As an older programmer with no particular attachments I have to say that I've found overtime to be generally counterproductive. Yes, I don't have the stamina I used to have, but even in my youth, if I worked more than ten or so hours a day, I ended up making more mistakes and getting stupid. I finally learned that in the long run, I'm much better quitting when I've run out of neurochemicals, going off to refresh myself with life, and coming back with new insights. Working myself into functional idiocy doesn't do anyone any good.
And I can't speak for other geezers, but I have not lost any interest in learning. I pick up an average of a new language every year. And I've found that the best job security is found by doing one hell of a job.
It wouldn't be that bad if the clueless voted randomly, since the noise would cancel itself out. Trouble is, the people who would otherwise stay away from the polls are the most likely to be influenced by the BS ads. I'm happy myself that those who don't really give a shit don't vote.
I remember the last time I let the managers tell me I had to work myself ragged: I was staring at a piece of SQL that I KNEW I could complete easily, if I hadn't been putting in hours instead of intelligence. Thirty minutes of dumb diligence aren't worth thirty seconds of rested smarts.
I believe the story was called "Melancholy Elephants" (because they never forget), first printed in "Antinomy" (good luck finding it!) and then in a collection also called "Melancholy Elephants"
Yes, sell your car, turn off the electricity, and "get a horse!"
Actually, I agree to a degree: computers are in some sense a mass hallucination -- we are still made out of meat and life goes on very well without cyberspace.
Unfortunately, doing without computers makes us as one with the Amish, who score high on ethics, and negative on viability.
Computers and cyberspace are going to take over our lives regardless of our personal rejection of them -- I don't much like cars, think they really mess up our reality, but I still have to look both ways before crossing the street.
Hold the presses! I just had a barnstorm! No, wait, that's a branstorm! No, wait, I'll be right back!!
Ahh, that feels better. I was just listening to 60 Minutes while playing FreeCell, and the future suddenly became clear. (I'm afraid I've become elliptically hyperbolic, but never sphere):
Consider the collapse of the dotcoms. Consider Microsoft's.NET. Consider how I go channel surfing just as soon as those damn ads come on. The end of the world is at hand!
Soon, advertising will become completely saturated. Already, ads flood the airways, peek out of "placements" in the movies, fill entire TV networks such as MTV, beckon forlornly from disregarded corners of Eudora and Morpheus, and line birdcages across the nation. While telemarketers raise the level of incivility and spam hits us electronically, in snail mail, and . . . well, d'ya know what I'm sayin?
Advertising is a gazillion dollar industry. Yet it is in decline (Advertising Age show that the average compensation for an advertising CEO dropped from $186,000 to only $167,000 (http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=33625) (not including bonuses, stock options, etc., of course)) Search the web, and you find that online advertising will grow to an incredible . . . oops, those are all 2000 stories. Never mind.
Well, naturally. Live with a nasty smell long enough, and your nose stops responding (the toilet overflowed the other day, so I am especially aware of this fact). Watch enough commercials, and eventually the only commercials you even notice are the ones that make fun of commercials. It's surprising that they have lasted this long. Must be a bad habit. Can you say "adcritic.com"?
And then too, the nation is graying: there are a lot more of us hoary old cynics who have been there, done that, and forgotten where we put the T-shirt. Now, about the only time I note a commercial is when it is especially egregious -- I put the company that committed it on my shit-list and then promptly forget the whole thing. I already have more stuff than I have places to put it, anyway.
So, suppose I'm right and advertising totally ceases to have effect? Internet companies already are starting to despair that banner ads will keep them afloat -- I hit one page the other day where a glass waltzed out of nowhere, covered up what I was about to read, a decanter of Scotch filled the glass, and finally they both faded into the banner ad. The ads have been a lot more visually interesting for some time than the rest of the site (much like TV) but now they are taking over the rest of the site. It got my attention, sure (but ask me what it was advertising, huh?) -- how long is THAT going to happen? It's a classic fight of offense/defense. I think in this case the defense will win: they can't afford to get TOO offensive.
Advertising hits the dust. OK, fine, telemarketers will have to get productive jobs, as will salesmen and admen. This could be bad: so many out-of-work conmen would probably be forced into politics. (What happens to politics if this comes to pass I leave as an exercise for the reader.) Most television and radio stations close (even public media are largely supported by, e.g., Archer-Daniels-Midland). Most magazines stop publishing, as do practically all newspapers (the subscription price basically pays for the printing costs, everything else is from advertising). The only free Internet sites will be the ones who are trying to sell you something directly, and the ones who are fanatic about selling you something for nothing. (OK, and the ones which are genuinely trying to be educational, and the ones who are telling about my pet cat, and . ..)
Could be the economy screeches to a halt. It is, after all, dependent on ever more people spending ever more money to buy ever more stuff. If I, and too many of my neighbors, decide that I've got enough stuff -- damn, it's Armageddon! Inventories back up, factory orders are cancelled, the factories have to lay off workers, the former workers can't pay their bills or buy more stuff, the slope gets even more slippery, and we all plunge into recession.
Or what's happening with.NET, and pay-per-view, and subscription services, and other stuff I don't particularly like (yeah, I'm fond of free beer) actually makes sense. You pay for what you use. I recognize that software subscriptions are not the same thing as pay channels, but it comes down to the hard fact that the people who make what you use also have bills to pay. The recording industry probably will collapse, unless it can turn the US into a police state -- music will go on, as bands go back to concerts to earn the rent, the way they used to do; and recordings become even more just advertising for the concerts (ah, a good use of advertising!). Artists, God bless 'em, have historically always been marginal, and maybe that's what has made them artists. Imagine Van Gogh with a seventeen year contract for five billion bucks, Beethoven nudging his lawyer to get him some extra points on the next CD, and compare that with the historical lastingness of Britney Spears. Do we need more 20-year-old millionaires writing songs about being in a rock'n'roll band?
A corporation is a machine for making a profit. That's not always true, but few corporations with other goals last for long.
A corporation is no more moral than a rattlesnake: both have their natural goals, and it is unrealistic to expect them to behave differently. It is also unrealistic not to be very careful about them.
While I find any kind of advertising annoying, this stuff is kind of cute.
Fact is, no one has yet found a business model for the internet which doesn't involve ads. No matter that the ads are only slightly harder to ignore than the ones in magazines and newspapers. (I can blow them away with no thought at all.) But you ought to play along, even click through occasionally, just to make them think it's actually working. Once advertising becomes so ubiquitous that everyone ignores it, the economy will collapse and we'll all be in deep doo.
d00dz -- let's all rant about how 1337 we are -- typos are the future, eh? -- I think that's some of what he's talking about, a bunch of leet geeks scoring points off each other while the apes take it all over.
Well, it's "religious" (your spell check is in need of maintenance) and you can certainly copyright your Holy Writings (though don't you want everyone to know The Truth?) but it's just Fair Use if you use short quotations from the One and Only Absolute Book that show how lame your bullshit is.
I thought he said you had to take it in context: if I said "Person X buys crack using petty cash from Microsoft and uses it to send atomic secrets to Afghanistan using gay CIA mules" no one with a lick of sense would believe me, because I'm obviously a loon. (Though I might get a following on talk radio.) If the NY Times printed the same, that's libel, because they have a track record of not being loony. (OK, ask my radio audience.) If the Irrational Perspirer printed it -- now that's where lawyers make their fees.
It's pretty obvious to anyone with more than half a dozen functioning neurons that the internet trumps Sturgeon's Law: it's about 5 9's bullshit and though you can get good information from it you've got to be devious, resourceful, and damn good. And really careful out there.
Everything is just an opinion, i.e., the product of the three pounds of slime someone carries in his/her head. It's just that some slime has better opinions than others.
Slashdot Mirror
As an older programmer with no particular attachments I have to say that I've found overtime to be generally counterproductive. Yes, I don't have the stamina I used to have, but even in my youth, if I worked more than ten or so hours a day, I ended up making more mistakes and getting stupid. I finally learned that in the long run, I'm much better quitting when I've run out of neurochemicals, going off to refresh myself with life, and coming back with new insights. Working myself into functional idiocy doesn't do anyone any good.
And I can't speak for other geezers, but I have not lost any interest in learning. I pick up an average of a new language every year. And I've found that the best job security is found by doing one hell of a job.
Don't vote unless you really want them: it just encourages them.
It wouldn't be that bad if the clueless voted randomly, since the noise would cancel itself out. Trouble is, the people who would otherwise stay away from the polls are the most likely to be influenced by the BS ads. I'm happy myself that those who don't really give a shit don't vote.
So how do you convince everyone else, or even yourself, that you are unique among six billion human beings? A cool ring, of course.
This proves that cellphones cause brain damage
Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know when you're going to get the crunchy frog
I remember the last time I let the managers tell me I had to work myself ragged:
I was staring at a piece of SQL that I KNEW I could complete easily, if I hadn't been putting in hours instead of intelligence. Thirty minutes of dumb diligence aren't worth thirty seconds of rested smarts.
I believe the story was called "Melancholy Elephants" (because they never forget), first printed in "Antinomy" (good luck finding it!) and then in a collection also called "Melancholy Elephants"
Yes, sell your car, turn off the electricity, and "get a horse!" Actually, I agree to a degree: computers are in some sense a mass hallucination -- we are still made out of meat and life goes on very well without cyberspace. Unfortunately, doing without computers makes us as one with the Amish, who score high on ethics, and negative on viability. Computers and cyberspace are going to take over our lives regardless of our personal rejection of them -- I don't much like cars, think they really mess up our reality, but I still have to look both ways before crossing the street.
Signal to noise approaches infinity
Hold the presses! I just had a barnstorm! No, wait, that's a branstorm! No, wait, I'll be right back!!
.NET. Consider how I go channel surfing just as soon as those damn ads come on. The end of the world is at hand!
.)
.NET, and pay-per-view, and subscription services, and other stuff I don't particularly like (yeah, I'm fond of free beer) actually makes sense. You pay for what you use. I recognize that software subscriptions are not the same thing as pay channels, but it comes down to the hard fact that the people who make what you use also have bills to pay. The recording industry probably will collapse, unless it can turn the US into a police state -- music will go on, as bands go back to concerts to earn the rent, the way they used to do; and recordings become even more just advertising for the concerts (ah, a good use of advertising!). Artists, God bless 'em, have historically always been marginal, and maybe that's what has made them artists. Imagine Van Gogh with a seventeen year contract for five billion bucks, Beethoven nudging his lawyer to get him some extra points on the next CD, and compare that with the historical lastingness of Britney Spears. Do we need more 20-year-old millionaires writing songs about being in a rock'n'roll band?
Ahh, that feels better. I was just listening to 60 Minutes while playing FreeCell, and the future suddenly became clear. (I'm afraid I've become elliptically hyperbolic, but never sphere):
Consider the collapse of the dotcoms. Consider Microsoft's
Soon, advertising will become completely saturated. Already, ads flood the airways, peek out of "placements" in the movies, fill entire TV networks such as MTV, beckon forlornly from disregarded corners of Eudora and Morpheus, and line birdcages across the nation. While telemarketers raise the level of incivility and spam hits us electronically, in snail mail, and . . . well, d'ya know what I'm sayin?
Advertising is a gazillion dollar industry. Yet it is in decline (Advertising Age show that the average compensation for an advertising CEO dropped from $186,000 to only $167,000 (http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=33625) (not including bonuses, stock options, etc., of course)) Search the web, and you find that online advertising will grow to an incredible . . . oops, those are all 2000 stories. Never mind.
Well, naturally. Live with a nasty smell long enough, and your nose stops responding (the toilet overflowed the other day, so I am especially aware of this fact). Watch enough commercials, and eventually the only commercials you even notice are the ones that make fun of commercials. It's surprising that they have lasted this long. Must be a bad habit. Can you say "adcritic.com"?
And then too, the nation is graying: there are a lot more of us hoary old cynics who have been there, done that, and forgotten where we put the T-shirt. Now, about the only time I note a commercial is when it is especially egregious -- I put the company that committed it on my shit-list and then promptly forget the whole thing. I already have more stuff than I have places to put it, anyway.
So, suppose I'm right and advertising totally ceases to have effect? Internet companies already are starting to despair that banner ads will keep them afloat -- I hit one page the other day where a glass waltzed out of nowhere, covered up what I was about to read, a decanter of Scotch filled the glass, and finally they both faded into the banner ad. The ads have been a lot more visually interesting for some time than the rest of the site (much like TV) but now they are taking over the rest of the site. It got my attention, sure (but ask me what it was advertising, huh?) -- how long is THAT going to happen? It's a classic fight of offense/defense. I think in this case the defense will win: they can't afford to get TOO offensive.
Advertising hits the dust. OK, fine, telemarketers will have to get productive jobs, as will salesmen and admen. This could be bad: so many out-of-work conmen would probably be forced into politics. (What happens to politics if this comes to pass I leave as an exercise for the reader.) Most television and radio stations close (even public media are largely supported by, e.g., Archer-Daniels-Midland). Most magazines stop publishing, as do practically all newspapers (the subscription price basically pays for the printing costs, everything else is from advertising). The only free Internet sites will be the ones who are trying to sell you something directly, and the ones who are fanatic about selling you something for nothing. (OK, and the ones which are genuinely trying to be educational, and the ones who are telling about my pet cat, and . .
Could be the economy screeches to a halt. It is, after all, dependent on ever more people spending ever more money to buy ever more stuff. If I, and too many of my neighbors, decide that I've got enough stuff -- damn, it's Armageddon! Inventories back up, factory orders are cancelled, the factories have to lay off workers, the former workers can't pay their bills or buy more stuff, the slope gets even more slippery, and we all plunge into recession.
Or what's happening with
A corporation is a machine for making a profit. That's not always true, but few corporations with other goals last for long.
A corporation is no more moral than a rattlesnake: both have their natural goals, and it is unrealistic to expect them to behave differently. It is also unrealistic not to be very careful about them.
While I find any kind of advertising annoying, this stuff is kind of cute.
Fact is, no one has yet found a business model for the internet which doesn't involve ads. No matter that the ads are only slightly harder to ignore than the ones in magazines and newspapers. (I can blow them away with no thought at all.) But you ought to play along, even click through occasionally, just to make them think it's actually working. Once advertising becomes so ubiquitous that everyone ignores it, the economy will collapse and we'll all be in deep doo.
d00dz -- let's all rant about how 1337 we are -- typos are the future, eh? -- I think that's some of what he's talking about, a bunch of leet geeks scoring points off each other while the apes take it all over.
It's a sorry thing that getting sued can fuck you as bad as if you were actually guilty
Well, it's "religious" (your spell check is in need of maintenance) and you can certainly copyright your Holy Writings (though don't you want everyone to know The Truth?) but it's just Fair Use if you use short quotations from the One and Only Absolute Book that show how lame your bullshit is.
I thought he said you had to take it in context: if I said "Person X buys crack using petty cash from Microsoft and uses it to send atomic secrets to Afghanistan using gay CIA mules" no one with a lick of sense would believe me, because I'm obviously a loon. (Though I might get a following on talk radio.) If the NY Times printed the same, that's libel, because they have a track record of not being loony. (OK, ask my radio audience.) If the Irrational Perspirer printed it -- now that's where lawyers make their fees.
Damn! How do you get the tag to show?
Damn!
I am not responsible for anything I say
Obviously!
I am not responsible for anything I say
It's pretty obvious to anyone with more than half a dozen functioning neurons that the internet trumps Sturgeon's Law: it's about 5 9's bullshit and though you can get good information from it you've got to be devious, resourceful, and damn good. And really careful out there.
Grue ot toast: ?
Yeah, I kinda like it, but isn't it a lot like a EULA?
Catch-22: an infinite doo loop
Everything is just an opinion, i.e., the product of the three pounds of slime someone carries in his/her head. It's just that some slime has better opinions than others.