I'm with you. It's not the material (I think it's actually rather clever). I'm most certainly not prudish, and the job I work at certainly doesn't care what material I see (it's right in my contract that I'll probably see objectionable material as part of my job)... but just the crassness and overall deficit of worthwhile content on slashdot in favor of truly juvenile crap, with no aim toward being either news for nerds, or stuff that matters
I'll miss some people here, and perhaps an interesting story. But the net contribution of slashdot to my life is now negative.
Slashdot has officially worn out its welcome for the limited amount of time I have left in my life. I quit slashdot once before by banging then pasting random letters into the change password dialog. Now here's my new solution:
> There is nothing like the programming model of the VIC-20 around now.
And thank god for it. Sorry, but I frittered away many hours typing in programs in Compute's Gazette, and you know what? I never really learned a damn thing. Most decent programs that did anything worthwhile were either in MLX (just a bunch of hex) or full of DATA statements that would be POKEd in.
I think I learned more from the basic manual by poking to the screen memory and the SID (all right the latter's the c64. The VIC was too crippled even for a kid.)
Squeak's UI isn't suitable for adults with years of training. I suppose kids can get used to anything, but I would hardly call its interface anything like friendly or forgiving, and when kids get frustrated at something to the point of breaking, they tend to quit for good (they really are smarter). And there's only so much you can do with direct manipulation. The original smalltalk was never about any of those things.
> specifically, the observable law of nature that life only comes from other life.
Or, as I just mentioned, a billion years of organic compounds being blasted by the sun. Simply repeating an assertion and calling it a "law" doesn't make it so.
There's nothing "abio" about it -- no one but creationists even uses that term, since the thermodynamic theory has been so thoroughly discredited. We're all about carbon, from our cells to proteins to amino acids. Nifty stuff, carbon. Nothing "bio" needs come in, it's all chemistry and physics of carbon. And solar energy of course.
Now where all the carbon and all that matter came from in the first place is a much more interesting theory to me.
Linguistically it doesn't make any less sense than using "have". Going half-assed (have-assed?) I speculate "He should have jumped" uses "have" in the sense of "he should have (possess) the state of 'he jumped'" (tortured phrasing, but I was avoiding using "have" again in the sentence). So to use "of" could simply be construed to say that one is of that state rather than having it, with an understood "be" prefixing it.
I'm not a linguist, and I'm totally talking out of my ass there. I know it's a misspelling, but it's a nice congruity. I still pine for the death of the apostrophe so we can get over it's/its your/you're
> which is a far stretch from saying life can be formed via primordial ooze zapped by a bolt of lightning.
Creationism is the one with the "bolt out of the blue" concept. We're talkng about the fundamental molecules of protein getting bombarded for billions of years by solar radiation. All that energy goes somewhere, and it goes into interesting patterns. Magnetic fields create odd wavy lines in iron filings. Whooshing your hand through water creates coherent looking whirls. Snowflakes have regular shapes. When you put energy into a system, organization happens.
The sun: there's your creator right there. Now go ask the sun about the problem of evil, or about the morality of sex.
I know I'm banging my head against the wall here and I'll never convince anyone. There's hardly anyone left on the fence anymore. All I can say is I tried.
Bob came with a help system called Cue Cards, which is actually quite nice.
Clippy came from Bob. Clippy's actually a good idea executed poorly. Reparenting alerts, tips, and help into a predictable place is a GOOD thing, or do you actually prefer modal popups for everything? The interaction API is pretty sweet too, though that it really doesn't require an "agent". Poor execution by having the damn thing constantly calling attention to itself. They fell so in love with the idea that they assumed everyone else would.
But no, I must of course I must hate clippy with infantile apopleptic rage, clippyhate bellyfeelwise doubleplusgood all.
Big Huge Games. Brian Reynolds. All that work to create Age Of Empires 2.5, really.
Of course at some level, no company does work. Just some are consistent at churning out quality in their particular divisions over all the years, e.g. Bell Labs or Xerox Parc.
Blah. Where have all the cool research places gone? I don't see Google inventing another mouse, let alone the next transistor...
The corvair was perfectly safe. I'm guessing you weren't rear-ended with the pinto, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Unlined gas tank all the way to the rear bumper, and doors that jam up and lock you in. Lovely combination.
Perfectly drivable and reliable car though... for a deathtrap. Too bad Nader blew his credibility on the corvair. That egomaniac hurt consumer protection more than he helped anything.
fuckedgoogle.com... there's an unbiased source of news. Gave it a read and wow, talk about poisoning your own wells. I have no idea what to actually believe from these socially stunted anger junkies. I mean yes, it's overvalued, and any sane analyst says so, but they can't even say that on the site without immense hatred and vitriol. You'd think they murder kindergarteners or something.
A timely case in point is how it broke into and gained dominance in the web browser market: it is a fact well documented in court records that this was purely because of being able to leverage it's desktop monopoly into control of the newly established web browser market. Yeah, both MSIE and Netscape sucked, but MSIE wouldn't have gone anywhere without the desktop monopoly and, oh yeah, ripping code from Mosaic.
There was a TCP/IP stack market before Microsoft included one with the OS. Are they also to blame for the destruction of the TCP/IP stack market? Yes, the strongarm tactics they used on OEMs to kill the nascent market were unethical and quite probably illegal, but I hardly considered the allegations of mere "bundling" to have merit then, and certainly not now.
Microsoft did not "rip code from mosaic". They bought it outright from Spyglass.
Currently, the licenses for 2000 SP3, XP SP 2 and later even give MS administrative rights to the machine.
I'll admit to not having read the whole license. Could you quote the relevant parts?
That disqualifies just about everyone who thinks vim is adequate as an IDE. Most of them have never worked on anything bigger than their mp3 organizer in PHP.
The way I learned to play (and eventually the way I GMed) Paranoia was to liberally ignore all of the stats, charts, dice rolls, modifiers, and all of the other "technical" aspects of the game.
That is entirely the way you're supposed to play it. A player challenging the GM on the rules must have read the rules. The rules are classified Ultraviolet. Instant termination. Since this is the player we're talking about, not the character, the GM doesn't have the player terminated immediately, but arranges for rather unfortunate things to happen, like this:
"Okay, you're right, after much laborious argument, I concede your point. I confess, I rigged that roll. I promise to do everything by the book now. By the way, while your character was standing by, internally raging against pondering the unfairness of life, 100 mutants have moved into position and each one has launched a rocket at you. Roll dodge. For each one. I promise not to fudge."
Related to equipment, they missed my favorite cliche: "The Free Market". The world faces dire peril, you're the hero that vanquishes evil and dispatches minions by the score. The last hope for the world rests on your shoulders... yet that won't even score you a discount at the equipment retailers.
There have been better-done lists of cliches, with color commentary that was actually, well, interesting. Might have been on OldManMurray. And yes, he covered crates.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm with you. It's not the material (I think it's actually rather clever). I'm most certainly not prudish, and the job I work at certainly doesn't care what material I see (it's right in my contract that I'll probably see objectionable material as part of my job) ... but just the crassness and overall deficit of worthwhile content on slashdot in favor of truly juvenile crap, with no aim toward being either news for nerds, or stuff that matters
I'll miss some people here, and perhaps an interesting story. But the net contribution of slashdot to my life is now negative.
cheers.
chuck nee snorklewacker nee scrytch
Bye.
> A high level fly over that sprays bacteria on a steel structure. Two months later, shoot holes in it using a bb gun.
Gee, thats so much more effective than using a BOMB.
P.S. Ships are eaten away every day by salt water.
> All the booze and most of cheese, yoghurt and some more are made of bacteria and bacteria shit.
Let's not forget alcohol: yeast pee.
> There is nothing like the programming model of the VIC-20 around now.
And thank god for it. Sorry, but I frittered away many hours typing in programs in Compute's Gazette, and you know what? I never really learned a damn thing. Most decent programs that did anything worthwhile were either in MLX (just a bunch of hex) or full of DATA statements that would be POKEd in.
I think I learned more from the basic manual by poking to the screen memory and the SID (all right the latter's the c64. The VIC was too crippled even for a kid.)
Squeak's UI isn't suitable for adults with years of training. I suppose kids can get used to anything, but I would hardly call its interface anything like friendly or forgiving, and when kids get frustrated at something to the point of breaking, they tend to quit for good (they really are smarter). And there's only so much you can do with direct manipulation. The original smalltalk was never about any of those things.
Does anybody know of any good wireless keyboard made by a company who actually cares about its users?
Microsoft. I'm using one of their keyboards now, and it works perfectly in Firefox.
> Kozmo could only work in an arcology setting, and only then if the service charge were added in some fashion, e.g., as part of the rent.
Dude, they're called concierges.
That's fine, because the president can just make shit up.
Get a sense of humor, asshole.
Flying Fanged Decomposing Zombie Boobies
... it sounds like the name of a band.
I know it's cliche, but
We all know what this administration does to people who purchase large numbers of aluminum tubes.
That, and he makes video games! Ones that might possibly have boobie-enabling mods!
"Wankel Rotary Engine". That's one of my favorite dirty-sounding terms, but my all time favorite is:
"Bistable Multivibrator"
> I think I'll wait for next year's model - I hear they'll include toes!
Yeah, but they're only usable before you boot.
Ah, as in "to have a fit" or "to have an orgy". *smacks forehead*
Oh well, it would have been a neat justification.
> specifically, the observable law of nature that life only comes from other life.
Or, as I just mentioned, a billion years of organic compounds being blasted by the sun. Simply repeating an assertion and calling it a "law" doesn't make it so.
There's nothing "abio" about it -- no one but creationists even uses that term, since the thermodynamic theory has been so thoroughly discredited. We're all about carbon, from our cells to proteins to amino acids. Nifty stuff, carbon. Nothing "bio" needs come in, it's all chemistry and physics of carbon. And solar energy of course.
Now where all the carbon and all that matter came from in the first place is a much more interesting theory to me.
Linguistically it doesn't make any less sense than using "have". Going half-assed (have-assed?) I speculate "He should have jumped" uses "have" in the sense of "he should have (possess) the state of 'he jumped'" (tortured phrasing, but I was avoiding using "have" again in the sentence). So to use "of" could simply be construed to say that one is of that state rather than having it, with an understood "be" prefixing it.
I'm not a linguist, and I'm totally talking out of my ass there. I know it's a misspelling, but it's a nice congruity. I still pine for the death of the apostrophe so we can get over it's/its your/you're
> which is a far stretch from saying life can be formed via primordial ooze zapped by a bolt of lightning.
Creationism is the one with the "bolt out of the blue" concept. We're talkng about the fundamental molecules of protein getting bombarded for billions of years by solar radiation. All that energy goes somewhere, and it goes into interesting patterns. Magnetic fields create odd wavy lines in iron filings. Whooshing your hand through water creates coherent looking whirls. Snowflakes have regular shapes. When you put energy into a system, organization happens.
The sun: there's your creator right there. Now go ask the sun about the problem of evil, or about the morality of sex.
I know I'm banging my head against the wall here and I'll never convince anyone. There's hardly anyone left on the fence anymore. All I can say is I tried.
I can see your point that without a God, then what is the point in life? Why even bother living?
Good point. But we're here already, so why bother dying? You'll get your chance at that eventually.
Bob came with a help system called Cue Cards, which is actually quite nice.
Clippy came from Bob. Clippy's actually a good idea executed poorly. Reparenting alerts, tips, and help into a predictable place is a GOOD thing, or do you actually prefer modal popups for everything? The interaction API is pretty sweet too, though that it really doesn't require an "agent". Poor execution by having the damn thing constantly calling attention to itself. They fell so in love with the idea that they assumed everyone else would.
But no, I must of course I must hate clippy with infantile apopleptic rage, clippyhate bellyfeelwise doubleplusgood all.
> Rise of Nations is pretty rad
Big Huge Games. Brian Reynolds. All that work to create Age Of Empires 2.5, really.
Of course at some level, no company does work. Just some are consistent at churning out quality in their particular divisions over all the years, e.g. Bell Labs or Xerox Parc.
Blah. Where have all the cool research places gone? I don't see Google inventing another mouse, let alone the next transistor...
The corvair was perfectly safe. I'm guessing you weren't rear-ended with the pinto, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Unlined gas tank all the way to the rear bumper, and doors that jam up and lock you in. Lovely combination.
... for a deathtrap. Too bad Nader blew his credibility on the corvair. That egomaniac hurt consumer protection more than he helped anything.
Perfectly drivable and reliable car though
fuckedgoogle.com ... there's an unbiased source of news. Gave it a read and wow, talk about poisoning your own wells. I have no idea what to actually believe from these socially stunted anger junkies. I mean yes, it's overvalued, and any sane analyst says so, but they can't even say that on the site without immense hatred and vitriol. You'd think they murder kindergarteners or something.
A timely case in point is how it broke into and gained dominance in the web browser market: it is a fact well documented in court records that this was purely because of being able to leverage it's desktop monopoly into control of the newly established web browser market. Yeah, both MSIE and Netscape sucked, but MSIE wouldn't have gone anywhere without the desktop monopoly and, oh yeah, ripping code from Mosaic.
There was a TCP/IP stack market before Microsoft included one with the OS. Are they also to blame for the destruction of the TCP/IP stack market? Yes, the strongarm tactics they used on OEMs to kill the nascent market were unethical and quite probably illegal, but I hardly considered the allegations of mere "bundling" to have merit then, and certainly not now.
Microsoft did not "rip code from mosaic". They bought it outright from Spyglass.
Currently, the licenses for 2000 SP3, XP SP 2 and later even give MS administrative rights to the machine.
I'll admit to not having read the whole license. Could you quote the relevant parts?
> If you ever work on a big application
That disqualifies just about everyone who thinks vim is adequate as an IDE. Most of them have never worked on anything bigger than their mp3 organizer in PHP.
The way I learned to play (and eventually the way I GMed) Paranoia was to liberally ignore all of the stats, charts, dice rolls, modifiers, and all of the other "technical" aspects of the game.
That is entirely the way you're supposed to play it. A player challenging the GM on the rules must have read the rules. The rules are classified Ultraviolet. Instant termination. Since this is the player we're talking about, not the character, the GM doesn't have the player terminated immediately, but arranges for rather unfortunate things to happen, like this:
"Okay, you're right, after much laborious argument, I concede your point. I confess, I rigged that roll. I promise to do everything by the book now. By the way, while your character was standing by, internally raging against pondering the unfairness of life, 100 mutants have moved into position and each one has launched a rocket at you. Roll dodge. For each one. I promise not to fudge."
Related to equipment, they missed my favorite cliche: "The Free Market". The world faces dire peril, you're the hero that vanquishes evil and dispatches minions by the score. The last hope for the world rests on your shoulders... yet that won't even score you a discount at the equipment retailers.
There have been better-done lists of cliches, with color commentary that was actually, well, interesting. Might have been on OldManMurray. And yes, he covered crates.