Recently, I was involved in an online "fight-to-the-death" with a young fellow, freshman in college, nice guy too. It was on a different discussion site, for my real passion in life, drag racing. A big event was being planned, a "shoot-out" where a bunch of us get together and race each other. Its loads of fun. Anyhow, this fellow stated that he couldn't show up because his "rents" were coming to town. I pondered this for several minutes before realizing that he meant his PARENTS!! Being a (grand)parent myself, I basically unloaded both barrels on this guy.
My argument was that the guy in question was being disrespectful in a major way. He was either too lazy or too much of a punk to even spell out parents, and by doing that he was throwing a dis at his mom and dad, who are putting him through college. The more I thought about it, the more angry I became.
Then a sort of civil war broke out, me with my faction of older, more proper types, and him with the younger, more cavalier types. The feuding went on for days.
Eventually, the moderator threatened physical violence toward both of us unless we knock off our grudge, and return to more civil ways.
In the end, it was nothing more than a difference of opinion. My opinion was he should have shown the proper respect for his parents by prefixing Pa to his rents statement. His opinion was that he could omit the Pa and still be showing proper respect. While I strongly disagree with his thought process, it was none of my business to contradict and correct, or attempt to correct his behavior. I was within my rights to call him out and disagree, but it should have ended there. I got emotionally involved because I imagined what my personal feelings would be if I had found out my own children were calling me a RENT, and how I'd amend my will to make sure they got a set of towels or maybe the couch that's in my garage, while the non-RENT children would get my house, cars, the AV center, the computers, etc... Respect is a 2 ways street.
I guess the point I'm belaboring is... Spelling and Grammar count. Maybe not to you, but it counts to someone. If you're trying to say something important, why muck up the message with typo's and blatantly obvious grammatical errors. People will notice, and will associate you with people too lazy to do things correctly. Even if it takes twice as long to write something, more people will read it. When I encounter a "problem" document, I give the writer 3 chances. If three blatant mistakes are found, I stop reading and move on to the next document. It's prudent to allow someone to have a mis-key, or a brain fart. But a trend is a sign that this person doesn't care what I think of them, so I assume they're full of crap. They can gain acceptance somewhere else, where mistakes are welcome, where ever that is.
I also have heard and understand "second language" problems. But in my experience, second language posters are very careful to check their spelling and grammar, so they are assured the correct point gets across. Why is it that first language posters feel they can skip the proof read and live with the errors? Beats me.
Hmm... 3 million is 10 percent of 300 million... I think this is a statistical anomaly. I'll RTFA in a sec. to double check those figures.
Being one of the "rebels" who shuns the thought of broadcast TV like the plague it is, I find it comforting, and yet disturbing that I'm in such sparse company. Anyone who has watched a "Survivor" or "Real World" episode and has decided to continue to PAY to be spoon fed such garbage is quite beyond my comprehension.
Do yourselves a favor. Turn off the TV. Read a book. Go for a walk. Do some yard work. Play with your kids. Fix something. Call someone. Learn to sculpt. Volunteer somewhere. Do some of those things you wish you could do if you had more time.
I don't want to see my life flash before my eyes, and only see me watching television. I promise, you will only feel uncomfortable for a little while when your friends ask you if you wasted another hour watching some sit-com, interleaved with 20 minutes of commercials. Later on, you will pity them, and see the stagnation in their lives, and realize that you were once like that.
Dood you are soooo totally my hero! You have summed up my thoughts succinctly, and have brought calmness to my soul.
Unfortunately, if your wish comes true, slashdot will suddenly dissolve in a brilliant green flash during a blues-jazz concert, or was it jazz-blues... If no one would want to argue/bicker about trivial things, there would be no need for this medium.
I admit, I wasn't going to, until you and your nazi friends convinced me that this Roland fellow must have something important to say, since everyone wants to repeal his freedom of speech.
Congradulations! You achieved exactly the opposite of your intentions.
Some social pointers:
1. Using bad language does NOT make you cool.
2. If someone has a different point of view than you do, it's NOT OK to assault them, verbally or otherwise.
3. If Roland and Slashdot have a financial arrangement, it's none of your business. Implying that you should have been informed of such an arrangement is conceited.
Remember Slashdot ( like life ) is what you make of it.
Man, I hope they have better reliability than the ZIP or JAZ drives. Most of the time, the media was ruined before it was ejected from the drive. I hope the drives are USB or FireWire and not that insane Parallel-to-SCSI nonsense too.
Am I the only one who remembers this stuff?
As Apple has shown time and again, style is a key objective of engineering in creating a desireable product. Building an aesthetically pleasing cell tower would do an end-run around most (tho by no means all) of the objections.
But the point you're missing here is... The towers are NOT the product that the cell phone networks are providing! Any "window dressing" that must be engineered to make the towers more visually appealing ultimately may affect the towers range or coverage, meaning more of them are required to adequately service a particular area, which IS the product they're providing!
My Point (Finally!) People want their cell phone coverage, and don't want a tower in their back yard. I say, screw 'em! In 10 years, technology will advance and these towers will be slender, phallic, nanotube structures with no guy wires or visible antenna. Until then, you either
A. Put up with ugly towers, or
B. Put up with no coverage!
I, for one, appreciate the "complexness" of the sight of a cell tower. I would go further and make them very "Luis Royo" looking things, all black and gothic, with sharp contrast, very dangerous looking spires and angular webbing. We're not elves, why try to camouflage technology as a tree! How many trees died to put that tower there? Do we have to disguise the tower to look like a tree to satisfy our own guilt?
Yeah, Prometheus was also punished for his deed. Chained to a rock, so a huge buzzard could eat his liver (!) every day, which would grow back every night... byproducts of all the plutonium released into the atmosphere, I guess.
"Yes, but the latex ears seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the Humanity of the writer's compassionate soul, which contrives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other, and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into whatever it was the show was about."
I write code for both Windows and Linux, and I'm sure I'm not unique in this endeavor. My perspective on all of this is:
Linux users/developers want to maintain a niche market more than they want to expand to a bigger market. The Slashdot crowd, on their high horse, wave the banner of technical superiority, bashing Microsoft on every front, no matter how insignificant. Microsoft spends it's energy in a much more productive way, developing and marketing apps and OS's that people buy. I didn't say the apps and OS's were better, or faster or more secure, only that they were desirable by more than a handful of geeks.
Linux refuses to learn the lessons that Microsoft learned long ago. Granted, Microsoft has a reputation of doing some unethical business practices, and the Linux crowd is not willing to stoop that low to gain market, which is admirable. Linux developers tend to believe that embracing every new technology will gain them market, this is clearly not the case. Hell, Linux strength is it's biggest weakness! All the diversity has created a UI that is mayhem. There's not even a standard cut and paste between applications, no consistency! End users require, nay DEMAND consistency in their user interface. Windows provides that, and will dominate as long as it does.
I won't even get started on the differences in writing applications and installing them between the two systems, because it's too painful and close to me, but I will say this:
If I could choose between platforms to develop on, I would choose Windows over Linux 9 out of 10 times.
A message to Linux geeks/gurus/developers: Please stop wasting your time comparing OS's, bashing MS and complaining about the unfairness of it all. Put your money where your mouth is and deliver some progress. You wanna topple Microsoft, you're not going to do it with words, regardless of how inflammatory or true they are. Every minute you rant instead of developing a decent method of IPC, Microsoft gets a little bigger, a little richer, and little smarter.
If you're referring to ICBM's, your data is incorrect. It's been over 40 years.
The US had about 1000 Minuteman missiles and less than 100 Atlas missiles in the early 80's. The Soviets had a like number. The SALT treaties and the sands of time have eroded that number greatly since then.
AND the response time was less than 30 minutes!
PLUS Solid rocket fuel absorbs moisture from the atmosphere and is very sensitive to temperature changes. So, boosters must be cycled regularly and overhauled. They are not maintainence free! They are also bulky and difficult to transport. If a crack develops in the booster fuel, a hot spot will develop causing catastrophic failure and loss of payload.
I would suggest a big sling shot to deliver a payload of oxygen and food for stranded ISS astrouauts. Or better yet, escape pods.
Come on guys, this is a simple solution problem. In the short term:
1. Hang the astronauts upside down ( feet up )
2. Beat them with a broom
In the long term: It's obvious that we need to get proactive and develop some process for eroding the lunar dust. WAIT, I KNOW! We can erode the dust by BREATHING IT! I recommend that we send a group of Windows/Linux zealots to the moon for a study. We could find lots of candidates here on/. Then we could film it and and call it "LUNAR SURVIVOR." I'd watch.
Being a smoker, I'm only moderately offended by the callous statements being made here about smokers and astronauts.
I have had a Blue and Gold Macaw for years, and I can tell you without hesitation that:
A: Birds CAN see inanimate objects
B: Birds CAN see in vivid color and can differentiate between even slightly different hues
C: Birds CAN tell the difference between real and artifical threats ( a real hawk half a mile away has him jittery and scared, where a hawk on a TV show or a picture in a book causes no panic at all )
D: Birds are extremely intelligent, eat a lot of food for their size and poop about every 10 minutes.
It's got to be a Marketing thing, rather than an Engineering thing, which is why I want the entire Marketing Department dumped into the same hole the Lawyers are going into.
That's why they'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes!
Ok, this is probably flame bait, but here's another permutation.
I frequently legally drag race my car at the local dragstrip. I never engage in this practice on public roads, and never will. However how's the black box going to know the difference? At 5 seconds, there's little chance of a foulup, but if my black box says I went 120MPH last night, will I have to go to court with records to prove my innocence?
Recording the last 5 seconds, even the last minute is a great thing and has lots of arguements for it. But recording longer than that complicates things.
For the life of me, I cannot determine how anyone can figure out if the power supply fan is even running! My home office rings with the sound of exactly 4 2nd. generation Cheetah drives, and it's roughly the same amount of noise as a Marilyn Manson concert. A 400w amplifier and JBL speakers don't even begin to mask it. Make quieter hard drives!
Slashdot Mirror
Finally!
Recently, I was involved in an online "fight-to-the-death" with a young fellow, freshman in college, nice guy too. It was on a different discussion site, for my real passion in life, drag racing. A big event was being planned, a "shoot-out" where a bunch of us get together and race each other. Its loads of fun. Anyhow, this fellow stated that he couldn't show up because his "rents" were coming to town. I pondered this for several minutes before realizing that he meant his PARENTS!! Being a (grand)parent myself, I basically unloaded both barrels on this guy.
My argument was that the guy in question was being disrespectful in a major way. He was either too lazy or too much of a punk to even spell out parents, and by doing that he was throwing a dis at his mom and dad, who are putting him through college. The more I thought about it, the more angry I became.
Then a sort of civil war broke out, me with my faction of older, more proper types, and him with the younger, more cavalier types. The feuding went on for days.
Eventually, the moderator threatened physical violence toward both of us unless we knock off our grudge, and return to more civil ways.
In the end, it was nothing more than a difference of opinion. My opinion was he should have shown the proper respect for his parents by prefixing Pa to his rents statement. His opinion was that he could omit the Pa and still be showing proper respect. While I strongly disagree with his thought process, it was none of my business to contradict and correct, or attempt to correct his behavior. I was within my rights to call him out and disagree, but it should have ended there. I got emotionally involved because I imagined what my personal feelings would be if I had found out my own children were calling me a RENT, and how I'd amend my will to make sure they got a set of towels or maybe the couch that's in my garage, while the non-RENT children would get my house, cars, the AV center, the computers, etc... Respect is a 2 ways street.
I guess the point I'm belaboring is... Spelling and Grammar count. Maybe not to you, but it counts to someone. If you're trying to say something important, why muck up the message with typo's and blatantly obvious grammatical errors. People will notice, and will associate you with people too lazy to do things correctly. Even if it takes twice as long to write something, more people will read it. When I encounter a "problem" document, I give the writer 3 chances. If three blatant mistakes are found, I stop reading and move on to the next document. It's prudent to allow someone to have a mis-key, or a brain fart. But a trend is a sign that this person doesn't care what I think of them, so I assume they're full of crap. They can gain acceptance somewhere else, where mistakes are welcome, where ever that is.
I also have heard and understand "second language" problems. But in my experience, second language posters are very careful to check their spelling and grammar, so they are assured the correct point gets across. Why is it that first language posters feel they can skip the proof read and live with the errors? Beats me.
Hmm... 3 million is 10 percent of 300 million... I think this is a statistical anomaly. I'll RTFA in a sec. to double check those figures.
Being one of the "rebels" who shuns the thought of broadcast TV like the plague it is, I find it comforting, and yet disturbing that I'm in such sparse company. Anyone who has watched a "Survivor" or "Real World" episode and has decided to continue to PAY to be spoon fed such garbage is quite beyond my comprehension.
Do yourselves a favor. Turn off the TV. Read a book. Go for a walk. Do some yard work. Play with your kids. Fix something. Call someone. Learn to sculpt. Volunteer somewhere. Do some of those things you wish you could do if you had more time.
I don't want to see my life flash before my eyes, and only see me watching television. I promise, you will only feel uncomfortable for a little while when your friends ask you if you wasted another hour watching some sit-com, interleaved with 20 minutes of commercials. Later on, you will pity them, and see the stagnation in their lives, and realize that you were once like that.
Dood you are soooo totally my hero! You have summed up my thoughts succinctly, and have brought calmness to my soul.
Unfortunately, if your wish comes true, slashdot will suddenly dissolve in a brilliant green flash during a blues-jazz concert, or was it jazz-blues... If no one would want to argue/bicker about trivial things, there would be no need for this medium.
Don't be silly! BT is very new.
xmodem is old!
Oh, I'm terribly sorry! I clicked the link!
I admit, I wasn't going to, until you and your nazi friends convinced me that this Roland fellow must have something important to say, since everyone wants to repeal his freedom of speech.
Congradulations! You achieved exactly the opposite of your intentions.
Some social pointers:
1. Using bad language does NOT make you cool.
2. If someone has a different point of view than you do, it's NOT OK to assault them, verbally or otherwise.
3. If Roland and Slashdot have a financial arrangement, it's none of your business. Implying that you should have been informed of such an arrangement is conceited.
Remember Slashdot ( like life ) is what you make of it.
Man, I hope they have better reliability than the ZIP or JAZ drives. Most of the time, the media was ruined before it was ejected from the drive. I hope the drives are USB or FireWire and not that insane Parallel-to-SCSI nonsense too. Am I the only one who remembers this stuff?
And that was with ONE Linksys wireless router, strategically placed in Bejing.
But the point you're missing here is... The towers are NOT the product that the cell phone networks are providing! Any "window dressing" that must be engineered to make the towers more visually appealing ultimately may affect the towers range or coverage, meaning more of them are required to adequately service a particular area, which IS the product they're providing!
My Point (Finally!) People want their cell phone coverage, and don't want a tower in their back yard. I say, screw 'em! In 10 years, technology will advance and these towers will be slender, phallic, nanotube structures with no guy wires or visible antenna. Until then, you either
A. Put up with ugly towers, or
B. Put up with no coverage!
I, for one, appreciate the "complexness" of the sight of a cell tower. I would go further and make them very "Luis Royo" looking things, all black and gothic, with sharp contrast, very dangerous looking spires and angular webbing. We're not elves, why try to camouflage technology as a tree! How many trees died to put that tower there? Do we have to disguise the tower to look like a tree to satisfy our own guilt?
Yeah, Prometheus was also punished for his deed. Chained to a rock, so a huge buzzard could eat his liver (!) every day, which would grow back every night... byproducts of all the plutonium released into the atmosphere, I guess.
Alright, who invited the vogons?
Couldn't figure out how to IM you... Love your /. sig! Being from Milwaukee, and a punker, It struck a chord with me.
Q: Why does Linux not dominate the market?
A: Linux geeks do not want it to!
I write code for both Windows and Linux, and I'm sure I'm not unique in this endeavor. My perspective on all of this is:
Linux users/developers want to maintain a niche market more than they want to expand to a bigger market. The Slashdot crowd, on their high horse, wave the banner of technical superiority, bashing Microsoft on every front, no matter how insignificant. Microsoft spends it's energy in a much more productive way, developing and marketing apps and OS's that people buy. I didn't say the apps and OS's were better, or faster or more secure, only that they were desirable by more than a handful of geeks.
Linux refuses to learn the lessons that Microsoft learned long ago. Granted, Microsoft has a reputation of doing some unethical business practices, and the Linux crowd is not willing to stoop that low to gain market, which is admirable. Linux developers tend to believe that embracing every new technology will gain them market, this is clearly not the case. Hell, Linux strength is it's biggest weakness! All the diversity has created a UI that is mayhem. There's not even a standard cut and paste between applications, no consistency! End users require, nay DEMAND consistency in their user interface. Windows provides that, and will dominate as long as it does.
I won't even get started on the differences in writing applications and installing them between the two systems, because it's too painful and close to me, but I will say this:
If I could choose between platforms to develop on, I would choose Windows over Linux 9 out of 10 times.
A message to Linux geeks/gurus/developers: Please stop wasting your time comparing OS's, bashing MS and complaining about the unfairness of it all. Put your money where your mouth is and deliver some progress. You wanna topple Microsoft, you're not going to do it with words, regardless of how inflammatory or true they are. Every minute you rant instead of developing a decent method of IPC, Microsoft gets a little bigger, a little richer, and little smarter.
If you're referring to ICBM's, your data is incorrect. It's been over 40 years.
The US had about 1000 Minuteman missiles and less than 100 Atlas missiles in the early 80's. The Soviets had a like number. The SALT treaties and the sands of time have eroded that number greatly since then.
AND the response time was less than 30 minutes!
PLUS Solid rocket fuel absorbs moisture from the atmosphere and is very sensitive to temperature changes. So, boosters must be cycled regularly and overhauled. They are not maintainence free! They are also bulky and difficult to transport. If a crack develops in the booster fuel, a hot spot will develop causing catastrophic failure and loss of payload.
I would suggest a big sling shot to deliver a payload of oxygen and food for stranded ISS astrouauts. Or better yet, escape pods.
1. Hang the astronauts upside down ( feet up )
2. Beat them with a broom
In the long term: It's obvious that we need to get proactive and develop some process for eroding the lunar dust. WAIT, I KNOW! We can erode the dust by BREATHING IT! I recommend that we send a group of Windows/Linux zealots to the moon for a study. We could find lots of candidates here on /. Then we could film it and and call it "LUNAR SURVIVOR." I'd watch.
Being a smoker, I'm only moderately offended by the callous statements being made here about smokers and astronauts.
I have had a Blue and Gold Macaw for years, and I can tell you without hesitation that:
A: Birds CAN see inanimate objects
B: Birds CAN see in vivid color and can differentiate between even slightly different hues
C: Birds CAN tell the difference between real and artifical threats ( a real hawk half a mile away has him jittery and scared, where a hawk on a TV show or a picture in a book causes no panic at all )
D: Birds are extremely intelligent, eat a lot of food for their size and poop about every 10 minutes.
So much for the Tel Aviv Gencon next year...
It's got to be a Marketing thing, rather than an Engineering thing, which is why I want the entire Marketing Department dumped into the same hole the Lawyers are going into.
That's why they'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes!
Ok, this is probably flame bait, but here's another permutation.
I frequently legally drag race my car at the local dragstrip. I never engage in this practice on public roads, and never will. However how's the black box going to know the difference? At 5 seconds, there's little chance of a foulup, but if my black box says I went 120MPH last night, will I have to go to court with records to prove my innocence?
Recording the last 5 seconds, even the last minute is a great thing and has lots of arguements for it. But recording longer than that complicates things.
For the life of me, I cannot determine how anyone can figure out if the power supply fan is even running! My home office rings with the sound of exactly 4 2nd. generation Cheetah drives, and it's roughly the same amount of noise as a Marilyn Manson concert. A 400w amplifier and JBL speakers don't even begin to mask it. Make quieter hard drives!
If he didn't take advantage of the Pudget Sound area, he really missed out on the whole intern experience.
What? You mean the rain and the slugs? Or watching a sea lion eat salmon?