The Three Mile Island accident was a mild, harmless incident in a nuclear energy facility but it is still used by nuclear energy opponents to denounce the "harms and perils" of the nuclear power.
Captain Planet taught me that nuclear reactors were very dangerous because a radioactive supervillain wearing a Hawaiian shirt and trunks might punch his way through the vessel wall.
(Seriously. I got subjected to that episode once as an adult and that was basically it. I thought the final-scene moralizing lesson was gonna be something about real-world disasters, but it was more like "Yeah, we had to wear HAZMAT suits because of what Duke Nukem* did, so reactors are bad.")
(* No, the other Duke Nukem. The one who looks like the Thing's punk cousin with no dress sense.)
People even say a computer is junk without a bluray, and as a toy it probably is.
Show me these people. I wish to mock them. Seriously, a Blu-ray drive is about seven times the cost of a plain ol' DVD drive, and doesn't really come with a lot of advantages. Sure, you can play a Blu-ray disk. Except for this one fellow I know who found that his drive could only play SOME disks. Solution? Wait for a firmware upgrade. And wait. And wait. At least he hadn't bought an HD-DVD drive, right?
The prime disadvantage of the cutting edge is that sometimes you get cut. Once Blu-ray gets cheap and the drive quality levels out more, it might be worth it. But even then, some people just can't see any difference in quality and thus no reason to go Blu-ray. And then there's people like me, who use their DVD drives for burning data disks only.
3) Let them use it, but deliberately make it prohibitively difficult to use.; They'll soon fuck off
And people wonder why the IT industry is so stereotyped and maligned by other people.
Oh, for other people's PCs I keep them nice and simple. But mine is a fortress of esoterica and confusion. Starting a web browser? You could try the (classic) start menu, but that's autohidden on the left side of the screen, so good luck with that. And IE isn't on it anyway. Seamonkey is, buried in a sub-subfolder. If I load Seamonkey, I use ctrl-alt-N or the shortcut on my desktop, which has a custom icon to better fit my color scheme. The last tech who tried to use my personal machine "real quick" actually gave up and let me load the program he needed.
But other people's? Let's see (checks other monitor) generic XP SP3 install, IE and OE happily pinned to the double-wide start menu. Yay!
Goodness...how did we EVER survive as a species before cell phones and GPS trackers??!?!
When I was a kid, I roamed all over the neighborhood, and ones near us.
You're certainly not the first to notice this. Where the great-grandfather traveled MILES as a kid, the grandfather traveled no more than a mile, the father never went off his street, and now his son isn't allowed off the lawn.
A student I know has an autism spectrum disorder, and is known for running away. He has a white wristwatch that can't be removed without tools, or a big cutter, that does provide GPS data. I don't know what the backend looks like, webpage, cellphone, etc., but his parents and caregivers are much relieved. So, something exists.
Sorry but Doom is not that cool. Quake is in fact much much cooler and goes to prove that Maddox is right about the iPhone vs. the Nokia E-series. Oh it legally unlocked, it multitaskes, and it will be OSS soon.
It isn't unlocked. You gotta collect keys and kill bosses and stuff to unlock doors. Quake is FULL of locks. Oh, sorry, you meant the PHONE....
(Sorry, normally I'm not a grammar Nazi, but this sounds so much the schoolyard skirmishes of the console wars that I feel like I'm back reading stories to grade schoolers. Correcting bad grammar comes with the territory there.)
Why does everyone keep speaking about EXT4 as if it's broken? It's working exactly as designed. It's the applications that need fixing, no?
(broken) = (not trusted), but it doesn't follow that (not broken) = (trusted) or even that (not trusted) = (broken). I wouldn't be the first to cross a newly-made rope bridge over a deep gorge, no matter how unfrayed the ropes looked. ext4 could follow design spec to the letter and cure cancer to boot, but that doesn't mean it's been hammered on in sundry setups 24/7 for two years straight.
GamePro seemed to be targeted at eight year olds, with more of an emphasis on the comic avatars of the editors than actual games
Ah, yes. I remember someone once commenting on that aspect of GamePro. It went something like 'We tried to get in contact with the writer to discuss (an error in an article) but it turns out that GamePro's switchboard only works by real name, and they provide no way of converting "Sister Sinister" or "Bro Buzz" to a real name. Rather convenient for them.'
When I was young, I read Compute's Gazette and Game Players. Now, the only ones I buy are Retro Gamer (seems appropriate) and Games magazine (because a pencil and a puzzle magazine are a lot easier to carry than a laptop while waiting for a bus).
Or is your "ZOMG! PROBABLE TERRORIST!" comment code for your belief that any foreign national who appears to be hiding his identity should be allowed into the country without questions?
No, it's just the last line of the post, the entirety of which was code for my belief that a job which was created in the early days after 9/11, whose procedures can be altered by a sufficiently panicky "Breaking News" segment and whose wage is quite likely far below what one would expect for a job of that sort isn't going to attract Nobel Prize winners.
Probably about as much as any other legalese boilerplate shrinkwrap EULA. Because that's what I felt like I was reading, just with more treaty references.
This is what happens when you send a short-sighted lawyer to do a far-sighted revolutionary's work.
How does someone with their extremities amputated get through an airport?
There's probably some procedure in place for people without fingers. However, the security droids' gears ground to a halt when confronted by a person with fingers but without fingerPRINTs. Didn't compute, so something shorted out and the error trapping routine kicked in. Sadly, the error trapping routine consists entirely of "ZOMG! PROBABLE TERRORIST!"
I have a few older pieces in storage elsewhere, but the oldest I can get my hands on without having to leave the apartment is either an MSD SD2 drive or a 1702 monitor.
When I moved I put my C64s into storage, but I brought these two with me. The SD2 was the first piece of hardware I ever fixed. (Sure, it was just a blown fuse, but there's nothing like being given something that was about to be thrown out and making it work just like new.) The monitor was stol^H^H^H^Hsalvaged though wasn't even broken (no one knew how to plug anything into it, so it was left to languish).
Of course, while I'm reasonably sure the SD2 is working (the move wasn't THAT brutal), since I didn't have room for the C64s I have nothing to plug it in to. Though my 1702 monitor works just peachy when fed a composite TV signal. In a pinch, I even used it for a - very blurry - PC monitor on a computer with TV out.
Seriously, he lets himself get taken for a ride by the IDer's. What a moron.
WHAT? Richard Nixon's speechwriter isn't a bubbling font of integrity, wisdom, and truth? MY WORLD VIEW HAS BEEN SHATTERED! MY PARADIGM HAS BEEN PERILOUSLY SHIFTED! I CAN'T GO ON!
IBM is laying off American citizens, but hiring in Asia, and yet are spending all this money on gimmicks.
Hardly a gimmick. It's called "advertising". In the public mind:
(Jeopardy!) = smart
therefore
(computer winning Jeopardy!) = smart computer.
Plus, they get a hype boost just from using the show's name. Would this article have even made Slashdot if it were "IBM plans to have AI accurately answer game show questions"?
I don't have a problem with acting against individuals who break the law but if we start banning groups because of their beliefs it might be hard to know where to stop.
How about World of Warcraft. Isn't that sort of a cult?
While I don't agree with your basic premise (that Scientologists are being persecuted for their faith, not prosecuted for their crimes), I really have to take that analogy to task. The jump from Scientology to World of Warcraft is completely illogical, no matter how long you spend trying to grease the slippery slope. What do WoW players believe that everyone else doesn't, besides that WoW is worth playing?
"His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that having the mantra on your computer works the same as a traditional prayer wheel. Since a computer's hard disk spins hundreds of thousands of times per hour, and can contain many copies of the mantra, anyone who wants to can turn their computer into a prayer wheel."
Wow, and I thought the "spin a wheel = say a prayer" trick of theirs was already the height of efficient communion with the divine. Now, one can pray just by firing up the computer to look at porn! Awesome!
Slashdot Mirror
The Three Mile Island accident was a mild, harmless incident in a nuclear energy facility but it is still used by nuclear energy opponents to denounce the "harms and perils" of the nuclear power.
Captain Planet taught me that nuclear reactors were very dangerous because a radioactive supervillain wearing a Hawaiian shirt and trunks might punch his way through the vessel wall.
(Seriously. I got subjected to that episode once as an adult and that was basically it. I thought the final-scene moralizing lesson was gonna be something about real-world disasters, but it was more like "Yeah, we had to wear HAZMAT suits because of what Duke Nukem* did, so reactors are bad.")
(* No, the other Duke Nukem. The one who looks like the Thing's punk cousin with no dress sense.)
People even say a computer is junk without a bluray, and as a toy it probably is.
Show me these people. I wish to mock them. Seriously, a Blu-ray drive is about seven times the cost of a plain ol' DVD drive, and doesn't really come with a lot of advantages. Sure, you can play a Blu-ray disk. Except for this one fellow I know who found that his drive could only play SOME disks. Solution? Wait for a firmware upgrade. And wait. And wait. At least he hadn't bought an HD-DVD drive, right?
The prime disadvantage of the cutting edge is that sometimes you get cut. Once Blu-ray gets cheap and the drive quality levels out more, it might be worth it. But even then, some people just can't see any difference in quality and thus no reason to go Blu-ray. And then there's people like me, who use their DVD drives for burning data disks only.
Another vote for Spinrite here, although I'd call it more of a HD necromancer than a data recovery tool.
--
And then I will fuck the remains!
Wow. Your .sig really goes... well... with your post.
Half the replies here are:
3) Let them use it, but deliberately make it prohibitively difficult to use.; They'll soon fuck off
And people wonder why the IT industry is so stereotyped and maligned by other people.
Oh, for other people's PCs I keep them nice and simple. But mine is a fortress of esoterica and confusion. Starting a web browser? You could try the (classic) start menu, but that's autohidden on the left side of the screen, so good luck with that. And IE isn't on it anyway. Seamonkey is, buried in a sub-subfolder. If I load Seamonkey, I use ctrl-alt-N or the shortcut on my desktop, which has a custom icon to better fit my color scheme. The last tech who tried to use my personal machine "real quick" actually gave up and let me load the program he needed.
But other people's? Let's see (checks other monitor) generic XP SP3 install, IE and OE happily pinned to the double-wide start menu. Yay!
Goodness...how did we EVER survive as a species before cell phones and GPS trackers??!?!
When I was a kid, I roamed all over the neighborhood, and ones near us.
You're certainly not the first to notice this. Where the great-grandfather traveled MILES as a kid, the grandfather traveled no more than a mile, the father never went off his street, and now his son isn't allowed off the lawn.
This article's a year old, but it's still really relevant. Would this have been newsworthy a few generations ago? Mom lets 9-year-old take subway home alone.
A student I know has an autism spectrum disorder, and is known for running away. He has a white wristwatch that can't be removed without tools, or a big cutter, that does provide GPS data. I don't know what the backend looks like, webpage, cellphone, etc., but his parents and caregivers are much relieved. So, something exists.
Looks like there's a few options:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=gps+bracelet+autistic
...And Clippy, and Windows 98 ME...
And Commodore BASIC.
Sorry but Doom is not that cool. Quake is in fact much much cooler and goes to prove that Maddox is right about the iPhone vs. the Nokia E-series. Oh it legally unlocked, it multitaskes, and it will be OSS soon.
It isn't unlocked. You gotta collect keys and kill bosses and stuff to unlock doors. Quake is FULL of locks. Oh, sorry, you meant the PHONE....
(Sorry, normally I'm not a grammar Nazi, but this sounds so much the schoolyard skirmishes of the console wars that I feel like I'm back reading stories to grade schoolers. Correcting bad grammar comes with the territory there.)
Why does everyone keep speaking about EXT4 as if it's broken? It's working exactly as designed. It's the applications that need fixing, no?
(broken) = (not trusted), but it doesn't follow that (not broken) = (trusted) or even that (not trusted) = (broken). I wouldn't be the first to cross a newly-made rope bridge over a deep gorge, no matter how unfrayed the ropes looked. ext4 could follow design spec to the letter and cure cancer to boot, but that doesn't mean it's been hammered on in sundry setups 24/7 for two years straight.
GamePro seemed to be targeted at eight year olds, with more of an emphasis on the comic avatars of the editors than actual games
Ah, yes. I remember someone once commenting on that aspect of GamePro. It went something like 'We tried to get in contact with the writer to discuss (an error in an article) but it turns out that GamePro's switchboard only works by real name, and they provide no way of converting "Sister Sinister" or "Bro Buzz" to a real name. Rather convenient for them.'
When I was young, I read Compute's Gazette and Game Players. Now, the only ones I buy are Retro Gamer (seems appropriate) and Games magazine (because a pencil and a puzzle magazine are a lot easier to carry than a laptop while waiting for a bus).
Something about "retail store" sounds redundant to me.
The opposite would be a store that doesn't have anything in stock to sell you. I guess that's a field entirely occupied by the Gateway stores, huh?
Or is your "ZOMG! PROBABLE TERRORIST!" comment code for your belief that any foreign national who appears to be hiding his identity should be allowed into the country without questions?
No, it's just the last line of the post, the entirety of which was code for my belief that a job which was created in the early days after 9/11, whose procedures can be altered by a sufficiently panicky "Breaking News" segment and whose wage is quite likely far below what one would expect for a job of that sort isn't going to attract Nobel Prize winners.
So if I have no hands?
You'll be detained for hours while they figure out what to do with you. Because only terrorists don't share their fingerprints.
My brain hurts. Did this actually SAY anything??
Probably about as much as any other legalese boilerplate shrinkwrap EULA. Because that's what I felt like I was reading, just with more treaty references.
This is what happens when you send a short-sighted lawyer to do a far-sighted revolutionary's work.
Heaven help me for knowing this, but I'm pretty sure it was Ernest Saves Christmas.
How does someone with their extremities amputated get through an airport?
There's probably some procedure in place for people without fingers. However, the security droids' gears ground to a halt when confronted by a person with fingers but without fingerPRINTs. Didn't compute, so something shorted out and the error trapping routine kicked in. Sadly, the error trapping routine consists entirely of "ZOMG! PROBABLE TERRORIST!"
When I moved I put my C64s into storage, but I brought these two with me. The SD2 was the first piece of hardware I ever fixed. (Sure, it was just a blown fuse, but there's nothing like being given something that was about to be thrown out and making it work just like new.) The monitor was stol^H^H^H^Hsalvaged though wasn't even broken (no one knew how to plug anything into it, so it was left to languish).
Of course, while I'm reasonably sure the SD2 is working (the move wasn't THAT brutal), since I didn't have room for the C64s I have nothing to plug it in to. Though my 1702 monitor works just peachy when fed a composite TV signal. In a pinch, I even used it for a - very blurry - PC monitor on a computer with TV out.
My hammer was made in 1876.
But your grandfather replaced the handle and your father replaced the head, right?:)
By being good at their job presumably.
It's not like they're gonna be using harriers to pick up prostitutes.
Though if you have a Harrier and the only action you can get is pay-for, you're doing it wrong.
It looks awfully like one of the original Mr. Men characters, though I cannot find the exact one.
Funny.... I read that series when I was little and I really don't remember #44. Was that the ultra-limited-edition hardcover, mayhap?
Seriously, he lets himself get taken for a ride by the IDer's. What a moron.
WHAT? Richard Nixon's speechwriter isn't a bubbling font of integrity, wisdom, and truth? MY WORLD VIEW HAS BEEN SHATTERED! MY PARADIGM HAS BEEN PERILOUSLY SHIFTED! I CAN'T GO ON!
IBM is laying off American citizens, but hiring in Asia, and yet are spending all this money on gimmicks.
Hardly a gimmick. It's called "advertising". In the public mind:
(Jeopardy!) = smart
therefore
(computer winning Jeopardy!) = smart computer.
Plus, they get a hype boost just from using the show's name. Would this article have even made Slashdot if it were "IBM plans to have AI accurately answer game show questions"?
What if you have a solid state drive?
You put your entire PC on a turntable. If you don't, you die and come back as a buggy-whip salesman.
I don't have a problem with acting against individuals who break the law but if we start banning groups because of their beliefs it might be hard to know where to stop. How about World of Warcraft. Isn't that sort of a cult?
While I don't agree with your basic premise (that Scientologists are being persecuted for their faith, not prosecuted for their crimes), I really have to take that analogy to task. The jump from Scientology to World of Warcraft is completely illogical, no matter how long you spend trying to grease the slippery slope. What do WoW players believe that everyone else doesn't, besides that WoW is worth playing?
"His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that having the mantra on your computer works the same as a traditional prayer wheel. Since a computer's hard disk spins hundreds of thousands of times per hour, and can contain many copies of the mantra, anyone who wants to can turn their computer into a prayer wheel."
Wow, and I thought the "spin a wheel = say a prayer" trick of theirs was already the height of efficient communion with the divine. Now, one can pray just by firing up the computer to look at porn! Awesome!