How do you make a connection between a kiosk where you can order food at McDonalds and robots taking over every job in the United States?
By projecting 47 years into the future, during which just about anything can, and probably will, happen.;-) Futurists (and fake psychics) do it all the time.
It even easier when you project, like, 200 years into the future. No one currently alive will be around to say you were wrong (barring major any major gerontology revolutions).
Prediction: By the year 2203, the sun will regularly shine out of people's asses. See? It's easy! Prove me wrong. Prove some sort of weird, quantum subspace thingy won't someday be able to visually connect the sun's coronasphere with the colon.
I was a conservative before I abandoned all ideology and other fruitless attempts at TOEs (Theories Of Everything), so I'd like to take task with one thing.
"Oppurtunity" is most assuredly NOT a bad word to a conservative. It is, in fact, part of the whole point of economic conservatism as I saw it- to give people all the oppurtunities they need to succeed in life, rather than just the single choice of staying on the dole.
Many would disagree with this analysis, but they tend to be rabid anti-conservatives fighting a bogeyman instead of actual base conservative theory. Sadly, this is true of all ideologes. The vitriol against Bush is no worse or different from the vitriol against Clinton. People whip themselves up into a lather and begin to imagine the stupidest nonsense you can ever imagine. Clinton was a coke addict had dozens of people whacked. Bush is still a drunk and allowed 9/11 to happen for political points. Yada yada yada. They read it on a web page, so it must be true!
Your constitutional analysis is also faulty, but I'm far too tired to address that.:-) OK, be honest, I just don't feel like it.
Maybe Taco and crew should get Lessig to ask Dean to answer questions from all of us.
"Howard, do you have anything to say that isn't so dripping in politics and ideology that it burns holes through the floor like the blood from one of Ripley's bad guys, or is this just more of the same old same old left versus right fiddling and warring while civilization decays and our enemies laugh?"
Problem: it's a time causality loop. You cannot stop it! Why? Because if you do stop the war, you stop the Terminators, and you then never get them sent into the past. Without them in the past, you cannot have Skynet. Get it?!!?!
Keep it.:-) There is no time travel, hence there are no real laws of time travel to nitpick.
Read Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. He has a system where you can leave the timeline, someone else can make a change in it beofre you were born, erase the timeline that created you, but you still exist as long as you were not IN the timelne after the change ocurred and propagated.
This is my main nitpick with people who nitpick time travel stories. THERE ARE NO RULES! In T2, they physically sent a terminator back in time. Once he's there, he exists. He is the physical manifestation of a potential future- the end result of an incredibly complex set of wave functions. Even if his actions skew the probabilities toward a future that does not include him, he exists NOW. The forces and functions that led to his existence in the present have already done their work.
It's a sort of metatime. You chage a timeline from state A to state B. We now live in state B, but state A did exist at one time, perhaps along some other temporal dimension. From this view of time having more than a single dimension, the effects of state A can linger in state B.
I believe he has contracted to do six books. The first trilogy is out, and there is supposed to be a gap of several years in the story universe between the two trilogies. First book of the second trilogy is listed on amazon but not yet released. They HAD a date at one point, but I guess its slipped.
Do you ever get the feeling- all across the Covenant series, the Mordant's Need books and the "Gap" SF series- that Donaldson HATES his characters?;-) I have never seen an author brutalize his creations as much as Donaldson.
Well, a few of the Lannisters are pretty evil- most notably Cersei and her pwecious Joffrey. But, that being said, even Martin's clear cut evil characters are 3D and well done. Utterly amoral people like that *do* exist.
I agree on the rest, though. All the POV characters are complex and interesting. My favorite is Tyrion, the dwarf. You want to root for him, but when something bad happens to him, you realize he only had himself to blame. His own quest for some sort of power puts him into the bad situation and he basically sets himself up for a fall many time. He knows what a pack of alpha assholes his family is, but fails mnay times to factor that into his actions.
I also like Daenerys a lot. I hope she hooks up with Arya and sails into King's Landing with a fleet load of whoop ass.
You mean Gates was sitting still for an interview, and no one thought to send a strike team or even a cruise missile? The spectre of this guy still haunts people. No one can move on because they think he might be lurking just around the next corner ready to exact retribution for abandoning him and his regime. What the He- Oh, wait. I'm thinking of Hussein. Never mind.
We don't have a lot of basements here, but we do have crawl spaces. Better than a slab, I guess.
I spent hours shuffling around and lying in that tiny space, hooking up cable and tacking it to the structure. The payoff was that the only holes inside the house were for the wall jack. I came up inside the walls from underneath.
I got to know the wildlife down there very well (there's less than you might imagine). I still trade emails with some Black Widows I met.
... though Karen Allen is the only one that I'd personally like to see in it as Spielberg's wife (Kate Capshaw) just annoys the hell out of me!:)
Maybe, but, Jesus Christ On Rye, Capshaw looked great in that princess/harem/courtesan outfit during the gross-out dinner scene, and later in that willowy blue whatsis before the bug scene.
Are you crazy? Short Round kicked ass! He was a competent getaway driver, a sneaky card cheat, was not intimidated by a beautiful grown woman, knew martial arts, had the guts to apply FIRE to someone else's gut when the situation called for it, knew when to use his tongue and when to hold it, and he saved Indiana by beating the tar out of the little royal kid messing with the bad juju voodoo.
On the rope bridge, Jar-Jar would have screamed and blubbered. Short Round quietly turned to Willie and said, "Hang on. We going for a ride." The kid had a set of balls on him, man.
If they had both been there, Short Round would kicked Jar-Jar off the bridge himself in the name of the mission.
Re:The Contrarian View
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Nice to hear from a successful MSEE. I'm sure you have a 12" penis, too.
Geez. How'd you know?
Actually, that was only after I had it shortened.
The Contrarian View
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Oh yeah, those student loans... all $60k worth of them.
Geez! I got my BSEE at Cal State University, Long Beach. It was about $500 a semester at the time (mid 1980's). Graduated in 1988. It was the largest EE program west of the Mississippi at the time, and fairly well thought of in the industry as far as I could tell. One interviewer told me that the perception was that CSULB grads had nothing to prove, and just showed up and did the work.
My employer paid for my MSEE from USC, but, honestly, I think I'd be where I am now anyway without it.
I now make $140K a year, just bought a 2003 Mustang GT for cash, and am planning retirement for about age 48... maybe 45 with a bit of luck. That is when I will build the 30" autoguiding, computerized, motorized reflecting telescope in my backyard as my ultimate geek life project (assuming I don't also start work on the directed energy weapons). The mirror alone will set me back $10K or more.
I realzed early on, thanks to some advice from an engineer I knew in high school, that, yeah, the degree isn't worth all *that* much, even from a prestigious school. He told me to learn a lot of hands on stuff, so I joined a ham radio club and built Heathkits all through college (I still use my Heathkit voltmeter at work). Once I was hired post graduation, I learned everything I could, read every application note and data sheet I could get my hands on, and continue my education into the real world stuff.
All that stuff that's so emphasized in college is so unimporant in the real job. I haven't used Kirchoff's law since college. I haven't seen an integral in years.
And, kids, go into hardware engineering. The Indians can't touch me- they're all software weenies. Oh, and take extra courses in electromagnetics. I've lost count of the pure digital guys who don't understand why I am so meticulous about trace impedance and termination stubs when I want to get 10 gigabit data into an FPGA. RF and digital are converging. I regularly deal with digital data streams at 3 GHz or higher, and I don't mean multiplied inside a chip. I mean 3 Gbps data on 20 layer PCBs distributed all over the board, and traces of a couple inches become efficient transmitting and receiving antennas.
Yes. We're all alpha geeks with unparalleled technical skills, perfect Libertarian/Free Market outlooks, vast bank accounts/portfolios and enourmous genitals that make the bitches scream and beg for more.
I hate the little dramas they try to play out as if we're supposed to believe we're seeing real people. I don't care if some damn, whiny bitch isn't feeling "fresh". Welcome to the world of evolution and genetics. You don't feel fresh. I lose my hair at age 40 and my refractory period has hit 2 weeks. Welcome to the Miserable Hearts Club. Now shut up about it.
Or the stupid jingles or the grating voiceovers. Everyone sounds like a used car salesman or a politician. Everybody in ad-land has happy nuclear familes in Whitebreadville, except for the Black targeted ads that are invariably accompanied by some sort of stereotypical blues jingle. I wanna see a Burger King commercial with Menace Klan's "Kill Whitey" in the background. Have a BK Fish, G, and tap some of that ass!
Or any alcohol ad. "You're all losers, so you need to dull your mind even further before you can have fun! May we suggest you consume large quantites of our cheap, watery beer. Oh, and drink responsibly! Wink! Wink!" Jackass, if I wanted to drink responsibly, I'd have a glass of orange juice. Wink wink at my spinchter, assface.
Whatever happened to those goddamned Mentos commercials? Mentos - breath mint of the master race. Christ, I don't even know what that meant! And if anyone actually smiled as wide as they do in toothpaste commercials, their brains would pop out. I guess it's a good thing that these dogfood grade morons with the idiot grins plastered on their botoxed lippage don't have brains in the first place.
And smoker's toothpolish. How dick is that? "Bob! You quit smoking!" says whore. "DID I?" says Bob. "Hmm, no. I guess not," says whore. "I can still smell the fetid stench of your filthy brain damaged habit wafting from your smoke encrusted clothing. Bleah. It's an extra $200 if you expect me to deal with your Marlboro funk."
Slashdot Mirror
By projecting 47 years into the future, during which just about anything can, and probably will, happen. ;-) Futurists (and fake psychics) do it all the time.
It even easier when you project, like, 200 years into the future. No one currently alive will be around to say you were wrong (barring major any major gerontology revolutions).
Prediction: By the year 2203, the sun will regularly shine out of people's asses. See? It's easy! Prove me wrong. Prove some sort of weird, quantum subspace thingy won't someday be able to visually connect the sun's coronasphere with the colon.
"Oppurtunity" is most assuredly NOT a bad word to a conservative. It is, in fact, part of the whole point of economic conservatism as I saw it- to give people all the oppurtunities they need to succeed in life, rather than just the single choice of staying on the dole.
Many would disagree with this analysis, but they tend to be rabid anti-conservatives fighting a bogeyman instead of actual base conservative theory. Sadly, this is true of all ideologes. The vitriol against Bush is no worse or different from the vitriol against Clinton. People whip themselves up into a lather and begin to imagine the stupidest nonsense you can ever imagine. Clinton was a coke addict had dozens of people whacked. Bush is still a drunk and allowed 9/11 to happen for political points. Yada yada yada. They read it on a web page, so it must be true!
Your constitutional analysis is also faulty, but I'm far too tired to address that. :-) OK, be honest, I just don't feel like it.
OK. We can bring back the "good old days" and you can relive your childhood working in a coal mine. :-)
The most famous home movie ever filmed (Zapruder) was 8mm B&W, so... so... so... THERE!
ObHa: Ha!
Did you automatically assume I'm some sort of Bush supporter because I bashed Dean? The Hell with both of them.
"Howard, do you have anything to say that isn't so dripping in politics and ideology that it burns holes through the floor like the blood from one of Ripley's bad guys, or is this just more of the same old same old left versus right fiddling and warring while civilization decays and our enemies laugh?"
Mmmmmyep.
Got go read what that politican has to say, yesiree.
Mmm hmmm.
Yup. I'm sure it'll be different, and, um, oh, I dunno...
(sigh)
I wonder if my Tivo picked up "Dead Like Me" tonight?
Wow. Where's my Nobel Prize?!
IgNobel Prize?
Oh well... we trailblazers are never appreciated in our time.
Yeah, but would terrorists fear a gigantic rotating barbie doll?
You know, come to think of it, they might...
Then you might want to get them right.
The Andromeda Strain.
Keep it. :-) There is no time travel, hence there are no real laws of time travel to nitpick.
Read Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories. He has a system where you can leave the timeline, someone else can make a change in it beofre you were born, erase the timeline that created you, but you still exist as long as you were not IN the timelne after the change ocurred and propagated.
This is my main nitpick with people who nitpick time travel stories. THERE ARE NO RULES! In T2, they physically sent a terminator back in time. Once he's there, he exists. He is the physical manifestation of a potential future- the end result of an incredibly complex set of wave functions. Even if his actions skew the probabilities toward a future that does not include him, he exists NOW. The forces and functions that led to his existence in the present have already done their work.
It's a sort of metatime. You chage a timeline from state A to state B. We now live in state B, but state A did exist at one time, perhaps along some other temporal dimension. From this view of time having more than a single dimension, the effects of state A can linger in state B.
I believe he has contracted to do six books. The first trilogy is out, and there is supposed to be a gap of several years in the story universe between the two trilogies. First book of the second trilogy is listed on amazon but not yet released. They HAD a date at one point, but I guess its slipped.
Do you ever get the feeling- all across the Covenant series, the Mordant's Need books and the "Gap" SF series- that Donaldson HATES his characters? ;-) I have never seen an author brutalize his creations as much as Donaldson.
Well, a few of the Lannisters are pretty evil- most notably Cersei and her pwecious Joffrey. But, that being said, even Martin's clear cut evil characters are 3D and well done. Utterly amoral people like that *do* exist.
I agree on the rest, though. All the POV characters are complex and interesting. My favorite is Tyrion, the dwarf. You want to root for him, but when something bad happens to him, you realize he only had himself to blame. His own quest for some sort of power puts him into the bad situation and he basically sets himself up for a fall many time. He knows what a pack of alpha assholes his family is, but fails mnay times to factor that into his actions.
I also like Daenerys a lot. I hope she hooks up with Arya and sails into King's Landing with a fleet load of whoop ass.
I swear on my grandmother grave that I saw "In-Person Shooting" when I first read it.
A few less FPS games for me, I think. More Super Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing for a while.
Well, I have a 5-day weekend ahead of me. You all play nice.
I wish my meat had substantial goodwill and good reputation.
I'm sorry, but I simply could not resist. I will now stoically accept my modding down like a man.
Wait. You mean *Gates* was sitting still for...
I spent hours shuffling around and lying in that tiny space, hooking up cable and tacking it to the structure. The payoff was that the only holes inside the house were for the wall jack. I came up inside the walls from underneath.
I got to know the wildlife down there very well (there's less than you might imagine). I still trade emails with some Black Widows I met.
Maybe, but, Jesus Christ On Rye, Capshaw looked great in that princess/harem/courtesan outfit during the gross-out dinner scene, and later in that willowy blue whatsis before the bug scene.
On the rope bridge, Jar-Jar would have screamed and blubbered. Short Round quietly turned to Willie and said, "Hang on. We going for a ride." The kid had a set of balls on him, man.
If they had both been there, Short Round would kicked Jar-Jar off the bridge himself in the name of the mission.
Geez. How'd you know?
Actually, that was only after I had it shortened.
Geez! I got my BSEE at Cal State University, Long Beach. It was about $500 a semester at the time (mid 1980's). Graduated in 1988. It was the largest EE program west of the Mississippi at the time, and fairly well thought of in the industry as far as I could tell. One interviewer told me that the perception was that CSULB grads had nothing to prove, and just showed up and did the work.
My employer paid for my MSEE from USC, but, honestly, I think I'd be where I am now anyway without it.
I now make $140K a year, just bought a 2003 Mustang GT for cash, and am planning retirement for about age 48... maybe 45 with a bit of luck. That is when I will build the 30" autoguiding, computerized, motorized reflecting telescope in my backyard as my ultimate geek life project (assuming I don't also start work on the directed energy weapons). The mirror alone will set me back $10K or more.
I realzed early on, thanks to some advice from an engineer I knew in high school, that, yeah, the degree isn't worth all *that* much, even from a prestigious school. He told me to learn a lot of hands on stuff, so I joined a ham radio club and built Heathkits all through college (I still use my Heathkit voltmeter at work). Once I was hired post graduation, I learned everything I could, read every application note and data sheet I could get my hands on, and continue my education into the real world stuff.
All that stuff that's so emphasized in college is so unimporant in the real job. I haven't used Kirchoff's law since college. I haven't seen an integral in years.
And, kids, go into hardware engineering. The Indians can't touch me- they're all software weenies. Oh, and take extra courses in electromagnetics. I've lost count of the pure digital guys who don't understand why I am so meticulous about trace impedance and termination stubs when I want to get 10 gigabit data into an FPGA. RF and digital are converging. I regularly deal with digital data streams at 3 GHz or higher, and I don't mean multiplied inside a chip. I mean 3 Gbps data on 20 layer PCBs distributed all over the board, and traces of a couple inches become efficient transmitting and receiving antennas.
Upstairs AND downstairs?
Yes. We're all alpha geeks with unparalleled technical skills, perfect Libertarian/Free Market outlooks, vast bank accounts/portfolios and enourmous genitals that make the bitches scream and beg for more.
I hate the little dramas they try to play out as if we're supposed to believe we're seeing real people. I don't care if some damn, whiny bitch isn't feeling "fresh". Welcome to the world of evolution and genetics. You don't feel fresh. I lose my hair at age 40 and my refractory period has hit 2 weeks. Welcome to the Miserable Hearts Club. Now shut up about it.
Or the stupid jingles or the grating voiceovers. Everyone sounds like a used car salesman or a politician. Everybody in ad-land has happy nuclear familes in Whitebreadville, except for the Black targeted ads that are invariably accompanied by some sort of stereotypical blues jingle. I wanna see a Burger King commercial with Menace Klan's "Kill Whitey" in the background. Have a BK Fish, G, and tap some of that ass!
Or any alcohol ad. "You're all losers, so you need to dull your mind even further before you can have fun! May we suggest you consume large quantites of our cheap, watery beer. Oh, and drink responsibly! Wink! Wink!" Jackass, if I wanted to drink responsibly, I'd have a glass of orange juice. Wink wink at my spinchter, assface.
Whatever happened to those goddamned Mentos commercials? Mentos - breath mint of the master race. Christ, I don't even know what that meant! And if anyone actually smiled as wide as they do in toothpaste commercials, their brains would pop out. I guess it's a good thing that these dogfood grade morons with the idiot grins plastered on their botoxed lippage don't have brains in the first place.
And smoker's toothpolish. How dick is that? "Bob! You quit smoking!" says whore. "DID I?" says Bob. "Hmm, no. I guess not," says whore. "I can still smell the fetid stench of your filthy brain damaged habit wafting from your smoke encrusted clothing. Bleah. It's an extra $200 if you expect me to deal with your Marlboro funk."
Argh! Don't get me started on commercials!