Obviously, you've never worked in a school enviroment before. I'm guessing you're corporate, but a much smaller level (even Fortune 500's have more politics than your work). Small but growing regional business? Anyways, let me get back on topic.
I briefly worked on a smallscale rollout project for a major (top 50 in population) city school system. There were ongoing political issues at the the superintendent level, unrelated to our technical problems, but likely to affect everyone's job one way or another. But virus problems were becoming impossible to deal with, so they moved the date forward for another rollout project, and added a Norton AV procedure.
Let me tell you, even the smoothest Windows rollout project sucks, they are never interesting no matter what. You never learn much, but when times are tight like they have been...
Well, the firm I usually deal with, calls up with this job, and they tell me 5-7 months of steady work. Those in the know, know that this means at best 3-5 months of less than 40 hours per week, but that was figured into my equations. They make it out that this is as simple as it gets, just me and another fellow, to make it last longer, and spread out the cost for the school system (Don't these places have an annual budget?!? Don't ask me...). No problem. Only after awhile, does it become apparent that this guy was only barely competent to begin with.
Well, this tech firm (which will remain nameless, they've sued ex-employees before over such) put the new sales rep on the school. That was bad. When the school says they just want the 2 grunts, and want to use one of their admins for the project manager, he agrees. Doesn't even diplomatically suggest different. He meets with her several times, still doesn't suggest otherwise. She was, unfortunately, a total ditz that apparently passed a CNE bootcamp course a few years back. But if her technical competency was horrible, then her management skills were absolutely abysmal. This had disaster written all over it, right from the beginning.
Well, you remember how I said that it was a rollout already planned? Well, the bulk of it was for some Novell Netware software, zenworks client, a few other things that I never actually learned of. Well, the ditz CNE's boss (also a woman, hate to be sexist but...) was having a power lunch with the VAR who was pushing the nw software. And she signed the deal, I think this was for at least $90,000... only this particular software only works with NT. There was no netware equivalent. 100 grand, gone like that. I don't know what was worse, that she would buy software that she obviously had no clue about, or that there is a VAR out there that sleezy.
I go into the briefing, just the tech firm, no client people there. I ask, time and again, was this tested, was that... "Yes, everything has been tested thoroughly, we expect you to be able to do the installs 20 minutes tops, per station". We start the next week, at City Hall (the admin offices are the top 3 floors). It's a total mess. The dumbass CNE/admin decides that first morning, that she would like us to do an inventory at the same time. Hands us some copies of paperwork, standard SN, asset #, etc. We're talking close to 25,000 machines throughout the school district (though not all are in scope for this rollout, maybe only half that). What does she think, that it means anything on paper? Is she gonna do data entry herself, when we turn these in? Or is she just trying to sabotage us even more?
In the administrative offices, there is a mixture of Win95a/win95b/win98/NT4/win2k. Wide variety of machines, including some new ones being installed by school technicians. The new ones are compaq... but they have no contract with compaq at all. I'm guessing Compaq salespeople somehow knew what a mess it was, and wanted nothing to do with it. We are given nothing at all like real procedure documentation... I could write docs better than this. A single page. 1. The grammar was awful, and it basically said install this software. We ended up discovering for ourselves just what options were needed. In the offices, close to 1 in 3 machines broke badly when installing the software, even after we figured out the correct options. Bloated registries, version dll soup, user installed software, all kinds of different things. We were spending up to 2 hours per machine, and the one week at city hall turns into 3. The sales rep lets us know the client is a little bit upset, and can't understand what the problem is.
Well, we move on to the first school. God, it was horrible, when I was in school, there were 3 Apple IIe's in the science room, for a month (They got switched out to another school in the county after that). In this school, there were no less 14 computer labs, all with 20+ machines. Every other room had at least 1 and sometimes 2 machines. 95% pII +. What did they teach these kids? Well, they taught them to be secretaries and other minimum wage type things. Any number of incredibly cool things to be teaching them, but no, just word processing, maybe spreadsheets (though I could never confirm that one).
We get there, and no one has even heard there will be any work done on the computers. 2 days to straighten that out. We can do work now, but only after 2pm (but the doors lock at 4pm, have to be out by then). Most of the labs lock all the keyboards up, and no one has a key (apparently they get vandalized or stolen). Lose another 3 days there. We get permission from individual teachers to do this, before 2pm. But code red alerts happen at least twice per day. This is when even though the bell rings, and its time for a new class, the kids all have to stay in the current one. The teacher locks the door, and the sherrif and deputies go through the halls grabbing all the dope dealers. Code red's never happen at a set time, so we end up missing a progress meeting with the ditz CNE. That was bad. Then, most of the lab machines are win95b, but haven't been reinstalled in over 4 years. Registries bloated so badly, that maybe only 15 out of 25 machines in any given lab are usable (and they've been like that for months, since the school techs refuse to support any machine not in the administrative offices). Of the 15, roughly 5 will have one set of win95 lockdown software on them, another 5 will have a different lockdown software, and 2 will have a third lockdown app. The rest have none. No one remembers or ever knew the passwords. When we do manage to disable it, if we can, it takes forever to learn just how to make it behave. But once our software install is complete, the machines become more unstable than anything I have EVER seen before. We end up rendering an entire lab unusable. We call up the ditz, she says if they still boot, proceed. They do boot up (most of the time), so we end up doing every lab in the school. We end up rendering all of them unusable. Complaints fly all over the place.
The sales rep arranges an emergency meeting with the ditz, her boss, and us. Plus another engineer from our firm, whom I question even his competency. We explain everything, including how this could only be expected when absolutely no testing was done beforehand. We explain that win95 is completely unsuitable, but even more so, when it isn't pristine (which is unbelievably generous, these had NEVER been reinstalled) you'll see these sorts of problems. We explain that the lockdown software is part of the problem, but not all of it. So they decide that the other tech will go work on another project, and that I and the engineer will go see if there is any salvaging it. We manage to go back to one of the labs we'd done. 2 hours there were enough to convince him (I winced at first, the first machine he turned on had almost no probelms). Every machine would BSOD. It would do the windows partial freezes, the buzzing mouse, all your favorite win95 problems. Some of the machines died at bootup, conflicts with the lockout software. He agrees that we can't go on as we had.
So, we make a proposal to spend a few weeks building install images and doing testing. We'll install 95 back on them, since that's all there is for licenses, but it will be pristine, each machine will have an identical image build. We'll standardize on one lockdown app, with documented passwords, etc.
Offer rejected. Too much embarrassment, I think that we made it clear that we had a clue, and all along knew how retarded they were. Also had a little bit to do with their strict no reinstall policy (I'm not making that up). Seems that at least 3 other dept's had claims on certain machines/labs, donations and what not. And their was enough inter-departmental rivalry, that IT wouldn't reinstall OS's, mostly because each dept wanted the same apps installed that were on the machines when donated. Which is utterly ridiculous, since M$ office was all that was ever used.
I got 6 week's worth of paychecks out of it. For trashing an entire school's worth of computers. Which, as far as I know, are still not functioning. Not that anyone cares. I do in a way, but have zero control over any of it. Makes me sick that my tax dollars pay for it.
Solution for the original slashdt asker: Find another job in a non-k12 setting.
Nothing can fix your situation. You may be the only one there qualified to teach anything having to do with computers, and you are not a teacher. The computers are a waste of tax dollars in their current capacity, and are only ever used for the most outrageous abuses. The shit will hit the fan, though maybe not for awhile yet, and you do not want to be there when it does.
Dude, you gotta remember to not swear during the interview... it's not the brightest idea to swear on the job at all, but if they use Microsoft products they oughtta be use to it by now. But during the interview itself, very big nono.
Oh. Another thing, that clip-on plastic bowtie you got out of the crackerjack box, that doesn't really count. You need a real tie, made out of cloth. It would also be good if the tie you pick out didn't depict various skeletons fornicating in various styles. Plain blue would be my recommendation. Take this advice, and in 10 years when the economy recovers, you oughtta be able to get a job you aren't qualified for, just like in the good ole days of 1997.
HAIKU: Case mods on slashdot Blinkenlights, doodads, plexi: Does anyone care?
LIMERICK: There once was some plexiglass from Ace that was decked out with white frilly lace tossed a mobo in there and athlons, a pair and when finished we'll call it a case!
DOUBLE DACTYL: Bubbly Bobbly Slashdotter Sandv!per "Gee this is ugly" lamented the klutz
"Uber-Case Moddery, surely impressed me, but... pseudo-geometry is driving me nuts!"
You can breath easily, its normal pressure, and nitrogen is no less pleasant than N+O. That's why its deadly, you can't notice anything abnormal... you just feel short of breath, then pass out.
When mine eye falls upon that light mine heart turns dark for the unmourned waste when in history we once feared night and strove to banish it, with undue haste
that good man Edison born forth the device which only made use of one in twenty driven by power that which was low in price and of that juice there would be plenty
now science improves upon that thought with a tungsten lattice that uses three in five hidden with answers we long have sought was the mythic efficiency for which we strive
And nothing remains of that electricity hog Save twenty-two billion metric tonnes of smog
So let me get this straight. You believe in astrology and channeling, while simultaneously and pre-emptively denying the validity of unnamed charlatans whenever and whereever you deem them undefendable.
Let's examine these too beliefs. One belief is that practically any personality trait or significant event actually has something to do with the arrangement of stars and planets in the night sky. Or, in some cases, what they happened to be on the day you were born. Does this mean that it might be preferable for pregnant women to medically delay birth, for a more favorable astrological "sign" ? If they have a C-section, does it count. If an embryo is frozen for 3 years, and then implanted in a womb, does this affect things at all, or is it truly the birth date?
What, you retards never actually tested any of this? Your 10,000 year old voodoo beliefs? What, are you afraid that if there were such tests, things might show it to be unsupportable superstition? And if you aren't afraid that is the case, what prevents you from doing this?
See, this is what science is about. Figuring out what is going on. If atrology were in any way valid, not only would it strengthen your arguments that it is, but science would allow you to refine just what you know.
Statistics, lies though they are, don't even come close to supporting anything that atrology ever claims. Made up bullshit by the trolls here on slashdot, is statistically indistinguishable from this garbage.
Channeling? Hmm, dunno. I won't rule it out, but the truth is, this one would be much more defendable by you, on its own. It's certainly not repeatable though, let alone reliable. But this once, you get a "Get out of jail free card". I won't attack this one just yet.
As for me being "programmed" to not believe stupid new age garbage, I thank you, I don't often recieve compliments on slashdot. For those of you that don't speak the fruity dialect of nutcasian, that translates to "having common sense".
You see, it's not out of malice or distrust that the natural inclination is to not believe something until proven true. It's simply that there are any number (read: infinite) of possibilities, all contradicting. And it would be IMPOSSIBLE to give all the benefit of the doubt simultaneously. So therefor, you figure out the things you know for sure, while setting aside all the crazy stuff, until you get around to test this.
Why? Because it's the only way to function as a human being, otherwise you'd starve to death worrying that if you ate at the wrong time, the gods would punish you (which they might, if all theories are equally plausible until tested, they might very well kill you for such a transgression, and by the time you find out, it's too late).
And if you don't agree, all you have to do, is prove it to me with repeatable results. That's the cool thing about science, my belief doesn't matter if it's true.
If it looks like justice to you, that's just because you're so starved for it that you no longer recognize it.
I seem to remember reading something about someone trapped in some desert, slowly dying of dehydration. It got so bad, he attempted to drink shampoo. Maybe it's like that for you?
I think it's easiest to use a metaphor here, so I'll try to make it a good one. Let's start with the internet, circa 1985.
At this point in time, the internet was much like some pristine wilderness, barely touched by mankind. The american west in the early 1800s, or maybe a south pacific island at the same time. Beautiful, clean. Able to go anywhere you want, and no one notices. Sure, you can't run down to the 7-11 and buy some chips and beer, and it can even be a rough place to live, but it's just so satisfying. Time could stand still, and you wouldn't complain.
Fast forward to 2002. This pristine wilderness is now covered by smog (popup ads, spam) being churned out by the local factory (spamhaus). There are fences everywhere, buildings built every concievable place, and the few open areas are public parks that don't let you do anything interesting. You can't fly a kite (run a webserver on yourr cablemodem, perrhaps). You can't put whatever sign you want on the front of your leased office building (hosted website). The zoning officials are constantly demanding bribes. And the crime rate in your section of town is horrifying. Not that anyone ever comes here anymore, ever since the Best Buys and Amazons bribed the local politicians to stop the expressway from coming through that area (baby bell dsl fiasco).
Face it, the internet is now one large inner city ghetto, and you don't have any money to move.
Oh my god. This is sad. That someone would mod this up as funny... I never intended it that way. I know I post alot of goofy shit, but I was 110% deadly serious this time.
And I don't find it funny at all.:(
I just accused our judicial system of being morally bankrupt and functionally impotent. Flamebait would have been more appropriate. Even troll. I think I'll go cry now.
Recently, a friend that works at a prestigious laboratory noted that they saw a very strange pattern of xenon atoms on top of a palladium plate. Assuming that it was a joke perpetrated by a coworker, it was never reported. While mostly illegible, he was able to make out several words.
"We not slaves, ugly bags of mostly water."
Both of us were perplexed, if it was a joke, we didn't get it.
Nah, you're confusing litigation with justice. If we were great at justice, the spammers would have been tortured to death (now there's a job that could pay minimum wage and still have people jumping at the chance).
If were great at litigation however, this case would have dragged on for a year, costing far more in legal fees than it ever deserved to. Oh wait.. that's what happened.
Cut me some slack. I'm trying to write these in under a minute, (this one was 27 seconds flat, iirc) so that they aren't buried at comment #900. This one was crap, but otherwise I've had some pretty decent ones lately. Check out the waste treatment/hydrogen article, for instance.
Also, most of my haiku now include the "cutting word" and kigo, since there were so many poetry critics here. I never even knew about such things until last week. See if your average slashdot troll puts so much work and creativity into this. (In my defense, if I can sum up an article in a limerick, then it shouldn't have been posted).
What more do you want, sonnets?
Hmm... Ode to Vaguely Funny Webzine *inspiration strikes*. Later.
There once was a atomic nuclide rumored were toys on the inside was sure Hemos was a liar turned out to be satire there are times I'd prefer "BSD has died"
There once was a movie called Tron with blinkenlights flashin' off/on Bruce Boxleitner resisted, Jeff Bridges assisted Twas the triumph of brains over brawn
There once was a price tag from Kmart that had slashdot crying it was too smart what they didn't know was the price would be low when you hacked the WinCE at it's heart
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously, you've never worked in a school enviroment before. I'm guessing you're corporate, but a much smaller level (even Fortune 500's have more politics than your work). Small but growing regional business? Anyways, let me get back on topic.
I briefly worked on a smallscale rollout project for a major (top 50 in population) city school system. There were ongoing political issues at the the superintendent level, unrelated to our technical problems, but likely to affect everyone's job one way or another. But virus problems were becoming impossible to deal with, so they moved the date forward for another rollout project, and added a Norton AV procedure.
Let me tell you, even the smoothest Windows rollout project sucks, they are never interesting no matter what. You never learn much, but when times are tight like they have been...
Well, the firm I usually deal with, calls up with this job, and they tell me 5-7 months of steady work. Those in the know, know that this means at best 3-5 months of less than 40 hours per week, but that was figured into my equations. They make it out that this is as simple as it gets, just me and another fellow, to make it last longer, and spread out the cost for the school system (Don't these places have an annual budget?!? Don't ask me...). No problem. Only after awhile, does it become apparent that this guy was only barely competent to begin with.
Well, this tech firm (which will remain nameless, they've sued ex-employees before over such) put the new sales rep on the school. That was bad. When the school says they just want the 2 grunts, and want to use one of their admins for the project manager, he agrees. Doesn't even diplomatically suggest different. He meets with her several times, still doesn't suggest otherwise. She was, unfortunately, a total ditz that apparently passed a CNE bootcamp course a few years back. But if her technical competency was horrible, then her management skills were absolutely abysmal. This had disaster written all over it, right from the beginning.
Well, you remember how I said that it was a rollout already planned? Well, the bulk of it was for some Novell Netware software, zenworks client, a few other things that I never actually learned of. Well, the ditz CNE's boss (also a woman, hate to be sexist but...) was having a power lunch with the VAR who was pushing the nw software. And she signed the deal, I think this was for at least $90,000... only this particular software only works with NT. There was no netware equivalent. 100 grand, gone like that. I don't know what was worse, that she would buy software that she obviously had no clue about, or that there is a VAR out there that sleezy.
I go into the briefing, just the tech firm, no client people there. I ask, time and again, was this tested, was that... "Yes, everything has been tested thoroughly, we expect you to be able to do the installs 20 minutes tops, per station". We start the next week, at City Hall (the admin offices are the top 3 floors). It's a total mess. The dumbass CNE/admin decides that first morning, that she would like us to do an inventory at the same time. Hands us some copies of paperwork, standard SN, asset #, etc. We're talking close to 25,000 machines throughout the school district (though not all are in scope for this rollout, maybe only half that). What does she think, that it means anything on paper? Is she gonna do data entry herself, when we turn these in? Or is she just trying to sabotage us even more?
In the administrative offices, there is a mixture of Win95a/win95b/win98/NT4/win2k. Wide variety of machines, including some new ones being installed by school technicians. The new ones are compaq... but they have no contract with compaq at all. I'm guessing Compaq salespeople somehow knew what a mess it was, and wanted nothing to do with it. We are given nothing at all like real procedure documentation... I could write docs better than this. A single page. 1. The grammar was awful, and it basically said install this software. We ended up discovering for ourselves just what options were needed. In the offices, close to 1 in 3 machines broke badly when installing the software, even after we figured out the correct options. Bloated registries, version dll soup, user installed software, all kinds of different things. We were spending up to 2 hours per machine, and the one week at city hall turns into 3. The sales rep lets us know the client is a little bit upset, and can't understand what the problem is.
Well, we move on to the first school. God, it was horrible, when I was in school, there were 3 Apple IIe's in the science room, for a month (They got switched out to another school in the county after that). In this school, there were no less 14 computer labs, all with 20+ machines. Every other room had at least 1 and sometimes 2 machines. 95% pII +. What did they teach these kids? Well, they taught them to be secretaries and other minimum wage type things. Any number of incredibly cool things to be teaching them, but no, just word processing, maybe spreadsheets (though I could never confirm that one).
We get there, and no one has even heard there will be any work done on the computers. 2 days to straighten that out. We can do work now, but only after 2pm (but the doors lock at 4pm, have to be out by then). Most of the labs lock all the keyboards up, and no one has a key (apparently they get vandalized or stolen). Lose another 3 days there. We get permission from individual teachers to do this, before 2pm. But code red alerts happen at least twice per day. This is when even though the bell rings, and its time for a new class, the kids all have to stay in the current one. The teacher locks the door, and the sherrif and deputies go through the halls grabbing all the dope dealers. Code red's never happen at a set time, so we end up missing a progress meeting with the ditz CNE. That was bad.
Then, most of the lab machines are win95b, but haven't been reinstalled in over 4 years. Registries bloated so badly, that maybe only 15 out of 25 machines in any given lab are usable (and they've been like that for months, since the school techs refuse to support any machine not in the administrative offices). Of the 15, roughly 5 will have one set of win95 lockdown software on them, another 5 will have a different lockdown software, and 2 will have a third lockdown app. The rest have none. No one remembers or ever knew the passwords. When we do manage to disable it, if we can, it takes forever to learn just how to make it behave. But once our software install is complete, the machines become more unstable than anything I have EVER seen before. We end up rendering an entire lab unusable. We call up the ditz, she says if they still boot, proceed. They do boot up (most of the time), so we end up doing every lab in the school. We end up rendering all of them unusable. Complaints fly all over the place.
The sales rep arranges an emergency meeting with the ditz, her boss, and us. Plus another engineer from our firm, whom I question even his competency. We explain everything, including how this could only be expected when absolutely no testing was done beforehand. We explain that win95 is completely unsuitable, but even more so, when it isn't pristine (which is unbelievably generous, these had NEVER been reinstalled) you'll see these sorts of problems. We explain that the lockdown software is part of the problem, but not all of it. So they decide that the other tech will go work on another project, and that I and the engineer will go see if there is any salvaging it. We manage to go back to one of the labs we'd done. 2 hours there were enough to convince him (I winced at first, the first machine he turned on had almost no probelms). Every machine would BSOD. It would do the windows partial freezes, the buzzing mouse, all your favorite win95 problems. Some of the machines died at bootup, conflicts with the lockout software. He agrees that we can't go on as we had.
So, we make a proposal to spend a few weeks building install images and doing testing. We'll install 95 back on them, since that's all there is for licenses, but it will be pristine, each machine will have an identical image build. We'll standardize on one lockdown app, with documented passwords, etc.
Offer rejected. Too much embarrassment, I think that we made it clear that we had a clue, and all along knew how retarded they were. Also had a little bit to do with their strict no reinstall policy (I'm not making that up). Seems that at least 3 other dept's had claims on certain machines/labs, donations and what not. And their was enough inter-departmental rivalry, that IT wouldn't reinstall OS's, mostly because each dept wanted the same apps installed that were on the machines when donated. Which is utterly ridiculous, since M$ office was all that was ever used.
I got 6 week's worth of paychecks out of it. For trashing an entire school's worth of computers. Which, as far as I know, are still not functioning. Not that anyone cares. I do in a way, but have zero control over any of it. Makes me sick that my tax dollars pay for it.
Solution for the original slashdt asker:
Find another job in a non-k12 setting.
Nothing can fix your situation. You may be the only one there qualified to teach anything having to do with computers, and you are not a teacher. The computers are a waste of tax dollars in their current capacity, and are only ever used for the most outrageous abuses. The shit will hit the fan, though maybe not for awhile yet, and you do not want to be there when it does.
Dude, you gotta remember to not swear during the interview... it's not the brightest idea to swear on the job at all, but if they use Microsoft products they oughtta be use to it by now. But during the interview itself, very big nono.
Oh. Another thing, that clip-on plastic bowtie you got out of the crackerjack box, that doesn't really count. You need a real tie, made out of cloth. It would also be good if the tie you pick out didn't depict various skeletons fornicating in various styles. Plain blue would be my recommendation. Take this advice, and in 10 years when the economy recovers, you oughtta be able to get a job you aren't qualified for, just like in the good ole days of 1997.
Personally, I can't wait until they can digitally recreate them. Star Trek had too short of a run, if you ask me...
HAIKU:
Case mods on slashdot
Blinkenlights, doodads, plexi:
Does anyone care?
LIMERICK:
There once was some plexiglass from Ace
that was decked out with white frilly lace
tossed a mobo in there
and athlons, a pair
and when finished we'll call it a case!
DOUBLE DACTYL:
Bubbly Bobbly
Slashdotter Sandv!per
"Gee this is ugly"
lamented the klutz
"Uber-Case Moddery,
surely impressed me, but...
pseudo-geometry
is driving me nuts!"
SONNET:
To be continued.
Complete with anti-aircraft missiles running WinCE?
Yeh. Serious.
There once was a slashdotter, ShavenYak
who with verse did try to attack
my position as king
of this poetry thing
you gotta wonder if he smokes crack
You can breath easily, its normal pressure, and nitrogen is no less pleasant than N+O. That's why its deadly, you can't notice anything abnormal... you just feel short of breath, then pass out.
The fairy's made him forget the good ending, duh.
It wasn't a bad book, though I do agree the ending was weak. The first few books of the Riftwar Saga were much better though.
Karma Whorin' Galor'n
NoMoreNicksLeft
"When will he stop?" Pon-
dered the troll
"Super-slash-poetry
doesn't amuse me; my
super-slash-trollery's
withered my soul!"
Angry troll complains
No more poems, you karma whore!
He must be jealous
light bulb wastes power
tungsten evaporating:
produce more photons!
When mine eye falls upon that light
mine heart turns dark for the unmourned waste
when in history we once feared night
and strove to banish it, with undue haste
that good man Edison born forth the device
which only made use of one in twenty
driven by power that which was low in price
and of that juice there would be plenty
now science improves upon that thought
with a tungsten lattice that uses three in five
hidden with answers we long have sought
was the mythic efficiency for which we strive
And nothing remains of that electricity hog
Save twenty-two billion metric tonnes of smog
Stuck in a small box
CPU crunches numbers:
Use Redhat or not?
So let me get this straight. You believe in astrology and channeling, while simultaneously and pre-emptively denying the validity of unnamed charlatans whenever and whereever you deem them undefendable.
Let's examine these too beliefs. One belief is that practically any personality trait or significant event actually has something to do with the arrangement of stars and planets in the night sky. Or, in some cases, what they happened to be on the day you were born. Does this mean that it might be preferable for pregnant women to medically delay birth, for a more favorable astrological "sign" ? If they have a C-section, does it count. If an embryo is frozen for 3 years, and then implanted in a womb, does this affect things at all, or is it truly the birth date?
What, you retards never actually tested any of this? Your 10,000 year old voodoo beliefs? What, are you afraid that if there were such tests, things might show it to be unsupportable superstition? And if you aren't afraid that is the case, what prevents you from doing this?
See, this is what science is about. Figuring out what is going on. If atrology were in any way valid, not only would it strengthen your arguments that it is, but science would allow you to refine just what you know.
Statistics, lies though they are, don't even come close to supporting anything that atrology ever claims. Made up bullshit by the trolls here on slashdot, is statistically indistinguishable from this garbage.
Channeling? Hmm, dunno. I won't rule it out, but the truth is, this one would be much more defendable by you, on its own. It's certainly not repeatable though, let alone reliable. But this once, you get a "Get out of jail free card". I won't attack this one just yet.
As for me being "programmed" to not believe stupid new age garbage, I thank you, I don't often recieve compliments on slashdot. For those of you that don't speak the fruity dialect of nutcasian, that translates to "having common sense".
You see, it's not out of malice or distrust that the natural inclination is to not believe something until proven true. It's simply that there are any number (read: infinite) of possibilities, all contradicting. And it would be IMPOSSIBLE to give all the benefit of the doubt simultaneously. So therefor, you figure out the things you know for sure, while setting aside all the crazy stuff, until you get around to test this.
Why? Because it's the only way to function as a human being, otherwise you'd starve to death worrying that if you ate at the wrong time, the gods would punish you (which they might, if all theories are equally plausible until tested, they might very well kill you for such a transgression, and by the time you find out, it's too late).
And if you don't agree, all you have to do, is prove it to me with repeatable results. That's the cool thing about science, my belief doesn't matter if it's true.
Wouldn't it be ironic if those who spouted Yoda-isms were somehow actually wise?
If it looks like justice to you, that's just because you're so starved for it that you no longer recognize it.
I seem to remember reading something about someone trapped in some desert, slowly dying of dehydration. It got so bad, he attempted to drink shampoo. Maybe it's like that for you?
I think it's easiest to use a metaphor here, so I'll try to make it a good one. Let's start with the internet, circa 1985.
At this point in time, the internet was much like some pristine wilderness, barely touched by mankind. The american west in the early 1800s, or maybe a south pacific island at the same time. Beautiful, clean. Able to go anywhere you want, and no one notices. Sure, you can't run down to the 7-11 and buy some chips and beer, and it can even be a rough place to live, but it's just so satisfying. Time could stand still, and you wouldn't complain.
Fast forward to 2002. This pristine wilderness is now covered by smog (popup ads, spam) being churned out by the local factory (spamhaus). There are fences everywhere, buildings built every concievable place, and the few open areas are public parks that don't let you do anything interesting. You can't fly a kite (run a webserver on yourr cablemodem, perrhaps). You can't put whatever sign you want on the front of your leased office building (hosted website). The zoning officials are constantly demanding bribes. And the crime rate in your section of town is horrifying. Not that anyone ever comes here anymore, ever since the Best Buys and Amazons bribed the local politicians to stop the expressway from coming through that area (baby bell dsl fiasco).
Face it, the internet is now one large inner city ghetto, and you don't have any money to move.
Oh my god. This is sad. That someone would mod this up as funny... I never intended it that way. I know I post alot of goofy shit, but I was 110% deadly serious this time.
:(
And I don't find it funny at all.
I just accused our judicial system of being morally bankrupt and functionally impotent. Flamebait would have been more appropriate. Even troll. I think I'll go cry now.
Recently, a friend that works at a prestigious laboratory noted that they saw a very strange pattern of xenon atoms on top of a palladium plate. Assuming that it was a joke perpetrated by a coworker, it was never reported. While mostly illegible, he was able to make out several words.
"We not slaves, ugly bags of mostly water."
Both of us were perplexed, if it was a joke, we didn't get it.
Nah, you're confusing litigation with justice. If we were great at justice, the spammers would have been tortured to death (now there's a job that could pay minimum wage and still have people jumping at the chance).
If were great at litigation however, this case would have dragged on for a year, costing far more in legal fees than it ever deserved to. Oh wait.. that's what happened.
Cut me some slack. I'm trying to write these in under a minute, (this one was 27 seconds flat, iirc) so that they aren't buried at comment #900. This one was crap, but otherwise I've had some pretty decent ones lately. Check out the waste treatment/hydrogen article, for instance.
Also, most of my haiku now include the "cutting word" and kigo, since there were so many poetry critics here. I never even knew about such things until last week. See if your average slashdot troll puts so much work and creativity into this. (In my defense, if I can sum up an article in a limerick, then it shouldn't have been posted).
What more do you want, sonnets?
Hmm... Ode to Vaguely Funny Webzine *inspiration strikes*. Later.
There once was a atomic nuclide
rumored were toys on the inside
was sure Hemos was a liar
turned out to be satire
there are times I'd prefer "BSD has died"
There once was a movie called Tron
with blinkenlights flashin' off/on
Bruce Boxleitner resisted,
Jeff Bridges assisted
Twas the triumph of brains over brawn
There once was a price tag from Kmart
that had slashdot crying it was too smart
what they didn't know
was the price would be low
when you hacked the WinCE at it's heart