Get a slide rule. If they bitch about it tell them to suck it. A scientific calculator can't do anything a slide rule can't, and a graphing calculator can't do anything paper and pencil can't. 3D graphing would theoretically set them apart, but the 3D graphing on handheld calculators is pure shit.
What, you think terrorists aren't human? You're an idiot, plain and simple. I'm not going to go into it, because, ironically enough, no rational argument is possible with people who honestly think terrorists aren't capable of rationality.
I didn't mean science programs are useless shit. I know how important science is.
The useless shit is the bridge to nowhere, the TSA, airline bailouts, and all the millions of small bits of pork you don't hear about on the news.
You're damn right we don't produce the caliber of students we ought to be. High school and college have become the time to drink yourself stupid, and grad school has turned into a place people use to avoid the world for a few more years. It's not a problem with the education system, though, it's a problem with the people themselves, and I don't really know how it can be fixed unless I am to start sacrificing people in the manner of Tyler Durden.
It won't happen. Not until the invisible hand pushes gas prices to $10 a gallon, and the public wants hybrids, will that happen. The free market, in this case, seems to be overpowering what little government interference there's been. Americans are truly dedicated to their SUVs and Corvettes.
And I'm also only looking at the surface of the electronics, I have no idea what's going on internally and why they work. The underlying reasons are really complex, much more complex than any of the emotional things you mention.
You can look deeply at anything; the performance of a C program can be analyzed using the calculus of three-dimensional vectors describing individual electrons if you'd like. Doesn't mean anything about your understanding of it.
There's enough smart people around that I've learned there's no reason to hire or waste time associating with the arrogant ones when there are so many more who don't look down on others.
If I were applying for a job, I wouldn't be an arrogant prick. That's how I spend my downtime.
They may not have facts to quote or have memorized textbooks, but a truly observant and open mind can learn much from any human.
That's fine. I'll let you learn from the ignorant ones, while I take the ones who know what they're talking about. Is that fair?
By the way, in my daily life I don't antagonize people like this, I merely don't talk to them unless they initiate the conversation. I'm more arrogant and confrontational online, as described by John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
It's not that easy, and that you reduce it to that indicates either a certain contempt or misunderstanding of the, as it is sometimes called, "human element.
And understanding computers isn't as easy as knowing what a full adder looks like. I merely picked a few examples.
You also have your paragraph, "TO NORMAL PEOPLE" and you use quite a few comments that do a great job, again, of showing arrogance. You use terms with emotional loading, like "less intellectual".
I didn't mean to imply that I wasn't arrogant. I'm one of the ones who doesn't use my social skills often. Doesn't mean I don't have them, or that I can't socialize, or that I never socialize.
They, however, know their fields extremely well. The lawyers I know would never dream of calling people who aren't law geeks "normal people" and the same goes for other fields.
Knowing your field != intelligence. And being good at your work != being a geek. Most geeks know much more than computers. And more importantly, they seek more knowledge. When you were in school, who'd you ask for help after school - the geek who understood the material, or the future lawyer who could do the problems but couldn't explain why the substitution property worked?
The difference is those that know they have a higher intelligence tend to like to think that makes them above normal and better than all the rest, which leads the the very arrogance you show in your post in many small statements.
And the difference I see is that those who have less intelligence do absolutely nothing with what they have - how often do stupid people read books or discuss philosophy compared to their smarter counterparts? I'm perfectly aware that there are plenty of smart people who piss it away (I go to Duke for Christ's sake), but the incidence of stupid people pissing it away is much higher. If your lawyer friend is actually intelligent and knows more than just law (which other people taught him), then I bet he doesn't talk to ignorant people much. He'd get frustrated in ten minutes flat.
Thank you for providing us with a good example of a "geek" who thinks s/he is better than everyone else and in an attempt to justify that, shows the very arrogance s/he feels others show toward him/her.
Well, I'm glad to help. But there's a difference between the arrogance of geeks and the arrogance of socialites - the socialites' arrogance is based on something utterly insignificant, whereas the geeks have a good idea why they'd be better off if the socialites weren't wasting space.
Computers are easy to learn. People are more complex.
I've heard that attitude often. People with social skills (you know, the people who spend their time talking to each other about nothing and not doing shit for anyone) tend to have inaccurately high opinions of themselves. Socializing is the easiest thing in the world to learn.
Freshman year of high school, I had no friends. Beginning of sophomore year, I got bored and decided to get some, despite having no conversational skills. So I spent a few days listening to people talk and that was it. I knew how to converse. After a few weeks of practice I had the same social skills as any arrogant dumbass you'd see making fun of geeks.
TO NORMAL PEOPLE: If you see an intelligent person whom you perceive as having no social skills, it's because they either never bothered learning them, or they don't use them. Never assume you were born with something they weren't, and definitely don't think yourself better than them. You probably just used your time for less intellectual pursuits when you were growing up.
By the way, about
"geeks" are scared to figure out the more complex topic of people because they might fail and stick to computers because figuring out ones and zeros is easier.
I don't think you know very much about ones and zeros. Do you honestly think it's more difficult to compliment someone's hair than to read a circuit diagram of a full adder with a latch and see what it does? Or that it's more difficult to trade Simpsons quotes than to recognize and exploit a buffer overflow? Or that it's more difficult to listen to someone bitching about their ex-wife then to understand how the discrete logarithm problem can be used for public-key cryptography?
What the hell country are you living in? It's been 30-odd years since that's been true in Western countries. The second wave of feminism completely obliterated testosterone, and now men spend as much time worrying about their appearance as women. Remember metrosexuals? You honestly think such a trend could come from a nation of manly men?
That's a good point. Everyone knows that people target only the operating system. No self-respecting hacker would ever attack a third-party tool to gain access to a system, right?
I doubt Bush _is_ stupid or inarticulate. He does it on purpose. How many times have you heard people say he's a good man doing a hard job, or say he at least knows to surround himself with intelligent people, or discuss his mispronunciation of "nuclear" instead of the fact that America is the first nation on Earth to allow a first nuclear strike? It's extraordinarily unlikely that someone could pull the crap he pulled, AND STILL GET REELECTED, without careful planning. Stupidity appeals to Americans, and Bush used it very successfully. He accomplished most of his and the Republicans' goals, stayed in office for two terms, and did it in such a way that Republican leaders could distance themselves from him in time for the '06 and '08 elections, keeping 50% of Congress. Amazing.
Have people completely given up on the idea that our society won't last forever? Dammit, I'm going to want books when the oil runs out! What will I do if they're all on hard drives?
Then again, maybe you prefer the artificial sounds of SRS WoW.
Well, personally I prefer the entirely un-artificial sounds of live music: all-natural metal guitar strings vibrating across electromagnetic pickups grown in the coastal regions of South America, driven through amplifiers made from a variety of organically-grown ingredients to give only the purest of sounds. But I suppose in a pinch, I'll listen to sounds created from strange man-made objects like hard drives and headphones.
Slashdot Mirror
Get a slide rule. If they bitch about it tell them to suck it. A scientific calculator can't do anything a slide rule can't, and a graphing calculator can't do anything paper and pencil can't. 3D graphing would theoretically set them apart, but the 3D graphing on handheld calculators is pure shit.
Yeah, I realized it as soon as I posted. They really should take away the submit button and force me to preview.
Oh, I see. Slashdot adds a slash. My bad, feel free to ignore or downmod the above post as desired.
I can't tell if you're serious or not. You do know there are only two slashes in http:/// don't you?
No food.
What, you think terrorists aren't human? You're an idiot, plain and simple. I'm not going to go into it, because, ironically enough, no rational argument is possible with people who honestly think terrorists aren't capable of rationality.
I didn't mean science programs are useless shit. I know how important science is.
The useless shit is the bridge to nowhere, the TSA, airline bailouts, and all the millions of small bits of pork you don't hear about on the news.
You're damn right we don't produce the caliber of students we ought to be. High school and college have become the time to drink yourself stupid, and grad school has turned into a place people use to avoid the world for a few more years. It's not a problem with the education system, though, it's a problem with the people themselves, and I don't really know how it can be fixed unless I am to start sacrificing people in the manner of Tyler Durden.
The US doesn't have the budget to play with and fritter away on pointless shit. We just do anyway.
It won't happen. Not until the invisible hand pushes gas prices to $10 a gallon, and the public wants hybrids, will that happen. The free market, in this case, seems to be overpowering what little government interference there's been. Americans are truly dedicated to their SUVs and Corvettes.
And I'm also only looking at the surface of the electronics, I have no idea what's going on internally and why they work. The underlying reasons are really complex, much more complex than any of the emotional things you mention.
You can look deeply at anything; the performance of a C program can be analyzed using the calculus of three-dimensional vectors describing individual electrons if you'd like. Doesn't mean anything about your understanding of it.
That's fine. I'll let you learn from the ignorant ones, while I take the ones who know what they're talking about. Is that fair?
By the way, in my daily life I don't antagonize people like this, I merely don't talk to them unless they initiate the conversation. I'm more arrogant and confrontational online, as described by John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
Not initially. It took about a year of talking to people to become as bitter as I am today. I can still socialize when necessary, but I don't often.
I didn't mean to imply that I wasn't arrogant. I'm one of the ones who doesn't use my social skills often. Doesn't mean I don't have them, or that I can't socialize, or that I never socialize.
Knowing your field != intelligence. And being good at your work != being a geek. Most geeks know much more than computers. And more importantly, they seek more knowledge. When you were in school, who'd you ask for help after school - the geek who understood the material, or the future lawyer who could do the problems but couldn't explain why the substitution property worked?
And the difference I see is that those who have less intelligence do absolutely nothing with what they have - how often do stupid people read books or discuss philosophy compared to their smarter counterparts? I'm perfectly aware that there are plenty of smart people who piss it away (I go to Duke for Christ's sake), but the incidence of stupid people pissing it away is much higher. If your lawyer friend is actually intelligent and knows more than just law (which other people taught him), then I bet he doesn't talk to ignorant people much. He'd get frustrated in ten minutes flat.
Well, I'm glad to help. But there's a difference between the arrogance of geeks and the arrogance of socialites - the socialites' arrogance is based on something utterly insignificant, whereas the geeks have a good idea why they'd be better off if the socialites weren't wasting space.
Freshman year of high school, I had no friends. Beginning of sophomore year, I got bored and decided to get some, despite having no conversational skills. So I spent a few days listening to people talk and that was it. I knew how to converse. After a few weeks of practice I had the same social skills as any arrogant dumbass you'd see making fun of geeks.
TO NORMAL PEOPLE: If you see an intelligent person whom you perceive as having no social skills, it's because they either never bothered learning them, or they don't use them. Never assume you were born with something they weren't, and definitely don't think yourself better than them. You probably just used your time for less intellectual pursuits when you were growing up.
By the way, about I don't think you know very much about ones and zeros. Do you honestly think it's more difficult to compliment someone's hair than to read a circuit diagram of a full adder with a latch and see what it does? Or that it's more difficult to trade Simpsons quotes than to recognize and exploit a buffer overflow? Or that it's more difficult to listen to someone bitching about their ex-wife then to understand how the discrete logarithm problem can be used for public-key cryptography?
*sigh* I know. I try to have an idealized view of the past. Gives me hope for the future. Man, people suck.
That's a good point. Everyone knows that people target only the operating system. No self-respecting hacker would ever attack a third-party tool to gain access to a system, right?
And I'm sure you have no problem being the reason everyone hates Americans. Other people try not to be like that.
I doubt Bush _is_ stupid or inarticulate. He does it on purpose. How many times have you heard people say he's a good man doing a hard job, or say he at least knows to surround himself with intelligent people, or discuss his mispronunciation of "nuclear" instead of the fact that America is the first nation on Earth to allow a first nuclear strike? It's extraordinarily unlikely that someone could pull the crap he pulled, AND STILL GET REELECTED, without careful planning. Stupidity appeals to Americans, and Bush used it very successfully. He accomplished most of his and the Republicans' goals, stayed in office for two terms, and did it in such a way that Republican leaders could distance themselves from him in time for the '06 and '08 elections, keeping 50% of Congress. Amazing.
Have people completely given up on the idea that our society won't last forever? Dammit, I'm going to want books when the oil runs out! What will I do if they're all on hard drives?
They care enough to put words in my mouth.
Sign in before you speak and someone MIGHT care what you have to say.I care what he has to say.