What I mind are a lot of other names, some of which techie-oriented folks accept. The real problem, to me, is that non-techies use them to denigrate us, and too many here don't see that.
Far too many in the US, living in the most powerful, "advanced" country in the history of the world, have NO F*CKING CLUE how *anything* works, conflate flipping a switch to turn on the lights with Harry Potter-style magic, and don't *care* to try to know.
A century ago, some all the nationalistic stereotypes were, in fact positive. Consider French with cooking, or Germans with engineering. Americans - train going through the Alps breaks down, little 70 yr old American woman gets out of a car, hobbles up, looks at engine where train crew is arguing about how to fix, stick a hairpin in, and engine starts.
Today, the motto of the US is "no user serviceable parts inside". How many TV shows ever had one person who you'd trust to clean their toaster and not get electrocuted?
"Geek" is my own personal hobbyhorse, which I actively dislike. Now, it comes from carny (carnival) slang, and referred to the usually retarded man who made his living in the freak show, billed as The Wild Man of Borneo, or some such, and biting the heads off live chickens. Now, Newt Gingrich, who served his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital with chemo, qualifies (look it up, it happened).
Maybe we ought to start using more aggressive names for *them* than "non-techie", and *maybe* they'll realized what they're doing.
And on the hard side: of course they do. All of them are *sure* that if they work hard enough, they'll be RICH!!! The reality is, of course, that overwhelmingly, they're either millionaires now, or they're suckers.
They claim to believe, religiously, in the so-called "free market" (as if some such ever existed), in exactly the same way that funnymentalist Christians claim to believe in the message of Jesus... but neither actually follows the implications of that belief.
When have you seen libertarians attack megacorps and cartels... like Boeing/LockMart/NorthGrum, or WalMart? Actually, the latter's an excellent example: they say they believe in freedom of association, but hate unions, and say we don't need them, then add that "government is not the answer"... but when asked who else can protect us against Big Uncle - the corporations that are *far* more invasive in our daily lives than any government outside of Nazi Germany or Ceauescu's Romania.
Then claim that we all have "leverage" with the companies we work for (tell that to WalMart employees).
Finally, I used to argue with a Libertarian (member of the party) in the early nineties, and one day stopped him in his tracks. I asked him how we get from here and now to his utopia: do we take everything away from everyone, and divvy it up equally, like the beginning of Monopoly (tm), or do we start from where we are, with you and me with zip, and Bill Gates and the Waltons with billions and billions?
He said they were still discussing that down at the "club". I still haven't heard an answer.
For 15-20 years, I've been saying that dogs top out equivalent to humans between two and four, *maybe* five, and now I see I've been proven correct.
Next proof: I say that cat's top out at humans bertween six and nine or ten. Please note that this means that they have their *own* agenda, which is probably *not* yours.
mark -- The truth will out: someone got it at last:
Dogs have masters; cats have staff.
In '95, I remember a review, perhaps in PC Mag, that noted that 90% of all the users of word processors used 10% of the features; of the 10% of users that used more, they used them perhaps 10% of the time.
That was 14 years ago.
How many of the "advanced features" do any of you use? Are you writing documents, or are you doing desktop publishing for printing out?
The real point of a word processor was not to "ready documents to show to someone higher up than me", it was to replace a typewriter. My old criteria for evaluating word processors was whether I could sit down with it for the first time, never having seen it before, and could type up a letter and print it out in five minutes.
Which, of course, was why I *loathed* Wordstar. WordPerfect, I didn't like... until 5.0. Then, I loved it. If I could, I'd use WP today. For one thing, there was the 'reveal all codes" function, that showed ALL CODES, inline, not some codes (say, not including "this paragraph is right justified") and on, and on, that Word does, where I've had to *fight it* to edit a document. For that matter, the way WP did codes, I'm astounded that they didn't go to saving and markup using HTML, since their codes could have almost gone 1-to-1.
Oh, that's right, their marketing and management couldn't market their way out of a wet paper back with the Terminator's help.
And they keep "improving" it, because even though most of us will *never* use the NEW, GREATER FEATURES (tm), they can sell more copies, rather than people using the same program, year in and year out.
So, let's see: how many years did typewriters, all of which did the same thing, last? 90 years or so, and the only real "improvement" was going electric, so you could type faster?
Why do we need a word processor to sing and dance? Are you creating something for Youtube in it?
First, we have no idea how long a civilization *can* last - on Earth, the longest have only managed a thousand or so years.
Second, there's the question of how often intelligent life arises.
Third is the question of how often, of those where intelligent life arises develop a technological civilization.
Now, once you've gotten through all that, comes the next point: how many would be within a few hundred years of our level of technology *now*. Much lower - and the Romans were moderately technological - and we'll never see them. Beyond a couple-three hundred years past us, and we *still* wouldn't see them - could people at the time of the American Revolution have listened to most of *our* conversations?
First, well over half of them, and half of the guys, are *fat*. Sorry, I don't find that attractive.
Second, well, it's clear to me that the post-Dr. Spock (NOT Mr. Spock, kiddies, look him up) generation obviously wasn't breast-fed long enough. Women whose each breast is bigger than their head doesn't ring my attraction meter, either.
Nobody ever remembers the RadShack CoCo. I had one that I bought around '80 or '81, and found a text adventure game - I don't remember the name - where one started out in a town at a market. The best thing to buy there was a shovel: you could dig for treasure... and beat off bandits on the road, lions in the jungle, sharks and pirates in the ocean, and, if you got to the end, meteors in outer space....
Lessee, a laundry list:
1) nobody cuts down perfectly nice trees on the edge of their village
2) the stone towers are completely at odds with the village
3) THERE WOULDN'T BE A SINGLE ABLE-BODIED PERSON IN THE VILLAGE DOING *ANYTHING*
other than either fighting, or running away from the battle.
Come on - we partnered with dogs 70k years ago or so, and what happened? We sat around, scratched/licked our private parts, hunted (a little), and hung out and told stories.
Then, maybe 12k-20k years ago, cats domesticated us, and the next thing you know, we're doing agriculture, and building civilization... so that they could live in the manner in which they intended to become accustomed.
It's all their fault...
mark
-- The truth will out: someone got it at last:
Dogs have masters; cats have staff.
Back in the very early eighties, I heard a speaker from, I think it was the Space Sciences Inst, who told me that the Environmental Impact Statement had been done in the late seventies for this. And that they were talking about something like 10W/m^2. And a lot of large collectors. It would take a truly stupid buzzard to get toasted in that.
Or an enTHUsiastic slashdotter, with more goshawowie than science....
things could be worse. So I cheered up, and, sure enough, they got worse.
For example, you could be, say, twice your age, and looking. And the folks that go to bars in their fifties aren't probably techie, or even interesting (unless you've both had too much to drink).
mark "and 80% of those on craigslist, the ones that aren't scams for
malware-loaded sleazenet sites, are all twentysomething (or under)"
I can say for a fact (speaking to someone who supports a government agency, and knows, but I should not name), that the Obama administration *has* started pumping money, both straight and as part of the stimulus, directly into actual research.
Dick "Halliburton's profits" Cheney and George "vacationing on my photo-op ranch" Bush saw no profits in it; besides, it might want to do or say something that conflicts with their Christian supporters.
I mean, really. I quote paragraphs 3 & 4 in the article linked to: Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the subcommittee's chairman, described the move as a "time-out" in the budget process as the White House awaits the findings of a 10-member panel tasked by the White House to reassess NASA's post-shuttle exploration plans. That panel, led by former Lockheed Martin chief Norm Augustine, is expected to report back with its findings in August.
In his opening statement at the markup hearing, Mollohan said the cut should not be viewed as a diminution of the subcommittee's support for NASA's human spaceflight activities. "Rather, it's a deferral taken without prejudice; it is a pause, a time-out, to allow the president to establish his vision for human space exploration and to commit to realistic future funding levels to realize this vision --- end excerpt ---
a) We can't even talk to dolphins, though they've got some of our words. How about practicing on other intelligent Earthly species?
b) maybe y'all should turn off the movies, and tv shows, and actually *READ* some real SF (as opposed to sci-fi (pronounced skiffy, rhyming with the peanut butter, and which thinks Godzilla movies are sf....)
There are decades of short stories and novels whose theme is first contact. I remember one from the fifties, where one of our starships meets an alien ship. The ending of the story is both groups take out *ALL* navigation equipment and info, and trade ships.
Then there's a more significant issue: in a galaxy that's what, about 10G years old, and we're from a planet that's had life for over 3G years, *and* we've only had real technology based on science for barely 400 years, what are the odds that we'll meet an technologically-inclined alien race that's withing 200 or 300 years of *our* technology? I suggest the odds are vast that they're either far beyond us - on the order of a nuclear aircraft carrier to a merchant ship of the 1400's, , or far behind (if they're not up to Roman Empire standards, or, say, Turtledove's "The Path Not Taken"), they're more likely hunter-gatherers.
Start thinking of what a Prime Directive *should* be (and remember Buckminster Fuller's aphorism, "we are as gods, and we might as well get good at it"), or how to convince them that we're worth a) paying attention to, and b) that they shouldn't treat us like fire ants.
Here in IL, the unemployment office warns you that you *really* shouldn't use a cell phone to do your bi-weekly certification by phone, that there may be problems.
About the brontosaurus vs. apatasaurus: it isn't bad enough that the brontosaurus has been extinct for 65M years, now they want to make the *name* extinct.
Besides, who wants apitty-patty-saurus? Give us back our Thunder Lizard!
mark, chairman of the Committee to Save the Brontosaurus
Tell them no, would they like to loan you their cellphone to make a bunch of personal calls on?
The only alternative I can think of is to create another account, name it the traditional: guest, password anon, and make sure it's NOT a power user, that it's got the least authority. Let them screw with each other's crap there, and go in as administrator, and delete everything when you get home.
I don't see why they're called a religion, *and* given tax breaks, when they don't take "offerings", they charge real money for services.
Worse than a yellow star: make them advertise in the "adult services" section of craigslist.
Point of information: in 1967, at the Worldcon, a number of us were standing around John W. Campbell (go google him, those who don't have a clue, and add "analog" to your search), and someone asked about scientology and LRond, who Campbell knew very well. His answer was that over the years, Hubbard had wandered back and forth between believing it, and thinking it a great scam.
Well, yes they have. In the early years of the century, during the thirties, and again in the sixties, we looked for radical transformation. The wealthy, who own the media and a *lot* of politicians(come on, argue that), have spent since the end of WWI, and esp. since the seventies, brainwashing the public to believe that real change can't come, and if it did, it would only be a change of masters, and not better for most folks....
I have it on good authority - I know someone who, in the early eighties, was in the "Hunt for Red October" command (COMOCEANSYSLANT) - who tells me that all a sub needs to do is drop below a cold current in the ocean, and they're invisible.
What's more important is silence on the sub - she also told me about them finding a Soviet sub because of a noisy coffeepot (for real).
I mean, is there a diagnosis for wanting to be a psychiatrist? There *is* the old joke is that the folks going into psychiatry are all crazy in the first place, and figure if they can cure others, they'll be able to cure themselves.
It also doesn't address the perfectly *reasonable* reaction to real-world situations that one has no control over; continuing on down this path literally leads to Brave New World, drugs to sleep, drugs to wake up, drugs to....
I can also comment as to my opinion of *most* psychiatrists: consider One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or, to be downright brutal, Joe Haldeman's 1968.
Finally, I can go back to what I've read about Freud, with his "Civilization and Its Discontents", which I gather is basically "this is the way it is, and stiff upper lip and all that, and anything else, we'll have to treat so you can stiff upper lip it".
I've always considered that a failure of nerve, since it didn't go to the next step of "let's change civilization to be more human-centric".
Slashdot Mirror
What I mind are a lot of other names, some of which techie-oriented folks accept. The real problem, to me, is that non-techies use them to denigrate us, and too many here don't see that.
Far too many in the US, living in the most powerful, "advanced" country in the history of the world, have NO F*CKING CLUE how *anything* works, conflate flipping a switch to turn on the lights with Harry Potter-style magic, and don't *care* to try to know.
A century ago, some all the nationalistic stereotypes were, in fact positive. Consider French with cooking, or Germans with engineering. Americans - train going through the Alps breaks down, little 70 yr old American woman gets out of a car, hobbles up, looks at engine where train crew is arguing about how to fix, stick a hairpin in, and engine starts.
Today, the motto of the US is "no user serviceable parts inside". How many TV shows ever had one person who you'd trust to clean their toaster and not get electrocuted?
"Geek" is my own personal hobbyhorse, which I actively dislike. Now, it comes from carny (carnival) slang, and referred to the usually retarded man who made his living in the freak show, billed as The Wild Man of Borneo, or some such, and biting the heads off live chickens. Now, Newt Gingrich, who served his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital with chemo, qualifies (look it up, it happened).
Maybe we ought to start using more aggressive names for *them* than "non-techie", and *maybe* they'll realized what they're doing.
Or maybe not.
mark, techie and proud
Yeah, ESR and a few others aside....
On the one hand, the old cartoon....
And on the hard side: of course they do. All of them are *sure* that if they work hard enough, they'll be RICH!!! The reality is, of course, that overwhelmingly, they're either millionaires now, or they're suckers.
They claim to believe, religiously, in the so-called "free market" (as if some such ever existed), in exactly the same way that funnymentalist Christians claim to believe in the message of Jesus... but neither actually follows the implications of that belief.
When have you seen libertarians attack megacorps and cartels... like Boeing/LockMart/NorthGrum, or WalMart? Actually, the latter's an excellent example: they say they believe in freedom of association, but hate unions, and say we don't need them, then add that "government is not the answer"... but when asked who else can protect us against Big Uncle - the corporations that are *far* more invasive in our daily lives than any government outside of Nazi Germany or Ceauescu's Romania.
Then claim that we all have "leverage" with the companies we work for (tell that to WalMart employees).
Finally, I used to argue with a Libertarian (member of the party) in the early nineties, and one day stopped him in his tracks. I asked him how we get from here and now to his utopia: do we take everything away from everyone, and divvy it up equally, like the beginning of Monopoly (tm), or do we start from where we are, with you and me with zip, and Bill Gates and the Waltons with billions and billions?
He said they were still discussing that down at the "club". I still haven't heard an answer.
mark
For 15-20 years, I've been saying that dogs top out equivalent to humans between two and four, *maybe* five, and now I see I've been proven correct.
Next proof: I say that cat's top out at humans bertween six and nine or ten. Please note that this means that they have their *own* agenda, which is probably *not* yours.
mark
--
The truth will out: someone got it at last:
Dogs have masters; cats have staff.
But maybe not for the same reasons.
In '95, I remember a review, perhaps in PC Mag, that noted that 90% of all the users of word processors used 10% of the features; of the 10% of users that used more, they used them perhaps 10% of the time.
That was 14 years ago.
How many of the "advanced features" do any of you use? Are you writing documents, or are you doing desktop publishing for printing out?
The real point of a word processor was not to "ready documents to show to someone higher up than me", it was to replace a typewriter. My old criteria for evaluating word processors was whether I could sit down with it for the first time, never having seen it before, and could type up a letter and print it out in five minutes.
Which, of course, was why I *loathed* Wordstar. WordPerfect, I didn't like... until 5.0. Then, I loved it. If I could, I'd use WP today. For one thing, there was the 'reveal all codes" function, that showed ALL CODES, inline, not some codes (say, not including "this paragraph is right justified") and on, and on, that Word does, where I've had to *fight it* to edit a document. For that matter, the way WP did codes, I'm astounded that they didn't go to saving and markup using HTML, since their codes could have almost gone 1-to-1.
Oh, that's right, their marketing and management couldn't market their way out of a wet paper back with the Terminator's help.
And they keep "improving" it, because even though most of us will *never* use the NEW, GREATER FEATURES (tm), they can sell more copies, rather than people using the same program, year in and year out.
So, let's see: how many years did typewriters, all of which did the same thing, last? 90 years or so, and the only real "improvement" was going electric, so you could type faster?
Why do we need a word processor to sing and dance? Are you creating something for Youtube in it?
mark, who'd like a non-M$ emulator word processor
First, we have no idea how long a civilization *can* last - on Earth, the longest have only managed a thousand or so years.
Second, there's the question of how often intelligent life arises.
Third is the question of how often, of those where intelligent life arises develop a technological civilization.
Now, once you've gotten through all that, comes the next point: how many would be within a few hundred years of our level of technology *now*. Much lower - and the Romans were moderately technological - and we'll never see them. Beyond a couple-three hundred years past us, and we *still* wouldn't see them - could people at the time of the American Revolution have listened to most of *our* conversations?
mark
To be brief, IMO, no.
First, well over half of them, and half of the guys, are *fat*. Sorry, I don't find that attractive.
Second, well, it's clear to me that the post-Dr. Spock (NOT Mr. Spock, kiddies, look him up) generation obviously wasn't breast-fed long enough. Women whose each breast is bigger than their head doesn't ring my attraction meter, either.
mark, grown up
Nobody ever remembers the RadShack CoCo. I had one that I bought around '80 or '81, and found a text adventure game - I don't remember the name - where one started out in a town at a market. The best thing to buy there was a shovel: you could dig for treasure... and beat off bandits on the road, lions in the jungle, sharks and pirates in the ocean, and, if you got to the end, meteors in outer space....
mark
Lessee, a laundry list:
1) nobody cuts down perfectly nice trees on the edge of their village
2) the stone towers are completely at odds with the village
3) THERE WOULDN'T BE A SINGLE ABLE-BODIED PERSON IN THE VILLAGE DOING *ANYTHING*
other than either fighting, or running away from the battle.
mark "nice graphics, though"
Come on - we partnered with dogs 70k years ago or so, and what happened? We sat around, scratched/licked our private parts, hunted (a little), and hung out and told stories.
Then, maybe 12k-20k years ago, cats domesticated us, and the next thing you know, we're doing agriculture, and building civilization... so that they could live in the manner in which they intended to become accustomed.
It's all their fault...
mark
--
The truth will out: someone got it at last:
Dogs have masters; cats have staff.
With a 1MW trial set for next year.
mark
*sigh*
Clueless.
Back in the very early eighties, I heard a speaker from, I think it was the Space Sciences Inst, who told me that the Environmental Impact Statement had been done in the late seventies for this. And that they were talking about something like 10W/m^2. And a lot of large collectors. It would take a truly stupid buzzard to get toasted in that.
Or an enTHUsiastic slashdotter, with more goshawowie than science....
mark
things could be worse. So I cheered up, and, sure enough, they got worse.
For example, you could be, say, twice your age, and looking. And the folks that go to bars in their fifties aren't probably techie, or even interesting (unless you've both had too much to drink).
mark "and 80% of those on craigslist, the ones that aren't scams for
malware-loaded sleazenet sites, are all twentysomething (or under)"
I can say for a fact (speaking to someone who supports a government agency, and knows, but I should not name), that the Obama administration *has* started pumping money, both straight and as part of the stimulus, directly into actual research.
Dick "Halliburton's profits" Cheney and George "vacationing on my photo-op ranch" Bush saw no profits in it; besides, it might want to do or say something that conflicts with their Christian supporters.
mark
I'm quite happy with newsguy. It was cheap, and I have no problems.
mark
Before the Web existed, and I love his brag that he "got around" Fair Use... as though that were something to brag about.
Meanwhile, I thought the real opening gun was Canter & Siegel's Green Card spam of 1994
"Oh, no, there's no community here, this is just fallow ground that we can do whatever we want, wherever we want to do it".
mark
I mean, really. I quote paragraphs 3 & 4 in the article linked to:
Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the subcommittee's chairman, described the move as a "time-out" in the budget process as the White House awaits the findings of a 10-member panel tasked by the White House to reassess NASA's post-shuttle exploration plans. That panel, led by former Lockheed Martin chief Norm Augustine, is expected to report back with its findings in August.
In his opening statement at the markup hearing, Mollohan said the cut should not be viewed as a diminution of the subcommittee's support for NASA's human spaceflight activities. "Rather, it's a deferral taken without prejudice; it is a pause, a time-out, to allow the president to establish his vision for human space exploration and to commit to realistic future funding levels to realize this vision
--- end excerpt ---
Which is perfectly reasonable.
mark
a) We can't even talk to dolphins, though they've got some of our words. How about practicing on other intelligent Earthly species?
b) maybe y'all should turn off the movies, and tv shows, and actually *READ* some real SF (as opposed to sci-fi (pronounced skiffy, rhyming with the peanut butter, and which thinks Godzilla movies are sf....)
There are decades of short stories and novels whose theme is first contact. I remember one from the fifties, where one of our starships meets an alien ship. The ending of the story is both groups take out *ALL* navigation equipment and info, and trade ships.
Then there's a more significant issue: in a galaxy that's what, about 10G years old, and we're from a planet that's had life for over 3G years, *and* we've only had real technology based on science for barely 400 years, what are the odds that we'll meet an technologically-inclined alien race that's withing 200 or 300 years of *our* technology? I suggest the odds are vast that they're either far beyond us - on the order of a nuclear aircraft carrier to a merchant ship of the 1400's, , or far behind (if they're not up to Roman Empire standards, or, say, Turtledove's "The Path Not Taken"), they're more likely hunter-gatherers.
Start thinking of what a Prime Directive *should* be (and remember Buckminster Fuller's aphorism, "we are as gods, and we might as well get good at it"), or how to convince them that we're worth a) paying attention to, and b) that they shouldn't treat us like fire ants.
mark
Here in IL, the unemployment office warns you that you *really* shouldn't use a cell phone to do your bi-weekly certification by phone, that there may be problems.
mark
About the brontosaurus vs. apatasaurus: it isn't bad enough that the brontosaurus has been extinct for 65M years, now they want to make the *name* extinct.
Besides, who wants apitty-patty-saurus? Give us back our Thunder Lizard!
mark, chairman of the Committee to Save the Brontosaurus
Tell them no, would they like to loan you their cellphone to make a bunch of personal calls on?
The only alternative I can think of is to create another account, name it the traditional: guest, password anon, and make sure it's NOT a power user, that it's got the least authority. Let them screw with each other's crap there, and go in as administrator, and delete everything when you get home.
mark
I don't see why they're called a religion, *and* given tax breaks, when they don't take "offerings", they charge real money for services.
Worse than a yellow star: make them advertise in the "adult services" section of craigslist.
Point of information: in 1967, at the Worldcon, a number of us were standing around John W. Campbell (go google him, those who don't have a clue, and add "analog" to your search), and someone asked about scientology and LRond, who Campbell knew very well. His answer was that over the years, Hubbard had wandered back and forth between believing it, and thinking it a great scam.
mark "I report, you get the idea"
Well, yes they have. In the early years of the century, during the thirties, and again in the sixties, we looked for radical transformation. The wealthy, who own the media and a *lot* of politicians(come on, argue that), have spent since the end of WWI, and esp. since the seventies, brainwashing the public to believe that real change can't come, and if it did, it would only be a change of masters, and not better for most folks....
mark
I have it on good authority - I know someone who, in the early eighties, was in the "Hunt for Red October" command (COMOCEANSYSLANT) - who tells me that all a sub needs to do is drop below a cold current in the ocean, and they're invisible.
What's more important is silence on the sub - she also told me about them finding a Soviet sub because of a noisy coffeepot (for real).
mark
I mean, is there a diagnosis for wanting to be a psychiatrist? There *is* the old joke is that the folks going into psychiatry are all crazy in the first place, and figure if they can cure others, they'll be able to cure themselves.
It also doesn't address the perfectly *reasonable* reaction to real-world situations that one has no control over; continuing on down this path literally leads to Brave New World, drugs to sleep, drugs to wake up, drugs to....
I can also comment as to my opinion of *most* psychiatrists: consider One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or, to be downright brutal, Joe Haldeman's 1968.
Finally, I can go back to what I've read about Freud, with his "Civilization and Its Discontents", which I gather is basically "this is the way it is, and stiff upper lip and all that, and anything else, we'll have to treat so you can stiff upper lip it".
I've always considered that a failure of nerve, since it didn't go to the next step of "let's change civilization to be more human-centric".
mark
I mean, they were "ruder times". How do we know they weren't taking their body and blood literally? (Seriously, consider Stranger in a Strange Land.)
mark "or were the homo saps early funnymentalists?"