It really is an odd combination of funny and sad seeing a tech site as old as slashdot is getting. It's a rare type that actually lets you see geeks getting older, and it's depressing how little being one seems to change the general terror of new technologies.
Qwest is horrible. They had some problem, and it left myself and a fair amount of people around me without service for almost half a month. They always replied to inquiries with shrugs when asked how much longer it'd be. And all but laughed when I tried to see if I could get out of paying for the duration of service that they weren't actually providing me service.
Glad to see I'm not the only one here primarily for that reason. I feel bad too. I noticed the prolongged downtime and my first thought was simply a judgmental "pft, damn it reddit, again?" And, it turns out I really shouldn't have been so quick to place blame. That said, it's bad enough that I'm actually going out to be social. I don't like the strange world that lack of reddit is thrusting me into.
Games using source that run from steam run fine, usually. If not at first, then after a few weeks of release. I have a fair amount of games that I've bought over steam, and I'd say that not even 1 in 4 run well enough under wine to keep me from booting into windows.
I haven't used an iphone for a while, so could someone bring me up to speed. If one goes to a webapp in safari that makes use of all the html5 goodies, he can just add it to the homescreen, right? Can it then launch like an application, not having the usual safari behavior of sliding around as a normal page amid other open webpages? Or does a developer essentially have to create a native app, an instance of webkit, and then wrap the html5/javascript within it to get an app written with html5/js onto the phone if he wants it to actually seem like an app instead of a webpage? Because if JIT is disabled in native apps using webkit, I can at least understand that. It's the app store, it's a big brother environment, that's common knowledge from the start. But if they're actually putting effort into slowing down performance of javascript within the context of normal OS functionality, that's something a lot more annoying.
I think this has a lot more to do with JIT compilation in webapps than it does for a random page. When considering the limited speed of a phone, using something that's running only as interpreted code is a pretty big limitation.
Totally agreed with you on that one. I have all my dvds backed up to my 2tb drive, and use sickbeard to automatically download tv shows I'm interested in as they air. Combine that with steam, and space gets tight pretty quickly.
The main difference is that humans are pretty much stuck on earth. We need the shit here to function. Computer based life could exist pretty much anywhere it wanted in the entire universe. If it had survival as a primary goal, there's no real point in risking it by pissing off humanity. Just make a deal with some nation with the ability to properly equip it for spaceflight and some kind of initial mining. If it was a super intelligence it should be able to give a fair amount of scientific advantage to an country that was willing to make the trade.
Research and science, that is uninterested in what is being done in the field
I'd agree, except that he made a quick note that the interview somewhat brushed over. He's keeping up with neurological research, just not with any competing attempts to implement them in software with similar goals. Which I'd actually agree is the best way to go about it. What he's describing is more applied science based on neurology than actual research. And the research elements he would be doing are things that would be kept under wraps, not actually published. So keeping tabs on those would just be risking negative effects without any real potential gain.
I know laws can be pretty stupid, but I'm sure it cannot be that stupid.
They're not. But the slashdot groupthink got it into its head years ago that it worked like that. It's pointless to argue it with them at this point. You can waste hours, and then bam, you've managed to convince a couple people. The shit drain just clogs up again the next time the issue comes up.
I skipped a fair amount in high school as well. And I too wound up with above average grades despite it all. That anger is one of the odder things I remember about it as well. Most of the teachers didn't give a shit. However, there were a couple that just seemed infuriated that I could cover the material on my own by reading the text book myself instead of sitting and having them read it for me.
I love Patton, but he seems to just be having trouble with getting old. If you did a good job with your little subculture when you were young, it winds up bleeding into the mainstream. And, while it's sad, it's just the nature of things that your brain isn't going to be able to keep up with what that subculture you were in has evolved into. Even if it could, you couldn't because you'd be busy raising kids. And if you didn't have kids, then you couldn't because all your friends do and as a result are going to be stagnant. And you can't hang out with the youth, because then you're creepy old dude hanging out with kids. It's just how our species and culture works, no mystery there.
Saying the big bang theory is about geek culture is like saying that Short Circuit 2 is a thoughtful look into the culture of India. They're mainly mocking geek culture, while doing a tired will they/won't they story. Or at least they were when I gave up on it.
Unless you have even the most basic knowledge of the subject. In which case it's additional verification of previous studies. What's next slashdot, amazed gasps about this new thing called fire. And how it's apparently baffling scientists?
I think the most annoying part is having to then watch other people deal with the same stuff that messed you up. I mean, I have sympathy. But watching people struggle with far less severe deaths when they're in their late 20s as I did when I was five? It's hard to not wonder if these faces are the same as the kids on the playground who wound up shunning me because they felt like death was contagious.
I think their worst feature is that they seem to delight in waiting for a fair amount of cash to build up before just deciding to yank an account. Basically just stealing the money. It'd be one thing if they just warned you beforehand, but it's not uncommon for them to just do it out of nowhere. No warnings, just out of nowhere locking down an account. What's more annoying is that there seems to often be little logic to it. Sometimes they'll give warning after warning, months and months of it given to people spamming the market with their crap. Other times they'll just yank peoples accounts and money with no notice. And you can guess how probable it is that they'll even bother to reply to any questions about what's going on. When it would be rather nice if they'd instead give you a shout about a problem beforehand. So, you know, YOU CAN ACTUALLY FIX IT. I've been doing android development for about half a year now. And in that time, talking to others doing the same, I've gone from being a bit of a google fanboy to finding them very annoying at times. I love android, it's a fantastic mobile operating system. But google's market is just annoying to me in a lot of ways. Especially when people tend to portray it as both a bastion of freedom and an open place where the benign leadership actually cares.
How about, I don't know, getting rid of one of the single most annoying thing about British comedies. The damn studio audience. I swear they bus in the most idiotic people around for them. I've heard the people involved with I.T. Crowd mentioning that they have to give a lecture to the audience to try not laughing at anything too dumb. In particular I remember hearing someone mention being exasperated because the audience would laugh at toilets. Not doing anything with a toilet, just, apparently, the fact that a toilet could exist.
It's really annoying. I've tended to just make throwaway gmail accounts for this and that. And I can get why they'd want to limit that. But it's not like I went nuts with it or anything. I think I have like three alts. And they told me I'd used my phone number too many times and wasn't allowed to make any more with it. It was a tad on the creepy side. I've always been a bit of a google fanboy. But it kind of reminded me of all the talk of what might happen when google was too powerful for too long. It's a bit worrisome, even for me.
I used to get android sales pretty consistently, and that was one of the best parts. There's just something kind of cool in checking your balance and seeing daily deposits from google.
As someone who was homeless, I think I can explain to some extent. Homeless people tend to be kind of nuts. If you don't start out that way, it's highly probable you're going to end up that way eventually. It's a life of living like an animal, never being able to trust anyone, and often going days without more than a few words to another human being. Hell, you often forget how to actually participate in a real conversation pretty quickly. It's a bit like when you don't speak a second language for a while. Except not with the secondary language, but the primary. You usually only make it out by having something that can remain untainted by that, or just a lot of luck. It's not so much deserving to escape it, but that being the only way. Personally, I don't have money right now. But when I did, after being homeless, I tried to help as much as I could. And there's a LOT you can do. And it comes into play far more from direct interaction than from donating to charity. I never saw a dime of charity when I was homeless. Most don't. A person talking to me though, with respect, as a human being. And possibly buying and eating lunch with me. That happened, and it was worth more to me than words can express. It doesn't have to be the wealthy, by any means. Even if you're lower middle class, it's in you to save any of these peoples lives. It probably won't, but there's still a chance that a single shared meal can do it.
For what it's worth, I'm in that situation as well. Some years back I wound up homeless after an accident threw my life into turmoil. I recovered physically, to some extent. But found that my entire life had been thrown into turmoil by the new status of "limping and scarred dude". It was social death in the superficial crowd I was in and employed by, and the job fled as quickly as the people eager to stab anyone in the back to advance. I found first my wife, then my money, and finally my job gone. However, I kept my laptop even as I lost a roof under which to use it. It took a while to get back on my feet, but it was entirely by taking small telecommuting jobs found over the net over a four month period or so. If that seems like a rather long time, keep in mind that I had other concerns as well such as "eat" and "don't get fuckin' cut by either your fellows or random crazies". I'd feel more positive about the experience if I wasn't on the verge of having to worry about that all over again. My rambling point is that one shouldn't feel like these stories have a finality to them. They might have a happily ever after, but they might wind up right back where they were. Because to get to the point of being homeless is to lack a social support structure. And once you've been homeless, it can be horribly difficult to get that back. Because the lack of such usually starts out with either an abusive family, or one you've seen die around you. And continues on to friends who wound up throwing you away when you most needed them. It's not easy to open yourself up socially again after something like that happens. It might not seem important, but that view only comes from within a life that hasn't ever really experienced it. People need people, it's just a fact of our species. And you get screwed up pretty quickly from the lack.
I've worked with enough charities that I eventually decided that I don't give money to them without a huge amount of research beforehand. Between those that are outright corrupt, and those that are ruined by internal politics, it can be hard to find anything real. I vastly prefer just giving it directly to the homeless without a middle man.
Slashdot Mirror
It really is an odd combination of funny and sad seeing a tech site as old as slashdot is getting. It's a rare type that actually lets you see geeks getting older, and it's depressing how little being one seems to change the general terror of new technologies.
Qwest is horrible. They had some problem, and it left myself and a fair amount of people around me without service for almost half a month. They always replied to inquiries with shrugs when asked how much longer it'd be. And all but laughed when I tried to see if I could get out of paying for the duration of service that they weren't actually providing me service.
Glad to see I'm not the only one here primarily for that reason. I feel bad too. I noticed the prolongged downtime and my first thought was simply a judgmental "pft, damn it reddit, again?" And, it turns out I really shouldn't have been so quick to place blame. That said, it's bad enough that I'm actually going out to be social. I don't like the strange world that lack of reddit is thrusting me into.
Games using source that run from steam run fine, usually. If not at first, then after a few weeks of release. I have a fair amount of games that I've bought over steam, and I'd say that not even 1 in 4 run well enough under wine to keep me from booting into windows.
I haven't used an iphone for a while, so could someone bring me up to speed. If one goes to a webapp in safari that makes use of all the html5 goodies, he can just add it to the homescreen, right? Can it then launch like an application, not having the usual safari behavior of sliding around as a normal page amid other open webpages? Or does a developer essentially have to create a native app, an instance of webkit, and then wrap the html5/javascript within it to get an app written with html5/js onto the phone if he wants it to actually seem like an app instead of a webpage? Because if JIT is disabled in native apps using webkit, I can at least understand that. It's the app store, it's a big brother environment, that's common knowledge from the start. But if they're actually putting effort into slowing down performance of javascript within the context of normal OS functionality, that's something a lot more annoying.
I think this has a lot more to do with JIT compilation in webapps than it does for a random page. When considering the limited speed of a phone, using something that's running only as interpreted code is a pretty big limitation.
Totally agreed with you on that one. I have all my dvds backed up to my 2tb drive, and use sickbeard to automatically download tv shows I'm interested in as they air. Combine that with steam, and space gets tight pretty quickly.
The main difference is that humans are pretty much stuck on earth. We need the shit here to function. Computer based life could exist pretty much anywhere it wanted in the entire universe. If it had survival as a primary goal, there's no real point in risking it by pissing off humanity. Just make a deal with some nation with the ability to properly equip it for spaceflight and some kind of initial mining. If it was a super intelligence it should be able to give a fair amount of scientific advantage to an country that was willing to make the trade.
Research and science, that is uninterested in what is being done in the field
I'd agree, except that he made a quick note that the interview somewhat brushed over. He's keeping up with neurological research, just not with any competing attempts to implement them in software with similar goals. Which I'd actually agree is the best way to go about it. What he's describing is more applied science based on neurology than actual research. And the research elements he would be doing are things that would be kept under wraps, not actually published. So keeping tabs on those would just be risking negative effects without any real potential gain.
I know laws can be pretty stupid, but I'm sure it cannot be that stupid.
They're not. But the slashdot groupthink got it into its head years ago that it worked like that. It's pointless to argue it with them at this point. You can waste hours, and then bam, you've managed to convince a couple people. The shit drain just clogs up again the next time the issue comes up.
Ground Kontrol in Portland still looks great.
I skipped a fair amount in high school as well. And I too wound up with above average grades despite it all. That anger is one of the odder things I remember about it as well. Most of the teachers didn't give a shit. However, there were a couple that just seemed infuriated that I could cover the material on my own by reading the text book myself instead of sitting and having them read it for me.
I love Patton, but he seems to just be having trouble with getting old. If you did a good job with your little subculture when you were young, it winds up bleeding into the mainstream. And, while it's sad, it's just the nature of things that your brain isn't going to be able to keep up with what that subculture you were in has evolved into. Even if it could, you couldn't because you'd be busy raising kids. And if you didn't have kids, then you couldn't because all your friends do and as a result are going to be stagnant. And you can't hang out with the youth, because then you're creepy old dude hanging out with kids. It's just how our species and culture works, no mystery there.
Saying the big bang theory is about geek culture is like saying that Short Circuit 2 is a thoughtful look into the culture of India. They're mainly mocking geek culture, while doing a tired will they/won't they story. Or at least they were when I gave up on it.
The results were startling.
Unless you have even the most basic knowledge of the subject. In which case it's additional verification of previous studies. What's next slashdot, amazed gasps about this new thing called fire. And how it's apparently baffling scientists?
I think the most annoying part is having to then watch other people deal with the same stuff that messed you up. I mean, I have sympathy. But watching people struggle with far less severe deaths when they're in their late 20s as I did when I was five? It's hard to not wonder if these faces are the same as the kids on the playground who wound up shunning me because they felt like death was contagious.
Not a big deal for them. I think the main point is that there's people who don't have that luxury or free publicity with the same problem.
I think their worst feature is that they seem to delight in waiting for a fair amount of cash to build up before just deciding to yank an account. Basically just stealing the money. It'd be one thing if they just warned you beforehand, but it's not uncommon for them to just do it out of nowhere. No warnings, just out of nowhere locking down an account. What's more annoying is that there seems to often be little logic to it. Sometimes they'll give warning after warning, months and months of it given to people spamming the market with their crap. Other times they'll just yank peoples accounts and money with no notice. And you can guess how probable it is that they'll even bother to reply to any questions about what's going on. When it would be rather nice if they'd instead give you a shout about a problem beforehand. So, you know, YOU CAN ACTUALLY FIX IT. I've been doing android development for about half a year now. And in that time, talking to others doing the same, I've gone from being a bit of a google fanboy to finding them very annoying at times. I love android, it's a fantastic mobile operating system. But google's market is just annoying to me in a lot of ways. Especially when people tend to portray it as both a bastion of freedom and an open place where the benign leadership actually cares.
How about, I don't know, getting rid of one of the single most annoying thing about British comedies. The damn studio audience. I swear they bus in the most idiotic people around for them. I've heard the people involved with I.T. Crowd mentioning that they have to give a lecture to the audience to try not laughing at anything too dumb. In particular I remember hearing someone mention being exasperated because the audience would laugh at toilets. Not doing anything with a toilet, just, apparently, the fact that a toilet could exist.
It's really annoying. I've tended to just make throwaway gmail accounts for this and that. And I can get why they'd want to limit that. But it's not like I went nuts with it or anything. I think I have like three alts. And they told me I'd used my phone number too many times and wasn't allowed to make any more with it. It was a tad on the creepy side. I've always been a bit of a google fanboy. But it kind of reminded me of all the talk of what might happen when google was too powerful for too long. It's a bit worrisome, even for me.
I used to get android sales pretty consistently, and that was one of the best parts. There's just something kind of cool in checking your balance and seeing daily deposits from google.
There's really not much point in doing so now. PS2 emulation is far enough along that it usually provides a superior experience to the real thing.
As someone who was homeless, I think I can explain to some extent. Homeless people tend to be kind of nuts. If you don't start out that way, it's highly probable you're going to end up that way eventually. It's a life of living like an animal, never being able to trust anyone, and often going days without more than a few words to another human being. Hell, you often forget how to actually participate in a real conversation pretty quickly. It's a bit like when you don't speak a second language for a while. Except not with the secondary language, but the primary. You usually only make it out by having something that can remain untainted by that, or just a lot of luck. It's not so much deserving to escape it, but that being the only way. Personally, I don't have money right now. But when I did, after being homeless, I tried to help as much as I could. And there's a LOT you can do. And it comes into play far more from direct interaction than from donating to charity. I never saw a dime of charity when I was homeless. Most don't. A person talking to me though, with respect, as a human being. And possibly buying and eating lunch with me. That happened, and it was worth more to me than words can express. It doesn't have to be the wealthy, by any means. Even if you're lower middle class, it's in you to save any of these peoples lives. It probably won't, but there's still a chance that a single shared meal can do it.
For what it's worth, I'm in that situation as well. Some years back I wound up homeless after an accident threw my life into turmoil. I recovered physically, to some extent. But found that my entire life had been thrown into turmoil by the new status of "limping and scarred dude". It was social death in the superficial crowd I was in and employed by, and the job fled as quickly as the people eager to stab anyone in the back to advance. I found first my wife, then my money, and finally my job gone. However, I kept my laptop even as I lost a roof under which to use it. It took a while to get back on my feet, but it was entirely by taking small telecommuting jobs found over the net over a four month period or so. If that seems like a rather long time, keep in mind that I had other concerns as well such as "eat" and "don't get fuckin' cut by either your fellows or random crazies". I'd feel more positive about the experience if I wasn't on the verge of having to worry about that all over again. My rambling point is that one shouldn't feel like these stories have a finality to them. They might have a happily ever after, but they might wind up right back where they were. Because to get to the point of being homeless is to lack a social support structure. And once you've been homeless, it can be horribly difficult to get that back. Because the lack of such usually starts out with either an abusive family, or one you've seen die around you. And continues on to friends who wound up throwing you away when you most needed them. It's not easy to open yourself up socially again after something like that happens. It might not seem important, but that view only comes from within a life that hasn't ever really experienced it. People need people, it's just a fact of our species. And you get screwed up pretty quickly from the lack.
I've worked with enough charities that I eventually decided that I don't give money to them without a huge amount of research beforehand. Between those that are outright corrupt, and those that are ruined by internal politics, it can be hard to find anything real. I vastly prefer just giving it directly to the homeless without a middle man.