The world-acclaimed scientist James P. Hogan, in his "Giants Trilogy", reveals the amazing truth of our genesis:
Millions of years ago, a large planet existed where the asteroid belt now floats. On this planet were the Gentle Giants of Ganymede, who were somewhat interested in Earth. Unfortunately, they disliked dinosaurs because they were vegetarians and the dinosaur's diets upset them. So they wiped out the dinosaurs with advanced energy weapons, which interestingly created our great deserts.
OUR forebears were carried to this planet by the Giants because they felt we would make good pets with a little genetic engineering. At some point, all the Giants left for another star system, leaving behind a culture of humans who developed their own advanced technology and had a tremendous war. Unfortunately for them, they blew the planet to bits, throwing its moon towards the sun (along with a stranded colony of astronauts).
The moon was captured by the Earth, and the stranded astronauts descended in their remaining spacecraft. One of these astronauts, Koriel, lost his watch. This watch was later discovered by an archeologist who thought it was a prank and threw it away.
Simultaneously, Koriel's old friend, who had died on the moon in his military space suit, is discovered by scientists, which leads to a whole big drama including a remnant of the ancient culture which starts some NEW trouble with the Ganymeans, leading ultimately to their being thrown back in time (and starting the war with our far-off ancestors on that big planet).
Whee! Now, isn't that a LOT more fun than "we evolved from ambitious monkeys in Africa, beat up the Neandertals, and spread all over the earth like a fungus"???
I used to be in Mensa, too. Kinda boring, everyone spent all their time kvetching about how nobody else values their brilliance, and nobody did any actual hacking. It was very disappointing.
I dropped out and started playing Halo 2 online (Big Team Battle rank = 19, Rumble Pit rank = 14 and climbing).
Isn't it nice, though, that you can be a server-side Java programmer during the day at work, and use the same skill set at home to hack together your client-side hobby projects?
Isn't it nice to be able to focus on a single language and really master it, instead of trying to keep several balls in the air at once?
Isn't it nice that if you ever wanted to, you could write an applet for your website instead of having to pay five hundred bucks for Flash authoring tools?
After all, with Java, the difference between web development and client-side development is just the libraries you choose... Isn't it "one stop shopping"?
Well, IF we lose the ice caps, which is entirely plausible, and IF the gulf stream doesn't turn off producing an ice age, then you could see the sea level rise by quite a bit. They were saying one foot over the next century, but some wit here on Slashdot pointed out that the mass of ice on Greenland alone would increase the surface level by 42 feet or so. I don't know if I buy THAT, but let's have some fun with it anyway.
I live in upstate New York, at 210 feet above sea level (God, I love the Catskills!). Being a mountain dweller, I can look on with some amusement as all those stuck up, smug folks down in NYC find out what it's like to live in Venice. Also, I can go on vacation in Venice, right here in New York, which is nothing to sniff at. Instead of gondolas, we'll probably get gypsy cab drivers in Zodiacs flying down the block at forty miles an hour yelling "GET OUTTA THE FUCKIN' WAY YOU PIECE-A-SHIT!". VERY entertaining.
While us East Coast types will take refuge in the mountains, as no doubt will our Californian counterparts (they'll benefit because the earthquakes will be underwater, thus causing great waves for all their surfer population and stealing business from Hawaii) I think the relatively dumber central and southern states are going to have a rough time.
First of all, the Mississippi is going to flood all the way up to Illinois or thereabouts. The Gulf of Mexico is going to be a LOT bigger. Texas is basically gone, folks (Hooray!). New Mexico has some high ground, so maybe it'll be an Island state. And Arizona has the bottom tip of the Rocky Mountains so everyone can head up to Flagstaff with the hippies, which isn't that bad a fate. Phoenix was too damn hot anyway.
The Southeast will probably be gone, but nobody will notice. Hawaiians will just wait for the volcanoes to grow another few dozen feet, no big deal there. Throw a few virgins in, please the fire gods, the mountain grows, and Bob's your uncle (as the British say).
Bathing suits? The strippers in your town wear bathing suits? Ours are butt nekkid.:)
Seriously, though, you've got me confused with a dweeb. I'm a BPFH (Bastard Programmer From Hell), which although not quite as powerful as a BOFH, is still quite sneaky, horny, and a complete degenerate.
I'll take hot nekkid chicks over server setup any day!
They have no way of evaluating your work. You could be brilliant; you could be an utter moron. A manager who wasn't promoted from within has no way of telling which is which. Everything eventually turns into a popularity contest as the manager favors the suck-ups and punishes the oddballs.
When a manager thinks a programmer may be crap but has no way of personally evaluating it, he'll take that programmer's work to another programmer (likely the first programmer's rival). The reviewer will shit all over the other programmer's work and the manager will think the programmer is crap even if he isn't. That programmer's life at the company is now ruined.
This happens a LOT with successful projects. Other programmers want a piece of them, so they sabotage the developer and take the project off his hands. Incompetent managers facilitate this.
The manager you WANT to work for is someone who was promoted from within, and who was a developer not so long ago. He'll have a good bullshit detector, and he'll understand the rivalries that develop on teams. In other words, he's not going to be a pidgeon.
ALL managers congradulate themselves for their "people skills" but they're fooling themselves if they think they've got the chops to really know what's going on right under their noses. Only an actual techie has a chance of really knowing what's going on.
Trust me on this one. I've been suffering under a know-nothing for four years. My life is a living hell. Every five minutes in my office, one programmer stabs another one in the back, and the manager goes along with everything with a deer-in-the-headlights look. I think internally he's muttering "hope for the best, hope for the best" because he SURE doesn't seem to know what he's doing...
You should have gotten the other IT guys in on your action, and told the boss "Sir, you're absolutely right! We'll need a company credit card and a paid day off to go to CompUSA, BestBuy, and Staples and research alternative solutions!"
Spend 7 hours drinking at the strip bar and one hour buying some wireless networking gear. Presto! Everybody's happy!
(announcer) Where are you going, Timmy? You look excited!
(Timmy) Oh, I am, Mr. Announcer! They found a job for me and it's OVERSEAS!
(A) That must be really exciting, Timmy. What are they going to have you doing over there?
(T) I'm not sure, but it's in Viet Nam so I'm betting it's going to be really cool. Maybe even an online porno site!
(A) Wow, good for you, Timmy.
(2 WEEKS LATER)
Ring, ring
(A) Why, that must be Timmy! I wonder how he's doing?
(picks up phone)
(T) FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET ME OUT OF HERE! THEY'RE SHOVING ME UP... SPLORTCH! SPLORTCH! -- BRRRT! BRRRT! BRRRT!
(A) My, my; it looks like Timmy has been disconnected. Oh, well, children. He'll call back later, I'm sure. He sounds like he's having a great time over there!
I mean, really. I love the whole idea of the Matrix Online, but I don't want to have to babysit a Windows machine just to be able to play one single game. And, anyway, playing a game about hackers on a WINDOWS BOX would be horrifying. You'd spend all your time waiting for the hammer to come down (pardon the pun). I mean, really -- hackers DO have a very well developed sense of irony.
Hey, things are cool. I've gotten much better information from several canadians already, and I'm back to thinking Canada's pretty nice. Actually, I'm embarrassed; I shouldn't have been that easy to spook. But hey, we're only human.:)
Well, that's reassuring about Canada. Being not entirely of sound mind myself (heh) the possibility of someone suddenly deciding I need some governmental help is rather intimidating. But if the rules up there are about the same as New York, well, the balance of cool things about Canada would tip the scales back towards it, I think.
I still think I'd love Toronto. I can't BELIEVE you guys actually get underground walking tunnels. In MY city (Albany, NY) we don't have anything like that. Hell, a lot of our streets are still cobblestone, and they ice over like nobody's business. If I had a nickel for every time I nearly broke my neck there...:)
Slashdot Mirror
Aha! I can point you in the right direction.
The world-acclaimed scientist James P. Hogan, in his "Giants Trilogy", reveals the amazing truth of our genesis:
Millions of years ago, a large planet existed where the asteroid belt now floats. On this planet were the Gentle Giants of Ganymede, who were somewhat interested in Earth. Unfortunately, they disliked dinosaurs because they were vegetarians and the dinosaur's diets upset them. So they wiped out the dinosaurs with advanced energy weapons, which interestingly created our great deserts.
OUR forebears were carried to this planet by the Giants because they felt we would make good pets with a little genetic engineering. At some point, all the Giants left for another star system, leaving behind a culture of humans who developed their own advanced technology and had a tremendous war. Unfortunately for them, they blew the planet to bits, throwing its moon towards the sun (along with a stranded colony of astronauts).
The moon was captured by the Earth, and the stranded astronauts descended in their remaining spacecraft. One of these astronauts, Koriel, lost his watch. This watch was later discovered by an archeologist who thought it was a prank and threw it away.
Simultaneously, Koriel's old friend, who had died on the moon in his military space suit, is discovered by scientists, which leads to a whole big drama including a remnant of the ancient culture which starts some NEW trouble with the Ganymeans, leading ultimately to their being thrown back in time (and starting the war with our far-off ancestors on that big planet).
Whee! Now, isn't that a LOT more fun than "we evolved from ambitious monkeys in Africa, beat up the Neandertals, and spread all over the earth like a fungus"???
Well, in her profile, she also has these sentences:
"I am a proud member of MENSA. I hate sexiest men, who are afraid of intelligent women."
Her writing reveals that she has difficulty with grammar and spelling. It is also a source of a certain amount of amusing irony.
The spelling is "superior":
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=superior
I used to be in Mensa, too. Kinda boring, everyone spent all their time kvetching about how nobody else values their brilliance, and nobody did any actual hacking. It was very disappointing.
I dropped out and started playing Halo 2 online (Big Team Battle rank = 19, Rumble Pit rank = 14 and climbing).
Hmm...
;)
Isn't it nice, though, that you can be a server-side Java programmer during the day at work, and use the same skill set at home to hack together your client-side hobby projects?
Isn't it nice to be able to focus on a single language and really master it, instead of trying to keep several balls in the air at once?
Isn't it nice that if you ever wanted to, you could write an applet for your website instead of having to pay five hundred bucks for Flash authoring tools?
After all, with Java, the difference between web development and client-side development is just the libraries you choose... Isn't it "one stop shopping"?
Right?
Awwww... Shit.
Yikes.
Looks like I'll be moving about 20 miles North, then, where the land is higher. Barring that, there's always Pennsylvania.
But...
Would that mean New Jersey would be gone?
W00T!!!
Well, IF we lose the ice caps, which is entirely plausible, and IF the gulf stream doesn't turn off producing an ice age, then you could see the sea level rise by quite a bit. They were saying one foot over the next century, but some wit here on Slashdot pointed out that the mass of ice on Greenland alone would increase the surface level by 42 feet or so. I don't know if I buy THAT, but let's have some fun with it anyway.
I live in upstate New York, at 210 feet above sea level (God, I love the Catskills!). Being a mountain dweller, I can look on with some amusement as all those stuck up, smug folks down in NYC find out what it's like to live in Venice. Also, I can go on vacation in Venice, right here in New York, which is nothing to sniff at. Instead of gondolas, we'll probably get gypsy cab drivers in Zodiacs flying down the block at forty miles an hour yelling "GET OUTTA THE FUCKIN' WAY YOU PIECE-A-SHIT!". VERY entertaining.
While us East Coast types will take refuge in the mountains, as no doubt will our Californian counterparts (they'll benefit because the earthquakes will be underwater, thus causing great waves for all their surfer population and stealing business from Hawaii) I think the relatively dumber central and southern states are going to have a rough time.
First of all, the Mississippi is going to flood all the way up to Illinois or thereabouts. The Gulf of Mexico is going to be a LOT bigger. Texas is basically gone, folks (Hooray!). New Mexico has some high ground, so maybe it'll be an Island state. And Arizona has the bottom tip of the Rocky Mountains so everyone can head up to Flagstaff with the hippies, which isn't that bad a fate. Phoenix was too damn hot anyway.
The Southeast will probably be gone, but nobody will notice. Hawaiians will just wait for the volcanoes to grow another few dozen feet, no big deal there. Throw a few virgins in, please the fire gods, the mountain grows, and Bob's your uncle (as the British say).
Big changes, big changes. Should be interesting!
...And if the computer discovers that you are doing something less than brilliant, it will scream "YOU DAFT HIPPIE" in a heavy English accent.
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
Who cares? They're NEKKID! It's like disneyland and Christmas all in one.
All hail the bastard! He's my hero.
And wire-fu matrix hacker-fights every half hour on the hour!
Woah!
uhhhhh..... FARM FRESH MILK!
Have you been receiving empty packages?
FARM FRESH! AAAAGH... MILK! FARMFRESHMILK!
No, it's Vivian from the Young Ones. The new Intel logo is going to be four silver stars stapled to a geek's forehead.
Bathing suits? The strippers in your town wear bathing suits? Ours are butt nekkid. :)
Seriously, though, you've got me confused with a dweeb. I'm a BPFH (Bastard Programmer From Hell), which although not quite as powerful as a BOFH, is still quite sneaky, horny, and a complete degenerate.
I'll take hot nekkid chicks over server setup any day!
You know that. I know that. The boss does not know that. And you fail to see the opportunity there!
Boss: "OMG -- I just discovered that wireless uses ethernet!"
Me: "Quick! Give us the credit card! We won't stop until we've made it right"
(later)
Woo, HOO, ladies! Come to papa!
They have no way of evaluating your work. You could be brilliant; you could be an utter moron. A manager who wasn't promoted from within has no way of telling which is which. Everything eventually turns into a popularity contest as the manager favors the suck-ups and punishes the oddballs.
When a manager thinks a programmer may be crap but has no way of personally evaluating it, he'll take that programmer's work to another programmer (likely the first programmer's rival). The reviewer will shit all over the other programmer's work and the manager will think the programmer is crap even if he isn't. That programmer's life at the company is now ruined.
This happens a LOT with successful projects. Other programmers want a piece of them, so they sabotage the developer and take the project off his hands. Incompetent managers facilitate this.
The manager you WANT to work for is someone who was promoted from within, and who was a developer not so long ago. He'll have a good bullshit detector, and he'll understand the rivalries that develop on teams. In other words, he's not going to be a pidgeon.
ALL managers congradulate themselves for their "people skills" but they're fooling themselves if they think they've got the chops to really know what's going on right under their noses. Only an actual techie has a chance of really knowing what's going on.
Trust me on this one. I've been suffering under a know-nothing for four years. My life is a living hell. Every five minutes in my office, one programmer stabs another one in the back, and the manager goes along with everything with a deer-in-the-headlights look. I think internally he's muttering "hope for the best, hope for the best" because he SURE doesn't seem to know what he's doing...
Just my two cents.
Man, you've got no imagination!
You should have gotten the other IT guys in on your action, and told the boss "Sir, you're absolutely right! We'll need a company credit card and a paid day off to go to CompUSA, BestBuy, and Staples and research alternative solutions!"
Spend 7 hours drinking at the strip bar and one hour buying some wireless networking gear. Presto! Everybody's happy!
MWAH, HA HA HA HA HA HA!
(announcer) Where are you going, Timmy? You look excited!
(Timmy) Oh, I am, Mr. Announcer! They found a job for me and it's OVERSEAS!
(A) That must be really exciting, Timmy. What are they going to have you doing over there?
(T) I'm not sure, but it's in Viet Nam so I'm betting it's going to be really cool. Maybe even an online porno site!
(A) Wow, good for you, Timmy.
(2 WEEKS LATER)
Ring, ring
(A) Why, that must be Timmy! I wonder how he's doing?
(picks up phone)
(T) FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET ME OUT OF HERE! THEY'RE SHOVING ME UP... SPLORTCH! SPLORTCH! -- BRRRT! BRRRT! BRRRT!
(A) My, my; it looks like Timmy has been disconnected. Oh, well, children. He'll call back later, I'm sure. He sounds like he's having a great time over there!
...do we get a playstation II or III version?
I mean, really. I love the whole idea of the Matrix Online, but I don't want to have to babysit a Windows machine just to be able to play one single game. And, anyway, playing a game about hackers on a WINDOWS BOX would be horrifying. You'd spend all your time waiting for the hammer to come down (pardon the pun). I mean, really -- hackers DO have a very well developed sense of irony.
Ah, but was it desecrated, or violated? I'm single, so I don't get much action... I'd like to think I "violated" hammertime.
Yes, he did... He shoots! He scores!
:)
Don't hate me because I thought of it first.
Iceland has geothermal power now! And they're shifting to a hydrogen economy.
I'm kind of in awe of that.
Hey, things are cool. I've gotten much better information from several canadians already, and I'm back to thinking Canada's pretty nice. Actually, I'm embarrassed; I shouldn't have been that easy to spook. But hey, we're only human. :)
Well, that's reassuring about Canada. Being not entirely of sound mind myself (heh) the possibility of someone suddenly deciding I need some governmental help is rather intimidating. But if the rules up there are about the same as New York, well, the balance of cool things about Canada would tip the scales back towards it, I think.
:)
I still think I'd love Toronto. I can't BELIEVE you guys actually get underground walking tunnels. In MY city (Albany, NY) we don't have anything like that. Hell, a lot of our streets are still cobblestone, and they ice over like nobody's business. If I had a nickel for every time I nearly broke my neck there...