"On my darker days, I like to think I did something good. It's reasonable to presume that if she survived high school, she survived university, and found her way to cubicle-bound conformity along with the rest of us."
You can't predict the future, and you can't change someone else's life. You can only do what you feel is right. "Right" is a relative term - I did what I felt was "right" once for a friend once more than a decade ago - telling him where I felt his life was, and what I felt he should do about it - and he blew his brains out with a 20-gauge the next morning.
Another friend I advised on "right", a few years before that, has become a very successful entrepeneur and retired already, long before I ever hope to.:)
I think what you did was good. Advice is easy to give; even when it's "right" - or accurate - it doesn't mean that the other person will be able to incorporate it into their worldview the way you see it. Sometimes they take it a bad way, sometimes it changes their whole life for the good. You can't predict it, you can't throw equations at it, you just have to put it out there, to the best of your understanding, and hope that they understand what you're trying to do.
That's the problem with compassion. Sometimes it can have unintended consequences.
That certainly should not stop anyone from trying. Giving your best, to someone you care about, is the greatest gift you can give. Even if it means remaining silent; even if it means hurting them.
There is no 'try'. Do, or don't do. If you don't 'do', you will always regret it, because you'll say to yourself "I didn't."
"Nothing like sitting in a room with 130 people and being told "Most of you were A+ students in high school. That ends here. You're still just as smart as you were six months ago, but you're in a room of people, all of whom who are also just as smart as you were six months ago, or they wouldn't be here.""
Amen. College is the ultimate sorting machine. Nothing like thinking you're smart, than getting put in a room full of smart people, and having to *really* work for it:)
I hope she survived too - I knew a few people like that in HS.
The "jocks" and assholes I knew in HS...well, I went to my 15th a while back - not that I wanted to that much - but most of the people who had given me shit in HS were working nowhere jobs, whereas I've been self-employed for more than half a decade, happy with my life, and upbeat. The "ladies" were all over me:) and I had to say no, I'm happy where I'm at, and you had your chance.
Also, most of the "nerds"; the friends I had in HS, the ones I played D&D with, talked computers in my folks' basement with, we had few friends then - but we're great friends now, and have lives that are infinitely more interesting than most of the others.
"When I was popular, I had people wanting to kick my ass, people who were jealous of me and I didnt even know who they are, I had rumors being spread about me for no reason, I had people talking behind my back constantly. Whats the point of all this political bullshit?"
-- Think of it as a social disease. I have since my freshman year in college, when I realized that very few people who really mattered acted that way. I got a lot of crap from a lot of the cliques in high school up until I was a sophomore in HS, when I got my brown belt in TKD. After a lot of people realized that I could wipe them into the ground easily, some of the pressure eased off. Some, not all.
"The more popular you become the harder it is to determine who your friends are."
Until you grow up and start understanding how to determine the difference between real friends and false friends; unfortunately, perfect understanding in that seems to take more years than we live; but one learns every day. It gets better, if you're willing to work at it. Trust me. Just don't expect it to change tomorrow. It's a process.
Most of the rest of your post I'll address by saying this: Live your life the way you see fit, treat other people like you want to be treated yourself, remember that everyone goes thru similar anguish at one point in their life or another, and be compassionate towards those who don't understand yet, when you can, because someday they may thank you for it.
Everyone else is fair game:)
Those three simple rules have served me well for a long time (I'm nearly forty y.o.).
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"I just think people like that should have their assets frozen for a year and learn to live off a 40k a year salary before they tell us we can't protect what we buy."
I think people like that should have their assets frozen for five years and have to go get a real fucking job where they do real work.
Come on, Jack V.! How about it? Come and hang and finish drywall with me for a year or so. You'll learn what *real* work is, you lazy bastard.
(yes, it's the life I choose. I love it. Keeps me in shape, too, especially considering how close 40 y.o. is....sigh.)
It's not the restrictions on logging that have made wood expensive, it's the huge demand for wood for building (flimsy) frame housing.
In any case, agriculture in space for export to the ground is extraordinarily inefficient. A much better idea is to move our steel manufacturing industries and more polluting industries into orbit. We could mine the raw materials from Near Earth Asteroids, ship to high Earth orbit, and process it there. Free energy (sunlight) for smelting, pollution would cease to be a problem, and it would open up more arable land on Earth, not to mention helping eliminate some of our largest polluters - and also materials for space-based construction would be made MUCH cheaper as we wouldn't have to ship the majority of the high-mass items up the gravity well.
Agriculture in orbit would only be efficient to feed the orbital construction crews....even though water would still be a problem.
"One suggested workaround would be to put the whole tank in a big sock to minimise such debris, but getting it over the outside of the tank would likely be orders of magnitude more difficult than any of the on-orbit construction that has taken place to date."
I think this is a good argument to continue building and expand the ISS into a station where the shuttle can be inspected in orbit and repaired if possible. We desperately need to expand our presence into LEO if we want to continue manned missions. A repair depot, however simple, could also retrieve and repair damaged satellites and provide a base for us to expand further.
We need that station. We need it to be permanently manned and capable of a lot more than simple experiments. If we are to continue the space program, instead of cutting back until there's little left but semi-smart probes, we need to move on, to never forget, and to make sure it never happens again. We need to explore and use the enormous resources of the solar system to ensure the survival of the human race; to bring our eggs beyond this one basket.
The alternative doesn't bear thinking about. Are we going to ignore the sacrifices that astronauts from world around have made in pursuit of these dreams? Are we going to turn our back on the solar system and throw away what so many people have sweated, worked, and died for? Are we going to throw away the potential given us, by God, Allah, Buddah, or whomever you wish to credit it to?
Are we going to turn our backs on the future of the human race?
We, as Geeks, need to dedicate ourselves to passing this message on - not just to other Geeks, but to everyone we can reach, especially the ordinary people whose opinions matter only en masse; we need to convince them with logic and reason and the passion that drives us; we need to ensure that there are enough people to pass this dream on, like a proliferate virus, until the governments of the world and the people who control the purse strings have no choice but to listen.
An avalanche starts with one small movement, and grows into something unstoppable.
So if a citizen of the EU comes over here and commits a capital crime, then he can't be subject to the death penalty; but if an American commits the same crime we can be?
My *point* as Gnovos pointed out below, is that organizations like the RIAA have no right to be bitching about criminal copying when they are engaged in criminal behavior themselves.
That's the scary part. I'm not so much worried about the actual food shortages as I am about the wars that would result as everyone remaining fought over the available resources - especially the spoiled people of the US, who are used to being spoonfed what they need.
Not me. I'm self-sufficient.
And Armed. So don't even think about stealing my crops:)
Slashdot Mirror
Well put. I salute you. What you said, of course, applies to any career, not just computing.
If you're ever in Northern Minnesota, come and have a beer.
SB
"On my darker days, I like to think I did something good. It's reasonable to presume that if she survived high school, she survived university, and found her way to cubicle-bound conformity along with the rest of us."
:)
:)
You can't predict the future, and you can't change someone else's life. You can only do what you feel is right. "Right" is a relative term - I did what I felt was "right" once for a friend once more than a decade ago - telling him where I felt his life was, and what I felt he should do about it - and he blew his brains out with a 20-gauge the next morning.
Another friend I advised on "right", a few years before that, has become a very successful entrepeneur and retired already, long before I ever hope to.
I think what you did was good. Advice is easy to give; even when it's "right" - or accurate - it doesn't mean that the other person will be able to incorporate it into their worldview the way you see it. Sometimes they take it a bad way, sometimes it changes their whole life for the good. You can't predict it, you can't throw equations at it, you just have to put it out there, to the best of your understanding, and hope that they understand what you're trying to do.
That's the problem with compassion. Sometimes it can have unintended consequences.
That certainly should not stop anyone from trying. Giving your best, to someone you care about, is the greatest gift you can give. Even if it means remaining silent; even if it means hurting them.
There is no 'try'. Do, or don't do. If you don't 'do', you will always regret it, because you'll say to yourself "I didn't."
Yes, Yoda said that
SB
"Nothing like sitting in a room with 130 people and being told "Most of you were A+ students in high school. That ends here. You're still just as smart as you were six months ago, but you're in a room of people, all of whom who are also just as smart as you were six months ago, or they wouldn't be here.""
:)
:) and I had to say no, I'm happy where I'm at, and you had your chance.
Amen. College is the ultimate sorting machine. Nothing like thinking you're smart, than getting put in a room full of smart people, and having to *really* work for it
I hope she survived too - I knew a few people like that in HS.
The "jocks" and assholes I knew in HS...well, I went to my 15th a while back - not that I wanted to that much - but most of the people who had given me shit in HS were working nowhere jobs, whereas I've been self-employed for more than half a decade, happy with my life, and upbeat. The "ladies" were all over me
Also, most of the "nerds"; the friends I had in HS, the ones I played D&D with, talked computers in my folks' basement with, we had few friends then - but we're great friends now, and have lives that are infinitely more interesting than most of the others.
I know where I'd go, if I had to choose again.
SB
"When I was popular, I had people wanting to kick my ass, people who were jealous of me and I didnt even know who they are, I had rumors being spread about me for no reason, I had people talking behind my back constantly. Whats the point of all this political bullshit?"
:)
-- Think of it as a social disease. I have since my freshman year in college, when I realized that very few people who really mattered acted that way. I got a lot of crap from a lot of the cliques in high school up until I was a sophomore in HS, when I got my brown belt in TKD. After a lot of people realized that I could wipe them into the ground easily, some of the pressure eased off. Some, not all.
"The more popular you become the harder it is to determine who your friends are."
Until you grow up and start understanding how to determine the difference between real friends and false friends; unfortunately, perfect understanding in that seems to take more years than we live; but one learns every day. It gets better, if you're willing to work at it. Trust me. Just don't expect it to change tomorrow. It's a process.
Most of the rest of your post I'll address by saying this: Live your life the way you see fit, treat other people like you want to be treated yourself, remember that everyone goes thru similar anguish at one point in their life or another, and be compassionate towards those who don't understand yet, when you can, because someday they may thank you for it.
Everyone else is fair game
Those three simple rules have served me well for a long time (I'm nearly forty y.o.).
Good luck and I hope this helps.
SB
"CT: Yeah yeah. It's a dupe. Funny that not a single reader emailed me in almost 2 hours to tell me."
:)
Why should we email you when we can post in the story thread and gain karma?
(or lose it)
SB
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SB
Something like Poe's mystery story about a locked room....I forget the name....
The Muzak did it! Muhahahahaaha!
"Rather, the Big Bang arose from a quantum fluctuation in the vast nothingness that was (or was not?) before."
Actually it was probably some geeky teenager with thick glasses doing vacuum energy experiments in his parents' basement.
Watch THIS Mom, I'm going to save the Universe! *insane grin*
SB
A dull tool can do more damage to one's own self.....
SB
"I just think people like that should have their assets frozen for a year and learn to live off a 40k a year salary before they tell us we can't protect what we buy."
I think people like that should have their assets frozen for five years and have to go get a real fucking job where they do real work.
Come on, Jack V.! How about it? Come and hang and finish drywall with me for a year or so. You'll learn what *real* work is, you lazy bastard.
(yes, it's the life I choose. I love it. Keeps me in shape, too, especially considering how close 40 y.o. is....sigh.)
SB
It's not the restrictions on logging that have made wood expensive, it's the huge demand for wood for building (flimsy) frame housing.
In any case, agriculture in space for export to the ground is extraordinarily inefficient. A much better idea is to move our steel manufacturing industries and more polluting industries into orbit. We could mine the raw materials from Near Earth Asteroids, ship to high Earth orbit, and process it there. Free energy (sunlight) for smelting, pollution would cease to be a problem, and it would open up more arable land on Earth, not to mention helping eliminate some of our largest polluters - and also materials for space-based construction would be made MUCH cheaper as we wouldn't have to ship the majority of the high-mass items up the gravity well.
Agriculture in orbit would only be efficient to feed the orbital construction crews....even though water would still be a problem.
SB
"One suggested workaround would be to put the whole tank in a big sock to minimise such debris, but getting it over the outside of the tank would likely be orders of magnitude more difficult than any of the on-orbit construction that has taken place to date."
I can see the patent now:
Shuttle External Tank Condom
*ducks*
SB
I think this is a good argument to continue building and expand the ISS into a station where the shuttle can be inspected in orbit and repaired if possible. We desperately need to expand our presence into LEO if we want to continue manned missions. A repair depot, however simple, could also retrieve and repair damaged satellites and provide a base for us to expand further.
We need that station. We need it to be permanently manned and capable of a lot more than simple experiments. If we are to continue the space program, instead of cutting back until there's little left but semi-smart probes, we need to move on, to never forget, and to make sure it never happens again. We need to explore and use the enormous resources of the solar system to ensure the survival of the human race; to bring our eggs beyond this one basket.
The alternative doesn't bear thinking about. Are we going to ignore the sacrifices that astronauts from world around have made in pursuit of these dreams? Are we going to turn our back on the solar system and throw away what so many people have sweated, worked, and died for? Are we going to throw away the potential given us, by God, Allah, Buddah, or whomever you wish to credit it to?
Are we going to turn our backs on the future of the human race?
We, as Geeks, need to dedicate ourselves to passing this message on - not just to other Geeks, but to everyone we can reach, especially the ordinary people whose opinions matter only en masse; we need to convince them with logic and reason and the passion that drives us; we need to ensure that there are enough people to pass this dream on, like a proliferate virus, until the governments of the world and the people who control the purse strings have no choice but to listen.
An avalanche starts with one small movement, and grows into something unstoppable.
Shadowbearer
Y'know, I went looking for the pix from this post late in the
day (damn work anyway
weren't still timing out.
Thanks, dude.
SB
No two witnesses ever see things the same way.
Universal
Corporation for
Assigning
Names and
Numbers via
Outright
Totalitarianism
AYE.
I think I sorta suggested this somewhere in one of the first
posts - unfortunately don't have the URL handy....
Testing was just too much fun....my ribs still hurt from
the hilarity of some of the posts.
meant we in the US :)
Move over Carlin, you have competition :)
A Truly Worthy (TM) rant, sir.
SB
How interesting.
So if a citizen of the EU comes over here and commits a capital
crime, then he can't be subject to the death penalty; but if an
American commits the same crime we can be?
We're fucked.
My *point* as Gnovos pointed out below, is that organizations like
the RIAA have no right to be bitching about criminal copying when they
are engaged in criminal behavior themselves.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
AFAIC the same thing applies to Microsoft....
SB
"Producing unauthorized duplicates of commercial products is known as counterfeiting"
and forcing prices to be artificially high is known as "Price Fixing".
SB
No, Mozilla
Oh....are these what you're looking for?
http://www.backwoodshome.com/
http://www.countrysidemag.com/
Exactly.
It can also be argued that things are not "OK" now, that our
climate is changing already.....
There's a lot of evidence, but little consensus on what it means...
SB
Nobody - NOBODY - can predict what would happen.
That's the scary part. I'm not so much worried about the actual
food shortages as I am about the wars that would result as everyone
remaining fought over the available resources - especially the
spoiled people of the US, who are used to being spoonfed what they
need.
Not me. I'm self-sufficient.
And Armed. So don't even think about stealing my crops
SB