SOHO view of comet Bradfield...
on
Summer Comet Update
·
· Score: 2, Informative
...is looking mighty impressive in the latest LASCO C3 frame, with a coma/nucleus that's so bright it's bleeding into adjacent pixels on the image. Neato. Grabbed it off as a desktop background.
Why would anyone expect a small town in Eastern Florida to be technologically advanced?
Must have something to do with the moon and stars. That's the bright stuff up in the sky you can see sometimes at night. Fairly difficult to get to. Takes a bit of technical expertise on the part of a large workforce of folks who live, perforce, close to where people and large objects are hurled skyward.
When you go and ask, be sure to get the DIRECTOR, and not just one of the nice people at the counter. In my experience, getting hold of the director is not the easiest thing in the world. BUSY BUSY BUSY. Be patient and sooner or later the door will open and you're in.
Make your pitch in the interests of the library's PATRONS, as opposed to merely yourself. Directors like keeping their patrons happy.
Accentuate the CHEAPNESS and EASE of this approach, with the library only having to burn a few cd's following a FREE download from the inet.
Perhaps mention that since the cd's only cost pennies apiece, lost or damaged property (library property) expenses will be near nothing, with replacement of damaged/missing items being a matter of mere minutes and pennies. WAY better than the replacement costs on books, tapes, and PURCHASED cd's.
Libraries are on a tight budget (think: tax dollars going to really STUPID places, while the SMART places languish) and anything that can save them money while improving their ability to serve the community is something they're going to like.
Give it to them in a form THEY can relate to and your odds go way up.
I suspicion that this is going to get handed off to the Brevard County central library in Cocoa for a final decision (assuming that it even makes it out of the director's office in CB).
I'm not a member of ANY users group hereabouts (or any other group either for that matter, it's just something I don't go for) despite having local roots in the computer community hereabouts going all the way back to Jerry Russell's TechTalk (remember THAT?) and other BBS's, and consequently don't know what the local UG's may have by way of resources or inclination to support this sort of thing, but perhaps they should be asked for a bit of input/insight too?
..and now I have become unable to even understand why everybody's watching that infernal box. As it is, the day fails to contain sufficient hours for me to learn and do all the neato things I wanna learn and do (yup, that even includes a bit of time for/.), and the concept of blocking out HOURS, for learning and doing NOTHING, has become abhorrent to me. I find myself in people's houses and they're staring mindlessly into that thing and I'm UNABLE to fathom their hypnotism. I like me better, now that I've become this way, although certain others like me less. So it goes.
You have to be careful when you poke a large organization with lots of lawyers and no sense of humour.
Which gives me to understand that you are aware of large organizations with lots of lawyers that have a sense of humor.
I am but a humble traveler seeking wisdom here on/. Please point me in the direction of these large organizations with lots of lawyers and a sense of humor. I would like to learn from them.
Before this is over, everybody is going to know everything about everybody, at which point nobody is going to give a shit about anybody. Crooks excepted, of course. Should prove interesting.
So when does this sort of thing finally render the whole clothing gig hopelessly silly? Put the damned things on when they're actually NEEDED, and don't when they're not.
What the fuck is the Big Deal here?
The bluenoses have run things for SO long that we've come to take it completely for granted that the sonofabitches are actually RIGHT.
They're not.
Enough footage from devices like this and eventually everybody will saturate on the input, collectively shrug their shoulders over it, and get on with living their lives, minus one more retarded Cultural Imperialist bullshit item to put up with.
Not only will the emperor NOT have any "new clothes," it will be perfectly ok and people will need to have that little tale explained to them, even as they shake their heads in disbelief at the overarching stupidity of their forebears.
Produce another system to verify the first system's proof. The same methodology could be applied to electronic voting. Everyone votes twice, once on each of two machines from two different manufacturers, and at the end of the day the results are tallied separately and compared.
This looks good until you factor in the pisshead, alzheimer's, or "I changed my mind" factors.
The two sets of votes will NEVER match up owing to people who voted two different ways, nevermind any machine-generated irregularities (power surges, water drips onto the circuitry from a leaky ceiling, cosmic ray strikes, younameit).
Pfft, the whole thing goes right out the window. Nailing this sort of thing down isn't too far removed from nailing the uncertainties of the original article down. Seems trivial at first glance, but when it comes to guaranteeing results, then all of a sudden all this crap comes out of the woodwork and lands squarely in your lap.
if you can afford an internet connection after you are fired without severance or unemployment benefits.
Actually, the folks down at the unemployment office are surprisingly inclined to accept your side of the story when it comes to getting fired or quitting.
I've personally received full unemployment bennies after being fired for not performing my job duties a week after getting a small raise, after quitting and moving to Hawaii to go surfing, and after being fired for attempting to organize labor on a shop floor, among other things.
There is a reason the attrition rate of tech support is much higher then shit-shoveling.
Actually, it's even worse than that. Tech support is in no wise different from working at any job where you're interacting with the Great Mass of Idiots. Motel desk clerk, 7-Eleven counter guy, McDonald's, you name it. They're ALL THE SAME, INCLUDING TECH SUPPORT. Zillions of fucking idiots who think that they've somehow "got you cornered" and vent all over you for shit they caused themselves.
But there's a catch.
In any of the "standard" jobs where you deal with the public, you knew you'd be doing this when you walked in the door looking to fill out an application.
Tech support folks oftentimes have no clue where they're going to wind up, and if that's not bad enough, being technical types in the first place causes them to be less than, ummm...shall we say 'robust,' when it comes to dealing with the slings and arrows of the Great Shoal of Idiots.
Net result: You've got somebody who's poorly adapted to deal with the emotional stresses (vastly worse than mere physical stresses, unless those consist in taking bullets to the chest or some such similar) of working with the public, working with the public. The plumber goes home from work and washes his hands. No more shit. The McDonald's clerk goes home from work secure in the knowledge that all them assholes can no longer get to him. No more shit.
The TECH WORKER goes home from work, and grinds away mentally over all that happened and all that's going to happen again tomorrow and slowly goes down the emotional drain over a period of weeks, months, or perhaps even years, before finally blowing a fuse and bailing out.
People who belittle the effects of this sort of thing are unable to integrate the fact that identical stimuli will have differing effects on different people, and in their ignorance of the actualities of the situation can only make things worse overall.
Yes indeed, tech work is one of the most corrosive environments you could work at, and if you're not adapted to it the way a weight lifter adapts to plucking large masses of iron off the floor, it's going to be the death of you.
A mostly non-erratic orbit that circles the sun and not other heavenly bodies.
Correct.
Which fits in perfectly with my dictum that should Ralph Kramden some day make good on his threats to send Alice to the moon, but somehow she misses the moon and enters solar orbit, then as far as I'm concerned, Alice becomes a planet at that point.
Start here if you'd like. Short and sweet, and comes with a nice pretty picture. Dig for more if you'd like, it's out there and it's not even hiding. Them little boogers isn't volcanic. And oh yeah, NASA is NOT "asserting that because they are spheres they must have formed in water." Not at all. Not sure where you got that from, but you might as well go ahead and put it back, 'cause it's wrong.
You are correct of course. As far as that goes, they're ALREADY doing that.
But as the Army is always for fond of pointing out, somewhere along the line, you've gotta go in and secure the ground. It's a multipronged approach that no single solution will ever be able to do alone. Ergo, things with legs, neither living nor driven by things living.
Before it's over, not only will stuff be running around outside (autonomously), but it will also be creeping around town, into, onto, and under buildings and streets. Should be some mighty interesting times coming up, eh?
Which brings us to the "so obvious, everybody's missing it" conclusion to the business of autonomous navigation over ROUGH terrain.
When these things are actually out in the field doing their jobs, they're going to be doing it on LEGS, not wheels, and they're gonna be going like a bat out of hell on top of it. Tell everybody you read about it first on slashdot if you'd like.
Should be interesting when the first legged competitor shows up for a Grand Challenge. Expect them to fail hilariously the first time or three, but after that, the laughter will turn into dropped jaws with no sound coming out.
Slashdot Mirror
...is looking mighty impressive in the latest LASCO C3 frame, with a coma/nucleus that's so bright it's bleeding into adjacent pixels on the image. Neato. Grabbed it off as a desktop background.
Must have something to do with the moon and stars. That's the bright stuff up in the sky you can see sometimes at night. Fairly difficult to get to. Takes a bit of technical expertise on the part of a large workforce of folks who live, perforce, close to where people and large objects are hurled skyward.
Certain people are unable to comprehend this.
Make your pitch in the interests of the library's PATRONS, as opposed to merely yourself. Directors like keeping their patrons happy.
Accentuate the CHEAPNESS and EASE of this approach, with the library only having to burn a few cd's following a FREE download from the inet.
Perhaps mention that since the cd's only cost pennies apiece, lost or damaged property (library property) expenses will be near nothing, with replacement of damaged/missing items being a matter of mere minutes and pennies. WAY better than the replacement costs on books, tapes, and PURCHASED cd's.
Libraries are on a tight budget (think: tax dollars going to really STUPID places, while the SMART places languish) and anything that can save them money while improving their ability to serve the community is something they're going to like.
Give it to them in a form THEY can relate to and your odds go way up.
Whatta ya say we SLASHDOT the Brevard County Library System with user requests for software cd's?
I'm not a member of ANY users group hereabouts (or any other group either for that matter, it's just something I don't go for) despite having local roots in the computer community hereabouts going all the way back to Jerry Russell's TechTalk (remember THAT?) and other BBS's, and consequently don't know what the local UG's may have by way of resources or inclination to support this sort of thing, but perhaps they should be asked for a bit of input/insight too?
Cocoa Beach
..and now I have become unable to even understand why everybody's watching that infernal box. As it is, the day fails to contain sufficient hours for me to learn and do all the neato things I wanna learn and do (yup, that even includes a bit of time for /.), and the concept of blocking out HOURS, for learning and doing NOTHING, has become abhorrent to me. I find myself in people's houses and they're staring mindlessly into that thing and I'm UNABLE to fathom their hypnotism. I like me better, now that I've become this way, although certain others like me less. So it goes.
The bad news is that shortly thereafter, everything will turn an odious dull black.
Which gives me to understand that you are aware of large organizations with lots of lawyers that have a sense of humor.
I am but a humble traveler seeking wisdom here on /. Please point me in the direction of these large organizations with lots of lawyers and a sense of humor. I would like to learn from them.
Dehydrate her. No problemo.
Think: Fly on the wall.
Before this is over, everybody is going to know everything about everybody, at which point nobody is going to give a shit about anybody. Crooks excepted, of course. Should prove interesting.
What the fuck is the Big Deal here?
The bluenoses have run things for SO long that we've come to take it completely for granted that the sonofabitches are actually RIGHT.
They're not.
Enough footage from devices like this and eventually everybody will saturate on the input, collectively shrug their shoulders over it, and get on with living their lives, minus one more retarded Cultural Imperialist bullshit item to put up with.
Not only will the emperor NOT have any "new clothes," it will be perfectly ok and people will need to have that little tale explained to them, even as they shake their heads in disbelief at the overarching stupidity of their forebears.
"The engineering calculations were all wrong!!"
"Yeah, but it was only a careless mistake in arithmetic, so there's no real harm done."
This looks good until you factor in the pisshead, alzheimer's, or "I changed my mind" factors.
The two sets of votes will NEVER match up owing to people who voted two different ways, nevermind any machine-generated irregularities (power surges, water drips onto the circuitry from a leaky ceiling, cosmic ray strikes, younameit).
Pfft, the whole thing goes right out the window. Nailing this sort of thing down isn't too far removed from nailing the uncertainties of the original article down. Seems trivial at first glance, but when it comes to guaranteeing results, then all of a sudden all this crap comes out of the woodwork and lands squarely in your lap.
No, but neither does it make asskissing any more productive or defensible.
Actually, the folks down at the unemployment office are surprisingly inclined to accept your side of the story when it comes to getting fired or quitting.
I've personally received full unemployment bennies after being fired for not performing my job duties a week after getting a small raise, after quitting and moving to Hawaii to go surfing, and after being fired for attempting to organize labor on a shop floor, among other things.
Don't swallow the FUD. Go for it!!
Do not tempt the gods that way. You're just asking for something.
Yep. You said it.
Actually, it's even worse than that. Tech support is in no wise different from working at any job where you're interacting with the Great Mass of Idiots. Motel desk clerk, 7-Eleven counter guy, McDonald's, you name it. They're ALL THE SAME, INCLUDING TECH SUPPORT. Zillions of fucking idiots who think that they've somehow "got you cornered" and vent all over you for shit they caused themselves.
But there's a catch.
In any of the "standard" jobs where you deal with the public, you knew you'd be doing this when you walked in the door looking to fill out an application.
Tech support folks oftentimes have no clue where they're going to wind up, and if that's not bad enough, being technical types in the first place causes them to be less than, ummm...shall we say 'robust,' when it comes to dealing with the slings and arrows of the Great Shoal of Idiots.
Net result: You've got somebody who's poorly adapted to deal with the emotional stresses (vastly worse than mere physical stresses, unless those consist in taking bullets to the chest or some such similar) of working with the public, working with the public. The plumber goes home from work and washes his hands. No more shit. The McDonald's clerk goes home from work secure in the knowledge that all them assholes can no longer get to him. No more shit.
The TECH WORKER goes home from work, and grinds away mentally over all that happened and all that's going to happen again tomorrow and slowly goes down the emotional drain over a period of weeks, months, or perhaps even years, before finally blowing a fuse and bailing out.
People who belittle the effects of this sort of thing are unable to integrate the fact that identical stimuli will have differing effects on different people, and in their ignorance of the actualities of the situation can only make things worse overall.
Yes indeed, tech work is one of the most corrosive environments you could work at, and if you're not adapted to it the way a weight lifter adapts to plucking large masses of iron off the floor, it's going to be the death of you.
Correct.
Which fits in perfectly with my dictum that should Ralph Kramden some day make good on his threats to send Alice to the moon, but somehow she misses the moon and enters solar orbit, then as far as I'm concerned, Alice becomes a planet at that point.
Holy cow! What a leading line!
But no, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot Lithuanian.
Start here if you'd like. Short and sweet, and comes with a nice pretty picture. Dig for more if you'd like, it's out there and it's not even hiding. Them little boogers isn't volcanic. And oh yeah, NASA is NOT "asserting that because they are spheres they must have formed in water." Not at all. Not sure where you got that from, but you might as well go ahead and put it back, 'cause it's wrong.
You are correct of course. As far as that goes, they're ALREADY doing that.
But as the Army is always for fond of pointing out, somewhere along the line, you've gotta go in and secure the ground. It's a multipronged approach that no single solution will ever be able to do alone. Ergo, things with legs, neither living nor driven by things living.
Before it's over, not only will stuff be running around outside (autonomously), but it will also be creeping around town, into, onto, and under buildings and streets. Should be some mighty interesting times coming up, eh?
Which brings us to the "so obvious, everybody's missing it" conclusion to the business of autonomous navigation over ROUGH terrain.
When these things are actually out in the field doing their jobs, they're going to be doing it on LEGS, not wheels, and they're gonna be going like a bat out of hell on top of it. Tell everybody you read about it first on slashdot if you'd like.
Should be interesting when the first legged competitor shows up for a Grand Challenge. Expect them to fail hilariously the first time or three, but after that, the laughter will turn into dropped jaws with no sound coming out.
We have.
Count on them to somehow manage to fuck it all up, though.