If you think Uwe Boll is bad, try watching Atomic Twister sometime.
I dare you to find worse than Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. It has a kung-fu second coming of Jesus, a priest with a punk hairdo riding a vespa, and a newspaper headline reading "Critical shortage of lesbians". Other than that the movie has no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and the fact that video and audio aren't synchronized very well gets on your nerves pretty fast doesn't help either.
Having said that, if you like bad horror movies a good laugh is Bad Taste by Peter Jackson, but you probably already have seen it. And Braindead by the same Peter Jackson is still a b-movie classic, worth more than a few laughs.
A movie like Primer is a good example of the fact that not all low budget movies have to be bad. It's actually a pretty good movie, especially if you're a bit of a geek.
I must admit that I do feel a little bit of satisfaction knowing that they're paying to send several pieces of snail mail across the Atlantic to me every year.
The sad thing about that is that they're probably making enough money to be able to send out that many letters in international mail each year. I get about 3 or 4 of those things in the mail each year, each for a separate domain, and so do a couple of acquaintances of mine. If for every 10 letters they send, one sucker gets fooled, that still makes it profitable.
Most Slashdotters will never be anywhere close to one foot from a vagina anyway, so it's not like we'll have anything to compare it to when surfing our porn on it.
Haven't you heard? Steve Jobs thinks you should buy an android if you (or your children) are looking for porn.
The corporate whores at the FCC have decide to server their corporate masters
Yes, I too have servered my corporate masters every now and then. From great distances I have hurled 1U, 2U and every now and then 4U servers towards their heads. Sadly, despite their weight and looking very sturdy, servers break too easily for servering my corporate masters on a regular basis.
I'm planning to bring out a book in a year or two: How to server man.
So Jason Chen just banned me from io9 and other sites which Jason Chen has absolutely 0 influence in because I insinuated Gizmodo is full of dirty rotten lowlife thieves who purchase obviously stolen property in order to make a quick buck.
So, guys, last week I went to the vaticans site and accused some priest of touching children in the public forum about sin. Could you believe that the pope himself banned me? He even had the gall to ban me from prayersonline.com, confessions.info and hotnunswearingthongs.com! How the hell am I going to have a decent conversation about the ten commandments now?
If this "child porn" thing actually exists, which I doubt
Please so not downplay the severity or deny the existence of sexual abuse of children. Despite the "for the children" argument being used too often, it is a very real and very serious problem which should be treated appropriately. Sadly, it is such a difficult topic that evokes such strong reactions that people can't seem to think straight about the topic. The media with their lack of understanding of technology combined with someones political ambitions carefully play the "for the children" card all too often to accomplish their goals. Part of the sarcastic "think of the children" reactions you see here on slashdot are the direct result of that.
it's so well hidden that any measures about blocking it are useless.
Sadly, it's not well hidden. Just because you can't find it on google, doesn't mean it's hidden. The things I've stumbled across have always been hidden in plain sight. I suggest that you leave an open http proxy on the internet for a week or two and have a look at the logs. I've once seen the logs of a proxy that wasn't secured properly, and let's just say that I'm glad nobody ever came calling for that particular IP number. What most likely is well hidden is the identity of the perpetrators or the people who trade in this material. A few years ago this stuff was a real plague on usenet, from what I gather nowadays tor and freenet are the more popular places. I doubt one has to browse the tor onion sites for long to find the material in question, and freenet... I remember finding the stuff in the indexsite in the very beginning, although I'm not aware of how freenet is doing right now. Needless to say, that I don't need to check to know that an anonymous network is going to carry that kind of material in plain open sight.
The heart of the matter is that I would like to see more effort be put into training police into catching these types of criminals, instead of passing legislation that makes necessity for better criminals. At least in the west there have been numerous attempts at overly broad and insane laws on the topic, and the result has always been that they don't catch more criminals. I'm sure that if people could rationally approach this topic despite its vile nature, we could actually accomplish something for the children, instead of making questionable comics illegal for instance.
Apparently there was an episode or two involving a hatch buried in the ground.
Two seasons of it, sir... Two very long seasons.
Re:So, my only question regarding Lost is
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
What the hell was that black smoke thing in the first series? You didn't see it at all through two or three, and I got so bored by then that I gave up.
So, black smoke monster; What was it?
Remember that Lassie movie where Timmy fell down a well? Add light to the well and you've got the smoke monster.
How? Why? Tune in next week! We promise we'll tell you!
L O S T
Oh wait... Last episode... Right... Sorry!
Re:Season 6 was a complete disapoimtment
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
In the end the loyal viewers were betrayed.
I think "betrayed" is a bit of a strong term there. Deceived is probably better. Conned perhaps? Misled?
Damn your betrayal Taco Bell. You promised me food paradise but all I got was a lousy burrito.:)
Re:Was Not Impressed at All
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 1
The heart of the island is filled with energy. It is the same energy that fuels life. Jacob guarded that energy and used it to protect candidates so they didn't age, and healed miraculously. As a punishment for someone trying to steal that energy, they would be turned into the "smoke monster", which could only wear the faces of dead bodies on the island.
Okay, and how is this any better than "mysterious island with mysterious powers"? From a writing point of view, you've moved the plot device from the island to "mysterious light with mysterious powers". You're still waving your hands and you've explained nothing except you've said that "magic is magic", and if you're going to do that you could just leave it be in the first place.
In fact, from a storytelling point of view, the moment they "explained" the smoke monster they took a few steps back. If you have a good monster, don't bother explaining it since it makes it less of a monster. The "defense mechanism" explanation was more than enough to make for a good story. Think of the aliens from the movie series alien. They're a good monster because they're not explained: they're there, they act somewhat intelligently to cut power and so forth, they kill some people and implant their young in others. If you were to explain those aliens as "Oh yeah, those guys. They're from a planet called Xenopetipatalan. They were lawyers on their homeworld but were banished and are now acting as judge jury and executioner to determine who is most suitable to be hosts for their young". The only thing the writers from Lost accomplished was "Oh look, another guy trying to get off the island, oh yeah, and he can turn into smoke".
Did you watch Star Wars and complain that the Force was never explained?
It was explained by the way of midichloreans or something or other, and it sucked. Just like the "light from the cave" (handwaving) sucked. The problem is that all the things they could've explained on the island weren't, and there was ample opportunity. Here's a few of those:
Why was Walt (or as Michael called him "WAAAAAAAAAALT!!!") so special? And here's the real kicker about that one: they really go out of their way to make the point that Walt is incredibly special, yet at a later point in time when Locke wants people to go back to the Island they just brush by it and go "Oh Walt, yeah, he's just in highschool now like regular kids. Fuck what we said before."
They take an entire season of people hopping around time, and they just don't do anything significant with it. Oh, man in black Locke tells Richard to go help regular Locke. But the whole Desmond & Daniel thing for instance is a big plothole you can drive a truck through. Imagine that you're a scientist working on timetravel without too much success (quite the opposite actually). Out of nowhere comes a scotsman with the missing parts of the equation, and one experiment later your mouse has been timetraveling. Would you not remember this scotsman (who also happens to timetravel in front of you at least once) a few years later when you meet him on an island where "time isn't quite right" ? Oh, but when you read your diary and find "Desmond is my constant" then you remember him... Right? Riiiiight.
The numbers on the radio. Really, they could've easily explained those. Hugo could've spoken those numbers on a tape for Danielle to find, and they could've easily closed that question. They could've even spun an entire story around it so that Hugo inspired someone to put these numbers on a tape. You've got people hopping around time, close that little bit of mystery with a loop and say "Well, he didn't change the past, it's predetermined that he would do that".
There's was ample opportunity for the writers to clear up a lot of man-made mysteries, without having to wave their hands about light in a cave that turns bad people into smoke monsters. They wouldn't have to explain anything about the island and just say "Oh, mag
Many signature dishes come out at the perfect temperature
No they don't. Get over yourselves.
You sir, obviously haven't experienced the finer art of cooking. Last week I made a lasagna that needed to be served at the perfect temperature in order to be optimally satisfying. It needed to be so hot that it would scorch the taste buds right off of your tongue, or else you would be unable to stand the taste.
Again it's, "Here, record company, take my money," and they say, "no thanks." Ok, fine, if you insist I'll just download it somewhere.
A few months ago I went to the local record store. I wanted to buy a physical copy of an album of a relatively unknown (compared to top 10 in the charts popular) artist, and I just happened to pass by the record store while doing groceries. I browsed a while between the racks of CDs and noticed how little variety they had. 10 years ago I could go into this CD shop, look for something relatively unknown and have a decent chance of finding it. Today, if it wasn't the kind of album my mother would buy (demographically speaking) or something that was in the charts at some point in time I wouldn't be able to find it.
The section dedicated to the louder variants of metal had made room for an impressive array of overpriced (and outdated) videogames. The section which used to display a wide array of blues and jazz was now reduced to the sale of game consoles, and had not a single person browsing there. The immense assortment of classical music was decimated to a single shelf, right next to the DVD shelves that had greedily overtaken the available space. To the very left of the DVD shelves a makeshift cardboard stand was carrying various software, of which most prominently displayed there was Windows 7 attracting exactly zero customers.
It's needless to say that I didn't find what I was looking for. I asked the guy at the counter if I could perhaps order it, and was informed that I had to wait somewhere between 3 to 6 weeks and there would be an extra cost for which I needed to pay an advance. I told him I'd find it somewhere else, and I did. As it turns out, I didn't even have to leave the house in the first place. Amazon carried what I was looking for, and little under a week after placing my order I got my physical copy in my mailbox.
It dawned on me that it had been a little over 10 years since I had set foot in a record store. The previous experience had been somewhat the same when I wanted to buy an album from a somewhat known local artist. But this is something that keeps people like me out of record stores. Why would I purchase from a local store, when Amazon will ship me a physical medium for a lower price (the price difference not very significant though). And when I want to buy a single song from an artist, why not just download the digital version (bought and paid for).
The record industry is complaining that the sale of CDs is going down, but in all honesty going out and buying a CD requires more effort than downloading it from iTunes or less legal ways. Is it any wonder that practically everybody chooses those alternatives then? The failure of the record industry to adapt to new challenges isn't really hurting the recording industry yet, nor the big name artists. They have the local copyright watchdog organizations make up for the lack of income (or "lost sales") through taxes on DVD-Rs, USB memory sticks and hard drives. It's hurting the "record shops" (if you can still call them that when they're stocked with more videogames and DVDs than music), and the not-so-popular or local artists those shops used to carry.
Yes, because we've all been waiting for yet another linux distro. There's plenty of decent linux distros around, and I'd prefer not to have to boot into Streamux to play a videogame. I might as well stick to gaming on windows then.
in my experience, people who ignore any and all lunches with coworkers are viewed as snobbish loners, and their work ethic seems to be the same (they are the people that ignore meetings, ignore policies, etc).
This is very true. We have a few loners like that who will go out of their way not to eat lunch with others, and it just so happens that it's those people who
systematically don't show up or show up late for meetings
will ignore any conclusions from a meeting if it doesn't suit their whims
in general do not wish to cooperate with the rest of the team, even on the most basic of things as agreeing on an interface for two projects to communicate with eachother
will be the first ones to go to management or project leads to complain that "the others" are not complying with their vision on things (and depending on the competence of management, this may be an issue)
Lunches, although more often than not being quite informal, are also very good replacements for those "status report" meetings internally. People will often discuss problems they're having with a project, and often you'll find someone at the dinner table with a solution. The barrier for divulging problems is also lower since there are no minutes of meeting that will come back to haunt you later, although any problem serious enough should probably still be mentioned at an official meeting.
As for the whole "personal information" thing I saw being mentioned a thread or two up from this one, don't divulge what you don't want people to know. If you've got hobbies that will be frowned upon, find a common ground of interests with your coworkers. A perfectly good example of this was a former co-worker of mine who was obsessed with space and science fiction. First of all, there's nothing wrong with these hobbies, but please refrain from making warp-core jokes at the dinner table. It's a real conversation killer if 80% of the people at the dinner table don't know or like star trek. The 20% at the dinner table that likes star trek will probably find their way to you during a coffee-break.
If you're short on conversational topics in the first few weeks and you're a bit socially awkward (no offense intended), here's a few pointers I've found that always break the ice:
Previous work experience: people love stories about other companies/people. Keep the exact details hidden (names, dates, companies), but a few well placed hilarious anecdotes are usually appreciated, especially when they're relevant.
News & politics : turn on the radio on your commute and listen to the news. Every person is an armchair politician and has a solution for whatever crisis is going on in politics. Keep your conversations as politically neutral as possible (which is harder in some countries than others), but people love to criticize those in power even if they voted for them. Don't go down the "party X sucks because they eat babies" road, it will come back to haunt you (in some jobs more than others).
Be yourself, and don't try to overly impress or be someone you're not.
Oh, and find the group of people you like best, and go for drinks every now and then after work. If you don't like alcohol, have a soda, it's all just an excuse for informal socializing. There's a lot of people who say "don't divulge any personal information", but I would say "Don't divulge anything personal that could be used against you". You'll get a good feel for what is acceptable and not in the first few weeks. If you have very little to talk about, be a good listener.
Finally, there will always be people you can't get along with. Don't take it personal, and don't make it worse.
This is a real warning people get for uploading too much cock onto Commons.
Hahaha... oh wow... For some reason, having a template letter for when people upload too much genitalia seems like a whole new level of bureaucracy. Please don't mistake this for a troll or flamebait, but as an outsider to the whole editing wikipedia thing, it's hilarious in a very immature way.
You see, for this template to exist, it must mean that on a regular basis there's gigabytes of penis.jpg being uploaded. It also means, that there's several editors constantly removing aforementioned penis.jpg, and when the uploader wishes to discuss the removal of their upload, someone is bound to discuss why it needs to be removed.
Thanks for this. For some immature and juvenile reason, this just made my day.
What kind of experiment are we talking about (/should i have read TFA for) here?
They're going to fire large amounts of nickles and dimes into the sun from a cannon disguised as a telescope to see exactly how much metal is needed to stop the fusion reaction and cause a supernova. The delay is being caused by some guy who forgot to bring exact change, and now he's holding up the queue by arguing with the cashier why he can't just put in a dollar.
But really, something with cosmic radiation, particle of the week, and magnets. A typical plot used in modern scifi, only with the added realism of bureaucracy, testing and money.
My apologies to any scientist who cringes while reading this post.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not a house; that's my wife, clod!
<insert degoratory comment on airbags/bumper here>
If you think Uwe Boll is bad, try watching Atomic Twister sometime.
I dare you to find worse than Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. It has a kung-fu second coming of Jesus, a priest with a punk hairdo riding a vespa, and a newspaper headline reading "Critical shortage of lesbians". Other than that the movie has no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and the fact that video and audio aren't synchronized very well gets on your nerves pretty fast doesn't help either.
Having said that, if you like bad horror movies a good laugh is Bad Taste by Peter Jackson, but you probably already have seen it. And Braindead by the same Peter Jackson is still a b-movie classic, worth more than a few laughs.
A movie like Primer is a good example of the fact that not all low budget movies have to be bad. It's actually a pretty good movie, especially if you're a bit of a geek.
I must admit that I do feel a little bit of satisfaction knowing that they're paying to send several pieces of snail mail across the Atlantic to me every year.
The sad thing about that is that they're probably making enough money to be able to send out that many letters in international mail each year. I get about 3 or 4 of those things in the mail each year, each for a separate domain, and so do a couple of acquaintances of mine. If for every 10 letters they send, one sucker gets fooled, that still makes it profitable.
Most Slashdotters will never be anywhere close to one foot from a vagina anyway, so it's not like we'll have anything to compare it to when surfing our porn on it.
Haven't you heard? Steve Jobs thinks you should buy an android if you (or your children) are looking for porn.
The corporate whores at the FCC have decide to server their corporate masters
Yes, I too have servered my corporate masters every now and then. From great distances I have hurled 1U, 2U and every now and then 4U servers towards their heads. Sadly, despite their weight and looking very sturdy, servers break too easily for servering my corporate masters on a regular basis.
I'm planning to bring out a book in a year or two: How to server man.
FWIW, I make the same typo nearly all the time ;)
So Jason Chen just banned me from io9 and other sites which Jason Chen has absolutely 0 influence in because I insinuated Gizmodo is full of dirty rotten lowlife thieves who purchase obviously stolen property in order to make a quick buck.
So, guys, last week I went to the vaticans site and accused some priest of touching children in the public forum about sin. Could you believe that the pope himself banned me? He even had the gall to ban me from prayersonline.com, confessions.info and hotnunswearingthongs.com! How the hell am I going to have a decent conversation about the ten commandments now?
Their AppleII finally broke..
That's ok, Sayid will fix it, he's not sure how long the batteries will last though.
Except some jerk from the past will someday show up and steal one of your time machines!
That's ok, I'll still have one time-machine, so I can repeat the process until that bastard gives up
It's a shit test, and measures nothing.
You could show a little more empathy for the people who made the test you insensitive piece of shit.
Meh... Look at me care
-1, Lacks empathy
If this "child porn" thing actually exists, which I doubt
Please so not downplay the severity or deny the existence of sexual abuse of children. Despite the "for the children" argument being used too often, it is a very real and very serious problem which should be treated appropriately. Sadly, it is such a difficult topic that evokes such strong reactions that people can't seem to think straight about the topic. The media with their lack of understanding of technology combined with someones political ambitions carefully play the "for the children" card all too often to accomplish their goals. Part of the sarcastic "think of the children" reactions you see here on slashdot are the direct result of that.
it's so well hidden that any measures about blocking it are useless.
Sadly, it's not well hidden. Just because you can't find it on google, doesn't mean it's hidden. The things I've stumbled across have always been hidden in plain sight. I suggest that you leave an open http proxy on the internet for a week or two and have a look at the logs. I've once seen the logs of a proxy that wasn't secured properly, and let's just say that I'm glad nobody ever came calling for that particular IP number. What most likely is well hidden is the identity of the perpetrators or the people who trade in this material. A few years ago this stuff was a real plague on usenet, from what I gather nowadays tor and freenet are the more popular places. I doubt one has to browse the tor onion sites for long to find the material in question, and freenet... I remember finding the stuff in the indexsite in the very beginning, although I'm not aware of how freenet is doing right now. Needless to say, that I don't need to check to know that an anonymous network is going to carry that kind of material in plain open sight.
The heart of the matter is that I would like to see more effort be put into training police into catching these types of criminals, instead of passing legislation that makes necessity for better criminals. At least in the west there have been numerous attempts at overly broad and insane laws on the topic, and the result has always been that they don't catch more criminals. I'm sure that if people could rationally approach this topic despite its vile nature, we could actually accomplish something for the children, instead of making questionable comics illegal for instance.
Apparently there was an episode or two involving a hatch buried in the ground.
Two seasons of it, sir... Two very long seasons.
What the hell was that black smoke thing in the first series? You didn't see it at all through two or three, and I got so bored by then that I gave up. So, black smoke monster; What was it?
Remember that Lassie movie where Timmy fell down a well? Add light to the well and you've got the smoke monster.
How? Why? Tune in next week! We promise we'll tell you!
L O S T
Oh wait... Last episode... Right... Sorry!
In the end the loyal viewers were betrayed.
I think "betrayed" is a bit of a strong term there. Deceived is probably better. Conned perhaps? Misled?
Damn your betrayal Taco Bell. You promised me food paradise but all I got was a lousy burrito. :)
The heart of the island is filled with energy. It is the same energy that fuels life. Jacob guarded that energy and used it to protect candidates so they didn't age, and healed miraculously. As a punishment for someone trying to steal that energy, they would be turned into the "smoke monster", which could only wear the faces of dead bodies on the island.
Okay, and how is this any better than "mysterious island with mysterious powers"? From a writing point of view, you've moved the plot device from the island to "mysterious light with mysterious powers". You're still waving your hands and you've explained nothing except you've said that "magic is magic", and if you're going to do that you could just leave it be in the first place.
In fact, from a storytelling point of view, the moment they "explained" the smoke monster they took a few steps back. If you have a good monster, don't bother explaining it since it makes it less of a monster. The "defense mechanism" explanation was more than enough to make for a good story. Think of the aliens from the movie series alien. They're a good monster because they're not explained: they're there, they act somewhat intelligently to cut power and so forth, they kill some people and implant their young in others. If you were to explain those aliens as "Oh yeah, those guys. They're from a planet called Xenopetipatalan. They were lawyers on their homeworld but were banished and are now acting as judge jury and executioner to determine who is most suitable to be hosts for their young". The only thing the writers from Lost accomplished was "Oh look, another guy trying to get off the island, oh yeah, and he can turn into smoke".
Did you watch Star Wars and complain that the Force was never explained?
It was explained by the way of midichloreans or something or other, and it sucked. Just like the "light from the cave" (handwaving) sucked. The problem is that all the things they could've explained on the island weren't, and there was ample opportunity. Here's a few of those:
There's was ample opportunity for the writers to clear up a lot of man-made mysteries, without having to wave their hands about light in a cave that turns bad people into smoke monsters. They wouldn't have to explain anything about the island and just say "Oh, mag
Anxiously awaiting food.slashdot.org.
And the incessant whining from RMS about restaurants that don't publish their recipes.
For some reason I don't see the term "open sauce" catching on that well. On the upside, I don't think food can be cucumbered by patents.
Many signature dishes come out at the perfect temperature
No they don't. Get over yourselves.
You sir, obviously haven't experienced the finer art of cooking. Last week I made a lasagna that needed to be served at the perfect temperature in order to be optimally satisfying. It needed to be so hot that it would scorch the taste buds right off of your tongue, or else you would be unable to stand the taste.
DE-LI-CIOUS! Hmmm. Nothing beats homemade cooking.
Adolf Hitler was considered an enemy of the Allied powers because they didn't like his painting.
Well, he was a lousy artist...
Again it's, "Here, record company, take my money," and they say, "no thanks." Ok, fine, if you insist I'll just download it somewhere.
A few months ago I went to the local record store. I wanted to buy a physical copy of an album of a relatively unknown (compared to top 10 in the charts popular) artist, and I just happened to pass by the record store while doing groceries. I browsed a while between the racks of CDs and noticed how little variety they had. 10 years ago I could go into this CD shop, look for something relatively unknown and have a decent chance of finding it. Today, if it wasn't the kind of album my mother would buy (demographically speaking) or something that was in the charts at some point in time I wouldn't be able to find it.
The section dedicated to the louder variants of metal had made room for an impressive array of overpriced (and outdated) videogames. The section which used to display a wide array of blues and jazz was now reduced to the sale of game consoles, and had not a single person browsing there. The immense assortment of classical music was decimated to a single shelf, right next to the DVD shelves that had greedily overtaken the available space. To the very left of the DVD shelves a makeshift cardboard stand was carrying various software, of which most prominently displayed there was Windows 7 attracting exactly zero customers.
It's needless to say that I didn't find what I was looking for. I asked the guy at the counter if I could perhaps order it, and was informed that I had to wait somewhere between 3 to 6 weeks and there would be an extra cost for which I needed to pay an advance. I told him I'd find it somewhere else, and I did. As it turns out, I didn't even have to leave the house in the first place. Amazon carried what I was looking for, and little under a week after placing my order I got my physical copy in my mailbox.
It dawned on me that it had been a little over 10 years since I had set foot in a record store. The previous experience had been somewhat the same when I wanted to buy an album from a somewhat known local artist. But this is something that keeps people like me out of record stores. Why would I purchase from a local store, when Amazon will ship me a physical medium for a lower price (the price difference not very significant though). And when I want to buy a single song from an artist, why not just download the digital version (bought and paid for).
The record industry is complaining that the sale of CDs is going down, but in all honesty going out and buying a CD requires more effort than downloading it from iTunes or less legal ways. Is it any wonder that practically everybody chooses those alternatives then? The failure of the record industry to adapt to new challenges isn't really hurting the recording industry yet, nor the big name artists. They have the local copyright watchdog organizations make up for the lack of income (or "lost sales") through taxes on DVD-Rs, USB memory sticks and hard drives. It's hurting the "record shops" (if you can still call them that when they're stocked with more videogames and DVDs than music), and the not-so-popular or local artists those shops used to carry.
It wouldn't be regarded as a copy. Otherwise, it would be illegal to, for example, browse a website.
Hush now, don't give them any ideas.
What Steam should due is form there own Distro.
Yes, because we've all been waiting for yet another linux distro. There's plenty of decent linux distros around, and I'd prefer not to have to boot into Streamux to play a videogame. I might as well stick to gaming on windows then.
If Amazon is collecting notes, expect a few "Impress her with your stamina. Buy viagra at http://penisexperts.com/." notes in the near future.
in my experience, people who ignore any and all lunches with coworkers are viewed as snobbish loners, and their work ethic seems to be the same (they are the people that ignore meetings, ignore policies, etc).
This is very true. We have a few loners like that who will go out of their way not to eat lunch with others, and it just so happens that it's those people who
Lunches, although more often than not being quite informal, are also very good replacements for those "status report" meetings internally. People will often discuss problems they're having with a project, and often you'll find someone at the dinner table with a solution. The barrier for divulging problems is also lower since there are no minutes of meeting that will come back to haunt you later, although any problem serious enough should probably still be mentioned at an official meeting.
As for the whole "personal information" thing I saw being mentioned a thread or two up from this one, don't divulge what you don't want people to know. If you've got hobbies that will be frowned upon, find a common ground of interests with your coworkers. A perfectly good example of this was a former co-worker of mine who was obsessed with space and science fiction. First of all, there's nothing wrong with these hobbies, but please refrain from making warp-core jokes at the dinner table. It's a real conversation killer if 80% of the people at the dinner table don't know or like star trek. The 20% at the dinner table that likes star trek will probably find their way to you during a coffee-break.
If you're short on conversational topics in the first few weeks and you're a bit socially awkward (no offense intended), here's a few pointers I've found that always break the ice:
Oh, and find the group of people you like best, and go for drinks every now and then after work. If you don't like alcohol, have a soda, it's all just an excuse for informal socializing. There's a lot of people who say "don't divulge any personal information", but I would say "Don't divulge anything personal that could be used against you". You'll get a good feel for what is acceptable and not in the first few weeks. If you have very little to talk about, be a good listener.
Finally, there will always be people you can't get along with. Don't take it personal, and don't make it worse.
This is a real warning people get for uploading too much cock onto Commons.
Hahaha... oh wow... For some reason, having a template letter for when people upload too much genitalia seems like a whole new level of bureaucracy. Please don't mistake this for a troll or flamebait, but as an outsider to the whole editing wikipedia thing, it's hilarious in a very immature way.
You see, for this template to exist, it must mean that on a regular basis there's gigabytes of penis.jpg being uploaded. It also means, that there's several editors constantly removing aforementioned penis.jpg, and when the uploader wishes to discuss the removal of their upload, someone is bound to discuss why it needs to be removed.
Thanks for this. For some immature and juvenile reason, this just made my day.
Don't come whining when you don't like it any more
I believe the whining in general means we don't like it right now.
What kind of experiment are we talking about (/should i have read TFA for) here?
They're going to fire large amounts of nickles and dimes into the sun from a cannon disguised as a telescope to see exactly how much metal is needed to stop the fusion reaction and cause a supernova. The delay is being caused by some guy who forgot to bring exact change, and now he's holding up the queue by arguing with the cashier why he can't just put in a dollar.
But really, something with cosmic radiation, particle of the week, and magnets. A typical plot used in modern scifi, only with the added realism of bureaucracy, testing and money.
My apologies to any scientist who cringes while reading this post.