Oh I'll one up ya on that... I had a very wealthy friend in high school that got as obsessed with MtG as I did, only he had $thousands to spend....so we formed a team: I got good at playing the game and at trading the cards, and he bankrolled me. We had over $20k in cards at one point on a $10k investment (right around when The Dark came out, we had one of _every_ card, alpha, beta, unlimited, etc. and 10 time walks, 10 black lotuses, etc.).
That was all nice and good until one day I was playing at a tournament and some fuckhead stole my main binder (with the best of the best, around $5k in cards) right out of my bag while I was playing. I turned shades of colors you've never even thought of.
AND THEN... I found the guy who stole the cards. How did I find him? I was at a local meet and noticed an awful lot of familiar cards in this one guy's deck and binder...same wear patterns that I remembered, etc. Unfortunately, there was little 13-year-old me could do, as this guy was over 30, a thug, and there was no way I could prove a month after the fact that he stole them. *sigh* lessons learned...
who on earth uses yyyymmdd other than nerds like us? i like my mmddyy(yy), but must bashfully admit that the euro's _do_ have a point...day-month-year is a bit more logical.
They're only real mistake was hiring a paper sysadmin (one with lots of certs but no real experience or clue) to replace me.
You act like you're offended that they replaced you with someone inferior....Why did you quit? Maybe you're really good, and they couldn't find someone as good as you. Don't hold it against them by claiming they made a "mistake" -- don't quit next time.
Slang is a legitimate evolution of language -- it's a collection of colloquialisms like 'barf' (vomit) or 'beemer' (BMW) or 'grungy'.
What this article talks about is not slang. It's shorthand, abbreviations, bad spelling, and laziness.
Saying 'u need 2 go out b4 i kick u out' isn't using slang, it's proper english with the words spelled wrong. This is fine for IMs or emails (sort of), where the point is all that needs to be passed on, but to me using this in school is no different than the dumb kid who writes 'their going to clime a mountin.'
Ah yes...another example demonstrating what I call the "MIT humor dysfunction syndrome" -- this is something I saw at MIT all the time among nerds/dorks/geeks: They simply don't know when to end the joke, or just don't get it in the first place....
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"Why?"
"To get to the other side!"
"Ahahah...and yes, then he crossed back and went to the side again, right? eheheh...?"
I don't think any owners of theater are OK with people using cellphones. In fact, almost every theater I've been to recently has some type of "please turn your cellphone off!" sign or warning.
The difference is, theater owners can't fine you if you keep it on. They can't take away your phone either -- all they can do is yell at you. A law would enable direct monetary or physical consequences to being a dipshit, and that will act as a deterrant.
Did the following quote in the PC World article stick out to anyone else?
In recent months, thanks to ever-increasing clock speeds and improvements to supporting technologies, P4-based PCs have started to outrun Athlon XP-based systems under PC WorldBench. For example, in a recent test of each company's top CPUs, a system with Intel's 2.53-GHz P4 edged past a PC with an Athlon XP 2100+ chip (running at 1.73 GHz) in PC WorldBench 4.
Um....wow. You mean to say that Intel's 2.53 Ghz chip "edged" past AMD's 1.75 Ghz chip (that's only marketed to beat an Intel 2.1 Ghz chip) --- real impressive there guys...thanks for pointing out how quickly that gap is closing.
I'm going to disagree with your suggestion. I think doing some part-time work for a consulting organization might be a nice way to pay the bills in the beginning or build a resume if that's what he needs, but I think he'll be most effective if he just gets up and goes at it alone, head-first, all-out.
There is time to be an effective salesman and an effective programmar, even in a slow economy...(that is, if he's willing to put in the long hours that any entrepreneur should be putting in -- fast or slow economy).
I think that getting bogged down with a consulting organization may net some short-term cash (maybe), but it would be too tempting to keep doing it and he'll be missing valuable opportunities to meet his own clients and build his own business, which is the goal in the first place.
Not an awful suggestion, but I'd stay away from that path.
Seriously....where are they? Is anyone on here a Nielsen household? I don't know anyone in my circle of friends/family/acquaintances who's a Nielsen family, so I can't imagine the ratings are so accurate, as I know a fairly broad swath of people in the New York / Boston "under 25 professional" demographic.
Feh. This all boils down to my being pissed off at Family Guy and Futurama going bye-bye.
This may be grabbing at flaimbait, but if an advertiser's proper place is a dank little hole in the ground, who do you expect to pay for your TV-watching?
"It's deceptive...People will be fooled into thinking this is honest buzz."
Isn't this taking consumer activism a weeee bit far? I know Nader's trying to play the everything-companies-do-is-evil card as much as he can, but come on...this is absurd.
...living proof that you need little more than a "weird" or "interesting" name to suddenly become very famous in this country (particularly among nerds....American McGee, Jello Biafra, etc...)
I'm sorry, but could someone give me an idea of what this guy has _actually_ done to deserve such fame? I hope 'Alice' isn't your answer...I saw him talk at GDC '01 this past March, and my impression was that he wasn't even a part of the development team -- he wasn't even on-site...he'd ship off his "artistic visions" to the on-site team who actually designed/coded/drew the game, he got all the credit, and the press loves him why? Because he's got a cool name.
Seriously...I'm happy to give him credit where credit is due...if the guy's a brilliant game designer, a top-notch dealmaker, a great programmer, or a lead artist, fine -- I'd love to know about it, but come ON...enough with the sensationalism.
Because to 90% of the population, PayPal doesn't have a bad reputation. It's just within the active trader / nerd universe that PayPal is the evil empire.
What motivates and interests me is actually building things, networks, infrastructure, transmitters, receivers, learning about a new or at least new to me, modes (e.g. QMSK). In fact I spend a very small amount of time "on the air" with most of the interesting bits happening on the bench.
I agree with your point. This is certainly one of the better parts of the hobby -- the study and and practice of radio itself and indeed, the appeal of this won't go away.
I guess for me it was mostly about the communication (though that's pretty silly, since most of the contacts I had were rarely more than "hi this is what i'm using what's the weather like where you are?"). But I suppose the means (i.e. building and tinkering), though they were fun, were still a means to an end. And when that end got less exciting, the means got less exciting. To each his own, though, and I hope you continue to enjoy things!
That being said, I still think there are novel communication-related things going on in the hobby -- the AMSAT stuff is still amazingly cool (how many "regular" people do military-style sattelite tracking on their home PCs and then use a dedicated sattelite communications channel?). Also, EME stuff is outta-this-world (ha ha ha), and contesting is still a thrill that can't really be matched elsewhere.
Mod parent up...I think this is an interesting topic to discuss.
I've been thinking along the same lines for a while....I got my ham license back when I was 12 years old ('91) and the Internet/Web, though well on their way, were not a thing of public knowledge (weird to think about that, eh?). Likewise, cell phones were still in the "ultra luxury" class and were not things that everyday people had.
Ham Radio changed my perspective on a lot of things, and that time it was insanely cool -- I could fire up my HF radio, aim the yagi, and have a conversation with someone in Australia from my bedroom in NYC. Amazing. Even better, I could talk to people in exotic countries in Africa (Mali is one I remember nailing and being very excited about), the Middle East (I spoke with hams in Kuwait, Jordan, and Israel regularly), the Baltic States (Yugoslavia, etc.), and even tropical pacific islands -- very cool stuff for a 12-year-old.
With my handheld 2-meter radio, there was this mysteriously cool things called "Autopatch", where I could use the local repeater to....make phone calls! (that everyone with a scanner could and would easily listen to) Wow...now I had a cell-phone-like thing years before I or my friends would actually use cellphones, and that too was awesome.
Even with my computer, I could plug it in and use RTTY or CW to... digitally communicate with others around the world and send....email! I could even download weather fax imagines from sattelites and see the radar before the local newscasters could. Amazing.
The Internet changed a lot of that, and very seriously. Now, talking with someone in Australia isn't so exciting when I can log onto IRC and see thousands of Aussies in their own chat rooms (heck I can log onto an Australian porn site and "talk live with buxom babes waiting for me").
Exotic countries in Africa now bring to mind open relays, spam, and scams more than they bring excitement, and tropical islands are money-making opportunities for.TV domain names more than anything.
And digital weather maps? Woop-de-doo....weather.com and weatherunderground.com have those pretty much taken care of.
So I'm going to agree -- the allure that ham radio once had for me is gone... yes, morse code is cool, and yes, some of the digital modes are still cool, but it's nothing like what it used to be, and sadly, probably won't ever be.
--noah
Re:network of radios, sounds like a ...
on
Field Day 2002
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· Score: 2
Here here. Ugh...the bottomless pool of dollars that I spent as a 12-year-old ham. First was the HF radio ($1000), then the handheld ($500), then as I got more experienced the friggin' antenna I forced my parents to endure on the roof ($2000 including a cherrypicker for a day to install).
I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, this was not too much money, but for a 12-year-old, that was a lot of allowances and computer tutoring.
It's like saying you have a truck that is going 2/3's of 100mph, and you have a car inside that can also go 2/3's of 100mph. What happens when the car is released? The car is going 2/3's of 100mph, the same as the truck.
Actually, that example is a bit off -- If you're saying that both the truck and the car have a physical limitation of 2/3 of 100mph (67mph, let's say), then the following would happen:
Truck accelerates to 67mph, and it maxes out. Inside the truck, car is moving at 67mph relative to the world and 0mph relative to the truck. Car accelerates to 67mph relative to the truck, which is it's physically-imposed maximum speed (i.e. the wheels can't move faster), and is now going 134mph relative to the world.
When the car leaves the truck, it will go 134mph until its wheels touch the ground, at which point the drivetrain will fly out of the rear of the car, the engine will explode, and it will slow to 67mph.
3. ATTACKS ON ISRAELI CIVILIANS?! Oh, the horror. What about the US killing >5000 civilians in Afghanistan? Guess you'd better start bombing yourselves then.
Perhaps you didn't follow what's been happening on the planet for the past few months. Saddam bombed the Israelis -- WHO WERE NOT INVOLVED IN THE CONFLICT -- for the sole reason of provoking anger.
The US bombed the hell out of Afghanistan because the ruling regime was harboring terrorists who attacked our country. Also, if you recall, we didn't start bombing them until well after they repeatedly told us they would not hand over Osama.
If you'd like to complain about the loss of civilian life, perhaps you should register that complaint with the Taliban.
Saddam Hussein needs to be taken out and you know it.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh I'll one up ya on that ... I had a very wealthy friend in high school that got as obsessed with MtG as I did, only he had $thousands to spend....so we formed a team: I got good at playing the game and at trading the cards, and he bankrolled me. We had over $20k in cards at one point on a $10k investment (right around when The Dark came out, we had one of _every_ card, alpha, beta, unlimited, etc. and 10 time walks, 10 black lotuses, etc.).
... I found the guy who stole the cards. How did I find him? I was at a local meet and noticed an awful lot of familiar cards in this one guy's deck and binder...same wear patterns that I remembered, etc. Unfortunately, there was little 13-year-old me could do, as this guy was over 30, a thug, and there was no way I could prove a month after the fact that he stole them. *sigh* lessons learned...
That was all nice and good until one day I was playing at a tournament and some fuckhead stole my main binder (with the best of the best, around $5k in cards) right out of my bag while I was playing. I turned shades of colors you've never even thought of.
AND THEN
who on earth uses yyyymmdd other than nerds like us? i like my mmddyy(yy), but must bashfully admit that the euro's _do_ have a point...day-month-year is a bit more logical.
They're only real mistake was hiring a paper sysadmin (one with lots of certs but no real experience or clue) to replace me.
You act like you're offended that they replaced you with someone inferior....Why did you quit? Maybe you're really good, and they couldn't find someone as good as you. Don't hold it against them by claiming they made a "mistake" -- don't quit next time.
hahah...this is where I wish we could truly "meta-mod" -- whoever modded parent gets a 5, Funny....;)
Ahhh I haven't laughed that hard from /. in a while. Bravo on good writing and good delivery!!
nlh
Slang is a legitimate evolution of language -- it's a collection of colloquialisms like 'barf' (vomit) or 'beemer' (BMW) or 'grungy'.
What this article talks about is not slang. It's shorthand, abbreviations, bad spelling, and laziness.
Saying 'u need 2 go out b4 i kick u out' isn't using slang, it's proper english with the words spelled wrong. This is fine for IMs or emails (sort of), where the point is all that needs to be passed on, but to me using this in school is no different than the dumb kid who writes 'their going to clime a mountin.'
Again with the no sense of humor. Kids these days, I tell you...
Ah yes...another example demonstrating what I call the "MIT humor dysfunction syndrome" -- this is something I saw at MIT all the time among nerds/dorks/geeks: They simply don't know when to end the joke, or just don't get it in the first place....
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"Why?"
"To get to the other side!"
"Ahahah...and yes, then he crossed back and went to the side again, right? eheheh...?"
"um....dude...."
I don't think any owners of theater are OK with people using cellphones. In fact, almost every theater I've been to recently has some type of "please turn your cellphone off!" sign or warning.
The difference is, theater owners can't fine you if you keep it on. They can't take away your phone either -- all they can do is yell at you. A law would enable direct monetary or physical consequences to being a dipshit, and that will act as a deterrant.
--noah
Um....wow. You mean to say that Intel's 2.53 Ghz chip "edged" past AMD's 1.75 Ghz chip (that's only marketed to beat an Intel 2.1 Ghz chip) --- real impressive there guys...thanks for pointing out how quickly that gap is closing.
???
--noah
I'm going to disagree with your suggestion. I think doing some part-time work for a consulting organization might be a nice way to pay the bills in the beginning or build a resume if that's what he needs, but I think he'll be most effective if he just gets up and goes at it alone, head-first, all-out.
There is time to be an effective salesman and an effective programmar, even in a slow economy...(that is, if he's willing to put in the long hours that any entrepreneur should be putting in -- fast or slow economy).
I think that getting bogged down with a consulting organization may net some short-term cash (maybe), but it would be too tempting to keep doing it and he'll be missing valuable opportunities to meet his own clients and build his own business, which is the goal in the first place.
Not an awful suggestion, but I'd stay away from that path.
--noah
Seriously....where are they? Is anyone on here a Nielsen household? I don't know anyone in my circle of friends/family/acquaintances who's a Nielsen family, so I can't imagine the ratings are so accurate, as I know a fairly broad swath of people in the New York / Boston "under 25 professional" demographic.
Feh. This all boils down to my being pissed off at Family Guy and Futurama going bye-bye.
--noah
This may be grabbing at flaimbait, but if an advertiser's proper place is a dank little hole in the ground, who do you expect to pay for your TV-watching?
and it did wonders for their stock price, too. What...$20 to $9 in about a week? Yeah, great tax write-off.....::rolleyes::
Did anyone else flinch at this line?
"It's deceptive...People will be fooled into thinking this is honest buzz."
Isn't this taking consumer activism a weeee bit far? I know Nader's trying to play the everything-companies-do-is-evil card as much as he can, but come on...this is absurd.
Er....GDC '02. Eh, what's a year.
...living proof that you need little more than a "weird" or "interesting" name to suddenly become very famous in this country (particularly among nerds....American McGee, Jello Biafra, etc...)
I'm sorry, but could someone give me an idea of what this guy has _actually_ done to deserve such fame? I hope 'Alice' isn't your answer...I saw him talk at GDC '01 this past March, and my impression was that he wasn't even a part of the development team -- he wasn't even on-site...he'd ship off his "artistic visions" to the on-site team who actually designed/coded/drew the game, he got all the credit, and the press loves him why? Because he's got a cool name.
Seriously...I'm happy to give him credit where credit is due...if the guy's a brilliant game designer, a top-notch dealmaker, a great programmer, or a lead artist, fine -- I'd love to know about it, but come ON...enough with the sensationalism.
Because to 90% of the population, PayPal doesn't have a bad reputation. It's just within the active trader / nerd universe that PayPal is the evil empire.
nlh
It's OBD -- On Board Diagnostics
I agree with your point. This is certainly one of the better parts of the hobby -- the study and and practice of radio itself and indeed, the appeal of this won't go away.
I guess for me it was mostly about the communication (though that's pretty silly, since most of the contacts I had were rarely more than "hi this is what i'm using what's the weather like where you are?"). But I suppose the means (i.e. building and tinkering), though they were fun, were still a means to an end. And when that end got less exciting, the means got less exciting. To each his own, though, and I hope you continue to enjoy things!
That being said, I still think there are novel communication-related things going on in the hobby -- the AMSAT stuff is still amazingly cool (how many "regular" people do military-style sattelite tracking on their home PCs and then use a dedicated sattelite communications channel?). Also, EME stuff is outta-this-world (ha ha ha), and contesting is still a thrill that can't really be matched elsewhere.
--noah
Mod parent up...I think this is an interesting topic to discuss.
... digitally communicate with others around the world and send....email! I could even download weather fax imagines from sattelites and see the radar before the local newscasters could. Amazing.
.TV domain names more than anything.
... yes, morse code is cool, and yes, some of the digital modes are still cool, but it's nothing like what it used to be, and sadly, probably won't ever be.
I've been thinking along the same lines for a while....I got my ham license back when I was 12 years old ('91) and the Internet/Web, though well on their way, were not a thing of public knowledge (weird to think about that, eh?). Likewise, cell phones were still in the "ultra luxury" class and were not things that everyday people had.
Ham Radio changed my perspective on a lot of things, and that time it was insanely cool -- I could fire up my HF radio, aim the yagi, and have a conversation with someone in Australia from my bedroom in NYC. Amazing. Even better, I could talk to people in exotic countries in Africa (Mali is one I remember nailing and being very excited about), the Middle East (I spoke with hams in Kuwait, Jordan, and Israel regularly), the Baltic States (Yugoslavia, etc.), and even tropical pacific islands -- very cool stuff for a 12-year-old.
With my handheld 2-meter radio, there was this mysteriously cool things called "Autopatch", where I could use the local repeater to....make phone calls! (that everyone with a scanner could and would easily listen to) Wow...now I had a cell-phone-like thing years before I or my friends would actually use cellphones, and that too was awesome.
Even with my computer, I could plug it in and use RTTY or CW to
The Internet changed a lot of that, and very seriously. Now, talking with someone in Australia isn't so exciting when I can log onto IRC and see thousands of Aussies in their own chat rooms (heck I can log onto an Australian porn site and "talk live with buxom babes waiting for me").
Exotic countries in Africa now bring to mind open relays, spam, and scams more than they bring excitement, and tropical islands are money-making opportunities for
And digital weather maps? Woop-de-doo....weather.com and weatherunderground.com have those pretty much taken care of.
So I'm going to agree -- the allure that ham radio once had for me is gone
--noah
Here here. Ugh...the bottomless pool of dollars that I spent as a 12-year-old ham. First was the HF radio ($1000), then the handheld ($500), then as I got more experienced the friggin' antenna I forced my parents to endure on the roof ($2000 including a cherrypicker for a day to install).
I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, this was not too much money, but for a 12-year-old, that was a lot of allowances and computer tutoring.
--noah
It's like saying you have a truck that is going 2/3's of 100mph, and you have a car inside that can also go 2/3's of 100mph. What happens when the car is released? The car is going 2/3's of 100mph, the same as the truck.
Actually, that example is a bit off -- If you're saying that both the truck and the car have a physical limitation of 2/3 of 100mph (67mph, let's say), then the following would happen:
Truck accelerates to 67mph, and it maxes out. Inside the truck, car is moving at 67mph relative to the world and 0mph relative to the truck. Car accelerates to 67mph relative to the truck, which is it's physically-imposed maximum speed (i.e. the wheels can't move faster), and is now going 134mph relative to the world.
When the car leaves the truck, it will go 134mph until its wheels touch the ground, at which point the drivetrain will fly out of the rear of the car, the engine will explode, and it will slow to 67mph.
--noah
This garbage is laughable. Be gone with your trolling and your psychopathic made-up facts.
...
If I had a dime for every single allegation of "The US provided X weapons for Y dictator"
nlh
3. ATTACKS ON ISRAELI CIVILIANS?! Oh, the horror. What about the US killing >5000 civilians in Afghanistan? Guess you'd better start bombing yourselves then.
Perhaps you didn't follow what's been happening on the planet for the past few months. Saddam bombed the Israelis -- WHO WERE NOT INVOLVED IN THE CONFLICT -- for the sole reason of provoking anger.
The US bombed the hell out of Afghanistan because the ruling regime was harboring terrorists who attacked our country. Also, if you recall, we didn't start bombing them until well after they repeatedly told us they would not hand over Osama.
If you'd like to complain about the loss of civilian life, perhaps you should register that complaint with the Taliban.
Saddam Hussein needs to be taken out and you know it.
--noah