Hmmm..."make you live in the shit-infested, toxic weedlot of a world..."
Let's break this down-
Shit-infested - I thought we were going to be flooded and drown from melting ice-caps, who is going to supply the excrement, and why doesn't it wash away? Oh, wait, you're remembering the "too much sewage" crisis that was the result of over-development in our cities in the 1990's
Toxic - No, CO2 isn't toxic, you're mixing up your paranoid fantasies. Toxic belongs to the "acid rain" that was the liberal boogeyman of the 1980s.
Weedlot - Wait, I thought our farmland was going to turn into desert and be bleached in the sun. Cactus maybe, but weeds - they're the byproduct of over-farming and the use of artificial fertilizers, which are liberal scare-words from the 1970s.
It's no wonder people laugh at liberals, they can't even keep their own conspiracy theories straight.
Not a Jackass, but a misanthrope. It's a win-win situation. If I'm right and global warming is a hoax, I don't end up riding a bicycle to work because of a silly pseudo-scientific fad. But, on the very slim chance that I am wrong, there'll be fewer people alive to cause traffic jams when I'm trying to get to the mall in my SUV. However, to return to my core premise - scientists are overpaid, underworked misfits who create imaginary crises to justify the public funds they are wasting. It's time for society to remove these leeches and put them to productive use in the service of private enterprise. (No, I'm not a republican, they are far too liberal)
A few fundamental truths to chew on:
A) Most scientists are cheap whores. They got used to supporting liberal doctrines to earn their pay while democrats controlled congress. Now they moan and cry because somebody "moved their cheese", and they have to learn a new set of political doctrines to get their free drink from the government teet. Quick - call the Waaahhhmbulance!
B) Global warming is a hoax
C) EVEN if it was real it won't hurt anything because the ice caps are like the ice that floats in your drink. They will shrink as they melt and the net change in sea level will be zero point zero inches.
D) If Global warming WAS real it would bring enormous benefit to mankind by dramatically increasing the amount of farmable land available - it would offset world hunger significantly.
E) There is no Gaia. The earth is just big a ball of dirt. The only thing special about it is that I live here.
F) The best way to reduce any greenhouse effect is to fire a lot of useless scientists to decrease their spewing of hot gas.
1. Worldwide internet communication allows large numbers of international friendships, dampening public support for all geopolitical war. >Pedophilia soars, credit card fraud exceeds legitimate commerce, the middle class riot in the streets.
2. Cheap connectivity makes government propaganda impractical in every country. >Disinformation and conspiracy theories become unmanageable, science is overwhlemed by pseudo-science, tinfoil hats become the next fashion craze. Illiteracy soars as multimedia replaces text. Huge segments of young people become impossible to educate and are thus unemployable. The economy collapses.
3. Nearly all software becomes free, as the impracticality of selling infinitely copyable material becomes evident. > Users begin to steal everything from music to movies to software. High-tech workers and content creators are laid off in droves, and go begging in the streets. The stock market collapses, massive economic depression ensues.
4. Pop culture dies for the same reason, and is replaced by amateur arts and culture > Unable to support quality content creation without funding, all major media outlets die. News is made up by conspiracy theorists. Lame-ass amateurs post pathetic content on free websotes that no one bothers to visit.Public trust erodes. P0rn and gambling take over 99% of internet hosts. The institution of marriage becomes archaic. Most young people learn relationship skills from m@sterbating to staged performances. Rape becomes an accepted dating practice.
5. AIDS vaccine is found, triggering second sexual revolution > Constant video sex simulation erodes the pathetically weak social skills of the young. Self-indulgence is preached as a moral good to stimulate sales of P0rn on the internet. An emotional relationship comes to be viewed as an impediment to free expression. Rape becomes the most common form of sexual encounter. Suicide soars amongst the young who complain of feelings of abandondment and isolation.
6. Tech advances too fast for traditional college to keep up. Other methods of training become more prominent. > Young people refuse to allow school to impose on their basic right to constant video stimulation. 90% of the population becomes illiterate and devoid of job skills. Welfare rolls balloon until the federal government defaults on its debt. Hyperinflation wipes out all stores of capital. Electric utilites lack funds to purchase fuel and major pervasive blackouts occur. Citizens riot, then turn to cannibalism. Cities are converted to feudal fortresses. A new dark age is ushered in that lasts for 1000 years.
7. Privacy dies. Morality becomes more utilitarian as "public face" becomes impossible. Free, uncomitted sex with strangers (aka gang-rape) becomes the common mode of sexual exchange as young people lose all concern for the feelings of others. Learning from the open source movement that property is theft, roving gangs of young people loot and pillage for the food and clothing they have a "right" to own, but can not purchase for lack of jobs. See above.
Let's shut down the internet before it destroys the world!
It might amuse or even terrify you to learn that the new Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD12) that intends to give RFID based badges to all government employees to be used to give them access to government buildings and computer system, is planning to use *commercial banks* to process the security paperwork because of their cough-choke "experience" at handling identity verification.
I can only pray that the Washington Post is able to connect the dots and expose this cluster-fork before Achmet and pals go waltzing back to Durkadurkastan carrying suitcases full of plutonium that they checked out of a federal research lab using ID's issued to "American Dad".
Having worked with NASA in the near past on a satellite project, I was amazed at the positively ANTIQUE technology they throw into space. Their engineers are mostly in their 50's and 60's and they got their EE degrees before PCs were invented. They build satellites using hundreds of millions of dollars worth of custom-designed discrete component logic, when the same functions could be performed hundreds of times faster and more reliably with integrated circuits for a small fraction of the cost. They still build earth-sensing satellites with individual photodiodes and reciprocating mirrors instead of CCD arrays. The failure of a single transistor took out a whole spectral band (one of twelve) on one recent bird. When Golden tried to get them to do things "cheaper, faster, and better" they sabotaged his programs by cutting out testing and QA, blew up a few probes, and then started saying "That's what happens when you try to save money!" They pay a team of half a dozen scientists to sit around and periodically analyze the response curve of the photodiodes to look for drift in intensity, when the entire function could be done more accurately by a simple feedback and control loop. The whole place should be cleaned out and re-staffed from scratch.
This is the inevitable result of the saturation of the software market. Since everyone has PCs, and all of them run Windows, the only way for Microsoft to grow is to go into hardware.
MS has always seemed to have an "eat its own children" mentality. First they get a vendor to create a market for some service on windows - like speech recognition or web browsers, then they offer a competing product that kills off the original company. One could say the only people that have faired worse than the competitors of MS have been its partners.
Now they seem to be turning on the hardware makers who gave them their monopoly all these years by only installing Windows on new machines.
The secret of the coming demise of MS will likely be this - First - they will struggle to capture market from better HW products Then - they will cheat by putting secret features into Windows that run better on MS hardware Then - Competing manufacturers will realize they are being screwed. They will realize they can gain a price advantage by using a free OS Then - Linux will reach critical mass and take over as the defacto user OS Finally Microsoft will become the next Apple - marginalized and largely irrelevant, struggling to survive
I was only half joking. Consider me a Jeffersonian in the vein of "Government is best which governs least" Me personally I'm thinking Army, Post Offfice, and not much else. You can even get a bumper sticker- http://stickeremporium.com/mm5/products/MB00153.jp g
In the movie "Superman", Perry White, editor of the daily planet says - "I want the name of this paper and Superman to go together like peanut butter and jelly, like politics and corruption...."
The problem is basically this - you have created an office that gives the holder permission to spend the peoples money that they exert no effort in earning. THEN you have created an election process that requires millions of dollars to be spent to achieve that position of authority. How many seconds does it take the average fool to figure out that you can use those "public funds" and give them to firms that will kick back a fraction of the proceeds as the legalized bribery that we call "campaign contributions".
Then you act surprised that federal spending is full of "gifts" to large companies. Sheesh - did you go to school on the short bus?
There is one good way to fix this -
A constitutional amendment that disempowers Congress and substitutes a direct democarcy. Every taxpayer - along with their federal tax return, gets to say where the money they are "contributing" gets spent. Congress would assemble a sales catalog of possible federal programs, and taxpayers would pick and choose how much to spend on each one. Taxpayers would also get to vote each year on raising or lowering the tax rates.
THAT would put some radical reform into the federal government!
Hmmm - let's think about this - public servant, rigged voting machines.... public servant, rigged voting machines... hmmmmm There's an old latin phrase that is often applied in cases like this -"qui bono" , or "who benefits".
The prosecutor is certainly not responding to any public outcry - ergo
We can reasonably assume that he is benefitting in some other way.
Likely guess - The prosecutor (or a superior) is running for office soon, and Diebold may have offered a brib.....I'm sorry , in this country they're called *campaign contributions*.
Who knows - they may even be able to simply GIVE him the election - as long as there is no public scrutiny of their voting machines.
This all reminds me of Isaac Asimov's story about a compound called Thiotimeline. It was supposed to be a crystal that dissolved in water before the water was added.
If you were skilled enough, you could "intend" to add water to the thiotimeline then withhold it at the last instant. The Thiotimeline crystal would then travel through time looking for the instant when the water gets added. Making time travel a practical reality.
So I guess the next stop in quantum computing is a computer that does the calculations BEFORE the program is written. But if you try to list the program, the answer disappears.
Now here's a funny little tidbit. The morning after I posted this, there was a black Ford Explorer sitting in front of my house idling for about an hour. When I left the front door, the vehicle did a u-turn until it was sitting cross-wise in the street facing me. The driver put his finger to a radio button in his ear, said something into a small microphone, wrote something on a clipboard, then drove away.
Total coincidence I'm sure. But then again, maybe that totalitarian seizure of power is already in the planning stages, and someone is nervous about publicity...yah just don't know how paranoid to be these days...
Most of the Federal debt is in T-bills and other negotiable instruments that are redeemed after a fairly short period and have to be re-issued. If investors lose confidence in the dollar, the Government will have to finance its debt in other currencies - if it can borrow money at all. Hyperinflation happens when the government defaults on its debts, can't borrow any more, and just starts printing money to cover its expenses. Germany did this just before WWII. They got to the point where they were devaluing the paper by printing their currency on it.
Do you cretins actually think that you are *free* because you get to criticize President dubuya on the internet? Our country is being sold out wholesale from under our noses. We go $200 billion a year deeper in debt to China alone. Money we have no way of paying back. The Federal government has a debt in the trillions, going up at half-a-trillion per year. The federal deficit now is money that we are BORROWING to pay the INTEREST on outstanding debt. As a nation, we are charging our mastercard bill on our Visa card. As individuals we have a NEGATIVE savings rate - our citizens are going into hock at the rate of $1000/yr per person because they think the paper prices of homes in the real estate bubble are money they can actually spend and not have to pay back. Our country is poised on the verge of economic collapse the way Argentia and Brazil went decades ago. Hyperinflation of 2000 percent a year, 25-30 percent unemployment. The Chinese will 0WN us, and all they have to do is sit back and keep selling us TVs and stereos made with slave labor while we spend ourselves into ruin. Our leaders all own big pieces of the Oil companies and retail chains that are selling us out, and don't give a D@MN because they are getting so rich in the process. And once the economic collapse hits, guess what comes next - a totalitarian seizure of power to "save us". Freedom isn't being able to whack off to internet pr0n whenever you want to or being able to call George W an @ssh0le on a blog- it is being able to support your family without killing yourselves in the process. Millions of Americans have lost this ability - they have exchanged $40-50K factory jobs for $10-15K service sector employment. And we ignore them because we can now get a 32-inch chinese TV for $189 at W@ll-Mart. Now the IT jobs are going overseas, and there is talk of doing medicine over the internet with foriegn doctors.
20 years from now you may be *FREE* to say F%CK online as often as you like, but your children will be trying to sneak onto fishing boats headed for china to try to get work so they can send a few yen back to feed their starving families.
Oh, but none of that matters because we can indulge in all the inconsequential whining that we want on blogs that no one but our close friends ever reads.
I see in this result the inevitable effect of a generation raised on TV ads and trained to buy on impulse in order to increase consumption and stimulate the economy. It is taken as axiomatic these days that surrender to ones emotions and whims is a virtue, and self-control is seen as a neurosis. No wonder people can only make decisions in their sleep. They have never learned to suppress their feelings in order to think logically. A nation of hyperactive, short attetnion span, self-indulgent, easily manipulated sheep; incapable of reasoning their way through any decision more complex than "Would you like fries with that?" The sooner the ice caps melt and destroy this civilization, the better.
When selling Linux to corporate america, you just CAN'T do it using geek speak. Managers use the same english words, but when you are a manager, your goal is to confuse and misdirect. NEVER take what a manager says literally, or try to respond to it logically. Managers make decisions based purely upon gut feeling and emotional reaction, then rationalize the decisions with vaguely related reports and misapplied studies.
Here are some simple translations:
Management Speak(M) to Engineerish(E) 1M) I'm concerned about linux security 1E)I dont understand linux and it makes me feel insecure 2M) I've heard that linux has security problems 2E) A rival vendor's sales rep in an expensive suit told me linux has security problems, I need someone in a more expensive suit to tell me he was wrong 3M) No one supports linux 3E) If a linux server crashes there is no linux sales rep to yell at and blame it on 4M) I need more data 4E) I want the information reduced to powerpoint slides and presented by someone with a nice butt in tight fitting clothes(gender varies) 5M) Lets discuss the issues involved 5E) I'm afraid to make a decision until the whole industry stampedes in that direction 6M) Is this the right business decision? 6E) Can I be fired for doing this?
Here's a thought. What if the 3D Realms folks wrote DNF to run native on Linux using OpenGL, and they have been waiting for the Linux desktop market to stomp Windows the way it has done in servers? Quick, to the Fedora site Robin!
(BTW-If Redhat had any business sense, they would offer alternate distro bundles that had major games pre-install through RPM files.)
There was once a sitcom called "All that Glitters" (Norman Lear - 1977) in which ALL the roles of men and women were reversed.
Needless to say, it bombed.
Why not make a show about people eating boiled snowtires - because it would violate our genetically programmed behaviors, as well as our cultural habits.
I have half-heartedly submitted a dozen or so articles to/. - none of which have been accepted. My favorite topic, of course, is the danger of X-rays emitted by spark plugs. (See how I snuck that in) Any chance of there ever being a "Guide to writing acceptable articles for slashdot" that gives detailed advice on DOs and DONTs??? Just thought I'd ask.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm ..."make you live in the shit-infested, toxic weedlot of a world..."
Let's break this down-
Shit-infested - I thought we were going to be flooded and drown from melting ice-caps, who is going to supply the excrement, and why doesn't it wash away? Oh, wait, you're remembering the "too much sewage" crisis that was the result of over-development in our cities in the 1990's
Toxic - No, CO2 isn't toxic, you're mixing up your paranoid fantasies. Toxic belongs to the "acid rain" that was the liberal boogeyman of the 1980s.
Weedlot - Wait, I thought our farmland was going to turn into desert and be bleached in the sun. Cactus maybe, but weeds - they're the byproduct of over-farming and the use of artificial fertilizers, which are liberal scare-words from the 1970s.
It's no wonder people laugh at liberals, they can't even keep their own conspiracy theories straight.
Not a Jackass, but a misanthrope.
It's a win-win situation.
If I'm right and global warming is a hoax, I don't end up riding a bicycle to work because of a silly pseudo-scientific fad.
But, on the very slim chance that I am wrong, there'll be fewer people alive to cause traffic jams when I'm trying to get to the mall in my SUV.
However, to return to my core premise - scientists are overpaid, underworked misfits who create imaginary crises to justify the public funds they are wasting. It's time for society to remove these leeches and put them to productive use in the service of private enterprise.
(No, I'm not a republican, they are far too liberal)
A few fundamental truths to chew on: A) Most scientists are cheap whores. They got used to supporting liberal doctrines to earn their pay while democrats controlled congress. Now they moan and cry because somebody "moved their cheese", and they have to learn a new set of political doctrines to get their free drink from the government teet. Quick - call the Waaahhhmbulance! B) Global warming is a hoax C) EVEN if it was real it won't hurt anything because the ice caps are like the ice that floats in your drink. They will shrink as they melt and the net change in sea level will be zero point zero inches. D) If Global warming WAS real it would bring enormous benefit to mankind by dramatically increasing the amount of farmable land available - it would offset world hunger significantly. E) There is no Gaia. The earth is just big a ball of dirt. The only thing special about it is that I live here. F) The best way to reduce any greenhouse effect is to fire a lot of useless scientists to decrease their spewing of hot gas.
1. Worldwide internet communication allows large numbers of international friendships, dampening public support for all geopolitical war.
>Pedophilia soars, credit card fraud exceeds legitimate commerce, the middle class riot in the streets.
2. Cheap connectivity makes government propaganda impractical in every country.
>Disinformation and conspiracy theories become unmanageable, science is overwhlemed by pseudo-science, tinfoil hats become the next fashion craze. Illiteracy soars as multimedia replaces text. Huge segments of young people become impossible to educate and are thus unemployable. The economy collapses.
3. Nearly all software becomes free, as the impracticality of selling infinitely copyable material becomes evident.
> Users begin to steal everything from music to movies to software. High-tech workers and content creators are laid off in droves, and go begging in the streets. The stock market collapses, massive economic depression ensues.
4. Pop culture dies for the same reason, and is replaced by amateur arts and culture
> Unable to support quality content creation without funding, all major media outlets die. News is made up by conspiracy theorists. Lame-ass amateurs post pathetic content on free websotes that no one bothers to visit.Public trust erodes. P0rn and gambling take over 99% of internet hosts. The institution of marriage becomes archaic. Most young people learn relationship skills from m@sterbating to staged performances. Rape becomes an accepted dating practice.
5. AIDS vaccine is found, triggering second sexual revolution
> Constant video sex simulation erodes the pathetically weak social skills of the young. Self-indulgence is preached as a moral good to stimulate sales of P0rn on the internet. An emotional relationship comes to be viewed as an impediment to free expression. Rape becomes the most common form of sexual encounter. Suicide soars amongst the young who complain of feelings of abandondment and isolation.
6. Tech advances too fast for traditional college to keep up. Other methods of training become more prominent.
> Young people refuse to allow school to impose on their basic right to constant video stimulation. 90% of the population becomes illiterate and devoid of job skills. Welfare rolls balloon until the federal government defaults on its debt. Hyperinflation wipes out all stores of capital. Electric utilites lack funds to purchase fuel and major pervasive blackouts occur. Citizens riot, then turn to cannibalism. Cities are converted to feudal fortresses. A new dark age is ushered in that lasts for 1000 years.
7. Privacy dies. Morality becomes more utilitarian as "public face" becomes impossible.
Free, uncomitted sex with strangers (aka gang-rape) becomes the common mode of sexual exchange as young people lose all concern for the feelings of others. Learning from the open source movement that property is theft, roving gangs of young people loot and pillage for the food and clothing they have a "right" to own, but can not purchase for lack of jobs. See above.
Let's shut down the internet before it destroys the world!
It might amuse or even terrify you to learn that the new Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD12) that intends to give RFID based badges to all government employees to be used to give them access to government buildings and computer system, is planning to use *commercial banks* to process the security paperwork because of their cough-choke "experience" at handling identity verification.
I can only pray that the Washington Post is able to connect the dots and expose this cluster-fork before Achmet and pals go waltzing back to Durkadurkastan carrying suitcases full of plutonium that they checked out of a federal research lab using ID's issued to "American Dad".
Having worked with NASA in the near past on a satellite project, I was amazed at the positively ANTIQUE technology they throw into space. Their engineers are mostly in their 50's and 60's and they got their EE degrees before PCs were invented. They build satellites using hundreds of millions of dollars worth of custom-designed discrete component logic, when the same functions could be performed hundreds of times faster and more reliably with integrated circuits for a small fraction of the cost. They still build earth-sensing satellites with individual photodiodes and reciprocating mirrors instead of CCD arrays. The failure of a single transistor took out a whole spectral band (one of twelve) on one recent bird. When Golden tried to get them to do things "cheaper, faster, and better" they sabotaged his programs by cutting out testing and QA, blew up a few probes, and then started saying "That's what happens when you try to save money!" They pay a team of half a dozen scientists to sit around and periodically analyze the response curve of the photodiodes to look for drift in intensity, when the entire function could be done more accurately by a simple feedback and control loop.
The whole place should be cleaned out and re-staffed from scratch.
Will MS be changing its name to Microhard?
This is the inevitable result of the saturation of the software market. Since everyone has PCs, and all of them run Windows, the only way for Microsoft to grow is to go into hardware.
MS has always seemed to have an "eat its own children" mentality. First they get a vendor to create a market for some service on windows - like speech recognition or web browsers, then they offer a competing product that kills off the original company. One could say the only people that have faired worse than the competitors of MS have been its partners.
Now they seem to be turning on the hardware makers who gave them their monopoly all these years by only installing Windows on new machines.
The secret of the coming demise of MS will likely be this -
First - they will struggle to capture market from better HW products
Then - they will cheat by putting secret features into Windows that run better on MS hardware
Then - Competing manufacturers will realize they are being screwed. They will realize they can gain a price advantage by using a free OS
Then - Linux will reach critical mass and take over as the defacto user OS
Finally Microsoft will become the next Apple - marginalized and largely irrelevant, struggling to survive
Well, we can hope, anyway.
I was only half joking. Consider me a Jeffersonian in the vein of "Government is best which governs least"p g
Me personally I'm thinking Army, Post Offfice, and not much else.
You can even get a bumper sticker-
http://stickeremporium.com/mm5/products/MB00153.j
In the movie "Superman", Perry White, editor of the daily planet says -
"I want the name of this paper and Superman to go together like peanut butter and jelly, like politics and corruption...."
The problem is basically this - you have created an office that gives the holder permission to spend the peoples money that they exert no effort in earning. THEN you have created an election process that requires millions of dollars to be spent to achieve that position of authority. How many seconds does it take the average fool to figure out that you can use those "public funds" and give them to firms that will kick back a fraction of the proceeds as the legalized bribery that we call "campaign contributions".
Then you act surprised that federal spending is full of "gifts" to large companies. Sheesh - did you go to school on the short bus?
There is one good way to fix this -
A constitutional amendment that disempowers Congress and substitutes a direct democarcy. Every taxpayer - along with their federal tax return, gets to say where the money they are "contributing" gets spent. Congress would assemble a sales catalog of possible federal programs, and taxpayers would pick and choose how much to spend on each one. Taxpayers would also get to vote each year on raising or lowering the tax rates.
THAT would put some radical reform into the federal government!
-Wasn't there a movie about this? M-M-M-M-Max Headroom!
Hmmm - let's think about this - public servant, rigged voting machines.... public servant, rigged voting machines... hmmmmm
There's an old latin phrase that is often applied in cases like this -"qui bono" , or "who benefits".
The prosecutor is certainly not responding to any public outcry - ergo
We can reasonably assume that he is benefitting in some other way.
Likely guess - The prosecutor (or a superior) is running for office soon, and Diebold may have offered a brib.....I'm sorry , in this country they're called *campaign contributions*.
Who knows - they may even be able to simply GIVE him the election - as long as there is no public scrutiny of their voting machines.
This all reminds me of Isaac Asimov's story about a compound called Thiotimeline. It was supposed to be a crystal that dissolved in water before the water was added.
If you were skilled enough, you could "intend" to add water to the thiotimeline then withhold it at the last instant. The Thiotimeline crystal would then travel through time looking for the instant when the water gets added. Making time travel a practical reality.
So I guess the next stop in quantum computing is a computer that does the calculations BEFORE the program is written. But if you try to list the program, the answer disappears.
Now here's a funny little tidbit. The morning after I posted this, there was a black Ford Explorer sitting in front of my house idling for about an hour. When I left the front door, the vehicle did a u-turn until it was sitting cross-wise in the street facing me. The driver put his finger to a radio button in his ear, said something into a small microphone, wrote something on a clipboard, then drove away. Total coincidence I'm sure. But then again, maybe that totalitarian seizure of power is already in the planning stages, and someone is nervous about publicity...yah just don't know how paranoid to be these days...
You must be a White House economist!
You're right, yen will be even harder to earn ;-)
Most of the Federal debt is in T-bills and other negotiable instruments that are redeemed after a fairly short period and have to be re-issued. If investors lose confidence in the dollar, the Government will have to finance its debt in other currencies - if it can borrow money at all. Hyperinflation happens when the government defaults on its debts, can't borrow any more, and just starts printing money to cover its expenses. Germany did this just before WWII. They got to the point where they were devaluing the paper by printing their currency on it.
Do you cretins actually think that you are *free* because you get to criticize President dubuya on the internet? Our country is being sold out wholesale from under our noses. We go $200 billion a year deeper in debt to China alone. Money we have no way of paying back. The Federal government has a debt in the trillions, going up at half-a-trillion per year. The federal deficit now is money that we are BORROWING to pay the INTEREST on outstanding debt. As a nation, we are charging our mastercard bill on our Visa card. As individuals we have a NEGATIVE savings rate - our citizens are going into hock at the rate of $1000/yr per person because they think the paper prices of homes in the real estate bubble are money they can actually spend and not have to pay back. Our country is poised on the verge of economic collapse the way Argentia and Brazil went decades ago. Hyperinflation of 2000 percent a year, 25-30 percent unemployment. The Chinese will 0WN us, and all they have to do is sit back and keep selling us TVs and stereos made with slave labor while we spend ourselves into ruin. Our leaders all own big pieces of the Oil companies and retail chains that are selling us out, and don't give a D@MN because they are getting so rich in the process. And once the economic collapse hits, guess what comes next - a totalitarian seizure of power to "save us". Freedom isn't being able to whack off to internet pr0n whenever you want to or being able to call George W an @ssh0le on a blog- it is being able to support your family without killing yourselves in the process. Millions of Americans have lost this ability - they have exchanged $40-50K factory jobs for $10-15K service sector employment. And we ignore them because we can now get a 32-inch chinese TV for $189 at W@ll-Mart. Now the IT jobs are going overseas, and there is talk of doing medicine over the internet with foriegn doctors.
20 years from now you may be *FREE* to say F%CK online as often as you like, but your children will be trying to sneak onto fishing boats headed for china to try to get work so they can send a few yen back to feed their starving families.
Oh, but none of that matters because we can indulge in all the inconsequential whining that we want on blogs that no one but our close friends ever reads.
Fools.
I don't think anyone gets the futurama reference...
I see in this result the inevitable effect of a generation raised on TV ads and trained to buy on impulse in order to increase consumption and stimulate the economy. It is taken as axiomatic these days that surrender to ones emotions and whims is a virtue, and self-control is seen as a neurosis. No wonder people can only make decisions in their sleep. They have never learned to suppress their feelings in order to think logically. A nation of hyperactive, short attetnion span, self-indulgent, easily manipulated sheep; incapable of reasoning their way through any decision more complex than "Would you like fries with that?" The sooner the ice caps melt and destroy this civilization, the better.
When selling Linux to corporate america, you just CAN'T do it using geek speak.
Managers use the same english words, but when you are a manager, your goal is to confuse and misdirect. NEVER take what a manager says literally, or try to respond to it logically. Managers make decisions based purely upon gut feeling and emotional reaction, then rationalize the decisions with vaguely related reports and misapplied studies.
Here are some simple translations:
Management Speak(M) to Engineerish(E)
1M) I'm concerned about linux security
1E)I dont understand linux and it makes me feel insecure
2M) I've heard that linux has security problems
2E) A rival vendor's sales rep in an expensive suit told me linux has security problems, I need someone in a more expensive suit to tell me he was wrong
3M) No one supports linux
3E) If a linux server crashes there is no linux sales rep to yell at and blame it on
4M) I need more data
4E) I want the information reduced to powerpoint slides and presented by someone with a nice butt in tight fitting clothes(gender varies)
5M) Lets discuss the issues involved
5E) I'm afraid to make a decision until the whole industry stampedes in that direction
6M) Is this the right business decision?
6E) Can I be fired for doing this?
At least decommissioned robots won't beg on street corners or walk into post offices with assualt rifles when they get back home.
But what I really wanna know is how long until we get to see Keith Laumer's "Bolos" fighting to the bitter end for the honor of the regiment?
Here's a thought. What if the 3D Realms folks wrote DNF to run native on Linux using OpenGL, and they have been waiting for the Linux desktop market to stomp Windows the way it has done in servers? Quick, to the Fedora site Robin!
(BTW-If Redhat had any business sense, they would offer alternate distro bundles that had major games pre-install through RPM files.)
There was once a sitcom called "All that Glitters" (Norman Lear - 1977) in which ALL the roles of men and women were reversed.
Needless to say, it bombed.
Why not make a show about people eating boiled snowtires - because it would violate our genetically programmed behaviors, as well as our cultural habits.
Some things are just dumb ideas...
That means we say goodbye to the book/movie "His dark matters"...
I have half-heartedly submitted a dozen or so articles to /. - none of which have been accepted. My favorite topic, of course, is the danger of X-rays emitted by spark plugs. (See how I snuck that in) Any chance of there ever being a "Guide to writing acceptable articles for slashdot" that gives detailed advice on DOs and DONTs??? Just thought I'd ask.