I would have killed for a tape drive. I know this sounds like that old joke, but all of the BASIC programs I wrote had to be written on paper, and then I would have to type the whole damn thing in. I could only fool with that program until I turned off the computer (clearing the memory), so I would leave it on for days at a time while I debugged the program, and make the appropriate changes on the paper version.
One cool thing about the Atari XE was that it had a light gun that was super easy to program for. There were just a couple of memory locations to PEEK which gave you the X and Y position. Nowadays, you would need an 8 MB SDK and a Pentium 3 to have a light gun.
If it weren't for Atari though, I might have never discovered computers. It was bought for my brother as a video game machine, but I discovered the real purpose of it when I put in the BASIC cartridge that it came with. I remember the first programs I would experiment with...
10 PRINT "BARBER POLE";
20 GOTO 10
This would fill the screen with a spirally looking diagonal lines of the word BARBER POLE or whatever string you used. Then I started experimenting with the different shape characters to make little animations and stuff, and then it took off from there.
We here at the ARIA have recently intercepted telephone conversations where individuals were negotiating "borrowing" each other's CDs in order to make illegal copies to forego purchasing their own $20.00 Britney Spears plastic disc. This piracy is clearly facilitated, perhaps even encouraged by the telephone carrier in question. Take their advertisments where they claim you can speak to your 'relatives' at a really cheap rate. We all know that is simply code talk for 'talking to fellow pirates'. We will use the full power of the courts to force them to prevent this kind of activity in the future, or suffer heavily punitive monetary damages.
Oh yeah, some people were also negotiating hired murders and other physical crimes, but come on now, are those really important in light of this serious breach of our royalty system?
They always listened to the translation from C3PO, and when Luke was flying his X-wing to Dagobah, he had to read what R2 was saying on a little text monitor. Doesn't anybody pay attention to details.
R2 units did understand human language, although they could not reproduce it.
... when you go to cash a check with your tin-foil beanie on?
I'm being facetious, of course. Or is it fascist? I do worry about it a little, what with the Patriot act, etc.
I wonder, have you tried putting some Elmers glue or something on your finger before letting it scan your fingerprint? I bet this could be a fun thing to mess with. I'd be willing to try a gelatin fingerprint transplant like we heard of for foiling finger scanners before. I'll give someone my fingerprint to cash a check at Wachovia. Would this be considered some type of fraud?
The problems exist, you have just not studied them. No getting around that, it's just plain obvious from your statements.
I don't study these problems. The only reason I notice them is that they are beginning to infringe on liberty. In my opinion, without liberty, none of this really matters. When I say give me liberty or give me death, I mean it. Do you deny that there are so called 'environmental organizations that exaggerate and are disingenuous?
Just one point to get you to start all over really.. the land that you "fly over" is largely a dustbowl. There are real problems with soil and water everywhere. Just because there's no house or barn or skyscraper on the land doesn't mean it's usable land that is not in use.
You assume that this land is permanently unusable. That's not reasonable. We will only become more and more able to use this land. The cliche, "Necessity is the mother of invention," is fundamental to free market economics. If there is a need to use this space, it will be used. All of these problems will have answers. And I seriously doubt that all usable land is being used, even if the idea of usable wasn't a moving target.
I took your test, and it says I use 112.4% of the average American. Also, I use 28.3 acres even though there is only 5.4 acres of 'biologically productive space' per each person in the world. To this I say, 'fine'. What this site boils down to, is making the claim that I am somehow being unfair by living the way I do. Even assuming that by having such a large 'eco-footprint' I am preventing some other person in the third world from living at my level, so what. If they have freedom, they too can achieve this standard of living. When everyone tries to achieve it, it will be supplied. In the end, these movements always start to sound like communism. 'Your using too much, it's not fair, we want to bring you down to the lowest level instead of bringing everyone else up'. If you want to help all the unfortunates of the world that don't get the privilege of consuming as many of the worlds resources, give them freedom. The vast majority of people in this world live under tyranny, and that is why they are not as successful as us. The only way to get the fairness that you want, is to give everyone freedom.
I have to make the point that, if we're so stupid, are we worth saving? If we destroy the whole world and ourselves, then so what. Unless you believe that all other animals are equivalent to us, then it doesn't matter if we destroy them and ourselves. We deserved it. I don't think this will happen anyway, but if you think we are so stupid and evil that this will happen, why bother trying to protect us from ourselves. The universe would be better off without us. I guess that you hold the minds of animals in as high a regard as the human mind. Other than the apes, and perhaps dolphins, I think that's ridiculous.
Actually you didn't say it at all. You said 'fucking', twice. Try wc if you don't believe me. And my point wasn't that you had said it a bunch of times, but that saying it at all isn't really very productive. It tends to make your tone sound like a seething madman.
Do you honestly think humans are still part of a natural ecosystem? We surpassed that primality when we started making complex tools, spreading to every corner of the earth, terraforming, etcetera. Your claim is just silly.
From a philosophical point of view, I'm not sure that there is such a distinction between natural versus unatural. Our so called 'complex tools' are still nowhere near the complexity of one of our cells. That doesn't mean, however, that I think everything we do is good. I'm saying that our motivations aren't any different than other species. We were created by evolution to be the way we are.
I was referring to the Zebra Mussels in the Great Lakes, which were brought in in the ballast tanks of freighters. They have no natural predators, and so they spread uncontrollably. They have jammed up necessary water pipes, killed many natural species, and so on.
Sorry, you are correct. I was unclear on just what you were talking about, and I should have investigated more. I am aware of the ballast problem as it relates to ships coming from the polluted Asian ports and dumping that ballast water in our waters. Of course this shouldn't be allowed. I never said it should, that's just common sense. I'm not as sure about non-idiginous species. Sure, we can mess up an eco-system's balance by introducing a foreign species. But I'm sure this has happened naturally many times in the history of the Earth. We are only responsible for a change in scale. Eventually, I feel that those eco-systems will balance themselves back out in a new way. We can't stop nature from doing its thing. I have no problem with a government trying to prevent this from happening, I'm just not sure its EVIL.
Oh really? I have an alternate idea of what you are. A moron.
Sorry, I'm not a liberal robot so I don't do name calling. Woops!
You are pulling facts out of your ass (and doing so in a manner that an uneducated person would probably think you were right), and supporting an anti-environment message while doing it.
Despite what you claim to be, your inability to take action, and your lack of knowledge on the subject, make it very clear that you are exactly what you claim not to be. If not through direct action, then through apathy.
You're right. You've discovered my evil plan to destroy the environment. Good job Captain Planet! Get Real. I love nature, I want it to stay around, and I want my children to experience it. Even so, I recognize there is a large group of wack-jobs that are, to use a word they often choose to refer to people like me, extremists. They have exposed themselves to be liars with another agenda than they purport to have. You are most likely one of their lackeys, consumed with emotion, ready to fight for something that sounds noble. That being said, your motivations are good, even if they are wrong. I'm not sure how you know I'm apathetic. Maybe I'm hard at work to poison the water and kill the children.
By the way, by definition, I would have to say that Conservatism has to support conservation. That's a joke, if you can't tell through the red haze you look at the world through. I'm actually more of a Libertarian.
> Humans are not part of one natural, balanced eco-system. We are the only species on Earth that can and has become a significant part of every eco-system. We are the only species that has ever changed the face of the earth so drastically in under 200 years. (meteors aren't species)
We may have gotten rid of the Mastadons even earlier than that. The major meteor impact is only a small portion of the extinction I was talking about. Other species have caused the extinction of their neigbours as well. Not always by eating them, but often by simply out-competing them. Perhaps evolution's natural end is a species like humans that destroys the niche eco-system paradigm that so many animals have clung too. The idea of a number of isolated eco-systems could be an artificial designation, created by humans.
> Since humans have only been on earth for less than 1% of its 4.54 Billion years I would expect that that MUST be true. If we killed off every living thing on the planet leaving only people and machines your statement would still have to be true. 4.54 billion years is a long time.
Sounds right to me.
> So now that we know it must be true, what does that have to do with anything? According to your logic since we're animals then if we blight the soil, pave the forests, pollute the air, and end up living shoulder-to-shoulder on a steady diet of soylent green, that too is then a natural process of animals. Yes it sure is, but certainly it's not the one we're shooting for.
I agree. However, I think that it is unlikely to come to that. They call it fly-over country for a reason. If you fly over it, you will see that there is almost nothing there. There is so much space left, it's hard to fathom. And that's just the land.
>Capitalism by definition and in practice, is the pursuit of profit. There's your goal. Protecting our environment under a system that discourages it at every turn, (e.g. it cuts into short-term profits to do things in an ecologically conscience and sustainable way,) is extremely difficult.
The nice thing about freedom (which a free market requires to exist) is that you can choose what you buy. Therefore, if GE dumps a bunch of PCBs or whatever in your river for profit, you can choose not to support that company any longer. As you said, it woud be very 'short-term' thinking to assume you could commit heinous acts of pollution in the name of profit without consequences. That's not to say it hasn't been done, but overall, it won't be the case.
You don't need to be evil to consume a vastly disproportionate amount of resources compared to just about everything that came before you on this earth (Since you like that comparison).
That's simply not true. Perhaps when you break it down to various species, then it may be somewhat truthfull, but we are vastly outnumbered by the rest of the animals (don't forget insects) in the world, not only in numbers but in mass. Especially when you consider that, insects, etc. have little use for things like petroleum.
The very best you can do is try to fight it, e.g. bike to work along a busy road, eat vegetarian, turn off lights, etc.
See my remarks on the free market
P.S. - Yes, we ate them.
The best way to make sure something doesn't go extinct is to start eating it! Iowa is said to have more pigs than people, and it ain't because they're smarter (well, maybe in Iowa.)
In brief, I don't want to destroy all other species on Earth. I don't think this will happen, either. I'm just tired of the problem being exaggerated to ridiculous levels, although I admit it is a real problem.
saying fuck over and over again? That's sure to help.
Seriously, '90% of our large fish are gone'? If that's the case, then I have to assume we ate them, otherwise there would be a whole lot of stinking fish laying around. Do you cry when a shark eats a fish, or a killer whale eats a baby seal? 'But wait,' you say, 'those are part of a natural, balanced, eco-system.' What do you suppose we are? Animals? That's right. Did you know that over 90% of all species that have ever existed are extinct, due to 'natural' causes, before humans existed. Must have been those darn proto-human hominid thingies, huh.
And for your information, those mussels clogging our water pipes are there becasue they LIKE IT . Usually they hang out there because the heat makes them reproduce faster. You see, the survival drive is as fundamental to them as it is to us.
Lastly, don't assume that I'm completely against enviromentalism, or conservation. I'm against wacko-enviromentalists who twist data and make up facts to preach what usually boils down to communism or some other crazy scheme. Nobody really wants to destroy the environment. This isn't Captain Planet, where people want to destroy the Earth for the sake of being evil. I'll admit that often, while pursuing other goals, humanity has been irresponsible about pollution, but we all have to live here too. Tycoons don't want to drink dirty water anymore than you do, and most of them probably bathe in the same water that you do.
In one TNG episode, McCoy made a guest appearance, and he was only around 200 I think. He was pretty close to death at that point. Therefore, we can't possibly live even that long until the 23rd century or so. For now, we'll have to settle for 120 or so, probably. Star Trek is real you know.
I thought Jay's line 'What the fuck is the internet' was one of the funniest things I ever heard. I would love to hear him say the subject of this post.
That link is to an image named holybread.jpg. I was trying to figure out what was so holy about it. Maybe without the big holes in it, it's not considered leavened, so it can be used as communion wafers or during passover.
Have any of you seen the regular headphones that claim that their digital compatible . I can't believe it. They're analog, but I guess they mean they work with sound cards and CD players. Well duh. I'm just waiting for someone to try and stick the phono-plug into that digital audio port on the back of their DVD player.
Insightful? Am I the only one who saw this as an obvious joke? The trb knows what abstraction means, he was making a connection between abstract in the obscure sense.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think this guy is old enough to look at porn. He probably doesn't even like girls yet.
I would have killed for a tape drive. I know this sounds like that old joke, but all of the BASIC programs I wrote had to be written on paper, and then I would have to type the whole damn thing in. I could only fool with that program until I turned off the computer (clearing the memory), so I would leave it on for days at a time while I debugged the program, and make the appropriate changes on the paper version.
One cool thing about the Atari XE was that it had a light gun that was super easy to program for. There were just a couple of memory locations to PEEK which gave you the X and Y position. Nowadays, you would need an 8 MB SDK and a Pentium 3 to have a light gun.
If it weren't for Atari though, I might have never discovered computers. It was bought for my brother as a video game machine, but I discovered the real purpose of it when I put in the BASIC cartridge that it came with. I remember the first programs I would experiment with...
10 PRINT "BARBER POLE";
20 GOTO 10
This would fill the screen with a spirally looking diagonal lines of the word BARBER POLE or whatever string you used. Then I started experimenting with the different shape characters to make little animations and stuff, and then it took off from there.
It's actually a requirement. Didn't you read the Important Stuff underneath the submit button?
Then again, I don't think I know what I'm talking about.
We here at the ARIA have recently intercepted telephone conversations where individuals were negotiating "borrowing" each other's CDs in order to make illegal copies to forego purchasing their own $20.00 Britney Spears plastic disc. This piracy is clearly facilitated, perhaps even encouraged by the telephone carrier in question. Take their advertisments where they claim you can speak to your 'relatives' at a really cheap rate. We all know that is simply code talk for 'talking to fellow pirates'. We will use the full power of the courts to force them to prevent this kind of activity in the future, or suffer heavily punitive monetary damages.
Oh yeah, some people were also negotiating hired murders and other physical crimes, but come on now, are those really important in light of this serious breach of our royalty system?
They always listened to the translation from C3PO, and when Luke was flying his X-wing to Dagobah, he had to read what R2 was saying on a little text monitor. Doesn't anybody pay attention to details.
R2 units did understand human language, although they could not reproduce it.
What is this 'Google' you speak of?
... when you go to cash a check with your tin-foil beanie on?
I'm being facetious, of course. Or is it fascist? I do worry about it a little, what with the Patriot act, etc.
I wonder, have you tried putting some Elmers glue or something on your finger before letting it scan your fingerprint? I bet this could be a fun thing to mess with. I'd be willing to try a gelatin fingerprint transplant like we heard of for foiling finger scanners before. I'll give someone my fingerprint to cash a check at Wachovia. Would this be considered some type of fraud?
Jafafa Hots' Sig: When I can trade karma for a blowjob, then I'll give a shit...
So uh... How much karma you got?
... they'll be able to dupe articles once slashdot runs on one of these puppies!
Um, I hope you washed it reeeeal good.
I don't study these problems. The only reason I notice them is that they are beginning to infringe on liberty. In my opinion, without liberty, none of this really matters. When I say give me liberty or give me death, I mean it. Do you deny that there are so called 'environmental organizations that exaggerate and are disingenuous?
Just one point to get you to start all over really.. the land that you "fly over" is largely a dustbowl. There are real problems with soil and water everywhere. Just because there's no house or barn or skyscraper on the land doesn't mean it's usable land that is not in use.
You assume that this land is permanently unusable. That's not reasonable. We will only become more and more able to use this land. The cliche, "Necessity is the mother of invention," is fundamental to free market economics. If there is a need to use this space, it will be used. All of these problems will have answers. And I seriously doubt that all usable land is being used, even if the idea of usable wasn't a moving target.
I took your test, and it says I use 112.4% of the average American. Also, I use 28.3 acres even though there is only 5.4 acres of 'biologically productive space' per each person in the world. To this I say, 'fine'. What this site boils down to, is making the claim that I am somehow being unfair by living the way I do. Even assuming that by having such a large 'eco-footprint' I am preventing some other person in the third world from living at my level, so what. If they have freedom, they too can achieve this standard of living. When everyone tries to achieve it, it will be supplied. In the end, these movements always start to sound like communism. 'Your using too much, it's not fair, we want to bring you down to the lowest level instead of bringing everyone else up'. If you want to help all the unfortunates of the world that don't get the privilege of consuming as many of the worlds resources, give them freedom. The vast majority of people in this world live under tyranny, and that is why they are not as successful as us. The only way to get the fairness that you want, is to give everyone freedom.
I have to make the point that, if we're so stupid, are we worth saving? If we destroy the whole world and ourselves, then so what. Unless you believe that all other animals are equivalent to us, then it doesn't matter if we destroy them and ourselves. We deserved it. I don't think this will happen anyway, but if you think we are so stupid and evil that this will happen, why bother trying to protect us from ourselves. The universe would be better off without us. I guess that you hold the minds of animals in as high a regard as the human mind. Other than the apes, and perhaps dolphins, I think that's ridiculous.
Actually you didn't say it at all. You said 'fucking', twice. Try wc if you don't believe me. And my point wasn't that you had said it a bunch of times, but that saying it at all isn't really very productive. It tends to make your tone sound like a seething madman.
Do you honestly think humans are still part of a natural ecosystem? We surpassed that primality when we started making complex tools, spreading to every corner of the earth, terraforming, etcetera. Your claim is just silly.
From a philosophical point of view, I'm not sure that there is such a distinction between natural versus unatural. Our so called 'complex tools' are still nowhere near the complexity of one of our cells. That doesn't mean, however, that I think everything we do is good. I'm saying that our motivations aren't any different than other species. We were created by evolution to be the way we are.
I was referring to the Zebra Mussels in the Great Lakes, which were brought in in the ballast tanks of freighters. They have no natural predators, and so they spread uncontrollably. They have jammed up necessary water pipes, killed many natural species, and so on.
Sorry, you are correct. I was unclear on just what you were talking about, and I should have investigated more. I am aware of the ballast problem as it relates to ships coming from the polluted Asian ports and dumping that ballast water in our waters. Of course this shouldn't be allowed. I never said it should, that's just common sense. I'm not as sure about non-idiginous species. Sure, we can mess up an eco-system's balance by introducing a foreign species. But I'm sure this has happened naturally many times in the history of the Earth. We are only responsible for a change in scale. Eventually, I feel that those eco-systems will balance themselves back out in a new way. We can't stop nature from doing its thing. I have no problem with a government trying to prevent this from happening, I'm just not sure its EVIL.
Oh really? I have an alternate idea of what you are. A moron.
Sorry, I'm not a liberal robot so I don't do name calling. Woops!
You are pulling facts out of your ass (and doing so in a manner that an uneducated person would probably think you were right), and supporting an anti-environment message while doing it.
Despite what you claim to be, your inability to take action, and your lack of knowledge on the subject, make it very clear that you are exactly what you claim not to be. If not through direct action, then through apathy.
You're right. You've discovered my evil plan to destroy the environment. Good job Captain Planet! Get Real. I love nature, I want it to stay around, and I want my children to experience it. Even so, I recognize there is a large group of wack-jobs that are, to use a word they often choose to refer to people like me, extremists. They have exposed themselves to be liars with another agenda than they purport to have. You are most likely one of their lackeys, consumed with emotion, ready to fight for something that sounds noble. That being said, your motivations are good, even if they are wrong. I'm not sure how you know I'm apathetic. Maybe I'm hard at work to poison the water and kill the children.
By the way, by definition, I would have to say that Conservatism has to support conservation. That's a joke, if you can't tell through the red haze you look at the world through. I'm actually more of a Libertarian.
Have a calm day.
We may have gotten rid of the Mastadons even earlier than that. The major meteor impact is only a small portion of the extinction I was talking about. Other species have caused the extinction of their neigbours as well. Not always by eating them, but often by simply out-competing them. Perhaps evolution's natural end is a species like humans that destroys the niche eco-system paradigm that so many animals have clung too. The idea of a number of isolated eco-systems could be an artificial designation, created by humans.
> Since humans have only been on earth for less than 1% of its 4.54 Billion years I would expect that that MUST be true. If we killed off every living thing on the planet leaving only people and machines your statement would still have to be true. 4.54 billion years is a long time.
Sounds right to me.
> So now that we know it must be true, what does that have to do with anything? According to your logic since we're animals then if we blight the soil, pave the forests, pollute the air, and end up living shoulder-to-shoulder on a steady diet of soylent green, that too is then a natural process of animals. Yes it sure is, but certainly it's not the one we're shooting for.
I agree. However, I think that it is unlikely to come to that. They call it fly-over country for a reason. If you fly over it, you will see that there is almost nothing there. There is so much space left, it's hard to fathom. And that's just the land.
>Capitalism by definition and in practice, is the pursuit of profit. There's your goal. Protecting our environment under a system that discourages it at every turn, (e.g. it cuts into short-term profits to do things in an ecologically conscience and sustainable way,) is extremely difficult.
The nice thing about freedom (which a free market requires to exist) is that you can choose what you buy. Therefore, if GE dumps a bunch of PCBs or whatever in your river for profit, you can choose not to support that company any longer. As you said, it woud be very 'short-term' thinking to assume you could commit heinous acts of pollution in the name of profit without consequences. That's not to say it hasn't been done, but overall, it won't be the case.
You don't need to be evil to consume a vastly disproportionate amount of resources compared to just about everything that came before you on this earth (Since you like that comparison).
That's simply not true. Perhaps when you break it down to various species, then it may be somewhat truthfull, but we are vastly outnumbered by the rest of the animals (don't forget insects) in the world, not only in numbers but in mass. Especially when you consider that, insects, etc. have little use for things like petroleum.
The very best you can do is try to fight it, e.g. bike to work along a busy road, eat vegetarian, turn off lights, etc.
See my remarks on the free market
P.S. - Yes, we ate them.
The best way to make sure something doesn't go extinct is to start eating it! Iowa is said to have more pigs than people, and it ain't because they're smarter (well, maybe in Iowa.)
In brief, I don't want to destroy all other species on Earth. I don't think this will happen, either. I'm just tired of the problem being exaggerated to ridiculous levels, although I admit it is a real problem.
Seriously, '90% of our large fish are gone'? If that's the case, then I have to assume we ate them, otherwise there would be a whole lot of stinking fish laying around. Do you cry when a shark eats a fish, or a killer whale eats a baby seal? 'But wait,' you say, 'those are part of a natural, balanced, eco-system.' What do you suppose we are? Animals? That's right. Did you know that over 90% of all species that have ever existed are extinct, due to 'natural' causes, before humans existed. Must have been those darn proto-human hominid thingies, huh.
And for your information, those mussels clogging our water pipes are there becasue they LIKE IT . Usually they hang out there because the heat makes them reproduce faster. You see, the survival drive is as fundamental to them as it is to us.
Lastly, don't assume that I'm completely against enviromentalism, or conservation. I'm against wacko-enviromentalists who twist data and make up facts to preach what usually boils down to communism or some other crazy scheme. Nobody really wants to destroy the environment. This isn't Captain Planet, where people want to destroy the Earth for the sake of being evil. I'll admit that often, while pursuing other goals, humanity has been irresponsible about pollution, but we all have to live here too. Tycoons don't want to drink dirty water anymore than you do, and most of them probably bathe in the same water that you do.
So, any non foaming-at-the-mouth comments?
... if these things can live in 121 degree HOT GRITS!
In one TNG episode, McCoy made a guest appearance, and he was only around 200 I think. He was pretty close to death at that point. Therefore, we can't possibly live even that long until the 23rd century or so. For now, we'll have to settle for 120 or so, probably. Star Trek is real you know.
"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to? -- Clarence Darrow"
Shouldn't that be "..., to whom are you going to speak it?". That wasn't the point, whas it?
I'll buy one when they're silver and stick out of you ear about two inches ala Lt. Uhura.
I thought Jay's line 'What the fuck is the internet' was one of the funniest things I ever heard. I would love to hear him say the subject of this post.
Can I patent renting DVDs out of my mom's basement? How about on a train, or under water maybe?
Would you, could you in a box?
Would you, could you with a fox?
That link is to an image named holybread.jpg. I was trying to figure out what was so holy about it. Maybe without the big holes in it, it's not considered leavened, so it can be used as communion wafers or during passover.
Oh, wait, they didn't mean 'holey' did they?
Have any of you seen the regular headphones that claim that their digital compatible . I can't believe it. They're analog, but I guess they mean they work with sound cards and CD players. Well duh. I'm just waiting for someone to try and stick the phono-plug into that digital audio port on the back of their DVD player.
In other news to help sell more herbal manhood enhancements 4 inches has been redefined as 8 inches.
I don't know about you, but I think a lot of men have been trying to pass that one off for a while now. Of course, I don't need to...
Insightful? Am I the only one who saw this as an obvious joke? The trb knows what abstraction means, he was making a connection between abstract in the obscure sense.
Dude, Sun didn't hire that goat. He lives in your closet.