Above is absolutely true. John Clese (and, I believe, some of the other Python crew) brought their own rather twisted sense of humor to the corporate world. I saw their "customer relations" video about 10 years back.
"They've really sold out!" is what I thought to myself way back when. Now I'm not so sure there wasn't a subversive undertone (a la early Dilbert) to everything they produced.
One example thay gave about "be courtious to the customer, no matter what!" would make a CEO smile and a regular in-the-trenches worker wince. Now I suspect the example was over-the-top for a reason. Anybody else see any of their recordings?
stirring the pot since Nineteen-mumblty-mumble Doc Agony
to have more than one computer. And for goodness' sake, make sure those computers are more-or-less equal in capability!
Otherwise, make sure you spend some time with her every day (the current psych wisdom is to spend at least 20 minutes a day with her, talking or doing some activity).
The more things you can find to do with your spouse (besdies screw and/or take care of the podlings) the better off you'll be in the long run.
I've been kind of flip with the other responders, but I'm not going to do that here. Your criticism is to the point, and quite correct. Franklin (closest thing we have in America to a geek "saint" as we'll ever get, I think:) ) does not belong in the same category as the Pilgrims. I apologize for lumping "our" visionaries in with "their" visionaires. Shit, I did it again. Nonetheless, point very well taken.
As far as regionalism is concerned, well, you got me there, too. I have not seen a Red vs. Blue map of the US lately, so once again I have shot from the hip. My personal experience (and I will stress this is *personal* experience) with The Great American Heartland has been with the rural south. The place where you are issued a beaten up pickup with a gun rack in the back and a yaller dawg when you move in ("why duz yer DNA look so funny?" "You're probably not used to seeing the full compliment of genes and chromosomes. I suggest finding a 'domestic partner' outside of your own family, for a start." "Yew shure do have purty lips." "CHECK PLEASE!")
We'll, I've probaby pissed a few Virginian Mensa members off, but really, I have found a big difference between Urbanites (remember, The Sprawl goes from Boston to Richmond. Some would say further north and south than that) and Heartlandites (small towne and rural Amurica, praise Jeezus)
Now that I am guilty of raising the noise and lowering the signal for the benefit of my own ego (those words! every one a silver note! so beautiful!), let's see if I can make my point.
Register to vote. Push back. The exeutive branch has enough hubris for sixteen greek plays. There is hope. You just gotta act like there is for there to *be* hope.
Cheers, 6.2
We're not going to "get lucky" with a "Presidential Indescretion", like the Republicans did with Clinton. You're never going to find Duhbya in the sack with an intern OR Condoliza Rice (or, one suspects, his wife) because his privates are already held in blind trust by Halburton ("We'll be taking these for the duration, Mr. President. We wouldn't want you to do something foolish with them." "But, but who's balls will I use?" "Secretary Rumsfeld has more balls than all of the Bushes put together, including your mother Barbara, I'm afraid. I suggest you borrow his from time to time.")
Mod the parent up, ya caught me taking a cheap shot.
I was being imprecise, which is "sin #1" here on./
When I mentioned the original, intolerant religious crackpots, I was refering to the waves of people fleeing religious persecution, as well as the usual assortment of indentured servants, convicts, and other political and social undesirables that Britian was wont to ship anywhere and everywhere but Britian. This is all circa mid seventeenth century, I believe.
The Founding Fathers (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, et. al) were, in truth, a pretty interesting bunch. How they wound up in charge and not being stoned or burned is beyond me. Sometimes we get lucky:D
I stand by my "drunkard's walk" analogy. We really have no idea of what extremes are possible here in America. Everybody having a free hand means the extremists are kept in check (for the most part, current administration excluded. next election ain't over yet).
I would be interested in where you got your 5% figure.
Mod this guy up for being awake.:D AND for providing constructive criticism! (what a concept!!!)
Yes, I know the scopes trial was "hooey". But if I may quote:
The Scopes trial by no means ended the debate over the teaching of evolution, but it did represent a significant setback for the anti-evolution forces. Of the fifteen states with anti- evolution legislation pending in 1925, only two states (Arkansas and Mississippi) enacted laws restricting teaching of Darwin's theory. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ ftrials/s copes/evolut.htm
I'll take my victories where I can get them, hooey or not. Or, in this case, a "stalking horse". A scheme set in motion by advocates of rationalism, if my research is correct. Or by people trying to sell newspapers. Does it really matter? WWII started with an asassination in Serbia and ended with a shitpot of doughboys in Berlin. If that asassination had been foiled, odds are that WWII would have started some other way.
So how does this weaken my argument? If the forces of unreason can use outright lies the the forces of reason can be a little sneaky.
I suspect that your real objection is that if we're going to use rational arguments, we should remain pristine pure. I submit to you that this is exactly why lawyers hate engineers and other "rational" types on juries. (oh, god, another sweeping generalization! Guess I'll burn in hell...)
Hey, we're on the same side, but I'll argue with you anyway;)
"The U.S. is falling at warp speed into a dark age of ignorance, superstition and fear."
Only the Great American Heartland ("Praise jeezus, and pass me that rattlesnake!"). The Right and Left Coasts have enough cynnicism and free-thinking left (so to speak) to save it, though.
O.K. I'm an American. I've lived on the East Coast for (oh, roughly) 50 years. What's going on now is what's been going on since the original, intolerant, religious crackpots, er, our Glorious Founding Fathers, came ashore. It's a fight for mindshare.
"Truth" has nothing to do with it. It's all about control. For the past 100 years, one battle has been the Fundies vs. everybody else (the other battle has been Haves vs. Have Nots, but that one is as old as, pardon the expression, Adam).
The fundies are well organized and focused. The "rest of us" free-thinkers are disorganized and unfocused. Hey, if you're a free-thinker, you have a high tolerance for bullshit anyway.
We usually draw the line where evidence is considerable (look up the Scopes trial) or lives hang in the balance (Vietnam).
America is not sliding downhill. It's more like a drunkard's walk into a bad part of town. For goodness' sake, vote people. Vote for Homer Simpson if you have to (mmmm, WMD!), but vote, damnit!
I though this was going to be another election year article. Instead it's about magnetic spin in atoms.
SPIN-A-TRON said from Washington today that everything was under control after a momentary glitch in the new Skynet command and control computers. It would be sending out T101 "claims adjusters" to process damage claims due to the malfunction...
Can you say "denial of service" attack?!? It's like a rerun of "Goldfinger": get the codes for a large chunk of tagged cash and tell it "you're stolen".
Because, deep down inside, Microsoft is trying to figure out a way for you to pay for the fix. It would be "irresponsible" of them to release anything of value without extracting money for it.
Is it a "bugfix", or is it a "feature upgrade"? Know what the difference is? Oh ye$$$$$$$....
The real "Ask Slashdot" challenge would be "I'm am,at present, a UNIX system administrator. How the hell do I get out of this job, but still stay in a computer related field?"
I was shanghi'd into being a UNIX sysadmin for about a year. It was the nastiest experience of my life, especially since I was considered to be the "unix expert" by my non-UNIX cohorts, and was expected to waive a magic wand to get things to work. I developed a whole new relationship with SCSI cables that I never suspected even existed before.
Ah, I can see you've never worked for The Feds before. Our friend has exactly two choices:
Endure it
Leave
That's it. I used to be a contractor for the Navy, and every once in a while they would conduct searches like that too. You know what? They were well within their rights, as far as the documents I had signed on joining were concerned.
The point that everyone misses around here is that security people are malajusted, paranoid bastards because they have to be. They do not have a sense of humor.
It's now time to suck it up and realize that we as employees caused this philosophy with employers, and we as employees are the only ones who can change this philosophy by actually showing loyalty to the back to the employer.
I see you've never been "downsized", my friend. Or is it "right-sized"? The boyz at the top will do whatever is necessary to keep those bonuses comming in (don't forget that Caribbean "motivational meeting" for the CEO and the sales staff!).
I was a "loyal employee" until I got my throat cut without warning. Guess what? You still have the same bills to pay when unemployed as you do when you have a job! My solution: take a 20% pay cut, and upgrade my skill set like mad. I'm not quite as vulnerable as I once was. I eventually regained ground. But I don't rely on My Corporate Masters to "take care of me". Taking care of me is my job.
It wouldn't be a./ review unless there was a certain amount of navel watching involved (god, that was a brilliant line! I'm *sooo* good!./ should post more comments like this one). That was a nice bit of self refrence in the PS line, btw.
(*ahem*)
On the other hand, I could say the same about "The Longest Journey", a game that is bringing back the reasons why I don't like adventure games with hurricaine force. I can only do a minimal install even though I have a 12G hard drive. The sound stutters (thank god I have subtitles enabled). And...it's a pixel hunt. Another frigging pixel hunt.
Wouldn't places like "the Palace" qualify as prior art, then? There were a whole bunch of sites a few years back when the VRML craze was in full swing that looked like 3D IRC
Could be "case based reasoning". A company I used to work for a loooong time ago used this to debug the electronics of cars (which car? well...it's named after a sign of the zodiac). It was a lot of OPS5 statements that boiled down to:
if the car won't start, then
check the battery (80%)
check the wiring (15%)
check the solenoid(5%)
Or something to that effect. If the problem turned out not to be the battery, the program backtracked to check the wiring or the solenoid.
A lot of it could be more complicated than what I've shown. I wasn't an AI guy (aum mani padma), just a grunt.
I wonder how the compute power of a circa 1985 LISP machine compares to your basic 1GHz Pentium IV?
This is not about China vs. the US. It's about the Chinese Military vs everyone else.
An unarmed US prop plane destroys a slightly-less-than-state-of-the-art yet armed-to-the-teeth and kick-ass-in-its-own-right Chinese military jet. That same prop plane lands on Chinese soil and (I assume) all that tasty spy gear has been destroyed and the crew more-or-less unharmed (sorry, I'm having a hyphen problem today).
Now, if one of our Tomcats was knocked down by a Chinese propeller plane, you can rest assured that the Pentagon would be called on the carpet. The press would have a field day. Heads would roll.
Now, if I remember my Asian psychology correctly, multiply the above paragraph by 100. the Chinese military is gonna be insane. Big Loss of Prestiege by people who are not used to eating crow. They don't have to justify anything to the West, they have to recover whatever face they can for their own survival.
I hate to say "me too, me too" but there you have it. The horrible lesson is that the 80's and 90's have tought us is that we are all mercenaries(sp?) Company loyalty? Think of your career move as your opportunity to right size your upper management. Do not tip your hand, even to those closest to you. You can ask forgiveness later.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd subcontract to the same guys who built the Death Stars. I hear they do good work on a tight schedule...
pick up some CD's along with the milk. They're in the bread section...
It's like dropping lawn darts from orbit...
Above is absolutely true. John Clese (and, I believe, some of the other Python crew) brought their own rather twisted sense of humor to the corporate world. I saw their "customer relations" video about 10 years back.
"They've really sold out!" is what I thought to myself way back when. Now I'm not so sure there wasn't a subversive undertone (a la early Dilbert) to everything they produced.
One example thay gave about "be courtious to the customer, no matter what!" would make a CEO smile and a regular in-the-trenches worker wince. Now I suspect the example was over-the-top for a reason. Anybody else see any of their recordings?
stirring the pot since Nineteen-mumblty-mumble
Doc Agony
to have more than one computer. And for goodness' sake, make sure those computers are more-or-less equal in capability!
Otherwise, make sure you spend some time with her every day (the current psych wisdom is to spend at least 20 minutes a day with her, talking or doing some activity).
The more things you can find to do with your spouse (besdies screw and/or take care of the podlings) the better off you'll be in the long run.
Good Luck
I've been kind of flip with the other responders, but I'm not going to do that here. Your criticism is to the point, and quite correct. Franklin (closest thing we have in America to a geek "saint" as we'll ever get, I think :) ) does not belong in the same category as the Pilgrims. I apologize for lumping "our" visionaries in with "their" visionaires. Shit, I did it again. Nonetheless, point very well taken.
As far as regionalism is concerned, well, you got me there, too. I have not seen a Red vs. Blue map of the US lately, so once again I have shot from the hip. My personal experience (and I will stress this is *personal* experience) with The Great American Heartland has been with the rural south. The place where you are issued a beaten up pickup with a gun rack in the back and a yaller dawg when you move in ("why duz yer DNA look so funny?" "You're probably not used to seeing the full compliment of genes and chromosomes. I suggest finding a 'domestic partner' outside of your own family, for a start." "Yew shure do have purty lips." "CHECK PLEASE!")
We'll, I've probaby pissed a few Virginian Mensa members off, but really, I have found a big difference between Urbanites (remember, The Sprawl goes from Boston to Richmond. Some would say further north and south than that) and Heartlandites (small towne and rural Amurica, praise Jeezus)
Now that I am guilty of raising the noise and lowering the signal for the benefit of my own ego (those words! every one a silver note! so beautiful!), let's see if I can make my point.
Register to vote. Push back. The exeutive branch has enough hubris for sixteen greek plays. There is hope. You just gotta act like there is for there to *be* hope.
Cheers,
6.2
We're not going to "get lucky" with a "Presidential Indescretion", like the Republicans did with Clinton. You're never going to find Duhbya in the sack with an intern OR Condoliza Rice (or, one suspects, his wife) because his privates are already held in blind trust by Halburton ("We'll be taking these for the duration, Mr. President. We wouldn't want you to do something foolish with them." "But, but who's balls will I use?" "Secretary Rumsfeld has more balls than all of the Bushes put together, including your mother Barbara, I'm afraid. I suggest you borrow his from time to time.")
Cheers
6.2
Mod the parent up, ya caught me taking a cheap shot.
./
:D
I was being imprecise, which is "sin #1" here on
When I mentioned the original, intolerant religious crackpots, I was refering to the waves of people fleeing religious persecution, as well as the usual assortment of indentured servants, convicts, and other political and social undesirables that Britian was wont to ship anywhere and everywhere but Britian. This is all circa mid seventeenth century, I believe.
The Founding Fathers (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, et. al) were, in truth, a pretty interesting bunch. How they wound up in charge and not being stoned or burned is beyond me. Sometimes we get lucky
I stand by my "drunkard's walk" analogy. We really have no idea of what extremes are possible here in America. Everybody having a free hand means the extremists are kept in check (for the most part, current administration excluded. next election ain't over yet).
I would be interested in where you got your 5% figure.
Cheers,
6.2
Mod this guy up for being awake. :D AND for providing constructive criticism! (what a concept!!!)
/ ftrials/s copes/evolut.htm
;)
Yes, I know the scopes trial was "hooey". But if I may quote:
The Scopes trial by no means ended the debate over the teaching of evolution, but it did represent a significant setback for the anti-evolution forces. Of the fifteen states with anti- evolution legislation pending in 1925, only two states (Arkansas and Mississippi) enacted laws restricting teaching of Darwin's theory.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects
I'll take my victories where I can get them, hooey or not. Or, in this case, a "stalking horse". A scheme set in motion by advocates of rationalism, if my research is correct. Or by people trying to sell newspapers. Does it really matter? WWII started with an asassination in Serbia and ended with a shitpot of doughboys in Berlin. If that asassination had been foiled, odds are that WWII would have started some other way.
So how does this weaken my argument? If the forces of unreason can use outright lies the the forces of reason can be a little sneaky.
I suspect that your real objection is that if we're going to use rational arguments, we should remain pristine pure. I submit to you that this is exactly why lawyers hate engineers and other "rational" types on juries. (oh, god, another sweeping generalization! Guess I'll burn in hell...)
Hey, we're on the same side, but I'll argue with you anyway
Cheers, and keep raising (*ahem*) Hell,
6.2
"The U.S. is falling at warp speed into a dark age of ignorance, superstition and fear."
Only the Great American Heartland ("Praise jeezus, and pass me that rattlesnake!"). The Right and Left Coasts have enough cynnicism and free-thinking left (so to speak) to save it, though.
O.K. I'm an American. I've lived on the East Coast for (oh, roughly) 50 years. What's going on now is what's been going on since the original, intolerant, religious crackpots, er, our Glorious Founding Fathers, came ashore. It's a fight for mindshare.
"Truth" has nothing to do with it. It's all about control. For the past 100 years, one battle has been the Fundies vs. everybody else (the other battle has been Haves vs. Have Nots, but that one is as old as, pardon the expression, Adam).
The fundies are well organized and focused. The "rest of us" free-thinkers are disorganized and unfocused. Hey, if you're a free-thinker, you have a high tolerance for bullshit anyway.
We usually draw the line where evidence is considerable (look up the Scopes trial) or lives hang in the balance (Vietnam).
America is not sliding downhill. It's more like a drunkard's walk into a bad part of town. For goodness' sake, vote people. Vote for Homer Simpson if you have to (mmmm, WMD!), but vote, damnit!
I though this was going to be another election year article. Instead it's about magnetic spin in atoms.
SPIN-A-TRON said from Washington today that everything was under control after a momentary glitch in the new Skynet command and control computers. It would be sending out T101 "claims adjusters" to process damage claims due to the malfunction...
What book of fiction (or nonfiction) do you think represents a "best guess" as far as AI/Robot/Human relations is concerned.
that's it. I'm switching today!
Perhaps because they've fired all those pesky, freethinking engineers and retained the drones?
Can you say "denial of service" attack?!? It's like a rerun of "Goldfinger": get the codes for a large chunk of tagged cash and tell it "you're stolen".
Hey, buddy, can you spare an untagged dime?
Is it a "bugfix", or is it a "feature upgrade"? Know what the difference is? Oh ye$$$$$$$....
Heh, you hit the nail on the head, pal :)
The real "Ask Slashdot" challenge would be "I'm am ,at present, a UNIX system administrator. How the hell do I get out of this job, but still stay in a computer related field?"
I was shanghi'd into being a UNIX sysadmin for about a year. It was the nastiest experience of my life, especially since I was considered to be the "unix expert" by my non-UNIX cohorts, and was expected to waive a magic wand to get things to work. I developed a whole new relationship with SCSI cables that I never suspected even existed before.
Ah, I can see you've never worked for The Feds before. Our friend has exactly two choices:
That's it. I used to be a contractor for the Navy, and every once in a while they would conduct searches like that too. You know what? They were well within their rights, as far as the documents I had signed on joining were concerned.
The point that everyone misses around here is that security people are malajusted, paranoid bastards because they have to be. They do not have a sense of humor.
I see you've never been "downsized", my friend. Or is it "right-sized"? The boyz at the top will do whatever is necessary to keep those bonuses comming in (don't forget that Caribbean "motivational meeting" for the CEO and the sales staff!).
I was a "loyal employee" until I got my throat cut without warning. Guess what? You still have the same bills to pay when unemployed as you do when you have a job! My solution: take a 20% pay cut, and upgrade my skill set like mad. I'm not quite as vulnerable as I once was. I eventually regained ground. But I don't rely on My Corporate Masters to "take care of me". Taking care of me is my job.
It wouldn't be a ./ review unless there was a certain amount of navel watching involved (god, that was a brilliant line! I'm *sooo* good! ./ should post more comments like this one). That was a nice bit of self refrence in the PS line, btw.
(*ahem*)
On the other hand, I could say the same about "The Longest Journey", a game that is bringing back the reasons why I don't like adventure games with hurricaine force. I can only do a minimal install even though I have a 12G hard drive. The sound stutters (thank god I have subtitles enabled). And...it's a pixel hunt. Another frigging pixel hunt.
(*sigh*)
Someday I'll learn.
Just my .023 mW. May be higher in CA
if the car won't start, then
Or something to that effect. If the problem turned out not to be the battery, the program backtracked to check the wiring or the solenoid.
A lot of it could be more complicated than what I've shown. I wasn't an AI guy (aum mani padma), just a grunt.
I wonder how the compute power of a circa 1985 LISP machine compares to your basic 1GHz Pentium IV?
An unarmed US prop plane destroys a slightly-less-than-state-of-the-art yet armed-to-the-teeth and kick-ass-in-its-own-right Chinese military jet. That same prop plane lands on Chinese soil and (I assume) all that tasty spy gear has been destroyed and the crew more-or-less unharmed (sorry, I'm having a hyphen problem today).
Now, if one of our Tomcats was knocked down by a Chinese propeller plane, you can rest assured that the Pentagon would be called on the carpet. The press would have a field day. Heads would roll.
Now, if I remember my Asian psychology correctly, multiply the above paragraph by 100. the Chinese military is gonna be insane. Big Loss of Prestiege by people who are not used to eating crow. They don't have to justify anything to the West, they have to recover whatever face they can for their own survival.
No. It would be THE FRIGGING KILLER APP of the Web if you could do it convincingly!
I hate to say "me too, me too" but there you have it. The horrible lesson is that the 80's and 90's have tought us is that we are all mercenaries(sp?) Company loyalty? Think of your career move as your opportunity to right size your upper management. Do not tip your hand, even to those closest to you. You can ask forgiveness later.