That would be one of the first steps towards actual justice that could be handled on the net. The first one that sprung to mind for me was live feeds of the holding tanks at your local county jail, or the interrogation rooms. Of course, the cops will still keep a room where there's no cameras and no witnesses except them, just like the many that I've had chickenshits with badges beat on me while I'm in full restraints. It's amazing how pissed off they get when you beg for mercy, catch your breath, and then start laughing and calling them sons of cocksucking whores. It generally takes only a few hours of that before they get tired of it and just throw you back in a cell and there goes their case...
True, but it's more the mental structures you form than what you actually learn. Kind of like how it's more important to be able to learn than what you actually know. That always pisses me off when I interview somewhere, and they expect me to know the exact details of some obscure closed-source vendor's application. "Tell me step by step how you would go about configuring the multipathing on a vendor X fibrechannel controller" - are you out of your fucking mind? I seriously had a technical interview end (or at least they stop asking me questions or answering any of mine, and that was only the second question the fucker had asked me) because of that. I got a little pissed and asked him how he'd do it. The answer? "Well, I pull up this menu X, select option Y, select N number of LUNs...". People are stupid. It's really a shame that you have to deal with people in order to work with computers.
Not always true. I've worked with and gone to school with many people that applied themselves to the best of their ability, and they still failed at almost every task they were given (sometimes disastrously so - I've had entire networks brought to a grinding halt when someone did something stupid, like when a secondary blade in a router failed, and despite telling the guy on call which blade had failed [which should be pretty obvious because all the blinking lights are off, right? At least on a blade that was completely dead, as in the example I'm giving] and needed to be replaced in order to restore full network throughput [since said blade was there to support the back-end network for certain clusters that used separate interfaces for certain traffic], but wasn't actually mission-critical, just something that would speed up production if it were dealt with a 3AM or whatever rather than 8 or 9AM; anyways, despite telling him which one it was, how it was labeled, and the fact that none of the lights on the dead blade were active, whereas all of the ones on the fully populated, functional blade an inch or two to it's left were, this moron still pulled out the primary blade and replaced it with our spare [which meant that my remote login to that router - as well as a large part of the rest of the entire production network - was terminated and I couldn't get to it in order, and due to all the collateral damage he'd caused with that fuck-up I had to come in to fix it anyways; so it was pointless to spend another 20 minutes working with the idiot in hopes that he might be able to (a) put in the functional primary blade w/ it's NVRAM-stored configuration and (b) put all the Ethernet cables back into the appropriate locations, plus (c) fix any of the damage he'd caused I just pulled on my shoes and drove the 30-odd minutes in to work to do it all myself]. Some people just aren't worth dealing with because you can't fix stupid, and beating it until it stops doing it is frowned on by HR...). Seriously, I've seen this shit so many times. Hell, the last time I took a class at college (in order to gradually work my way towards actually finishing my degree), I recall one of my first class sessions, the professor explained that we'd have to continue our discussion the next class since he couldn't access the UNIX server that he insisted we do all our work on (I was happy that he wanted us to use a UNIX system to do our programming assignments on, even if it was an ancient Tru64 box) and it must be down, so he'd have to have IT fix it. I noticed that he'd opened his Windows-based Telnet/Rlogin/SSH client (I'm having a tired-but-wired-on-coffee brain fart so I can't remember the name right now) and was attempting to SSH into the machine. Since the box was truly ancient, I asked him if he'd tried telnet, or even pinging the server. He told me (in a smarmy, self-assured tone) that he was trying to telnet into the system and it was down. Since his laptop was hooked up to the projection uni
Non-conformists show a higher tendency towards doing unique things. No shit. But then again, you have to have some sort of structure. I'm a great sysadmin and a decent programmer, and I'm a high-school dropout, never finished college, all that. But I truly regret not spending more attention to college when I was younger. Sure, I'd read all the books required to get a PhD in CS, but I never spent the time in class working through everything. So I didn't have that experience or grounding in my career, so I often forget things after a while of not working with them. Unemployed for a while, or don't spend enough time staying abreast of a certain technology? Oops, fail on that job interview.
I'd say it's the unorthodox people that apply themselves more that do the best.
Well, why are you complaining? A guy who made billions (mostly by pushing crap bands to idiotic "consumers" [aka sheep] and other socially useless endeavors, IIRC) is now spending his money on making cool tech toys (admit it - this is cool as shit; if it actually works, we're talking about a submarine that's light enough that my truck can tow it but can dive to the deepest reaches of that annoyingly unexplored [I think only something like 50% of the Earth's oceans have actually been explored, and I'm not sure what percentage have been mapped - I should know this, I've worked at Oil & Gas companies, but us IT guys are too busy working so that the guys who studied stuff like this can run their compute- and I/O-intensive applications], massive [covers almost 70% of the Earth's surface] series of puddles that is almost as much of an unexplored mystery to us Mars) rather than stupid shit (like Bill Gates and his quest to fund tribal warlords in Africa) or greedy shit (the last time I checked most billionaires were primarily concerned with making that extra hundred million that they treat like it's the missing puzzle piece that will bring them The Answer To Life, The Universe, And Everything Else). This is just cool, plain and simple. So is the fact that he's trying to make it economically feasible to use turbine/wind energy.
I think it's really cool that he's doing that rather than the above-mentioned things. Sure, it probably won't change the course of human history (or maybe it will - maybe we'll find a critter down there that has an extremely virulent disease as it's defense mechanism, and therefore creatures that prey on it have evolved a way to neutralize it...and from that we get the cure for cancer and/or AIDS; you never know what can spin off the kinds of scientific research that we'd end up doing if we could access the entirety if the ocean floor as easily as we can our sky - look at all the cool shit that's come about in the hundred-odd years since the Wright brothers, and I'm not just talking about missiles that can vaporize human flesh ten thousand times faster than mustard gas or whatever - hell, the turbines that this sub will be using probably wouldn't be as technologically advanced as they are if military applications hadn't been found for really fast transport of planes, various types of aquatic craft, and plain ole missiles; I'm not saying the uses to which military technology are put are always that shit-hot, but the trickle-down effect of the technology that's developed as world leaders continue to be paranoid, diplomatically-inept, corrupt, and downright evil would-be Masters Of The Universe is often pretty damn cool).
Okay, pardon that ramble. I need to take my medication. But you get my basic idea - he might be throwing money out the window, but it's a window that has some cool applications. And I wouldn't be responding to this if I hadn't been trying to find a way to send you a message that I agree with you about Clinton being a pretty cool president (from a response to one of my posts; note - I wouldn't be that proud of having Walmart based out of Arkansas, bro!).
No wonder they drink so much. Every time they go outside and look up, all they see is a depressing cloud blocking all the sunlight. Being sh*t faced is probably the only way to get the gloom out of the day.
what I'm told Seattle is like...
Cold, wet, and miserable do not make for an upbeat environment.
Yeah, but in Seattle you can (a) laugh at the transvestites, (b) any time you want, SPD will find a reason to arrest you and keep you for 6 months (no kidding - they tried to give me a six month sentence for carrying a pocket knife, until they realized that I was from another state, in-town for a convention, and my employer would make a huge stink about them doing so, so instead they gave me 2 years probation and said "no, you don't have to report in, just leave when the convention is over"), and (c) the computer industry is really big there (so a lot of people in Seattle never expect or want to see sunlight anyways).
Avoid Arkansas then; nothing but heat, humidity, and tornadoes.
I can think of a lot better reasons to avoid Arkansas than those 3 things. When you consider the fact that Bill Clinton was actually one of the better aspects of the state, and it's all down-hill from there, that's a major warning sign in and of itself.
I don't know, look at Florida. I can't think of anything more utterly depressing than that relentless heat and glare.
Trenton, New Jersey?
Try any populated place in Utah. Or any place with water (in Utah, of course). Do you realize that people still shoot each other there over water rights? Yes, I'm a major proponent of the 2nd Amendment, but when I find myself having to shoot my neighbors in order to get water, I'd just fucking move. Well, I'd move anyways. Utah screams "inbreeding!" the way the Bush family screams "hereditary insanity!".
/. and manners? Half of the people on here are kids that should just STFU until they have gotten out of school, their parents' house, and had to work for a living. The other half are people that just need to come out of their lair they've built in their parents' basement other than when they go to work or go pay the pizza boy. Out of those two halves, at least 75% of them need more exercise, and would get more dates if they didn't mention that they play D&D* and then launch into a description of their latest campaign to whatever poor chick gets stuck next to them at the bar. And, coincidentally, 25% of the whole also needs to realize that their little politically correct fairy-tale world will not exist, and if it did it would be the greatest fascist state mankind has ever known. Of those 25%, 100% need to stop referring to WWII-era Nazis whenever I post on a social, as opposed to technical, issue of the article.
* Yes, I play (sometimes). Do I tell women before we've gotten to the mad monkey love stage? Fuck no. If I let a chick read most of the titles of books on my shelves, she'd realize that I'm obsessed with computers, fantasy and science fiction, new and interesting ways to blow shit up, and other things that rate slightly above an ankle monitor in scaring women off.
I agree with everything (because they are major pet peeves of mine) but the "unnecessary profanity" bit. If you're trying to make a point, throw in a cuss word. People catch the emphasis.
I'm well aware that more people in Ireland speak English than Gaelic. Sad state of affairs, but it is what it is.
I don't have a problem with this device being used to treat travelers - or even some working guy's mother who speaks mostly Korean or Spanish or whatever. Unfortunately, like everything else to do with medical care in this country, it will be most widely used to benefit the parasitic organisms that have ravaged their countries (primarily Mexico, but most of South America; admittedly, the CIA helped nicely with S. America) then moved on to this country, where our so-called "civilized" beliefs lead most of us to treat these fucks just so they can get up out of their bed (after using up 25K or more of medical treatment, thus meaning that the doctors - who are generally overpaid, undereducated quacks anyways - just bill higher for their services when someone who pays [like myself] comes in to see them) and keep sucking dry the benefits that could have, say, helped my grandmother while she was dying and so poor that if it weren't for my father she'd have been eating catfood by the time she died. Or that could have been used to help one of my best friends (who is epileptic, has serious shoulder injuries, and is an ex-convict, so he couldn't get a job doing anything but construction-type work, and couldn't keep a job due to the fact that his shoulders would give out after a while, and damn sure couldn't get insurance due to his epilepsy; he fought for about 5-6 years to get medicaid/medicare, and instead the SS office gave him a monthly pittance - 300 USD every 2 weeks - and no medical benefits, despite the fact that he repeatedly told the courts that he didn't want money, he just wanted medicaid so he could go back to work and hold a job). I am all for being civilized - but with the necessary intelligence to be civil, courteous, and respectful comes the brains to realize that I should not have to - and do no willingly do so - support people who take until it hurts (me and my fellow countrymen), and then keep taking some more. And have the gall to insist that it's their right to do so while they do it.
I'm tired of people miscasting my unwillingness to support parasites with a desire to see tourists die. It's a distraction from the main point. I'm all for tourism and people being exposed to the world. I wish more Americans understood that there's a whole world out there, and a lot of it is grand. But I also wish that people around me would wake up and realize that compassion should not be extended to people that come to your country just to take advantage of you, rather than fixing yours. Egypt quite recently demonstrated that when a system is corrupt and broken, it goes (sooner or later). If Mexico (and Africa) is such a horrible place to live, fix it. It's your fucking country - the land isn't oppressing you, starving you, or whatever else is the problem. Your own government and people are doing that. And not me or my countrymen - yours, you greedy dumb fuck.
The brackets are called "nested comments", to differentiate them from the ones in the "(" or the "[" section, you ignorant fuck. I'm surprised even you needed them explained.
Christ, you're a jackass. That was an attempt to be witty that just proves how fucking ignorant you are.
If it makes you feel any better, my mother was there almost exactly 70 years ago to the day of March 14th this month, and she said things were fine until two things happened : the Gestapo took her father (because even though he was a loyal citizen of Germany and supported anything that was good for his country, including the Nazi party [remember that the entire country was falling apart at the seams, people went from losing a war to starving after the war {bad idea, turning a lot of hungry soldiers loose, stealing their land and their means to make money, and then putting in a government that pays off their enemies and tells the soldiers it's a no-no if they play with guns again; what do you expect them to do, lay down and die?}, and the occupation government installed and enabled by the Treaty of Versailles - which is why Jews were such an easy target for the lunatics leading the Brownshirt/NSDAP movement to focus on, since many of them were active in various levels of government, far out of proportion to their representation in the general population {most likely since your average Jew of the time was some sort of businessman and hadn't fought in WWI, so he was a perfect choice for a cushy - relative to what most of the population was dealing with - post in the Weimar Republic government at the end of WWI; it probably seemed like the sort of thing to go for at the time...why not, since Jews were routinely kicked out of every country they'd ever been in - this can be historically verified if you doubt me, it's largely been a combination of ethnic conflict and racism [I think the term anti-Semitism is disingenuous - racism is racism, you don't get a special word for your people just because your religious and community leaders have gotten you in more trouble than anyone else in the history of the world, yet you still keep following them around claiming to be "God's chosen people"] on the part of those who treated unkindly with them and arrogance and greed on the part of their leaders} - was unable to do anything other than tell the German people that they would have to keep starving until they paid off the excesses of the pre-WWI imperial government {remember that your average German who fought in WWI, just like in WWII, didn't support the Kaiser any more than they did Hitler, they were conscripted or if was one of the few ways to support their country and more importantly, support their families; if the lower-echelon Nazis can be blamed for anything, it's for being overzealous and credulous in their support of Hitler and the NS - they weren't running concentration camps, that was the SS and other specialized units that were real fanatics, not just people who saw a chance to get out of the hole history had to dug for them} while they kept slowly but surely handing the food out of Germans' mouths to the French and then practically begging the communists to come in and kick their asses {even a rough study of history at the time shows that if the Nazis hadn't come to power, Communists would have; and look at the fine job Stalin did - he has been proven to have killed at least 10 times as many people as the Nazis have been proven to have killed - important phrase there, since certain so-called "authorities" keep inflating the number until if they keep it up they'll run out of Jews to claim to have been killed - but, unlike the Nazis, Stalin not only had the support of Jewish leaders world-wide, he had their public approval, as can be seen by numerous public statements made by various rabbis this and head rabbi that saying that Stalin was the greatest thing since sliced bread, never mind that he was making Hitler and the SS look like crayon-eating retards when it came to killing people in the territory he controlled}] and gave him the choice between (a) packing up and taking his family off to the camps or (b) going back to war (he chose the latter, since he was a decorated veteran from WWI and w
Not outside of hotels, airports, and business meetings. Try explaining to a Swiss taxi driver (who probably speak 3-4 languages, but the only one we have in common is German, and he barely understands enough of that to get down the street) at 3AM while you're shitfaced that you need a ride to such-and-such place. You're better off writing the address of where you're staying down and handing it to him.
Plus I don't like being the asshole American who has to speak English. I like to speak some of the native language, even if it means I sound like a retard. But by having a rudimentary grasp of the language, at least I can get my meaning across in basic ways.
Oh, one more thing. I'm getting the fuck out of the U.S. as soon as I get a better offer (not that I think one is coming). I debate w/ myself whether emigrating to Germany (I have the option of dual citizenship since my mother is a German citizen and I probably speak enough German to qualify) is worthwhile. Then I think about the taxes and decide that I'm better off where I am. But I do speak more languages than English (I'm pretty good at Mexican-style Spanish), just not on a day-to-day basis.
You're mostly right. But I don't see why my tax dollars should be spent on this when we could they could be spent developing a new type of bomb that kills people so fast that they're dead a week before it landed.
It's all about what your priorities are.
Okay, in all seriousness, I more or less agree with what you've said here. But that doesn't invalidate what I'm saying. I personally don't give a shit if someone's main language is Spanish or whatever. There's some times I find if easier to speak Spanish just to get my point across (which is mostly "if you put the green sauce on my taco, I'll skull-fuck you, rape your dog, and burn your mother to the ground"). But I get really pissed off at the legions of people that come to the U.S., don't bother to speak any English, and act like that's okay. I think I'd most likely get stoned to death if I did a similar thing w/ English in most parts of the world. It's a respect thing. If you go to someone else's country, you have to show enough respect to at least attempt to speak their language. It's not like it's rocket science to pick up a basic grasp of a language.
OK, you are an asshole. You are also a racist, unrealistic, nationalist scumbag, but you do know how to do a good self assessment. ; )
Adopting English as the official language of the US, a proposal which I have advocated, will not accomplish what you want which is obviously to "send them all back where they belong." Are you too timid to state your true thoughts?
I love this. You made my fucking morning...biting wit and the aim of a retard winding up his wiffle-ball bat! I'm not racist, I'm racialist (meaning I care about the benefit of my race before any others, but don't blindly hate anyone). I'm unrealistic, but I believe there is a certain quote about all progress being made by irrational or unrealistic (IIRC it's irrational, but in this case they're almost synonymous) men. And if you heard how much I criticize government in general and my own country and government in particular, you'd know better than to call me a nationalist. I will own up to being an asshole, and proud of it. I've been voted Asshole Of The Year for 3 years running, actually! My assholery knows no bounds...
But if you're going to call me all that, will you at least own up to being a "fuzzy bleeding heart fuck"?
And I am not too timid to state anything I feel. Personally, "send them all back where they belong" would leave me, my father, and a bunch of other Native Americans here, and everyone else somewhere else, depending on how you slice it (since I'm not quite pureblooded anything - though I am predominantly German, Irish, and Cherokee-Choctaw). Not to mention the fact that even if you considered White America as that dominant race (completely ignoring a wealth of history, like the fact that (a) the Spanish had a governor's mansion in CA before Plymouth Rock was ever found or (b) that most of my ancestors came over here as indentured servants [little better than slaves]), you have to define what that is (which is a major bone of contention amongst many people - just ask the wops, kikes, krauts, and other people with more-or-less white skin). Plus, if you send back all the wogs and - shit! I'm running out of racist terms to call people, I'm just not that good at being a xenophobic white supremacist. Fuck it - if you sent back all the people that weren't White Americans, I'd lose a lot of friends and colleagues. But Africa can have the niggers - that's one point where me and every single white supremacist agree. Ship those motherfuckers back ASAP - I'll bring the marshmallows and we can all sing campfire songs while we watch those useless motherfuckers struggling to pilot a ship (as nothing in the 5-8 generations of collecting welfare has prepared them to do anything even remotely resembling work) before the entire fleet crashes about 2 miles off shore and the entire nation collectively feels it's taxes lowered by a few billion each year.
Life seems a lot simpler when you're just casting stones, doesn't it? It's easy for you to point fingers when all I'm really saying is that stupidity has consequences. Hell, the French would laugh themselves silly if you went over there, got in a car wreck or whatever, and then tried to explain that you're allergic to a particular painkiller or antibiotic. Then they'd go back to planting trees so my German ancestors can march in the shade the next time they get pissed off and decide to take over most of Europe.
That is so much bullshit. I can teach myself the rudiments of effective communication in any language in a single night. All what it takes is some intelligence and a will to do so. The willpower is actually more important than the intelligence. I know a lot of people that are considered "less intelligent" than me who can apply themselves to study much harder than I am willing to do so. And if your potential well-being depends upon you doing so, the fact that you are not willing to do so is just a sign of laziness or gross stupidity (either of which should be punishable by death).
So, no xenophobia there, little buddy. Don't leave your helmet at the door before you get on the short bus, and stay off mommy's computer too...
The ability to figure out a means to communicate effectively with those around you is a good sign of intelligence. Intelligence is one of those key points which we should be selecting for in the evolution of the human race.
Actually, you dickhead, I have been to a lot of foreign countries where very little English is spoken by anyone. The first thing I do is purchase a simple translation guide and re-acquaint myself with the basics of the language. German, French, Irish, and Spanish come easy to me, other languages are much harder.
The one thing I do not do is throw myself on the mercy of anyone, ever. I take care of myself and, if by my own actions I die, then so be it. That's one thing someone like you could never understand.
"Gee, I'm in your country, can't speak your language, and now I might die because I can't communicate with you - you should buy devices that translate my speech for you!". Yeah, go to another country and try that one - they'll still be laughing while you're floating in a tunnel w/ Elvis and your grandmother...
It's called natural selection, it's good for the human race. Stop fighting it, you're only encouraging the idiots...
But if you move to a country, then you should speak enough of a language to at least tell your symptoms to a doctor. If you don't, you fucking deserve what you get, plain and simple
For all the fuzzy bleeding heart fucks that will undoubtedly call me a racist, unrealistic, nationalist scumbag - I'll point this out. I don't go to foreign countries and expect them to speak English. When I am in a foreign country, I pick up enough fo the dialogue (not to mention carrying a small translation guide) to function for the duration of my stay. If you go to another country and expect people to speak English, you get treated like the self-centered stereotypical American tourist fuck you are. I don't see how it's one goddamn bit different when you come to this country.
And I really hate people who come to the U.S. and think that Spanish should be automatically spoken (particularly by government functionaries who dispense medical care and benefits, welfare, and other things that my taxes pay for and these fucks don't). Almost as much as I hate the shitheads that say "well, if you're going to live in the U.S., Spanish is a good second language to speak!" (like that's something that's acceptable or we should be tolerant of). Why would I, as an intelligent, educated technical person want Spanish as a second language (admittedly I am somewhat fluent, but I live in Texas - it's hard not to pick up some)? Why not Cantonese, Nipponese, or another language that would enable me to deal with citizens of another technologically advanced country that does a fair amount of international business? Wouldn't that serve me much better if I want to learn a foreign language?
And Spanish is a foreign language in the U.S. - deal with it or choke to death in an ambulance because you can't tell the paramedics that you have an allergy or whatever other consequence of your foolishness that results.
Slashdot Mirror
It comes already pickled.
That would be one of the first steps towards actual justice that could be handled on the net. The first one that sprung to mind for me was live feeds of the holding tanks at your local county jail, or the interrogation rooms. Of course, the cops will still keep a room where there's no cameras and no witnesses except them, just like the many that I've had chickenshits with badges beat on me while I'm in full restraints. It's amazing how pissed off they get when you beg for mercy, catch your breath, and then start laughing and calling them sons of cocksucking whores. It generally takes only a few hours of that before they get tired of it and just throw you back in a cell and there goes their case...
True, but it's more the mental structures you form than what you actually learn. Kind of like how it's more important to be able to learn than what you actually know. That always pisses me off when I interview somewhere, and they expect me to know the exact details of some obscure closed-source vendor's application. "Tell me step by step how you would go about configuring the multipathing on a vendor X fibrechannel controller" - are you out of your fucking mind? I seriously had a technical interview end (or at least they stop asking me questions or answering any of mine, and that was only the second question the fucker had asked me) because of that. I got a little pissed and asked him how he'd do it. The answer? "Well, I pull up this menu X, select option Y, select N number of LUNs...". People are stupid. It's really a shame that you have to deal with people in order to work with computers.
Not always true. I've worked with and gone to school with many people that applied themselves to the best of their ability, and they still failed at almost every task they were given (sometimes disastrously so - I've had entire networks brought to a grinding halt when someone did something stupid, like when a secondary blade in a router failed, and despite telling the guy on call which blade had failed [which should be pretty obvious because all the blinking lights are off, right? At least on a blade that was completely dead, as in the example I'm giving] and needed to be replaced in order to restore full network throughput [since said blade was there to support the back-end network for certain clusters that used separate interfaces for certain traffic], but wasn't actually mission-critical, just something that would speed up production if it were dealt with a 3AM or whatever rather than 8 or 9AM; anyways, despite telling him which one it was, how it was labeled, and the fact that none of the lights on the dead blade were active, whereas all of the ones on the fully populated, functional blade an inch or two to it's left were, this moron still pulled out the primary blade and replaced it with our spare [which meant that my remote login to that router - as well as a large part of the rest of the entire production network - was terminated and I couldn't get to it in order, and due to all the collateral damage he'd caused with that fuck-up I had to come in to fix it anyways; so it was pointless to spend another 20 minutes working with the idiot in hopes that he might be able to (a) put in the functional primary blade w/ it's NVRAM-stored configuration and (b) put all the Ethernet cables back into the appropriate locations, plus (c) fix any of the damage he'd caused I just pulled on my shoes and drove the 30-odd minutes in to work to do it all myself]. Some people just aren't worth dealing with because you can't fix stupid, and beating it until it stops doing it is frowned on by HR...). Seriously, I've seen this shit so many times. Hell, the last time I took a class at college (in order to gradually work my way towards actually finishing my degree), I recall one of my first class sessions, the professor explained that we'd have to continue our discussion the next class since he couldn't access the UNIX server that he insisted we do all our work on (I was happy that he wanted us to use a UNIX system to do our programming assignments on, even if it was an ancient Tru64 box) and it must be down, so he'd have to have IT fix it. I noticed that he'd opened his Windows-based Telnet/Rlogin/SSH client (I'm having a tired-but-wired-on-coffee brain fart so I can't remember the name right now) and was attempting to SSH into the machine. Since the box was truly ancient, I asked him if he'd tried telnet, or even pinging the server. He told me (in a smarmy, self-assured tone) that he was trying to telnet into the system and it was down. Since his laptop was hooked up to the projection uni
Non-conformists show a higher tendency towards doing unique things. No shit. But then again, you have to have some sort of structure. I'm a great sysadmin and a decent programmer, and I'm a high-school dropout, never finished college, all that. But I truly regret not spending more attention to college when I was younger. Sure, I'd read all the books required to get a PhD in CS, but I never spent the time in class working through everything. So I didn't have that experience or grounding in my career, so I often forget things after a while of not working with them. Unemployed for a while, or don't spend enough time staying abreast of a certain technology? Oops, fail on that job interview.
I'd say it's the unorthodox people that apply themselves more that do the best.
Well, why are you complaining? A guy who made billions (mostly by pushing crap bands to idiotic "consumers" [aka sheep] and other socially useless endeavors, IIRC) is now spending his money on making cool tech toys (admit it - this is cool as shit; if it actually works, we're talking about a submarine that's light enough that my truck can tow it but can dive to the deepest reaches of that annoyingly unexplored [I think only something like 50% of the Earth's oceans have actually been explored, and I'm not sure what percentage have been mapped - I should know this, I've worked at Oil & Gas companies, but us IT guys are too busy working so that the guys who studied stuff like this can run their compute- and I/O-intensive applications], massive [covers almost 70% of the Earth's surface] series of puddles that is almost as much of an unexplored mystery to us Mars) rather than stupid shit (like Bill Gates and his quest to fund tribal warlords in Africa) or greedy shit (the last time I checked most billionaires were primarily concerned with making that extra hundred million that they treat like it's the missing puzzle piece that will bring them The Answer To Life, The Universe, And Everything Else). This is just cool, plain and simple. So is the fact that he's trying to make it economically feasible to use turbine/wind energy.
I think it's really cool that he's doing that rather than the above-mentioned things. Sure, it probably won't change the course of human history (or maybe it will - maybe we'll find a critter down there that has an extremely virulent disease as it's defense mechanism, and therefore creatures that prey on it have evolved a way to neutralize it...and from that we get the cure for cancer and/or AIDS; you never know what can spin off the kinds of scientific research that we'd end up doing if we could access the entirety if the ocean floor as easily as we can our sky - look at all the cool shit that's come about in the hundred-odd years since the Wright brothers, and I'm not just talking about missiles that can vaporize human flesh ten thousand times faster than mustard gas or whatever - hell, the turbines that this sub will be using probably wouldn't be as technologically advanced as they are if military applications hadn't been found for really fast transport of planes, various types of aquatic craft, and plain ole missiles; I'm not saying the uses to which military technology are put are always that shit-hot, but the trickle-down effect of the technology that's developed as world leaders continue to be paranoid, diplomatically-inept, corrupt, and downright evil would-be Masters Of The Universe is often pretty damn cool).
Okay, pardon that ramble. I need to take my medication. But you get my basic idea - he might be throwing money out the window, but it's a window that has some cool applications. And I wouldn't be responding to this if I hadn't been trying to find a way to send you a message that I agree with you about Clinton being a pretty cool president (from a response to one of my posts; note - I wouldn't be that proud of having Walmart based out of Arkansas, bro!).
what I'm told Seattle is like ...
Cold, wet, and miserable do not make for an upbeat environment.
Yeah, but in Seattle you can (a) laugh at the transvestites, (b) any time you want, SPD will find a reason to arrest you and keep you for 6 months (no kidding - they tried to give me a six month sentence for carrying a pocket knife, until they realized that I was from another state, in-town for a convention, and my employer would make a huge stink about them doing so, so instead they gave me 2 years probation and said "no, you don't have to report in, just leave when the convention is over"), and (c) the computer industry is really big there (so a lot of people in Seattle never expect or want to see sunlight anyways).
Avoid Arkansas then; nothing but heat, humidity, and tornadoes.
I can think of a lot better reasons to avoid Arkansas than those 3 things. When you consider the fact that Bill Clinton was actually one of the better aspects of the state, and it's all down-hill from there, that's a major warning sign in and of itself.
I don't know, look at Florida. I can't think of anything more utterly depressing than that relentless heat and glare.
Trenton, New Jersey?
Try any populated place in Utah. Or any place with water (in Utah, of course). Do you realize that people still shoot each other there over water rights? Yes, I'm a major proponent of the 2nd Amendment, but when I find myself having to shoot my neighbors in order to get water, I'd just fucking move. Well, I'd move anyways. Utah screams "inbreeding!" the way the Bush family screams "hereditary insanity!".
Also, it's just good manners
* Yes, I play (sometimes). Do I tell women before we've gotten to the mad monkey love stage? Fuck no. If I let a chick read most of the titles of books on my shelves, she'd realize that I'm obsessed with computers, fantasy and science fiction, new and interesting ways to blow shit up, and other things that rate slightly above an ankle monitor in scaring women off.
I agree with everything (because they are major pet peeves of mine) but the "unnecessary profanity" bit. If you're trying to make a point, throw in a cuss word. People catch the emphasis.
I'm well aware that more people in Ireland speak English than Gaelic. Sad state of affairs, but it is what it is.
I don't have a problem with this device being used to treat travelers - or even some working guy's mother who speaks mostly Korean or Spanish or whatever. Unfortunately, like everything else to do with medical care in this country, it will be most widely used to benefit the parasitic organisms that have ravaged their countries (primarily Mexico, but most of South America; admittedly, the CIA helped nicely with S. America) then moved on to this country, where our so-called "civilized" beliefs lead most of us to treat these fucks just so they can get up out of their bed (after using up 25K or more of medical treatment, thus meaning that the doctors - who are generally overpaid, undereducated quacks anyways - just bill higher for their services when someone who pays [like myself] comes in to see them) and keep sucking dry the benefits that could have, say, helped my grandmother while she was dying and so poor that if it weren't for my father she'd have been eating catfood by the time she died. Or that could have been used to help one of my best friends (who is epileptic, has serious shoulder injuries, and is an ex-convict, so he couldn't get a job doing anything but construction-type work, and couldn't keep a job due to the fact that his shoulders would give out after a while, and damn sure couldn't get insurance due to his epilepsy; he fought for about 5-6 years to get medicaid/medicare, and instead the SS office gave him a monthly pittance - 300 USD every 2 weeks - and no medical benefits, despite the fact that he repeatedly told the courts that he didn't want money, he just wanted medicaid so he could go back to work and hold a job). I am all for being civilized - but with the necessary intelligence to be civil, courteous, and respectful comes the brains to realize that I should not have to - and do no willingly do so - support people who take until it hurts (me and my fellow countrymen), and then keep taking some more. And have the gall to insist that it's their right to do so while they do it.
I'm tired of people miscasting my unwillingness to support parasites with a desire to see tourists die. It's a distraction from the main point. I'm all for tourism and people being exposed to the world. I wish more Americans understood that there's a whole world out there, and a lot of it is grand. But I also wish that people around me would wake up and realize that compassion should not be extended to people that come to your country just to take advantage of you, rather than fixing yours. Egypt quite recently demonstrated that when a system is corrupt and broken, it goes (sooner or later). If Mexico (and Africa) is such a horrible place to live, fix it. It's your fucking country - the land isn't oppressing you, starving you, or whatever else is the problem. Your own government and people are doing that. And not me or my countrymen - yours, you greedy dumb fuck.
The brackets are called "nested comments", to differentiate them from the ones in the "(" or the "[" section, you ignorant fuck. I'm surprised even you needed them explained.
Christ, you're a jackass. That was an attempt to be witty that just proves how fucking ignorant you are.
If it makes you feel any better, my mother was there almost exactly 70 years ago to the day of March 14th this month, and she said things were fine until two things happened : the Gestapo took her father (because even though he was a loyal citizen of Germany and supported anything that was good for his country, including the Nazi party [remember that the entire country was falling apart at the seams, people went from losing a war to starving after the war {bad idea, turning a lot of hungry soldiers loose, stealing their land and their means to make money, and then putting in a government that pays off their enemies and tells the soldiers it's a no-no if they play with guns again; what do you expect them to do, lay down and die?}, and the occupation government installed and enabled by the Treaty of Versailles - which is why Jews were such an easy target for the lunatics leading the Brownshirt/NSDAP movement to focus on, since many of them were active in various levels of government, far out of proportion to their representation in the general population {most likely since your average Jew of the time was some sort of businessman and hadn't fought in WWI, so he was a perfect choice for a cushy - relative to what most of the population was dealing with - post in the Weimar Republic government at the end of WWI; it probably seemed like the sort of thing to go for at the time...why not, since Jews were routinely kicked out of every country they'd ever been in - this can be historically verified if you doubt me, it's largely been a combination of ethnic conflict and racism [I think the term anti-Semitism is disingenuous - racism is racism, you don't get a special word for your people just because your religious and community leaders have gotten you in more trouble than anyone else in the history of the world, yet you still keep following them around claiming to be "God's chosen people"] on the part of those who treated unkindly with them and arrogance and greed on the part of their leaders} - was unable to do anything other than tell the German people that they would have to keep starving until they paid off the excesses of the pre-WWI imperial government {remember that your average German who fought in WWI, just like in WWII, didn't support the Kaiser any more than they did Hitler, they were conscripted or if was one of the few ways to support their country and more importantly, support their families; if the lower-echelon Nazis can be blamed for anything, it's for being overzealous and credulous in their support of Hitler and the NS - they weren't running concentration camps, that was the SS and other specialized units that were real fanatics, not just people who saw a chance to get out of the hole history had to dug for them} while they kept slowly but surely handing the food out of Germans' mouths to the French and then practically begging the communists to come in and kick their asses {even a rough study of history at the time shows that if the Nazis hadn't come to power, Communists would have; and look at the fine job Stalin did - he has been proven to have killed at least 10 times as many people as the Nazis have been proven to have killed - important phrase there, since certain so-called "authorities" keep inflating the number until if they keep it up they'll run out of Jews to claim to have been killed - but, unlike the Nazis, Stalin not only had the support of Jewish leaders world-wide, he had their public approval, as can be seen by numerous public statements made by various rabbis this and head rabbi that saying that Stalin was the greatest thing since sliced bread, never mind that he was making Hitler and the SS look like crayon-eating retards when it came to killing people in the territory he controlled}] and gave him the choice between (a) packing up and taking his family off to the camps or (b) going back to war (he chose the latter, since he was a decorated veteran from WWI and w
Not outside of hotels, airports, and business meetings. Try explaining to a Swiss taxi driver (who probably speak 3-4 languages, but the only one we have in common is German, and he barely understands enough of that to get down the street) at 3AM while you're shitfaced that you need a ride to such-and-such place. You're better off writing the address of where you're staying down and handing it to him.
Plus I don't like being the asshole American who has to speak English. I like to speak some of the native language, even if it means I sound like a retard. But by having a rudimentary grasp of the language, at least I can get my meaning across in basic ways.
Oh, one more thing. I'm getting the fuck out of the U.S. as soon as I get a better offer (not that I think one is coming). I debate w/ myself whether emigrating to Germany (I have the option of dual citizenship since my mother is a German citizen and I probably speak enough German to qualify) is worthwhile. Then I think about the taxes and decide that I'm better off where I am. But I do speak more languages than English (I'm pretty good at Mexican-style Spanish), just not on a day-to-day basis.
You're mostly right. But I don't see why my tax dollars should be spent on this when we could they could be spent developing a new type of bomb that kills people so fast that they're dead a week before it landed.
It's all about what your priorities are.
Okay, in all seriousness, I more or less agree with what you've said here. But that doesn't invalidate what I'm saying. I personally don't give a shit if someone's main language is Spanish or whatever. There's some times I find if easier to speak Spanish just to get my point across (which is mostly "if you put the green sauce on my taco, I'll skull-fuck you, rape your dog, and burn your mother to the ground"). But I get really pissed off at the legions of people that come to the U.S., don't bother to speak any English, and act like that's okay. I think I'd most likely get stoned to death if I did a similar thing w/ English in most parts of the world. It's a respect thing. If you go to someone else's country, you have to show enough respect to at least attempt to speak their language. It's not like it's rocket science to pick up a basic grasp of a language.
OK, you are an asshole. You are also a racist, unrealistic, nationalist scumbag, but you do know how to do a good self assessment. ; )
Adopting English as the official language of the US, a proposal which I have advocated, will not accomplish what you want which is obviously to "send them all back where they belong." Are you too timid to state your true thoughts?
I love this. You made my fucking morning...biting wit and the aim of a retard winding up his wiffle-ball bat! I'm not racist, I'm racialist (meaning I care about the benefit of my race before any others, but don't blindly hate anyone). I'm unrealistic, but I believe there is a certain quote about all progress being made by irrational or unrealistic (IIRC it's irrational, but in this case they're almost synonymous) men. And if you heard how much I criticize government in general and my own country and government in particular, you'd know better than to call me a nationalist. I will own up to being an asshole, and proud of it. I've been voted Asshole Of The Year for 3 years running, actually! My assholery knows no bounds...
But if you're going to call me all that, will you at least own up to being a "fuzzy bleeding heart fuck"?
And I am not too timid to state anything I feel. Personally, "send them all back where they belong" would leave me, my father, and a bunch of other Native Americans here, and everyone else somewhere else, depending on how you slice it (since I'm not quite pureblooded anything - though I am predominantly German, Irish, and Cherokee-Choctaw). Not to mention the fact that even if you considered White America as that dominant race (completely ignoring a wealth of history, like the fact that (a) the Spanish had a governor's mansion in CA before Plymouth Rock was ever found or (b) that most of my ancestors came over here as indentured servants [little better than slaves]), you have to define what that is (which is a major bone of contention amongst many people - just ask the wops, kikes, krauts, and other people with more-or-less white skin). Plus, if you send back all the wogs and - shit! I'm running out of racist terms to call people, I'm just not that good at being a xenophobic white supremacist. Fuck it - if you sent back all the people that weren't White Americans, I'd lose a lot of friends and colleagues. But Africa can have the niggers - that's one point where me and every single white supremacist agree. Ship those motherfuckers back ASAP - I'll bring the marshmallows and we can all sing campfire songs while we watch those useless motherfuckers struggling to pilot a ship (as nothing in the 5-8 generations of collecting welfare has prepared them to do anything even remotely resembling work) before the entire fleet crashes about 2 miles off shore and the entire nation collectively feels it's taxes lowered by a few billion each year.
Life seems a lot simpler when you're just casting stones, doesn't it? It's easy for you to point fingers when all I'm really saying is that stupidity has consequences. Hell, the French would laugh themselves silly if you went over there, got in a car wreck or whatever, and then tried to explain that you're allergic to a particular painkiller or antibiotic. Then they'd go back to planting trees so my German ancestors can march in the shade the next time they get pissed off and decide to take over most of Europe.
That is so much bullshit. I can teach myself the rudiments of effective communication in any language in a single night. All what it takes is some intelligence and a will to do so. The willpower is actually more important than the intelligence. I know a lot of people that are considered "less intelligent" than me who can apply themselves to study much harder than I am willing to do so. And if your potential well-being depends upon you doing so, the fact that you are not willing to do so is just a sign of laziness or gross stupidity (either of which should be punishable by death).
So, no xenophobia there, little buddy. Don't leave your helmet at the door before you get on the short bus, and stay off mommy's computer too...
The ability to figure out a means to communicate effectively with those around you is a good sign of intelligence. Intelligence is one of those key points which we should be selecting for in the evolution of the human race.
Actually, you dickhead, I have been to a lot of foreign countries where very little English is spoken by anyone. The first thing I do is purchase a simple translation guide and re-acquaint myself with the basics of the language. German, French, Irish, and Spanish come easy to me, other languages are much harder.
The one thing I do not do is throw myself on the mercy of anyone, ever. I take care of myself and, if by my own actions I die, then so be it. That's one thing someone like you could never understand.
Right on! I wish I hadn't posted, this would be getting modded up right now!
And how does this excuse stupidity?
"Gee, I'm in your country, can't speak your language, and now I might die because I can't communicate with you - you should buy devices that translate my speech for you!". Yeah, go to another country and try that one - they'll still be laughing while you're floating in a tunnel w/ Elvis and your grandmother...
It's called natural selection, it's good for the human race. Stop fighting it, you're only encouraging the idiots...
No, but it will encourage natural selection...
But if you move to a country, then you should speak enough of a language to at least tell your symptoms to a doctor. If you don't, you fucking deserve what you get, plain and simple
For all the fuzzy bleeding heart fucks that will undoubtedly call me a racist, unrealistic, nationalist scumbag - I'll point this out. I don't go to foreign countries and expect them to speak English. When I am in a foreign country, I pick up enough fo the dialogue (not to mention carrying a small translation guide) to function for the duration of my stay. If you go to another country and expect people to speak English, you get treated like the self-centered stereotypical American tourist fuck you are. I don't see how it's one goddamn bit different when you come to this country.
And I really hate people who come to the U.S. and think that Spanish should be automatically spoken (particularly by government functionaries who dispense medical care and benefits, welfare, and other things that my taxes pay for and these fucks don't). Almost as much as I hate the shitheads that say "well, if you're going to live in the U.S., Spanish is a good second language to speak!" (like that's something that's acceptable or we should be tolerant of). Why would I, as an intelligent, educated technical person want Spanish as a second language (admittedly I am somewhat fluent, but I live in Texas - it's hard not to pick up some)? Why not Cantonese, Nipponese, or another language that would enable me to deal with citizens of another technologically advanced country that does a fair amount of international business? Wouldn't that serve me much better if I want to learn a foreign language?
And Spanish is a foreign language in the U.S. - deal with it or choke to death in an ambulance because you can't tell the paramedics that you have an allergy or whatever other consequence of your foolishness that results.