No, it's Clinton's fault, if you listen to the conservatives. If he had been paying less attention to Monica he might have been able to do something about this, like capture Dr. Evil who's responsible for the flip in the first place. He could have had him, you know; it's an established fact (Fox News) that Sudan offered to hand Dr. Evil over to Clinton on a silver platter but he refused. But he didn't, because he was too busy hiding the travel files for his friends implicated in Whitewater while Hilary was shooting Vince Foster from a grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza.
I'm one of those lame-os who has a Walmart Tracfone. I prepay my minutes, don't bother with SMS or Internet access or any of that other stuff, and am not bothered by spam. Of course, all I expect my phone to do is send and receive calls. I like to keep it simple...mostly because years ago I saw that Net-enabled phones opened you up to the same spam, virii, hacking, and usual crap we've come to expect with regular computers. And Homey don't need no more trouble in her life...
Feh. Tapes are dead as far as we're concerned at work. We've started building servers with the Iomega REV drive, which is a helluva lot easier for clueless customers to deal with, and more reliable than tape backups.
No matter WHERE I've worked, it seems like our techs spend MORE time fighting with tape backup units...who NEEDS this crap???
d.) Don't talk about Star Trek, Slashdot, Linux, or quote Monty Python. They don't have the slightest interest in any of those topics
THIS is why you can't get a date...I won't talk to a guy who's not fluent in Monty Python, and won't talk about Linux, Slashdot, or Star Trek with me!!!
Okay, I'm really not THAT interested in Star Trek...maybe we can talk about how much we miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead.;)
Not all women are attracted to buff and handsome losers. (And yeah, some of these guys are MAJOR losers. I went out with a major hottie a few years ago who was the DUMBEST MAN ON THE ENTIRE PLANET!!! I mean, we are talking someone who makes George Bush look like a Rhodes scholar!) And guys, if we DO like geek subjects and you won't talk to us about them, you are OUT on your @$$! Last year I went out with a doctor who was clearly a geek, had won trophies in high school in robotics tournaments, was a Ph.D. in molecular biology and was a sci-fi movie fan...and I couldn't get him to talk to me about anything! I wanted to talk about his robotics victories because I'd just read an interesting article in Wired on affective computing; he shut up like a clam. I tried to talk sci-fi movies with him, it was like talking to dilithium crystal. I asked him about his work, even asked him if he thought I wasn't intelligent enough to understand what it was about, which he denied, but he wouldn't tell me anything! What a crashing bore he was. And he WAS the stereotypical, cliche geek - I strongly suspect I was only the second woman he'd ever been intimate with (and he was pushing forty!)
Alternatively, I almost always seem to attract the guys who can barely turn on their computer without consulting the manual, and are majorly impressed with my ability to listen to streaming audio over the Internet. I'm ready to crawl into my RJ-45 port and blubber like a baby...
Good series of articles. I've always wondered what it was really like for the booth babes - did they have to take a lot of crap for "objectifying" themselves from so-called "liberated" women (who probably won't go out with anyone under $75,000 but would never call themselves prostitutes because they're "liberated"), did they have to put up with groping, sweaty little pimply-faced nerds, did they have no brains whatsoever?
Good to see that a) They don't seem to be getting hassled by women (although the Swedish chick is in denial about her true appeal), b) The nerds, while a bit cliche, all seem to be very well-behaved and polite which I like to see and c) Yes, the ladies DO seem to have brains, and take the social backwardness all in stride.
I used to do a lot of "bellygrams" (belly dancing at parties, been dancing for about 17 years now) and I used to really hate dancing for the 20-35 year-old middle-class white male set, because the men were just atrocious - nasty little Neanderthals who thought I was no better than a stripper (I don't strip, my performances are perfectly okay with children present) and who treated me like crap. I mean I really hated dancing for middle-class young white males (young middle-class black males, interestingly, are far easier to deal with - my second-favorite audience after children). It is good to see, though, that the (I assume) largely middle-class white male geek set is much more polite and respectful of the young ladies who function as "booth babes."
I remember once again why I like geek guys so much!!!
I read PC World, Wired, Linux Magazine & Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine - the last only because my father keeps renewing my subscription every year at Christmas, knowing I won't do it myself.
The only time I read other magazines, usually, is when I'm waiting for the doctor or a haircut or I'm going on a plane trip - then I usually pick up Time or Newsweek, or the Paris Match if it's going to be a long transatlantic flight.
Left wing pessimism = a healthy dose of well-needed reality
I've got news for you, Sweetpea, the world is much more dangerous than it was before George Bush took office, there are no WMD in Iraq, there were no Saddam ties to 9/11, the U.S. government has proven there's no difference between itself and the Baathists in its condonation of torture, the whole world hates us and Al Qaeda probably WILL strike us sooner or later because Dumbya's next brilliant idea will probably be to invade an conquer Sweden. I'm sorry you righties have such a hard time coping with the truth, but it's time you grew up and moved beyond the fairy tales of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. Anyone who votes for George Bush in November votes *for* terrorism, *against* the Constitution, and against themselves as well.
A few years ago, a friend and I put up a website for childfree people - with moderate views, trying to turn attention away from the more extremist sites and groups for the childless-by-choice out there. About two years ago we got contacted by some cable TV show out in Los Angeles who wanted us to appear on an interview program, and they were looking for people with our kind of views. I forwarded the email to my friend and asked her what she thought. In the meantime, I did some Googling and was able to determine early on that it was not some nice little Phil Donahue-style show, but the sort of "ambush TV" where nice people are essentially attacked by others for whatever views they hold. They offered to fly us out to L.A. for the taping, take care of a lot of our expenses, put us up in a motel, etc. I don't know *what* they were planning for my friend and I, but I suspect it probably involved putting us up against embittered, angry, infertile women or perhaps the sort of idiot fundamentalist breeders who think a woman's only purpose in life is to make babies. Given how moderate our views were, I very much doubt they wanted to use us as the "evil child-haters" - they could have found *much* worthier candidates than us if that was the case.
So yes, you DO have to be careful about these things, and always make sure you know what you're getting into!
I was thinking of more than just Rumsfeld. There's, um, Saddam "Of COURSE we know he once had WMD, we GAVE them to him!" Hussein, and Allende in Chile, and the Shah of Iran, and Batista in Cuba, and the right-wing extremists in Nicaragua...
Wow, this is going to be a problem for the sort of retards who think France is evil because they were right about not supporting a particularly stupid war...
I've been using Vonage since late July last year, and have been, for the most part, happy with it...it was a rocky start, for sure. It was good for about three weeks, then the Great Blackout hit, and my service was very spotty for about the next month (well, a lot of viruses & worms going around probably didn't help much either). Since then, it's gone out a few times here and there but the service is *much* improved. I have no issues with hearing the people I'm talking to. And the international rates are awesome! That was the main reason why I switched...when I joined it was.05/min to call most places in Western Europe, and now it's only.03/min (they simply lowered my rate when the time came.) They also gave me a better plan for the same monthly charge I've been paying without making me sign a contract or anything. I also like calling Canada and the Lower 48 for free, essentially...my phone bills are much improved over my landline. Although I did keep my landline...I bumped it back to a measured line. I would strongly urge you to have some sort of backup account regardless of which VOIP service you go with - and before you say, "I have a cellphone," just remember that cell service got knocked out during the blackout.
I am not affiliated with Vonage in any way, BTW...I'm just a happy customer.
Hey, I'm outta here. My immigration app is sitting on the Consulate in Buffalo where I expect to have a decision on it next century. But hey, once I can get up there, I'll be more than happy to live in a somewhat more liberal country where they have better things to do than nose around in your drawers, micromanage your life and where you can walk around with your head high because YOUR head of state is anyone other than George Bush.
I'm hardly the only Yank looking to blow out of here. Others are tired of living in a semi-police state as well.
Honestly, guys, just what ARE you good for anymore? With women in the workplace earning their own money, we don't need you as a Golden Paycheck anymore; with equal rights, we don't need you to rubber-stamp our wants and needs before we can have them; with dashboard computers, we won't need you for parallel parking; with Japanese robots, we won't need you to take out the garbage; with vibrators, we don't need you for sexual satisfaction; and with artificial parthenogenesis, we won't even need you to make babies.
Boys, you are as officially irrelevant, archaic and obsolete as eight-dot-three file naming.;)
I concur wholeheartedly. I used to work for a small systems integrator and the staff was very tight with each other, and we worked together as a really great team. Part of what kept us so tight was our sense of humor, which actually probably would have gotten us all fired or sued anywhere else...we could be really politically incorrect...but in our office it worked.
We also did silly stuff to break up the day...on April 1st I got my then-boyfriend to call my co-worker,who had a fancy sportscar he used to park diagonally across the parking spaces in the lot, and had him leave a message on the guy's voice mail, anonymously, claiming to have hit the guy's car, but he didn't have insurance so he'd call him back when he got some money together to pay for the damage. My co-worker went tearing out of the office and when he got back there was a Post-It on his monitor that said "April Fool's." We all crowded around the window in the tech room watching him circle his car like a shark...
One afternoon this same co-worker brought in a box of Depends, I don't know why, and we started sticking them to everything. We tried to see if we could send one home with one of the others, without them knowing it. We stuck one in the Jaz drive box that the President, who was visiting that day, took back to the main office in Boston, and I guess he opened it up in front of a lot of the other techs and knew IMMEDIATELY we were responsible...but he had a pretty laid-back approach and wasn't going to complain because our office was kicking his office's ass in network sales!
You're right, it *is* a bonding experience for employees. I'll bet they have a real good time working at Damon's office, and I'll bet it's really boring working at the office where the stick-up-the-ass foreigner works...I used to go into work really looking forward to my day because the work was interesting and we had such a great bunch of people we could have a lot of laughs with. We got a LOT of work done, too. I still miss that place.
I'm seeing a lot more of this scam crap in email. Particularly in the last week and a half or so...Africa seems to be in desperate need of inkjet cartridges right now. Forget AIDS cocktails or condoms, please to be sending 150 epson c84 part numbr yadda yadda yadda, please...is urgent request, please reply shortly....and to be needing some printheds too.
The marketing guy, who gets this crap from our web page contact form, passes it on to me. I always can it, and marvel that not a *single* one of these bozos ever has a real domain name...it's always edscomputers0284742@yahoo.com or something. They've got moolah for 150 inkjet cartridges, but they can't afford a freaking domain for their alleged computer bizness. And of course *no* one ever speaks English as a first language.
Mindful of the chatter here on Slashdot earlier this week about the importance of not discriminating against people, I do at least look them over for signs that they might actually be in my state. But I never see them, and so I deep six 'em immediately.
If anyone tries to sue you, at least you know they're legit. But if anyone tried to call me back and say, "I am NOT a scammer," I would, as the previous guy said, inform him that he would be expected to prove he was the verified cardholder. If he had a problem with this, then he's a scammer or he needs to cultivate a little patience.
I would not be rude, though, esp. to the operator. It's not their fault they have to relay this convo to you, and they probably know it's a scam and resent having to be the middleman.
I got one of these calls at work a few months ago at the computer company where I'm employed. It was from AT&T's service, and when she said it was a service for the deaf, I had to ask her to explain it to me several times. Finally I got that there was someone typing messages to her who wanted her to relay them to me. The guy wanted a bunch of stuff - IIRC, a boatload of printer cartridges - and he didn't dick me around on the price which was my first clue. I forget exactly how the call went, we've gotten lots of these calls, but I began to realize something funky was going on - like the guy didn't have a credit card or something. I started asking the AT&T operator what was going on, and she couldn't come right out and tell me, but finally she said, "I'd be very careful with this," or words to that effect. That was when I knew she was trying to tell me, in a manner which wouldn't get her fired, that she suspected a scam. I told her to tell the guy we couldn't help him and then we hung up.
We got another one prior to this, although not through a TTY service, by a guy who claimed to be a U.S. soldier stationed at Guantanamo Bay, and he needed a satellite service setup. He wanted us, though, to ship it only to New York. Not only did I think it extremely likely that a US soldier would need us to send him a satellite setup, and even less likely that he'd be allowed to admit he was at Gitmo, but he didn't even introduce himself officially - it came out later in the conversaton. Suspicious, I began asking for a lot of information - like an email address, and he gave me a Yahoo one, rather than a US military address. I told him we couldn't help him out, and that night I reported it to the FBI.
The boss told me later he'd almost been duped by one of these guys, although the product never got shipped because he began to smell a scam and he cancelled the order at the last minute (my boss did, not the scammer). Our sort of unofficial policy now is we don't ship out of state unless it's for a customer we already know.
Slashdot Mirror
Frenchy, language nazi
No matter WHERE I've worked, it seems like our techs spend MORE time fighting with tape backup units...who NEEDS this crap???
THIS is why you can't get a date...I won't talk to a guy who's not fluent in Monty Python, and won't talk about Linux, Slashdot, or Star Trek with me!!!
Okay, I'm really not THAT interested in Star Trek...maybe we can talk about how much we miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead. ;)
Not all women are attracted to buff and handsome losers. (And yeah, some of these guys are MAJOR losers. I went out with a major hottie a few years ago who was the DUMBEST MAN ON THE ENTIRE PLANET!!! I mean, we are talking someone who makes George Bush look like a Rhodes scholar!) And guys, if we DO like geek subjects and you won't talk to us about them, you are OUT on your @$$! Last year I went out with a doctor who was clearly a geek, had won trophies in high school in robotics tournaments, was a Ph.D. in molecular biology and was a sci-fi movie fan...and I couldn't get him to talk to me about anything! I wanted to talk about his robotics victories because I'd just read an interesting article in Wired on affective computing; he shut up like a clam. I tried to talk sci-fi movies with him, it was like talking to dilithium crystal. I asked him about his work, even asked him if he thought I wasn't intelligent enough to understand what it was about, which he denied, but he wouldn't tell me anything! What a crashing bore he was. And he WAS the stereotypical, cliche geek - I strongly suspect I was only the second woman he'd ever been intimate with (and he was pushing forty!)
Alternatively, I almost always seem to attract the guys who can barely turn on their computer without consulting the manual, and are majorly impressed with my ability to listen to streaming audio over the Internet. I'm ready to crawl into my RJ-45 port and blubber like a baby...
Good to see that a) They don't seem to be getting hassled by women (although the Swedish chick is in denial about her true appeal), b) The nerds, while a bit cliche, all seem to be very well-behaved and polite which I like to see and c) Yes, the ladies DO seem to have brains, and take the social backwardness all in stride.
I used to do a lot of "bellygrams" (belly dancing at parties, been dancing for about 17 years now) and I used to really hate dancing for the 20-35 year-old middle-class white male set, because the men were just atrocious - nasty little Neanderthals who thought I was no better than a stripper (I don't strip, my performances are perfectly okay with children present) and who treated me like crap. I mean I really hated dancing for middle-class young white males (young middle-class black males, interestingly, are far easier to deal with - my second-favorite audience after children). It is good to see, though, that the (I assume) largely middle-class white male geek set is much more polite and respectful of the young ladies who function as "booth babes."
I remember once again why I like geek guys so much!!!
The only time I read other magazines, usually, is when I'm waiting for the doctor or a haircut or I'm going on a plane trip - then I usually pick up Time or Newsweek, or the Paris Match if it's going to be a long transatlantic flight.
I've got news for you, Sweetpea, the world is much more dangerous than it was before George Bush took office, there are no WMD in Iraq, there were no Saddam ties to 9/11, the U.S. government has proven there's no difference between itself and the Baathists in its condonation of torture, the whole world hates us and Al Qaeda probably WILL strike us sooner or later because Dumbya's next brilliant idea will probably be to invade an conquer Sweden. I'm sorry you righties have such a hard time coping with the truth, but it's time you grew up and moved beyond the fairy tales of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. Anyone who votes for George Bush in November votes *for* terrorism, *against* the Constitution, and against themselves as well.
So yes, you DO have to be careful about these things, and always make sure you know what you're getting into!
Frenchy, ROTFLMAO
I am not affiliated with Vonage in any way, BTW...I'm just a happy customer.
I heard they found the burnt body of a skin diver still in his rubber suit that was accidentally sprayed over some California fire. ;)
I'm hardly the only Yank looking to blow out of here. Others are tired of living in a semi-police state as well.
Boys, you are as officially irrelevant, archaic and obsolete as eight-dot-three file naming. ;)
We also did silly stuff to break up the day...on April 1st I got my then-boyfriend to call my co-worker,who had a fancy sportscar he used to park diagonally across the parking spaces in the lot, and had him leave a message on the guy's voice mail, anonymously, claiming to have hit the guy's car, but he didn't have insurance so he'd call him back when he got some money together to pay for the damage. My co-worker went tearing out of the office and when he got back there was a Post-It on his monitor that said "April Fool's." We all crowded around the window in the tech room watching him circle his car like a shark...
One afternoon this same co-worker brought in a box of Depends, I don't know why, and we started sticking them to everything. We tried to see if we could send one home with one of the others, without them knowing it. We stuck one in the Jaz drive box that the President, who was visiting that day, took back to the main office in Boston, and I guess he opened it up in front of a lot of the other techs and knew IMMEDIATELY we were responsible...but he had a pretty laid-back approach and wasn't going to complain because our office was kicking his office's ass in network sales!
You're right, it *is* a bonding experience for employees. I'll bet they have a real good time working at Damon's office, and I'll bet it's really boring working at the office where the stick-up-the-ass foreigner works...I used to go into work really looking forward to my day because the work was interesting and we had such a great bunch of people we could have a lot of laughs with. We got a LOT of work done, too. I still miss that place.
The marketing guy, who gets this crap from our web page contact form, passes it on to me. I always can it, and marvel that not a *single* one of these bozos ever has a real domain name...it's always edscomputers0284742@yahoo.com or something. They've got moolah for 150 inkjet cartridges, but they can't afford a freaking domain for their alleged computer bizness. And of course *no* one ever speaks English as a first language.
Mindful of the chatter here on Slashdot earlier this week about the importance of not discriminating against people, I do at least look them over for signs that they might actually be in my state. But I never see them, and so I deep six 'em immediately.
I would not be rude, though, esp. to the operator. It's not their fault they have to relay this convo to you, and they probably know it's a scam and resent having to be the middleman.
We got another one prior to this, although not through a TTY service, by a guy who claimed to be a U.S. soldier stationed at Guantanamo Bay, and he needed a satellite service setup. He wanted us, though, to ship it only to New York. Not only did I think it extremely likely that a US soldier would need us to send him a satellite setup, and even less likely that he'd be allowed to admit he was at Gitmo, but he didn't even introduce himself officially - it came out later in the conversaton. Suspicious, I began asking for a lot of information - like an email address, and he gave me a Yahoo one, rather than a US military address. I told him we couldn't help him out, and that night I reported it to the FBI.
The boss told me later he'd almost been duped by one of these guys, although the product never got shipped because he began to smell a scam and he cancelled the order at the last minute (my boss did, not the scammer). Our sort of unofficial policy now is we don't ship out of state unless it's for a customer we already know.