Let's go back to crystalline spheres and immutable heavens. That was a much safer design model.
On the other hand, it could be worse.
If Mercury and Venus, for example, collide and merge into one, all those born under the sign of Gemini and Libra will be doomed to live in uncharted (pun intended) territory.
Re:Whiners of all countries, unite!
on
One-Tweet Wonders
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Every story even remotely connected to Twitter gets the trolls crawling under their stones, mumbling how much they hate it.
Feeling the love, huh?
What you're referring to are are just parenthetical comments. The underlying question, and one that's yet to be answered, can be summed in a way that a Twitterer like yourself can appreciate:
What's the fucking point?
Absent one-off scenarios (the Obama campaign), I've yet to see any value in any of it. What I do see is a large number of people engaged in what could generously be described as trivia, and dragging down the quality of discourse for the rest of us to levels too embarassing to ponder.
I'll cite one example. Consider CNN, hardly known for its journalistic excellence, but an outlet with mass appeal. The guy that does the lunchtime shift (you know, the moron who tries to appear empassioned about news stories by shouting rhetorical but trollish questions at his audience and guests like a Tourette's sufferer). He spends much of his time actually reading tweets! And instead of brief headlines being appearing on the CNN scroller, we're now forced to read the contributions by every anonymous illiterate out there who has an opinion, an internet connection, and a fondness for extraneous ASCII characters.
Seriously, is this the kind of society we want to live in?
Re:I use twitter daily, but never tweet.
on
One-Tweet Wonders
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· Score: 4, Funny
I only follow a few interesting people but I now find it invaluable as a way of keeping track of them
I looked up and said to a friend. This town is so corrupt even the stars have left it.
Funny, yes, but I think the problem is the people on the ground don't mind. Huell Howser did a show some years back on the subject of light pollution. When he went to Vegas to ask what people thought about the problem, their reaction was they "liked it".
Too extreme an example? How about asking the folks on your block if they'd be interested in trying to get City Hall to replace the streetlights with something better so your kids can see the stars at night. The odds of success are probably as low as anything you'll get in Vegas.
But looking at the bright side of things, all those car dealerships going out of business might allow astronomers (and ordinary folks who know there's something up there beyond the smog) to enjoy the night time sky.
Putting it into.pdf form (or whatever form they might fancy) will only inhibit the ability to think...
I have no doubt about that, and I'm sure other people can testify to the mind-numbing effects of staring into a monitor for extended periods of time (or the creativity that flows from using natural tools), but the negative effects you're referring to can be lessened by the use of note-taking and free-form scribbling on a paper pad, assuming such features aren't available in the electronic interface. Me, I keep a notepad beside my laptop at all times.
Computerized reading devices (Kindle-type products) would fare much better, but those require an investment that California may not be willing to buck up.
That, I think is *the* salient point. We can discuss the pros and cons of all the issues involved (an interesting enough discussion), but I'd wager the announcement itself is going to ignite more interest in the technology itself. As goes California, so goes the nation, right?
Amazon has successfully carved out a niche with Kindle (mostly business travellers who read popular fiction), but their device and their setup isn't the solution we're all looking for. I see the situation as being similar to fuel efficiency standards for cars. The goverment mandates them, the carmakers bitch and moan about the impossibility of meeting those standards, but in the end we end up with better cars and everyone's better off for it.
So if Schwarzenegger hasn't mandated A Better Kindle, he very well may have put us on the path where we will soon have one. What flows from that may be as revolutionary as what happened to the bricks and mortar approach to selling.
... printed newspapers have five or six columns of text and not one column running across the whole page
God help us when that "dying industry" is replaced with on-line content. As it is now, I mostly dump pages I'm interested in reading using lynx, and while that's hardly ideal, it'll do until the dust settles in the Kindle arena.
IIRC, there was a UK newspaper that offered a feature that would display the article in multi-column format in a new window. Immensely readable, but the extra clicks made it annoying.
Unless you just want to stick to VIM (or emacs), a 7 inch screen screws up a lot of user interfaces.
Or possibly you mean switch away from vim or emacs?;-)
Seriously, I'd think that in a lot of cases, a small screen is actually more appropriate. Whenever I see someone using Outlook in full screen on a giant monitor, or using their browser in the same manner, I have to chuckle at the absurdity of it. You figure the ideal width of 74 characters or so for maximum readability and comprehension, but the latest and greatests in technology brings us mile-wide sentences?
Or, as this is a tech site, how useful is it when trying to troubleshoot a system where the BIOS setup, boot messages and everything else appears in giant poster-sized fonts? No one's arms are long enough for that nonsense.
I don't know what kind of person is representative of the netbook market, but I'd think that the majority of the great unwashed masses expect their computers to function like an appliance. A netbook seems to meet that requirement. So if checking email and browsing the web is all most people do, how big a screen do they really need?
Excellent point. Another way to look at it is if you build a metro stop, for example, you'll have business (commercial, retail and residential) booming in the general vicinity. That even applies to backwaters like Los Angeles where the problems of doing so are prohibitive and where they've only recently discovered (or perhaps re-discovered) how real cities are supposed to function.
By contrast, try to build or expand an airport and you'll have the locals complaining, or moving away. Those that remain are ultimately Holiday Inns, strip clubs, liquor stores, and crack whores. Nothing against crack whores, of course.
I'd go even farther and suggest that cities that have their transportation needs worked out using trains, buses and metros are invariably livable places. Those that don't typically have city leaders trying to sell big projects like airports as solutions to the crappy real world situations their residents contend with on a daily basis. The irony, of course, is that while bike paths aren't the source of tax revenues that airports are, they sure as hell seem to attract and please a lot of people.
I wouldn't be surprised, in 2001 (yes, within this millennium) they branded Darwin a racist with the following flawless logic...
Huey Long, one of the more famous governors of the Great State of Louisiana, once said "One of these days the people of Louisiana are going to get good government and they aren't going to like it."
I take it you've never had your car impounded by police only too eager to boost their budgets from the sale of your car (for, among other things, posession of drugs, attempting to buy drugs, soliticing a blow job, and traffic violations), had other property impounded that was similarly sold, or just driven through certain localities where the local sheriff's version of crimefighting involves intimidating motorists to hand over their cash?
The economic contraction has turned out to be the harsh winter that brings forth a summer of great fruit. Everybody in the trade is emptying their cupboard of innovation in the hope of gaining market share, rather than holding it in reserve for a rainy day. Because it's raining now.
So if Cisco is Richard III, Bill Gates is King Edward IV, and Lady Anne is a stand-in for the purchasing managers of corporate America, who's playing the role of Henry Stafford?
Seriously, somebody mod this guy up. Bonus points for anyone who can weave the internal combustion engine fit into all this.;-)
I wonder if it's just the "Buy American" bumper stickers that are laughable.
There was a spot on the news last night where a retired couple who invested their retirement savings in GM bonds were interviewed. The husband was a tool and die maker in the auto industry, and both the husband and wife considered it their patriotic duty to invest in America. And if the American flag seen waving in the background was any indication, advocate the same to others.
Needless to say their investments were wiped out.
The post-war industrial strength of America may have existed for their parents when they retired (and their parents before them), but an investment strategy that involves a troubled industry and a company that routinely posted huge losses is indicative more of nostalgic yearnings than common sense.
My own take is that the couple's situation could be considered laughable, as in "I invested in America and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.", but they didn't even get a T-shirt.
I personally have no intention of pleasing the feminists that go into a pseudo uproar when you call them Mrs because the letter "r" implies ownership etc)
Would pointing out the contradiction of a married woman hyphenating her father's surname with her husband's surname as a mark of independence in a male dominated society be going too far?;-)
Tact and discretion are always appropriate, but political correctness, like all things political in nature, often seeks to redefine words so as to make them take on different meanings or render them meaningless. If we can't agree on the meanings of the words we're using, then what basis is there for an honest exchange of ideas?
If tact demands that we limit ourselves to sharing platitudes, then I'd suggest our only hope for salvation is the comic performing on stage. And if it's a woman, God help those who refer to her as a comedienne.
How many lightbulbs would they need to convert from 100W to 60W usage (over time) to equal the energy cost of 1 femto second laser blast
Dunno, but my guess is that for each lightbulb, it will take at least 3 Slashdotters to screw it in. One to hold the ladder, one to screw it in, and one to explain the significance of a femtosecond.
That's not including the dozen or so other Slashdotters who will want to attend and debate the relative merits of CFLs and LEDs, another dozen who insist they're wrong, a few older Slashdotters who moan about the old lightbulb working just fine, and one guy standing in a corner mumbling something about a government conspiracy while rolling out tinfoil to fashion a head covering.
Hardly surprising given their existing Top Ten list. The rationalisation for MS Office, for example, is that it put thousands of secretaries out of work. No acknowledgment was made that they were already out of work long before Windows appeared, and wordprocessing software didn't need a toolbar with a ribbon to be effective.
And how many of the participants were bots or spammers?
I suspect you're trolling, so I'll offer the comment that it was common knowledge that AOL's chat rooms were wildly popular with gays who frequently used them to get same-day hookups (hence the monker GAOL).
No reflection on the OP's sexual orientation, preferences, or on-line habits.;-)
Of course. I have a Trimline phone at my house, and have since it was legal to own a phone in about 1984 or so.
I remember when the Trimlines phones became available. They mostly appealed to women.
Those were the days, of course. Men were men, women were women, and phones were mechanical devices with rotary dials and bells. Sigh. Today, of course, everything is created from miniaturisied electronic components and software. Hardly surprising we need to use analogies to understand what they are or do.
Now excuse me while I go back to writing my novel on my Smith Corona wordprocessor.
Hey, I love trees. They're green, provide shade, and help increase the property value in a city. What's not to love about them?
If you're referencing the situation in LA, I'd say that was a good question. Utility and maintenance companies hate them because they add work and cost. Homeowners can be generally stupid, so most opt for the bare landscaping with an palm tree here or there.
Amazing, isn't it? Endless miles of concrete in a city where the heat is pervasive, smog is a given, and air-conditioning is a must, and no one thinks to plant a few trees.
roads. My favorite roof solution, and something I plan on working on this summer or next summer is to turn my garage roof in to a natural garden by placing a protective tar paper over the shingles, a couple of inches of dirt and then grass or moss seeds. I'll let nature reclaim my man-made structure. Inch for inch, it would be just like grass growing on the ground, except not.
You're in good company. Lots of cities are doing the same. Chicago, for example, is doing this, and the benefits are clear from both social and environmental points of view. On a commercial building with a flat roof, for example, a rooftop garden that includes decorative plants and vegetables could be a no brainer. For a residential building, however, you're probably limited to grass and moss.
The term 'Czar' relates to a despicable history of oppression and murder.
No, the term has much broader connotations. I appreciate the general sentiments of your post, but the fact that you associate 'Czar' with Nicholas II, a period in history that is exceedingly narrow in its historical, cultural and political scope, suggests a general ignorance. The same could be said about anyone who has a similarly narrow interpretation of kings, queens, ministers, secretaries, and presidents.
The Swiss like their operating systems like their cheese -- Plenty of holes.
I know you're trying to be funny, but I'll put on my pedantic hat and remind everyone that Switzerland makes lots of cheeses, few of which contain holes.
What you're thinking of is that yellowish waxy product made in Wisconsin or California that vaguely resembles emmenthaler. By contrast, appenzeller and gruyere, for example, are similarly popular, and have no holes.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's go back to crystalline spheres and immutable heavens. That was a much safer design model.
On the other hand, it could be worse.
If Mercury and Venus, for example, collide and merge into one, all those born under the sign of Gemini and Libra will be doomed to live in uncharted (pun intended) territory.
Every story even remotely connected to Twitter gets the trolls crawling under their stones, mumbling how much they hate it.
Feeling the love, huh?
What you're referring to are are just parenthetical comments. The underlying question, and one that's yet to be answered, can be summed in a way that a Twitterer like yourself can appreciate:
What's the fucking point?
Absent one-off scenarios (the Obama campaign), I've yet to see any value in any of it. What I do see is a large number of people engaged in what could generously be described as trivia, and dragging down the quality of discourse for the rest of us to levels too embarassing to ponder.
I'll cite one example. Consider CNN, hardly known for its journalistic excellence, but an outlet with mass appeal. The guy that does the lunchtime shift (you know, the moron who tries to appear empassioned about news stories by shouting rhetorical but trollish questions at his audience and guests like a Tourette's sufferer). He spends much of his time actually reading tweets! And instead of brief headlines being appearing on the CNN scroller, we're now forced to read the contributions by every anonymous illiterate out there who has an opinion, an internet connection, and a fondness for extraneous ASCII characters.
Seriously, is this the kind of society we want to live in?
I only follow a few interesting people but I now find it invaluable as a way of keeping track of them
So she finally got that restraining order? ;-)
Delete their files. Steal their photos and email and cc numbers. Blackmail them.
I respect initiative and creativity as much as the next guy, but sometimes a proactive approach isn't best.
I looked up and said to a friend. This town is so corrupt even the stars have left it.
Funny, yes, but I think the problem is the people on the ground don't mind. Huell Howser did a show some years back on the subject of light pollution. When he went to Vegas to ask what people thought about the problem, their reaction was they "liked it".
Too extreme an example? How about asking the folks on your block if they'd be interested in trying to get City Hall to replace the streetlights with something better so your kids can see the stars at night. The odds of success are probably as low as anything you'll get in Vegas.
But looking at the bright side of things, all those car dealerships going out of business might allow astronomers (and ordinary folks who know there's something up there beyond the smog) to enjoy the night time sky.
If you ever seriously think of killing yourself over your job, it's time to get a new job.
Probably good advice generally, but I wonder how many of those defaulting on their mortgages due to a layoff will react positively to hearing it.
Sometimes that shitty job is all you've got.
Putting it into .pdf form (or whatever form they might fancy) will only inhibit the ability to think ...
I have no doubt about that, and I'm sure other people can testify to the mind-numbing effects of staring into a monitor for extended periods of time (or the creativity that flows from using natural tools), but the negative effects you're referring to can be lessened by the use of note-taking and free-form scribbling on a paper pad, assuming such features aren't available in the electronic interface. Me, I keep a notepad beside my laptop at all times.
Computerized reading devices (Kindle-type products) would fare much better, but those require an investment that California may not be willing to buck up.
That, I think is *the* salient point. We can discuss the pros and cons of all the issues involved (an interesting enough discussion), but I'd wager the announcement itself is going to ignite more interest in the technology itself. As goes California, so goes the nation, right?
Amazon has successfully carved out a niche with Kindle (mostly business travellers who read popular fiction), but their device and their setup isn't the solution we're all looking for. I see the situation as being similar to fuel efficiency standards for cars. The goverment mandates them, the carmakers bitch and moan about the impossibility of meeting those standards, but in the end we end up with better cars and everyone's better off for it.
So if Schwarzenegger hasn't mandated A Better Kindle, he very well may have put us on the path where we will soon have one. What flows from that may be as revolutionary as what happened to the bricks and mortar approach to selling.
... printed newspapers have five or six columns of text and not one column running across the whole page
God help us when that "dying industry" is replaced with on-line content. As it is now, I mostly dump pages I'm interested in reading using lynx, and while that's hardly ideal, it'll do until the dust settles in the Kindle arena.
IIRC, there was a UK newspaper that offered a feature that would display the article in multi-column format in a new window. Immensely readable, but the extra clicks made it annoying.
Unless you just want to stick to VIM (or emacs), a 7 inch screen screws up a lot of user interfaces.
Or possibly you mean switch away from vim or emacs? ;-)
Seriously, I'd think that in a lot of cases, a small screen is actually more appropriate. Whenever I see someone using Outlook in full screen on a giant monitor, or using their browser in the same manner, I have to chuckle at the absurdity of it. You figure the ideal width of 74 characters or so for maximum readability and comprehension, but the latest and greatests in technology brings us mile-wide sentences?
Or, as this is a tech site, how useful is it when trying to troubleshoot a system where the BIOS setup, boot messages and everything else appears in giant poster-sized fonts? No one's arms are long enough for that nonsense.
I don't know what kind of person is representative of the netbook market, but I'd think that the majority of the great unwashed masses expect their computers to function like an appliance. A netbook seems to meet that requirement. So if checking email and browsing the web is all most people do, how big a screen do they really need?
Excellent point. Another way to look at it is if you build a metro stop, for example, you'll have business (commercial, retail and residential) booming in the general vicinity. That even applies to backwaters like Los Angeles where the problems of doing so are prohibitive and where they've only recently discovered (or perhaps re-discovered) how real cities are supposed to function.
By contrast, try to build or expand an airport and you'll have the locals complaining, or moving away. Those that remain are ultimately Holiday Inns, strip clubs, liquor stores, and crack whores. Nothing against crack whores, of course.
I'd go even farther and suggest that cities that have their transportation needs worked out using trains, buses and metros are invariably livable places. Those that don't typically have city leaders trying to sell big projects like airports as solutions to the crappy real world situations their residents contend with on a daily basis. The irony, of course, is that while bike paths aren't the source of tax revenues that airports are, they sure as hell seem to attract and please a lot of people.
I wouldn't be surprised, in 2001 (yes, within this millennium) they branded Darwin a racist with the following flawless logic ...
Huey Long, one of the more famous governors of the Great State of Louisiana, once said "One of these days the people of Louisiana are going to get good government and they aren't going to like it."
Crime fighting is funded by (normal) taxes.
I take it you've never had your car impounded by police only too eager to boost their budgets from the sale of your car (for, among other things, posession of drugs, attempting to buy drugs, soliticing a blow job, and traffic violations), had other property impounded that was similarly sold, or just driven through certain localities where the local sheriff's version of crimefighting involves intimidating motorists to hand over their cash?
What about Linux on PPC?
So ... open source is a Linux-only thing?
The economic contraction has turned out to be the harsh winter that brings forth a summer of great fruit. Everybody in the trade is emptying their cupboard of innovation in the hope of gaining market share, rather than holding it in reserve for a rainy day. Because it's raining now.
So if Cisco is Richard III, Bill Gates is King Edward IV, and Lady Anne is a stand-in for the purchasing managers of corporate America, who's playing the role of Henry Stafford?
Seriously, somebody mod this guy up. Bonus points for anyone who can weave the internal combustion engine fit into all this. ;-)
I wonder if it's just the "Buy American" bumper stickers that are laughable.
There was a spot on the news last night where a retired couple who invested their retirement savings in GM bonds were interviewed. The husband was a tool and die maker in the auto industry, and both the husband and wife considered it their patriotic duty to invest in America. And if the American flag seen waving in the background was any indication, advocate the same to others.
Needless to say their investments were wiped out.
The post-war industrial strength of America may have existed for their parents when they retired (and their parents before them), but an investment strategy that involves a troubled industry and a company that routinely posted huge losses is indicative more of nostalgic yearnings than common sense.
My own take is that the couple's situation could be considered laughable, as in "I invested in America and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.", but they didn't even get a T-shirt.
I personally have no intention of pleasing the feminists that go into a pseudo uproar when you call them Mrs because the letter "r" implies ownership etc)
Would pointing out the contradiction of a married woman hyphenating her father's surname with her husband's surname as a mark of independence in a male dominated society be going too far? ;-)
Tact and discretion are always appropriate, but political correctness, like all things political in nature, often seeks to redefine words so as to make them take on different meanings or render them meaningless. If we can't agree on the meanings of the words we're using, then what basis is there for an honest exchange of ideas?
If tact demands that we limit ourselves to sharing platitudes, then I'd suggest our only hope for salvation is the comic performing on stage. And if it's a woman, God help those who refer to her as a comedienne.
How many lightbulbs would they need to convert from 100W to 60W usage (over time) to equal the energy cost of 1 femto second laser blast
Dunno, but my guess is that for each lightbulb, it will take at least 3 Slashdotters to screw it in. One to hold the ladder, one to screw it in, and one to explain the significance of a femtosecond.
That's not including the dozen or so other Slashdotters who will want to attend and debate the relative merits of CFLs and LEDs, another dozen who insist they're wrong, a few older Slashdotters who moan about the old lightbulb working just fine, and one guy standing in a corner mumbling something about a government conspiracy while rolling out tinfoil to fashion a head covering.
Hardly surprising given their existing Top Ten list. The rationalisation for MS Office, for example, is that it put thousands of secretaries out of work. No acknowledgment was made that they were already out of work long before Windows appeared, and wordprocessing software didn't need a toolbar with a ribbon to be effective.
And how many of the participants were bots or spammers?
I suspect you're trolling, so I'll offer the comment that it was common knowledge that AOL's chat rooms were wildly popular with gays who frequently used them to get same-day hookups (hence the monker GAOL).
No reflection on the OP's sexual orientation, preferences, or on-line habits. ;-)
Of course. I have a Trimline phone at my house, and have since it was legal to own a phone in about 1984 or so.
I remember when the Trimlines phones became available. They mostly appealed to women.
Those were the days, of course. Men were men, women were women, and phones were mechanical devices with rotary dials and bells. Sigh. Today, of course, everything is created from miniaturisied electronic components and software. Hardly surprising we need to use analogies to understand what they are or do.
Now excuse me while I go back to writing my novel on my Smith Corona wordprocessor.
Hey, I love trees. They're green, provide shade, and help increase the property value in a city. What's not to love about them?
If you're referencing the situation in LA, I'd say that was a good question. Utility and maintenance companies hate them because they add work and cost. Homeowners can be generally stupid, so most opt for the bare landscaping with an palm tree here or there.
Amazing, isn't it? Endless miles of concrete in a city where the heat is pervasive, smog is a given, and air-conditioning is a must, and no one thinks to plant a few trees.
roads. My favorite roof solution, and something I plan on working on this summer or next summer is to turn my garage roof in to a natural garden by placing a protective tar paper over the shingles, a couple of inches of dirt and then grass or moss seeds. I'll let nature reclaim my man-made structure. Inch for inch, it would be just like grass growing on the ground, except not.
You're in good company. Lots of cities are doing the same. Chicago, for example, is doing this, and the benefits are clear from both social and environmental points of view. On a commercial building with a flat roof, for example, a rooftop garden that includes decorative plants and vegetables could be a no brainer. For a residential building, however, you're probably limited to grass and moss.
Dunno about telecoms, but I think it's safe to call that the Walmart model.
The term 'Czar' relates to a despicable history of oppression and murder.
No, the term has much broader connotations. I appreciate the general sentiments of your post, but the fact that you associate 'Czar' with Nicholas II, a period in history that is exceedingly narrow in its historical, cultural and political scope, suggests a general ignorance. The same could be said about anyone who has a similarly narrow interpretation of kings, queens, ministers, secretaries, and presidents.
The Swiss like their operating systems like their cheese -- Plenty of holes.
I know you're trying to be funny, but I'll put on my pedantic hat and remind everyone that Switzerland makes lots of cheeses, few of which contain holes.
What you're thinking of is that yellowish waxy product made in Wisconsin or California that vaguely resembles emmenthaler. By contrast, appenzeller and gruyere, for example, are similarly popular, and have no holes.
So much for your holey theory. ;-)