..for all you unemployed geinii out there. Two huge companies that produce shitty user experiences are becoming one huge company. What d'you think is going to happen to user experience?
Time to put together a team, set sights on a vertical market and take that fucker away from them.
...just keep gas cheap and interest rates at all time lows. God will come save us if this turns out to a problem, be it global catastropy or the end of no money down, 90 day same as cash financing on 72" plasma tv's.
You just gotta draw the line somewhere...you help your parents, then their friends, then their friends friends...and pretty soon you have all these goddam FRIENDS!
You get carrot cakes and suppers and their unwavering gratitude and admiration. Your reputation grows geometrically. Helping people is great, and actually having conversations with people that aren't bitgeeks can be quite interesting. Did you know that some of those people know about stuff like structural design, the maintenance of heavy mining equipment or how to farm nightcrawlers?
I started down the seemingly pragmatic road though. Now I only take the suppertime calls from the vp of sales for my largest client, wanting to know how to work his I-Tunes. For this and other works, I am given a sum of quatloos that provides my mate and i with dinners, a place to stay, and surplus quatloos with which we can buy carrot cake and/or 72" flatpanel televisions, or sports cars, if we so choose. My new friends never gave me sports cars or 72" televisions, nor would I care to dwell with them in their houses, so this seems the more beneficial route.
Both scenarios have their pros and cons...maybe there is another way...
Imagine yourself the BitSlinger, roaming the land ridding innocent computing devices of unauthorized processes. With your faithful Indian friend Sanjay at your side, you'd roll into town, catching the eyes of the ladies as you strode through the swinging doors into the local internet cafe.
"Barkeep! Gimme a quad espresso with 4 turbinado lumps, and hold the saucer."
The room goes still, save for some awed whispering. Sound gradually returns to normal as Sanjay comes in after fueling and parking the Silver Beetle.
"Kemosabe! They wanted 11 dollars to park."
"Don't let it bother you Sanjay, these are good people in hard times."
"How do you know this, Kemosabe?"
"I did a sweep of open wifi hotspots as we drove in. Black Bart Bonzi is runnin' this town."
"Again! Can he not be not be destroyed??"
"As long as a suckers keep gettin born, we can only sweep back the tide Sanjay..."
...it was the most impressive thing out there. It still looks, plays, and sounds great. Add to the mix that it actually had a decent story line and voice acting (unheard of at the time) and there you are.
It didn't break any ground, but it did everything REALLY well.
I get bored with FPS games in about 10 minutes...but after 3 years I still fire up Halo every now and again. It just feels good being in that world...comfy like.
...I hung out on a message thread on their site about 'Critical Mass'...which is basically where they all get together on their bikes and swarm some section of roadway to jam up traffic and thereby "raise awareness."
I like to ride my bike as much as I can, but I don't think pissing off drivers is a good form of awareness to raise...I'd rather they didn't notice me than were actively hostile.
I expected that telling them this wouldn't go down well, but I was surprised at how intolerant they were of anybody that so much as set foot in a car. They were calling down curses on my automobile and all manner of crazy stuff, with an almost relegious fervor.
These guys are so damaging to the perception of leftist idealolgy that I would almost suspect that they are Republicans in disguise out to make the left look bad.
At any rate, it looks like the righties might have decided that dragging these nutballs out into the light might help their cause. I'm sure said nutballs are doing a victory dance about all the 'awareness' they're generating.
If there is one thing I won't tolerate, its intolerance.
We didn't have Clippy the paperclip in 1994...those were dark times indeed. Praise be to Microsoft, for delivering anthropomorphized office supplies unto the wretched masses!
I like to think of it as trickle-UP economics, like nutrition being injected at the bottom of the food chain (which benefits _everything_ in the food chain), instead of "trickle-down" economics which encourages class stratification.
You don't find the excrement that trickles down from the wealthy strata nutritous enough?
I'm no fan of heavily taxing anybody (or taxing them at all, but thats another argument). However, the whole trickle down thing has always struck me as gibberish, too. If you want to spread money around the economy, give it to poor people, who have demonstrated their incapacity to hold on to it. Eventually it will trickle up to the rich folks who know how to accumulate it, and it will have passed through more hands along the way.
Maybe it would have the side benefit of making the poor quit bitching for a while, too. The rich would bitch, but at least there arent so many of 'em...
Well, they managed to screw up with paper last time, too. Seemed that even though they HAD the paper, they didn't want to actually recount it all to settle the dispute.
At least when the diebold boxes go tits up, there will be no data to argue over. Countless pointless editorials will not be written! Millions of dollars will be saved!
... the language to make the insurer liable only for events that could occur in an alternate universe where our laws of physics and causality have no meaning?!?! At least we have the a comfort of knowing that that hollering at people works in either universe.
Last week my Epson Stylus 800 went into it's famous "Print 10 characters of gibberish and feed a page until the paper is all gone" schtick.
It had done this to me dozens of times, but for some reason this time I snapped and started punching it. Predictably, this hurt my geeky little fist. Further enraged, I grabbed the printer and yanked it out of the room...breaking the power strip and knocking over the computer it was plugged into via parallel cable.
Having wrenched it loose, I stomped out to the driveway and proceeded to perform Backyard Rassling on it...flinging it, stomping it, kicking it, screaming the most foul of names, and insulting its ancestry (all of whom share the design flaw that had touched off the episode). For the finale, I seized it by the power cord, gave it three vertical overhead rotations and slammed it into the trash can, where it made a most satisfying crash and spewed parts back out the top. At least the power cord was attached well...I will give them that.
It felt good. REALLY good...and now devices with congenital engineering defects tremble at my passing (as do the neighbors, oddly enough).
...as a rule of thumb, you can figure that 1 in 5 people THERE want to bust your brain bucket...and maybe 1 in 100 people HERE want to. Therefore, the risk of being brained there is 20x risk of being brained HERE. Therefore the pay there should be 20x what it is here to account for the risk.
...but so does plant cultivation. It takes quite a bit of diesel to grow an acre of anything...and quite a bit more energy to render the product into usable form.
They did that in '98...the Z28 Camaro. I had one...24k all tricked out with a 305hp LS1 engine. The thing was a MONSTER, and got about 24mpg with me rodding it all over the place.
Unfortunately the insurance killed me...$350/month. I had to get rid of it.
I guess this is why they didn't sell like hotcakes.
If stuff can be done more economically someplace else, thats where it will get done. If we make that illegal, it will just get done illegally.
The transition is going to be painful for the 'First World', and ultimately we will be somewhat poorer. That's just how it is.
It's not the end of the world...we will all make less money, but that will drive down prices. We are in for major deflation in the next decade...and places like India will see major inflation.
We won't starve or freeze to death. Most of what we buy with this excess wealth doesn't enhance our lives much in the long run anyhow. Driving a sloppy road whale or watching sitcoms on huge plasma tv's is not exactly the path to happiness and enlightenment.
...mass storage was made out of ROCKS! We'd roll the rock into the road for one, and back out again for zero, and we LOVED it! It never crashed...except when a mob of angry Palestinians happened by and flung our rocks at nearby Jews. It may sound flakey, but try to name a mass storage technology that can stand up to an angry mob of Palestininans...
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..for all you unemployed geinii out there. Two huge companies that produce shitty user experiences are becoming one huge company. What d'you think is going to happen to user experience? Time to put together a team, set sights on a vertical market and take that fucker away from them.
...just keep gas cheap and interest rates at all time lows. God will come save us if this turns out to a problem, be it global catastropy or the end of no money down, 90 day same as cash financing on 72" plasma tv's.
..."No, I won't fix your computer"
...
You just gotta draw the line somewhere...you help your parents, then their friends, then their friends friends...and pretty soon you have all these goddam FRIENDS!
You get carrot cakes and suppers and their unwavering gratitude and admiration. Your reputation grows geometrically. Helping people is great, and actually having conversations with people that aren't bitgeeks can be quite interesting.
Did you know that some of those people know about stuff like structural design, the maintenance of heavy mining equipment or how to farm nightcrawlers?
I started down the seemingly pragmatic road though. Now I only take the suppertime calls from the vp of sales for my largest client, wanting to know how to work his I-Tunes. For this and other works, I am given a sum of quatloos that provides my mate and i with dinners, a place to stay, and surplus quatloos with which we can buy carrot cake and/or 72" flatpanel televisions, or sports cars, if we so choose. My new friends never gave me sports cars or 72" televisions, nor would I care to dwell with them in their houses, so this seems the more beneficial route.
Both scenarios have their pros and cons...maybe there is another way
Imagine yourself the BitSlinger, roaming the land ridding innocent computing devices of unauthorized processes. With your faithful Indian friend Sanjay at your side, you'd roll into town, catching the eyes of the ladies as you strode through the swinging doors into the local internet cafe.
"Barkeep! Gimme a quad espresso with 4 turbinado lumps, and hold the saucer."
The room goes still, save for some awed whispering. Sound gradually returns to normal as Sanjay comes in after fueling and parking the Silver Beetle.
"Kemosabe! They wanted 11 dollars to park."
"Don't let it bother you Sanjay, these are good people in hard times."
"How do you know this, Kemosabe?"
"I did a sweep of open wifi hotspots as we drove in. Black Bart Bonzi is runnin' this town."
"Again! Can he not be not be destroyed??"
"As long as a suckers keep gettin born, we can only sweep back the tide Sanjay..."
Other than that, it's pretty g-darn spiffy.
...it was the most impressive thing out there. It still looks, plays, and sounds great. Add to the mix that it actually had a decent story line and voice acting (unheard of at the time) and there you are.
It didn't break any ground, but it did everything REALLY well.
I get bored with FPS games in about 10 minutes...but after 3 years I still fire up Halo every now and again. It just feels good being in that world...comfy like.
...I hung out on a message thread on their site about 'Critical Mass'...which is basically where they all get together on their bikes and swarm some section of roadway to jam up traffic and thereby "raise awareness."
I like to ride my bike as much as I can, but I don't think pissing off drivers is a good form of awareness to raise...I'd rather they didn't notice me than were actively hostile.
I expected that telling them this wouldn't go down well, but I was surprised at how intolerant they were of anybody that so much as set foot in a car. They were calling down curses on my automobile and all manner of crazy stuff, with an almost relegious fervor.
These guys are so damaging to the perception of leftist idealolgy that I would almost suspect that they are Republicans in disguise out to make the left look bad.
At any rate, it looks like the righties might have decided that dragging these nutballs out into the light might help their cause. I'm sure said nutballs are doing a victory dance about all the 'awareness' they're generating.
If there is one thing I won't tolerate, its intolerance.
...what do you want more doomsday weapons for? You hardly play with the ones you've got!
Thats because it makes me feel like a man.
We didn't have Clippy the paperclip in 1994...those were dark times indeed. Praise be to Microsoft, for delivering anthropomorphized office supplies unto the wretched masses!
I like to think of it as trickle-UP economics, like nutrition being injected at the bottom of the food chain (which benefits _everything_ in the food chain), instead of "trickle-down" economics which encourages class stratification.
You don't find the excrement that trickles down from the wealthy strata nutritous enough?
I'm no fan of heavily taxing anybody (or taxing them at all, but thats another argument). However, the whole trickle down thing has always struck me as gibberish, too. If you want to spread money around the economy, give it to poor people, who have demonstrated their incapacity to hold on to it. Eventually it will trickle up to the rich folks who know how to accumulate it, and it will have passed through more hands along the way. Maybe it would have the side benefit of making the poor quit bitching for a while, too. The rich would bitch, but at least there arent so many of 'em...
If that inconvienence is worth paying 20x as much for your music, it must REALLY bug you!
Try this: Pay them the 10 bucks you would normally pay Ituns for an album, download the album, and leave the other $9.50 as a tip.
Problem solved.
Well, they managed to screw up with paper last time, too. Seemed that even though they HAD the paper, they didn't want to actually recount it all to settle the dispute.
At least when the diebold boxes go tits up, there will be no data to argue over. Countless pointless editorials will not be written! Millions of dollars will be saved!
It's COUNTING for chrissakes!
... the language to make the insurer liable only for events that could occur in an alternate universe where our laws of physics and causality have no meaning?!?! At least we have the a comfort of knowing that that hollering at people works in either universe.
Last week my Epson Stylus 800 went into it's famous "Print 10 characters of gibberish and feed a page until the paper is all gone" schtick.
It had done this to me dozens of times, but for some reason this time I snapped and started punching it. Predictably, this hurt my geeky little fist. Further enraged, I grabbed the printer and yanked it out of the room...breaking the power strip and knocking over the computer it was plugged into via parallel cable.
Having wrenched it loose, I stomped out to the driveway and proceeded to perform Backyard Rassling on it...flinging it, stomping it, kicking it, screaming the most foul of names, and insulting its ancestry (all of whom share the design flaw that had touched off the episode). For the finale, I seized it by the power cord, gave it three vertical overhead rotations and slammed it into the trash can, where it made a most satisfying crash and spewed parts back out the top. At least the power cord was attached well...I will give them that.
It felt good. REALLY good...and now devices with congenital engineering defects tremble at my passing (as do the neighbors, oddly enough).
Microbiology for Dummies perhaps?
Electricity is scarce over there I hear...hope the battery holds a good charge.
...as a rule of thumb, you can figure that 1 in 5 people THERE want to bust your brain bucket...and maybe 1 in 100 people HERE want to. Therefore, the risk of being brained there is 20x risk of being brained HERE. Therefore the pay there should be 20x what it is here to account for the risk.
Is it?
...but so does plant cultivation. It takes quite a bit of diesel to grow an acre of anything...and quite a bit more energy to render the product into usable form.
...be ported to gameboy? Better yet, where can I lay my hands on a tongue controller for Xbox?
...sounds like the beginning of the communist revolution as he truly invisioned it...not forced by men, but simply the result of improving tech.
...it just doesn't show because the rest of the world is foolish enough to keep lending us money to keep up appearances.
Visualize all the peoples of the world,holding hands, as they all circle the bowl together!
They did that in '98...the Z28 Camaro. I had one...24k all tricked out with a 305hp LS1 engine. The thing was a MONSTER, and got about 24mpg with me rodding it all over the place.
Unfortunately the insurance killed me...$350/month. I had to get rid of it.
I guess this is why they didn't sell like hotcakes.
God I miss that car!
If stuff can be done more economically someplace else, thats where it will get done. If we make that illegal, it will just get done illegally.
The transition is going to be painful for the 'First World', and ultimately we will be somewhat poorer. That's just how it is.
It's not the end of the world...we will all make less money, but that will drive down prices. We are in for major deflation in the next decade...and places like India will see major inflation.
We won't starve or freeze to death. Most of what we buy with this excess wealth doesn't enhance our lives much in the long run anyhow. Driving a sloppy road whale or watching sitcoms on huge plasma tv's is not exactly the path to happiness and enlightenment.
...mass storage was made out of ROCKS! We'd roll the rock into the road for one, and back out again for zero, and we LOVED it! It never crashed...except when a mob of angry Palestinians happened by and flung our rocks at nearby Jews. It may sound flakey, but try to name a mass storage technology that can stand up to an angry mob of Palestininans...
I just can't quite adapt to the idea of putting the client and the server on the same machine. What is the benefit of separation?