Back in the Day -- as we geezers like to begin the sentences we use to talk down to you -- having that box on your desk prompt you for a password was a much more rare and curious thing than it is today. Our computer-y crap sat right there in the box by our legs, or maybe down the hall in that cold room with the raised floor with the fat bastard in it. And we would have li'l whispered conversations with the fat bastard as we passed him in the Break Room, like "I know you know my password, you fat bastard, and if I ever think for a heartbeat that you're going through my crap I will key your car and beat you like a baby seal." Our passwords were the things meant to keep our crap from the prying eyes of the sinister-but-clever sociopaths in Marketing and Accounting who would indeed rifle our desks for clues, like children's and pet names, in order to look at our computer-y crap. So selecting a password like P*/34_##FuK-U-Joey!!39* had real value. So today, when industry insists we store our computer-y crap -- which now includes bank account access, photo albums, our music collections, and christ-knows what else -- on servers spread around the world operated by even fatter bastards whom we don't see and can't effectively intimidate, it should come as no surprise the habit has stayed with us, despite being prompted for passwords every twenty minutes...
Actually, I avoid Google+ to avoid the people who use tired "cyber-phrases" like "meatspace" and rabid Google fanbois (I apologize if that's being redundant) who will sacrifice (and then try to sanctimoniously justify that sacrifice) their privacy for the latest Shiny.
My smartphone is made from low-fat granola pieces glued together from wheat reaped by freedom-loving highly-paid yet-still-spiritualistic gay Tibetan monks who are all married to one another and turn all their after-tax profits over to Greenpeace.
Of course it doesn't work, but I feel really good about owning it and it's a great conversation-starter with the cute angry Goth chicks who hang out in my local hipster food co-op in Brooklyn.
Your analysis of the TED talks by age and gender may be a bit whimsical, but you're in essence dead on.
The smug and tedious pretentiousness of the majority of TED presentations has been one of those Geek Truths That Dare Not Speak It's Name for years now. It's about two, maybe three years away from complete Burning Man Status (i.e., everyone knows it's time has come and gone, but there's still plenty of money to be made from the n00bs, so hush up...)
...as a lowering in standards. Slashdot is now all about the paid astro-turfing, self-referential brand-building, and manufactured outrages designed to generate pageviews. The founders are gone, and It's Time to Start Running This Like a Business, Goddammit!
You're obviously a classist buffoon whom God has seen fit to punish by never granting enough financial success to rise above the public transit and utilities whose users you (falsely, laughably) believe are beneath you.
If the caller is speaking too loud, you get up, go over to him, and politely ask him to tone it down. When I do that, the caller is inevitably embarrassed, apologizes, and more often than not, hangs up promptly thereafter.
Stop living in Nerdly Passive-Aggressive Panties-in-a-Wad Anxiety and join the Human Race.
...that a famous buggy whip factory has hired one of the first combustion engine mechanics to help them figure out how to put six cylinders inside a horse without killing it.
Not sure if I feel more sympathy for the mechanic or the horse...
Still and all, Malda is a good and talented guy, slashdot has noticeably deteriorated in his absence, and I wish him all the best.
See, if Facebook had sneaked around a GPL agreement to make a fortune off of some other developers' software, rather than sneaking around patent laws to make a fortune off some other developers' software, the hivemind would easily concur that Facebook is e-e-e-e-vil.
The link isn't even a legitimate link. It just takes the reader to some idiot's blog. "Lou Dobbs?" "Fox News?" Is there a citation for any of that, or do we now just invoke these boogeymen on sheer pretense and for effect?
Actual, better pretty much any group than Public Sector Unions.
Fix the System:
1. Triple every teacher's salary 2. Eliminate Collective Bargaining and Tenure, replacing with individually negotiated Employment Contracts with a maximum 3-year term. 3. Teachers without Employment Contracts have their salaries available for merit-based increase biennially. 3. Eliminate Pensions.
In short, make teachers' jobs like most every other valued job for which you want constant strong competition among skilled employees and potential employees.
Dude, the days when slashdot was read attentively by developers and other IT decision-makers is long past (just don't tell that to InfoWorld, which still pays a premium to astroturf here).
This is a tech-and-gadget flavored Newser.com, with open-source stories replacing the celebrity bits ("Linux instead of Lohan!"). Wired Magazine was exclusive and tech-elite when it started as well, and now it's all "Green Energy" and Rolex ads.
The word "geek" has lost all meaning; one need only note all the slick sales-and-marketing suits now smugly referring to themselves as "movie geeks."
Language changes. Media evolves. And writers and media-owners gotta pay the bills somehow...
This is the geek-world "Truth That Dare Not Speak It's Name," namely that it is the liberal/democrat machine that continues to give oxygen and sustenance to that e-e-e-e-e-e-evil content distribution industry. Maybe it's because so many of the artists themselves usually espouse left-wing politics, support the democratic candidates, and will not know how to earn a dime if technical progress continues to chip away at the struts in the old content/contract/distribution/residuals system.
...that entertainment is not "information," nor should it be free, whether or not it has been "digitized," and to be certain to compensate the writers/musicians/artists/designers/videographers and other creators whose work he/she enjoys.
What we need to do is take back our republic from the 1%.
It's the highly-paid top marketing minds, political functionaries, spin doctors and government job lifers who conceived of the so-called "1%/99%" dichotomy and wrote all the slogans and seeded the memes that the deluded unwashed of the "Occupy" movement have been made to believe are their own. It's designed to allow Obama -- the candidate deepest in the pocket of the Content Industry -- to play an effective class warfare card in the pending election and defeat the Gordon-Gecko-esque Romney.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the Day -- as we geezers like to begin the sentences we use to talk down to you -- having that box on your desk prompt you for a password was a much more rare and curious thing than it is today. Our computer-y crap sat right there in the box by our legs, or maybe down the hall in that cold room with the raised floor with the fat bastard in it. And we would have li'l whispered conversations with the fat bastard as we passed him in the Break Room, like "I know you know my password, you fat bastard, and if I ever think for a heartbeat that you're going through my crap I will key your car and beat you like a baby seal." Our passwords were the things meant to keep our crap from the prying eyes of the sinister-but-clever sociopaths in Marketing and Accounting who would indeed rifle our desks for clues, like children's and pet names, in order to look at our computer-y crap. So selecting a password like P*/34_##FuK-U-Joey!!39* had real value. So today, when industry insists we store our computer-y crap -- which now includes bank account access, photo albums, our music collections, and christ-knows what else -- on servers spread around the world operated by even fatter bastards whom we don't see and can't effectively intimidate, it should come as no surprise the habit has stayed with us, despite being prompted for passwords every twenty minutes...
for "League of Self-Important Angry Young Men."
And thanks, I'll pass...
Can I buy a piece of tech that was not assembled by an Asian Worker making considerably less than his American Union Factory Worker counterpart? No.
Can I buy a piece of tech and still have a clean conscience? Sure. Of course.
is the solar array built using renewable energy?
No, but it IS being constructed by highly-paid union dolphins, so Greenpeace is fine with that.
Be Very Afraid: The Church of The Climate is getting it's own Armed Inquisitition.
Life Imitates Super Bowl Ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml54UuAoLSo
My Mac can get me laid so I'm not a sexually-frustrated, basement dweller like you.
Yes, but can it get you laid by a girl?
Actually, I avoid Google+ to avoid the people who use tired "cyber-phrases" like "meatspace" and rabid Google fanbois (I apologize if that's being redundant) who will sacrifice (and then try to sanctimoniously justify that sacrifice) their privacy for the latest Shiny.
...and all I saw in the demo was marked-up text.
As a marketing convention, this equivalence of HTML and code is almost as pretentious as Wordpress' notion of equating code with "poetry."
My smartphone is made from low-fat granola pieces glued together from wheat reaped by freedom-loving highly-paid yet-still-spiritualistic gay Tibetan monks who are all married to one another and turn all their after-tax profits over to Greenpeace.
Of course it doesn't work, but I feel really good about owning it and it's a great conversation-starter with the cute angry Goth chicks who hang out in my local hipster food co-op in Brooklyn.
Perhaps their efforts are fueled by a more private agenda
PERHAPS?!?!!
Great. Now I have coffee all over my monitor, thanks to you...
Because when I think "Google," I think "Oh, hey, golly, THERE's a corporation that's looking out for my rights, yes-sir-ree-bob!"
Jeezus... you fanbois are starting to get dangerous...
Your analysis of the TED talks by age and gender may be a bit whimsical, but you're in essence dead on.
The smug and tedious pretentiousness of the majority of TED presentations has been one of those Geek Truths That Dare Not Speak It's Name for years now. It's about two, maybe three years away from complete Burning Man Status (i.e., everyone knows it's time has come and gone, but there's still plenty of money to be made from the n00bs, so hush up...)
...as a lowering in standards. Slashdot is now all about the paid astro-turfing, self-referential brand-building, and manufactured outrages designed to generate pageviews. The founders are gone, and It's Time to Start Running This Like a Business, Goddammit!
You're obviously a classist buffoon whom God has seen fit to punish by never granting enough financial success to rise above the public transit and utilities whose users you (falsely, laughably) believe are beneath you.
If the caller is speaking too loud, you get up, go over to him, and politely ask him to tone it down. When I do that, the caller is inevitably embarrassed, apologizes, and more often than not, hangs up promptly thereafter.
Stop living in Nerdly Passive-Aggressive Panties-in-a-Wad Anxiety and join the Human Race.
...that a famous buggy whip factory has hired one of the first combustion engine mechanics to help them figure out how to put six cylinders inside a horse without killing it.
Not sure if I feel more sympathy for the mechanic or the horse...
Still and all, Malda is a good and talented guy, slashdot has noticeably deteriorated in his absence, and I wish him all the best.
Cmdr Taco, where are you...?
You may have regarded Slashdot as your personal sandbox from time to time, but at least you had the grace and wisdom not to piss in it everyday.
See, if Facebook had sneaked around a GPL agreement to make a fortune off of some other developers' software, rather than sneaking around patent laws to make a fortune off some other developers' software, the hivemind would easily concur that Facebook is e-e-e-e-vil.
Now, it's complicated...
The link isn't even a legitimate link. It just takes the reader to some idiot's blog. "Lou Dobbs?" "Fox News?" Is there a citation for any of that, or do we now just invoke these boogeymen on sheer pretense and for effect?
Actual, better pretty much any group than Public Sector Unions.
Fix the System:
1. Triple every teacher's salary
2. Eliminate Collective Bargaining and Tenure, replacing with individually negotiated Employment Contracts with a maximum 3-year term.
3. Teachers without Employment Contracts have their salaries available for merit-based increase biennially.
3. Eliminate Pensions.
In short, make teachers' jobs like most every other valued job for which you want constant strong competition among skilled employees and potential employees.
Dude, the days when slashdot was read attentively by developers and other IT decision-makers is long past (just don't tell that to InfoWorld, which still pays a premium to astroturf here).
This is a tech-and-gadget flavored Newser.com, with open-source stories replacing the celebrity bits ("Linux instead of Lohan!"). Wired Magazine was exclusive and tech-elite when it started as well, and now it's all "Green Energy" and Rolex ads.
The word "geek" has lost all meaning; one need only note all the slick sales-and-marketing suits now smugly referring to themselves as "movie geeks."
Language changes. Media evolves. And writers and media-owners gotta pay the bills somehow...
...that the Open Source industry is finally on the verge of catching up with the rest of the tech and software industry in matters of gender equality?
The whole headline is a perfect example of back-handed praise. It's got to be Editor-Trolling because even Timothy can't be that naive.
This is the geek-world "Truth That Dare Not Speak It's Name," namely that it is the liberal/democrat machine that continues to give oxygen and sustenance to that e-e-e-e-e-e-evil content distribution industry. Maybe it's because so many of the artists themselves usually espouse left-wing politics, support the democratic candidates, and will not know how to earn a dime if technical progress continues to chip away at the struts in the old content/contract/distribution/residuals system.
"Popcorn," indeed...
...that entertainment is not "information," nor should it be free, whether or not it has been "digitized," and to be certain to compensate the writers/musicians/artists/designers/videographers and other creators whose work he/she enjoys.
What we need to do is take back our republic from the 1%.
It's the highly-paid top marketing minds, political functionaries, spin doctors and government job lifers who conceived of the so-called "1%/99%" dichotomy and wrote all the slogans and seeded the memes that the deluded unwashed of the "Occupy" movement have been made to believe are their own. It's designed to allow Obama -- the candidate deepest in the pocket of the Content Industry -- to play an effective class warfare card in the pending election and defeat the Gordon-Gecko-esque Romney.
Stop being a tool.