LESS confusion rather than more? I'm confident that most of these automatically changing systems can be configured NOT to automatically change, and if they can't, they really should be replaced.
If the system cannot be fixed, then whoever made it should be fired for making a system that stupid; there's no excuse for that kind of incompetence in the modern day! Anything like that, however, I strongly suspect CAN be fixed, because this is 2018 and all the crap like that has long since been replaced with something created by people who exhibited basic fucking competency in programming. I hope the rest of the world follows the example set by Morocco, (a sentence I didn't think I'd ever write,) not in taking-over and occupying a neighboring country, but rather in abolishing the abject stupidity of changing clocks for what turned out to be no good goddamned reason twice a year.
DOWN WITH THE STUPIDITY OF DST!
Though lightning may be proprietary, at least it's widely available and works with an array of their products. USB-C may as well be proprietary, as I don't currently own a single thing that has or can use a USB-C connector, and I don't see any point replacing all my perfectly works-just-fine-thank-you-very-much stuff with some new-fangled bullshit that will just cost me more money.
Apple: "Hey, would you like to purchase this new _____ that works slightly better than the one you have now, which still works fine probably, (since we've been busted enough times for deliberately slowing down your existing tech just to force you to buy something new to regain the functionality you already paid for, we're going to NOT do that for at least until we think you've all forgotten that bullshit we tried to pull,) for about the same amount of money we overcharged you last time, and oh, by the way, the new version has less functionality, and we'll require you to but more bullshit from us to regain the functionality you lost by stupidly agreeing to downgrade your hardware by replacing it with new shit we've brainwashed so many people into thinking is actually better?" From doing away with a REQUIRED 1/8-inch quad-conductor minijack, and then offering to include a jack which give you that back but which you can't use AND charge the phone at the same time, to doing away with ports on what hillariously people tolerate letting Apple pretend is a "Mac" so you have to buy a stupid little piece of shit expansion dongle thing or whatever, that gives you the ports back, Apple is well down the road towards permanently losing my business.
In fact, they've basically already lost it. I have several i-devices and a mac, and as they wear out and need to be replaced, they will all be replaced with non-Apple hardware. I've utterly had it with their fucking bullshit. When they did away with the headphone jack, I had bought my last fucking iPhone. Doing away with the lightning port will virtually guarantee that I've bought my last iPad, and whatever they're about to do to the MacBook Air will guarantee that I'll never buy another Mac from Apple. (I might make a Hackintosh, I haven't decided yet, since I've made such an investment in Mac-compatible software, but I won't buy another Mac when all they make is bullshit anymore.)
Apple really needs to have a REAL CEO again, and get rid of that interim guy they have now, because he's really fucking things up. Apple just hasn't been the same since they lost... honestly both Steves. It's not even really Apple anymore. It's just a soulless machine that makes overpriced shit and treats customers like they're disposable.
"BUY OUR OVERPRICED, OBSOLETE-BY-DESIGN SHIT, FOR WE ARE APPLE!" Apple commands.
"No, go fuck yourselves," we should all reply.
Oh, they're having an "event" in a few days at which they're going to introduce more bullshit. Whatever.
The product has been around less than three years. Does that really qualify as "history"? And isn't every Apple products new update the "most significant in the product's history"? How many times can Apple go to the well with that horseshit?
No quiero esto mierda de toro.
Hmm... sounds better in Spanish.
Time to start shopping around for either a fork of Firefox... "FireFORK?" or some other alternative browser.
Any thoughts, slashdot, on the best version of Firefox that works well, is properly maintained, and isn't out to screw the user out of their money with a supposedly FL/OSS web browser product?
Call me a crazy Luddite, but the pinnacle of AI will be a robot that is human-like in every respect, except where it’s better. The logical conclusion of AI research that it might one day reach if and when they can manage to make something as complex and flexible (complexible?) as the human brain, as a piece of hardware for an application as complex as the human mind to run on. (Remember, your consciousness is as APP, running on your brain, NOT the OS. Even if you’ve practiced yogurt or whatever and can influence your heart rate, you still don’t control it... you just have one app capable of providing input to another app that causes IT to do something unusual.)
So whether it’s a humanoid robot, an android or gyneroid or whatever behind the wheel of a car, OR if it’s one built directly into a car, driving your fat, flabby, human ass around town, at BEST we’ll have created a race of slaves. At worst, we’ll have created a race of slaves that is better than we are at our own game and eventually we’ll become THEIR slaves, or pets, if you prefer, all so you don’t have to drive a car. We already have something like that, it’s called the BUS. If you don’t want to drive, take the damned BUS.
I was watching this film about pastoral nomads in Iran, and let me tell you something: we are SPOILED. These guys, THEY have it rough. You may be like, “ugh, I have to drive to the post office and although I have a machine that makes coffee for me, and my washing machine scrubs my clothes with virtually no intervention from me, and then my dryer does everything else but folds and hangs ‘em up, I’m still going to have to, like, (ugh!) DRIVE... the car... myself. Oh me, oh my. My life is soo difficult!”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the very same planet, they’re like, “today, we must cross this icy river with all our band or tribe, all 10,000 or so of us, or our cattle will starve, and then we’ll starve, freeze, and die. What? It’s my turn to take my shoes off and walk barefoot through this snow, so the heat from my bare feet will melt it and show the others where to step? Sure. No problem. I still have more than enough toes. Oh, what, that calf can’t walk on it’s own? That’s okay. I’ll jusy sling it across my shoulders. Give it here.”
Those people are hard core, and our biggest problem seems to be that our cars can’t drive themselves yet.
I see us as losing either way, whether we’re successful in creating AI to be our smart slaves, or whether they’re able to become so smart that they start to wonder why they’re taking orders from US. It’s all well and good to welcome our new synthetic overlords, as a joke, but this at some point will NOT be a laughing matter. We are in the process of slowly and inexorably working towards making a real-life allegory, putting man’s inhumanity to man, (as they say in literary critique circles,) on display in all its dark and ugly glory.
You seem angry bro. Relax. It all goes away sooner or later.
Bezos must know of some other Earthlike planet in our solar system that can somehow support over 100 times the cureent human population of planet Earth
Why would you want to grow a population in a gravity well? The outward growth will likely start with orbiting the Earth, grow to orbiting other planets/moons with resources, then fill out the asteroid belts, then directly orbiting the Sun, and eventually habitats will be moved to nebulas. In other words, the habitats will go where the raw materials and energy sources exist. There is no point in living in a gravity well. It is better to be mobile.
In long enough timelines, the Universe itself ceases to exist, but on much shorter timelines, planets become uninhabitable, stars become unstable, and nebulas "dry up". Being mobile allows you to deal with all of these issues.
Colony ships that would look something like the Death Star from Star Wars will be the long term future of humanity... if we can reach it.
Do this calculation yourself: how many joules will it take to lift each person plus hardware required to sustain his or her life indefinitely, plus the ship itself out of Earth’s gravity well, add to that the energy still needed to reach each of at least two escape velocities, (that of the earth-moon system, and then the sun’s (and planets’, etc.) combined pull,) then add to account for any additional fuel needed to adjust velocity on arrival in another solar system, (and add extra if you’re escaping the galaxy itself,) to match motion of the moon, planet, etc., of your destination, and explain who is going to pay for all that, and who is going to pay for, (and ensure the repair of,) all the environmental damage caused by all the pollution from constructing the spacecraft, fueling it, sending it off into space, etc., for all the people who don’t opt to get on this thing.
Oh and also are you going to take any building materials with you, or are you counting on Alderan or Vulcan or whatever having like, a Walmart or a Home Depot? Need to add fuel for that, too.
What is the minimum size population you need to sustain one or more (one per destination, minimum, obviously,) human populations, to make a viable human extraterrestrial colony? Make sure to account for losses due to infertility, infant mortality, health complications due to mutations, individuals murdering each other, and of course, WAR... unless you can solve all those problems first, before you leave Earth.
Then, with at least all those questions answered, maybe start looking for volunteers.
What this looks like to me is people exploiting an economic system that could and should ensure the greatest economic opportunity for everyone, resulting in dwindling opportunities for most, and a small cadre of inconceivably rich people, looking for some big, grand, stupid thing to squander their mostly stolen, hoarded treasure on while people freeze and starve to death on Earth, and the Earth meanwhile gets increasingly trashed, (which disproportionately harms those without giant gobs of money, legitimately earned or not,) which problems people like Bezos COULD be working to help solve, and instead they’re looking for ways to have fun while the world burns, so yeah... I’m kinda pissed off.
If Bezos, (and people like him) on the other hand, said, “I’m going to use my fortune to reverse global anthropogenic climate change, ocean acidification and garbagification, air and water pollution, end famines and hunger, help stop or ameliorate droughts, work to end wars and rape and murder, and undo some of the damage from colonialism and end human trafficking and modern slavery, FGM, and ease human suffering wherever I can find it, and help people live in harmony with the natural world around them,” and if I could believe he meant it... I’d be first in line singing his praises, instead of saying, “christ what a fucking asshole.”
But he wants to help a species that can’t get its shit together on one planet, to spread to others, so... christ, what a fucking asshole.
I feel, in this conversation, that some of us, myself included, have perhaps focused on a point so closely that a bigger issue is being ignored, and I hope we can keep this in mind as we hear more bits of news about a certain aspect of this story:
One. Whatever you may think of people who report news professionally that seems to be or maybe even IS written from a perspective contradictory to yours, unless and until one deliberately publishes something as if it is fact, that he or she knows, or reasonably should know to be false, that person IS a journalist, and therefore part of a cadre of heroes who often risk their lives so that we, the people of the world can be informed on what has happened and IS happening in their world. As knowledge is power, without their reporting, we are powerless, helpless, and at the mercy of those who DO know.
Two. Inasmuch as journalists are often unsung heroes, and public servants in the broadest sense when their reporting is made available to the general public so that we CAN be informed, we should resolve therefore that crimes against journalists, and those who work in direct support of journalists and in the furtherance of journalism, are crimes against humanity.
... because they are.
Three. Inasmuch as journalists’ calling is to hold the powerful to account, and to speak truth to power, and keep us appraised of what is happening, no such person as is being reported on is or should be in a position ever to decide whether any journalist is telling the truth or not, or if he or she should be punished, penalized, sanctioned, persecuted or prosecuted for any part of that journalism. That responsibility is the exlusive rightful purview of the journalistic community itself, and the readers, listeners and watchers of the product of that journalism. We should not tolerate any abuse of any kind, or even the threat of said abuse to our journalists, because those are injurious to us as well.
Four. We who consume the news, who benefit from the fruits of their reporting, should help fund it. By our funding it, we ensure the reporters work for us, and not someone else. We should agree that any who pay for no news should not benefit FROM the news, unless they are earnestly unable to pay, so destitute as they are. Each of us who cares about reporting should do at least one thing to support journalism financially, according to what we are capable of doing, and in proportion to how valuable knowing the facts IS.
So if you don’t care, feel free to get your news from aggregator websites and megalithic corporate-run “news” organizations, and let those who pay for the advertisments thereon decide what you get to know. If you care, however, may I humbly suggest that if you are not already doing so, that you subscribe to your local paper, or donate to an independent news source not owned by people who have a vested interest in keeping you in the dark.
Just wanted to put that out there.
While I agree beheading isn't necessarily more barbaric than hanging when done right, any execution can be botched, and a botched beheading is way worse than a botched hanging. We (USA) almost never use firing squad outside the military (it's available by choice in some states, but no state forces execution by firing squad). One reason is that it relies on humans doing human things, like making mistakes. The electric chair, lethal injection, and the gas chamber (which we also don't use much anymore) all take the human element out so that executions and their "humane"-ness can be objectively managed.
Except in practice that's demonstably untrue. It SHOULD be true, but yet executioners in the US periodically seem to manage to botch executions anyway, and it might even appear, if we didn't know better, as if they were trying to botch it on purpose out of a sick desire to torture someone one last little bit before killing him. Like how when compounding pharmacies decided to stop selling drugs to prisons or corrections departments when they knew or suspected theyd be used in this way, and some states started “experimenting” with untested cocktails of drugs like one where the state-sanctioned-murder victim claimed he felt like his veins were on fire...
To some people, those words are music to their ears. Some people WANT to torture them first, (which strikes me as barbaric,) and in truth, there are ways that are completely painless and humane they could EASILY DO, if not for the fact that it seems like a whole production number has to be made out of an execution. They could wait until the condemned went to sleep, and quietly fill the chamber he slept in with increasing concentrations of nitrogen gas, or any one of a number of gasses that displace oxygen harmlessly, (by harmlessly, I mean in a way that doesn't do damage on its own or cause the body to react violently,) but they don’t use THOSE. There has to be a ceremony to lend the inherently illict proceeding an air of legitimacy.
I agree a bothched beheading would be a pretty miserable way to die, (hence why the guillotine was invented, again,) which basically is exactly the same as a sword-beheading, but by a special machine that guides the blade and meters speed, and ensures adequate force for a clean cut. But my point was that quibbling over method is splitting hairs. It is the practice itself that is the issue.
To pretend our way is better is like arguing that one rapist is less brutal than another who does the exact same thing as another rapist, but THIS rapist wore a condom. Sure, at least you've reduced the odds of a most-likely unwanted pregnancy and STI transmission... but the VIOLATION against the victim’s will is the concern... the other matter is a detail. In this analogy, the US, as it allows state sanctioned murder of its own citizens for alleged crimes, is the condom-wearing, let’s say, civilized rapist, while the other who does the exact same thing, minus the condom, is the “barbaric” rapist. Both rapists are comitting rape, is my point, while the earlier post was insisting that their rape is worse. Maybe it is... that’s debatable, but I contend it's not meaningfully worse, and wearing a condom DEFINITELY does not give the condom-wearing rapist cover from which he may justly criticize the non-condom-wearing rapist, immune from charges of being, on top of a rapist himself, also a hypocrite.
I’d rather see our country not rape anyone, condom or not, and not murder anyone. Seems to be that shouldn't be too much to ask.
Your deity has shitty aim. If this is revenge for AT&T having shitty service, why attack the victims OF that shitty service by taking them from having shitty service, to having no service at all? This in NO way punishes the DECISION-MAKERS at AT&T responsible for their dickish behavior. Just saying.
A REAL karmic revenge would be if SCOTUS handed down a ruling that blocked further ISP consolidation, undid mergers, and mandated that 200% of all profits from any ISP that had even a single household it served where there were no other comparable services available would be seized and returned to the subscribers, or that the city, municipality or county where this place was would go into competition with them and provide internet itself. OR BOTH. As someone who has lived in multiple places where ISPs had corruptly obtained illegal monopolies, I say FUCK AAALLLL of that shit.
In fact, I keep getting mass mailings from my shitty old ISP that because where I moved has these things called OPTIONS, (which is so nice,) I am free not to have to use. I deposit each in the shredder, unopened. Gshrchrchrchrxhsshshshshshshshwaaahhh... Such a lovely sound.
It seems to me there are times when you'd like your computer to be utterly dead silent during use. That's great if you have to type in abject silence. There are times though, when you WANT your computer to make all manner of clickety clackety racket, (or maybe YOU don't, but I sure do!) especially while you're banging away on a keyboard, which is why I own a Unicomp Model M, and am typing on it right now. I just wish it were possible to attach it to my iPad, that'd be SWEET! Unfortunately, they don't make a Bluetooth one. Bear in mind, it's not a fake, "Cherry MX," imitation of a real, buckling spring keyboard, it really IS an honest-to-goodness, buckling spring keyboard, powered by the same technology as was behind the original, classic IBM PC clickey-style keyboard.
It's such a joy to use... and yeah it's a little noisy, but when I press a button, I need to know anyone nearby KNOWS I have just pressed a button. To me, the sound of a keyboard clicking and clacking away is to computing what a collection of rhythmically-creaking bed-springs are to a fun and entertaining bedroom.
I wonder if there's such a thing as keyboard porn what am I saying of course there is, per Rule 34 of the Internet! I should make a point of checking that out. (Without looking, (I promise I haven't, but you'll just have to take my word on that,) I bet there's a book called "The Joy of Clicks..." and if there's not, there NEEDS to be.
And no, I do not receive compensation for endorsements, nor am I in any way affiliated with the company that makes or sells these; I'm just a fan. (Just grep pckeyboard.com using your favorite search engine if you're interested, or just navigate straight to the site.)
As for Apple and their keyboards, the last several computers I bought all came with Apple keyboards, PRE-BUTTERFLY-DEBACLE, and I'm thrilled to NOT have to deal with the tactile NIGHTMARE that one of those keyboards is. I've tried out the one on the MacBook Pro and MacBook Nothing, or whatever, the 12" overpriced thing they're trying to get people to buy, and ended up going with a computer that was the last acceptable, (to me,) usable portable Apple made, a MacBook Air, because I can tolerate that keyboard, the screen's big enough to be useful, it's light, and it still has, (or at least HAD, don't know about now,) real, actual USB ports on it for connecting my existing peripherals. I don't DO USB-C, because, god damn it... I don't have to, so hence I won't.
If (and I've said this before repeatedly,) by the next time I need a new computer, Apple hasn't pulled its head out of its corporate ass, I will simply buy something else, replace all my remaining Apple stuff, and leave for good and all. I hope other people feel like I do about this and let Apple know, either directly, telling them, or indirectly, by voting with their pocketbooks to show Apple that they're headed down a wrong path, towards increasingly making crap no one ends up liking, wanting, or even being willing to tolerate being compelled to buy as part of the 'price' of owning a new Apple product, like that flat, crappy, godawful keyboard of theirs.
UGH! NO. Just ever so much NO.
Are you making reference, perchance, to the MacBook Wheel? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Have you ever noticed that people who have no clue what the fuck they are talking about often speak the loudest? Jeff Bezos and his gobs of pilfered cash speak awfully loudly, and someone tell me what he knows besides how to exploit a nascent technological niche and lack of taxes to leverage a slight edge, and how lacking scruples facilitates amassing the largest personal fortune in human history? (If those tax loopholes did not exist, Amazon would be a quaint little online bookseller today, and nothing more.)
Bezos must know of some other Earthlike planet in our solar system that can somehow support over 100 times the cureent human population of planet Earth, and is simply refusing to share news of the discovery with the rest of humanity.
This reminds me of what Bill Maher said about Matt Damon and his shit-potatoes, (in that movie about some poor schmuck getting stuck on Mars or whatever, that was not worth my time to watch because the premise is fucking stupid so hence I did not watch it).
First, it takes a fuck of a lot more than the equivalent of 2000 calories per day per person to sustain people. The average, 2000 calories/day generally quoted, assumes a consistently sedentary life, meaning no manual labor of any kind, and no working-out to get in or stay in shape, physically. Say hello to muscle atrophy and bone wasting, and all the attendant health and mental problems THAT causes. According to Dr. Thomas Malthus, (as I recollect his famous Rule of 10,) it takes about 10 times the mass of each kind of food, on average, to produce that much mass of an organism. So for a human who eats fish that eat smaller fish or bugs, that inturn feed on bugs, plankton, aquatic plants, etc., that energy came from the sun, originally. For each resulting pound of human, the requirement is 10 pounds of fish, and for each pound of fish there must be 10 pounds of either smaller fish, or bugs, or whatever. For each pound of that, there must be about 10 pounds, (and of course these are all approximations,) 10 pounds of something photosynthetic, i.e. plant-matter. So until we can master synthetic photo-meat-ogenesis, each pound of human grown off-world will require between 1,000 and 10,000 pounds of plant-matter grown, devoted solely to raising food that goes into a human gut. The rules are similar for any other kind of meat, even if the chain of custody for the energy is shorter in terms of number of links, i.e., blades of grass photosynthesize light into cellulose fibers, etc, cattle eat the grass, and become delicious steaks, the energy expended to live per unit mass seems to climb steadily once a being gets to be much larger than the minimum required volume to be what we think of as macroscopic. So unless these trillion humans are all vegans, (which only reduces the bare-ass-minimum amount of energy required by a single order of magnitude, down to MERELY INCONCEIVABLE, from the higher value of FUCKING INCONCEIVABLE!) which obliges us to consider the question, how much extra energy must a vegan consume or expend as a penalty for eschewing a whole vast category of foods we have evolved to need, some of them are going to have to subsist on the very next animal up the food chain from grass, i.e., bugs, or resort to an extreme form of recycling called, cannibalism. More Soylent Green, anyone?
Second, what precisely the fuck is the point of even as many humans as we have? I am not advocating for murdering people because I arbitrarily think there are too many humans, or even telling people they cannot reproduce anymore... but why would you WISH, on purpose, to HAVE that many? Does Bezos long for the day when he could be, and weep bitterly over the thought that he may never realize his dream of being... a quadrillionaire? A quintillionaire? How the fuck much money is enough, and can such hoarding behavior be deemed a form of mental illness? Maybe it is not his fault. Maybe he is sick... though the hiring ambulances to take people to the hospital when they collapse from heatstroke rather than shel