1) After installing IE8, webcam tracks your movements around the room.
2) Strange giggling from PC speakers when you Agree to the EULA.
3) When you start Spybot Search & Destroy you get a phone call from someone sounding an awful lot like Jerry Seinfeld threatening your pets.
4) Paperclip is back, and now its mad.
5) The next time you hear the phrase "actually pretty innocuous" is in President Palin's speech about what happens in Loyal Citizens' Youth Brigade moral rectification camps.
6) You printer puts job sheets at the beginning of each document. Job sheets with coupons for Brawndo.
7) Activity gadget in upper right hand corner of browser is a Total Information Awareness icon.
8) Entering URL for Chrome download page redirects to gay furry bondage snuff porn site.
9) After refusing to upgrade to IE8 you wake up to find the Firefox's severed head on your bed.
10) Ghost of grandmother appears to you in dream, begging you to install Ubuntu. Which is just plain weird because she was a Slackware fan!
I bought a used Atari 800 to play games on after my IBM PC (original) proved pathetic for this purpose.
1986 was a GREAT time to own one of these old 8 bit systems. Software was still being made for it, and the slightly older hardware (8xx series printers, disk drives, serial interfaces, etc.) was available for firesale prices from mail order joints. The general audience computer magazines covered the platform, and there was at least one slick magazine with you-type-it program listings.
I played lots of the original EA classics; Seven Cities of Gold, Archon, and M.U.L.E. Amazingly crude by today's standard, but they were amazingly entertaining and so perfectly adapted for the platform.
Once in a while I'd get an old catalog or brochure. They were an interesting mix of slick and naive, with occasional vaporware products. I wish I kept those.
I dragged a cubic yard of Atari stuff with me to California after grad school. I hadn't plugged any of it in for maybe five years when I decided to sell it all for $20.
We are in a phase similar to the Cambrian Explosion, when all sorts of lifeforms with weird body plans gave it a shot . . . but which were winnowed down to a few by the time things started to crawl on land. Chances are just a few of the many alternative energy techniques being fooled about with will pan out commercially . . . but this is a necessary process.
Now, cue the cranky "Gee, Slashdot posts stories about dramatic advances in solar energy all the time; why doesn't my car run on solar cells yet?" posts.
This would be a big win for any kind of "environmental" energy source (wind, waves, caged toddlers) that isn't always on.
Heck, it would make a great general-purpose home UPS and/or load leveler. If properly integrated, a home equipped with this would be less vulnerable to brownouts and blackouts. Local storage would make the job of power companies easier too.
If you illegally download MP3s and videos, you are depriving American corporations of their rights to benefit from their intellectual property. This means the government can't collect taxes to fund the War on Terror. Therefore, file traders are in league with terrorists. So, it's OK to use Echelon or Total Information Awareness or the Friendly Neighbor Network or whatever they call it to track down file traders.
Now the government has the tools it needs to protect us. Don't you feel more protected? I feel more protected!
My freedoms are so protected too. Freedom to write things like:
"I wish each member of the Bush administration was dipped in a vat full of Poison Oak sap, and that each senator and representative was made to take turns scratching the oozing blisters on their private parts."
Give the man some credit. Bush is faithfully serving the people who got him into office.
They suckered the dupes into thinking they were getting a straight-shooting native-born Texan who was the kind of feller who'd drink a beer with them, keep the military out of nation-building boondoggles, hated taxes, and loved little unborn babies.
Now they've managed to convince us, and Congress, that we're better off not making him and his cronies accountable.
Bush and Cheney will spend their lives after the White House getting big bucks serving on the boards of Exxon, Halliburton, and Soylent Corporation,while we are left to deal with the financial and ecological mess they created.
Mr. Waxmanâ(TM)s committee is weighing its response to the White Houseâ(TM)s refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents relating to the E.P.A.â(TM)s handling of recent climate-change and air-pollution decisions. The White House, which has turned over other material to the committee, last week asserted a claim of executive privilege over the remaining documents.
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Fratto, the White House spokesman, said the committee chairmen did not understand the legal precedent underlying executive privilege. âoeThere is a long legal history supporting the principle that the president should have the candid advice of his advisers,â Mr. Fratto said.
Mr. Fratto could have saved himself some time and been more honest by simply smiling and saying "fuck you."
Based on the experience of the last seven years, non-reality-based decision making is a powerful tool for gathering and holding power. We should celebrate the Bush administration's success in contesting or ignoring every bit of evidence that contests their highly profitable worldview. After all, didn't a lot of people vote for Bush because they wanted a president who says what he means and means what he says?
Anyway, listening to scientists just encourages to make up stuff that upsets people. Evolution, the germ theory of disease, the greenhouse effect . . . we'd all be happier and more content if we all behaved like Ben Stein would like us to: God-fearing authority-worshipping dumbfucks.
Slashdot Mirror
. . . books, which frustrated Antenna People use to burn lynched corpses of FCC executives.
Americans agree this is a tragic waste of books.
. . . a 5% stake in A.I.G. in compensation.
1) After installing IE8, webcam tracks your movements around the room.
2) Strange giggling from PC speakers when you Agree to the EULA.
3) When you start Spybot Search & Destroy you get a phone call from someone sounding an awful lot like Jerry Seinfeld threatening your pets.
4) Paperclip is back, and now its mad.
5) The next time you hear the phrase "actually pretty innocuous" is in President Palin's speech about what happens in Loyal Citizens' Youth Brigade moral rectification camps.
6) You printer puts job sheets at the beginning of each document. Job sheets with coupons for Brawndo.
7) Activity gadget in upper right hand corner of browser is a Total Information Awareness icon.
8) Entering URL for Chrome download page redirects to gay furry bondage snuff porn site.
9) After refusing to upgrade to IE8 you wake up to find the Firefox's severed head on your bed.
10) Ghost of grandmother appears to you in dream, begging you to install Ubuntu. Which is just plain weird because she was a Slackware fan!
. . . a WOD server at the other end.
Hmm?
"Wank On Demand."
So from now on half of the episodes of our lives will take place in one of these pods?
Splittists, hooliganism, and enemies of social harmony are dire threats to users of the Internet.
Will these new chips be designed to require software that detects and eliminates these menaces?
(Yeah, yeah, I just read Rainbows End.)
I bought a used Atari 800 to play games on after my IBM PC (original) proved pathetic for this purpose.
1986 was a GREAT time to own one of these old 8 bit systems. Software was still being made for it, and the slightly older hardware (8xx series printers, disk drives, serial interfaces, etc.) was available for firesale prices from mail order joints. The general audience computer magazines covered the platform, and there was at least one slick magazine with you-type-it program listings.
I played lots of the original EA classics; Seven Cities of Gold, Archon, and M.U.L.E. Amazingly crude by today's standard, but they were amazingly entertaining and so perfectly adapted for the platform.
Once in a while I'd get an old catalog or brochure. They were an interesting mix of slick and naive, with occasional vaporware products. I wish I kept those.
I dragged a cubic yard of Atari stuff with me to California after grad school. I hadn't plugged any of it in for maybe five years when I decided to sell it all for $20.
Get out the sandpaper and white glue space cadets, it's
The Gee-Hod!.
We are in a phase similar to the Cambrian Explosion, when all sorts of lifeforms with weird body plans gave it a shot . . . but which were winnowed down to a few by the time things started to crawl on land. Chances are just a few of the many alternative energy techniques being fooled about with will pan out commercially . . . but this is a necessary process.
Now, cue the cranky "Gee, Slashdot posts stories about dramatic advances in solar energy all the time; why doesn't my car run on solar cells yet?" posts.
People look at me funny when I ask for my steak well done.
Neanderthal dopes!
Seriously. We need to test the hell out of this thing:
* Test monster-proofness of hatches and bulkheads.
* Ensure that air filters can handle sapient moon-dust clouds.
Oh . . . this is just a damn unmanned orbiter?
OK. Please forget this post. I'll use it again when they test the Orion lunar craft.
Scrape the contents of those Huggies into a biodigester and reap big $$$ in methane sales!
This would be a big win for any kind of "environmental" energy source (wind, waves, caged toddlers) that isn't always on.
Heck, it would make a great general-purpose home UPS and/or load leveler. If properly integrated, a home equipped with this would be less vulnerable to brownouts and blackouts. Local storage would make the job of power companies easier too.
Fingers crossed.
I hope Pohl gets to see "Wall-E." It's the kind of satirical SF that he and Cyril Kornbluth wrote in the 1950s.
Pohl wrote what is possibly the first story about "transhumans," and which also hinted at the Singularity: "Day Million."
Ultima II and "Hunt the Wumpus" SCREAM on this thing!
If you illegally download MP3s and videos, you are depriving American corporations of their rights to benefit from their intellectual property. This means the government can't collect taxes to fund the War on Terror. Therefore, file traders are in league with terrorists. So, it's OK to use Echelon or Total Information Awareness or the Friendly Neighbor Network or whatever they call it to track down file traders.
Now the government has the tools it needs to protect us. Don't you feel more protected? I feel more protected!
My freedoms are so protected too. Freedom to write things like:
"I wish each member of the Bush administration was dipped in a vat full of Poison Oak sap, and that each senator and representative was made to take turns scratching the oozing blisters on their private parts."
Give the man some credit. Bush is faithfully serving the people who got him into office.
They suckered the dupes into thinking they were getting a straight-shooting native-born Texan who was the kind of feller who'd drink a beer with them, keep the military out of nation-building boondoggles, hated taxes, and loved little unborn babies.
Now they've managed to convince us, and Congress, that we're better off not making him and his cronies accountable.
Bush and Cheney will spend their lives after the White House getting big bucks serving on the boards of Exxon, Halliburton, and Soylent Corporation ,while we are left to deal with the financial and ecological mess they created.
Suckers. We're all suckers.
From TOA:
Mr. Fratto could have saved himself some time and been more honest by simply smiling and saying "fuck you."
Put in a spoofed "From:" line reading "Prince Bandar."
Based on the experience of the last seven years, non-reality-based decision making is a powerful tool for gathering and holding power. We should celebrate the Bush administration's success in contesting or ignoring every bit of evidence that contests their highly profitable worldview. After all, didn't a lot of people vote for Bush because they wanted a president who says what he means and means what he says?
Anyway, listening to scientists just encourages to make up stuff that upsets people. Evolution, the germ theory of disease, the greenhouse effect . . . we'd all be happier and more content if we all behaved like Ben Stein would like us to: God-fearing authority-worshipping dumbfucks.
. . . at about the same time as we get . . . um, excuse me, doorbell . . .
. . . oh, shit, a UPS guy in a flying truck just delivered a jet belt and a robot ma[USER STEFANJ UNDERGOING UPGRADE]
I do not want to experience that hideous sixth grade First Thanksgiving play again.
. . . whoever the hell ran weapon tests on that star and its planets.
Hail Whoever!
. . . was an elderly woman who collected the boxes of old computer games. This was in 2090 or so.
At one point she realizes how miserable she is, goes in for a radical rejuve treatment, and gives it all up.