It sounds like your union sucks. Unions are like governments - people usually get the ones they deserve.
I don't want childcare, I definitely don't want age related pay, I do want rewarding for contribution, I do want a trust relationship between myself, my manager and my staff.
My kids are grown and I don't need child care either, but my union doesn't pull for it and my employer doesn't offer it. There's no age-related pay, but layoffs are by seniority; I've worked there for two decades, they can't lay me off and hire some twenty year old at half my salary. I'm in my present position now because ten years ago a supervisor noticed that I was working way above my pay grade and got a promotion for me; the union didn't complain.
If you have a staff, you're probably not eligible to join the union anyway.
I hadn't heard of it either, so I googled, planning to ridicule you on your lack of research skills.
No ridicule here though, all the links google comes up with assume you already know about it. Wikipedia has no entry at all on "dream pinball". I fail it, too.
Although I agree with you, trying to get them to do what we both would like to see is like trying to get a crackhead to stop smoking crack. It ain't gonna happen.
I plan on voting for Barr. Sure, he'll lose, but so will one of the two major party candidates. Why do the media insist that voting for a loser is a wasted vote? Could it be that they are owned by corporations, who bribe both candidates to get legislation (like the Bono Act and the PATRIOT act) passed with 100% or nearly so of the vote?
I know you're joking, but my friend Linda spent four months in Dwight Correctional Center for posession of a controlled substance. Shes on parole right now, not only a victimless criminal, but a victimless felon. Second amendment? She has no second amendment rights; she is banned from owning firearms for life, even though her crime was nonviolent and had no victims.
I don't fear being dead, but as I actually died once I don't look forward to the transition from life to death. Those who die in their sleep, or die without pain or suffering, are extremely lucky. My ex-wife's mother died in mid sentence, never knowing she was dying! That's the way to go, I think.
My grandmother lived a hundred years. She outlived her siblings, her friends, two husbands, and three of her four children. As a father I can't imagine anything worse than outliving one of your children. When Grandma was 95 she told me "I don't know why people want to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old".
She was an infant when the Wright brothers flew that short powered flight at Kitty Hawk, and saw the moon landings. When she was born people pretty much lived exactly like they had five hundred years earlier, yet when she died it was 2003, to me the science fiction century. Stuff in Captain Kirk's Star Trek that was unbelievable fantasy when the show was filmed and I was a young teenager is now real - flat screen computers that fit on desks; doors that open automatically; routine space flight; "communicators" (cell phones) -- we even have technology that was impossible in the 23rd century when the movie Star Trek II came out. Kirk was allergic to the drug they used to cure age related presbyopia, so McCoy gave him reading glasses.
I was severly nearsighted all my life, became farsighted as well in middle age, and got an eye implant in 2006 that had just been FDA approved in 2003 that cured my nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism and a cataract that had occurred because of steroid eye drops. I have better than 20/20 vision now! Dr. McCoy would be jealous of my surgeons (I had surgery to my retina this past April, as well as the cataract implant in 2006); today's operating rooms make Dr. McCoy's tech look primitive.
As to living a few hundred years, I'd like to see what the future holds, but there's always more future in the future no matter where in time you live. And a person's perception of time is always a fraction of how long (s)he has lived. Time goes faster when you get older. When you're four, Christmas takes forever to get there - but the day after Christmas, Christmas is 1/4 of a lifetime away. A year to a four year old is the same as a decade to someone who is forty.
Time is a dimention, no different than space. You can only live in a limited space, and a limited time. Make the most of what you have of it!
I don't know if it's universally true that "men that live fully don't despair death" but I live life to the fullest. Hell, I'm 56 and I had sex with a 27 year old woman last month (cost me twenty bucks; although the next time around she stole my money).
I'm spending my remaining space, time, and money on enjoying myself as much as possible (and writing about much of it, which is also enjoyable), and helping others do the same. There's just too much misery in the world. Life's too short to sit around bored.
As you're truly AC there's not much chance of your seeing this, but I'm astounded at the number of times I'll make what I think is an obvious joke and get modded "insightful" or "interestin" rather than "funny".
Maybe they think I need the karma; I don't, it's excellent. Mut some of the mods seem brain damaged; I'll make a perfevctly coherent argument, voicing a sincere opinion and be modded "troll".
Mad moderation, both positive and negative, happens to everyone, I think. But it sorts itself out; the comment is now modded "funny" as it should be. And there's metamoderation; I metamoderated twice yesterday (I don't know how good your karma has to be to metamoderate). With metamoderation you moderate the moderators; you are given ten random comments and rate one of the comment's mods as "fair" or "unfar" (if was originally modded "funny" the metamoderation is "funny" or "unfunny"). If you're metamoderated down, you don't get any more mod points.
I'm a bit duck-footed, and about anybody can recognize who I am before they're close enough to see my face. I'd probably have trouble fooling a human; if I held up a liquor store or a bank, a mask wouldn't help.
But a computer? Who do these people think they're fooling? Computers are brain-dead simple to fool about anything whatever.
As to resolution, well, this comes from my memory of a a newspaper article so take it with a grain of salt, but when Hubble was launched it was reported that if you put in in St Louis you could read the date on a dime in De Moines if it was focused properly. If they can aim Hubble up, they could aim another one down. Does anyboy have verification/rebuttal to this? I'm curious; as I said, I read it in the paper and they;re bad about getting science and technology wrong.
There is a long history in science fiction for robotic girlfriends.
Isaac Asimov's Robots of Dawn comes to mind, where the woman falls in love with a humaniform robot. An early STNG episode had Data having sex with Tasha Yar.
The sex industry would love to have a remote controlled sex doll/robot
I'd like one that wasn't remote controlled, but rather one that I could program to act in any way I wanted it to. If a woman wants sex with me, why would I want a robot involved? Unless, of course, I had a spouse on the other side of the continent (but I wouldn't have a long distance relationship).
So how is the GP offtopic?
My whole post was a joke; note that I linked the word "redundant" to the GP? And linked uncyclopedia of all places?
Heaven's Gate too nine years from script to premier and cost 200,000 per day. Yet by every account (I have never seen the movie) it sucked and sucked hard.
You could control a robot playing tennis remotely! Oh wait.. What if the network lags.
The same thing that happened ten years ago when we were playing Quake over the internet. Except, of course, bots will be LEGAL. Look at the lag the Martian robots have, and they work incredibly well.
Ever since Pac man came out there is a robotic room I wanted to build. I wanted to make a 3D pack man game you actually got inside of. I even drew up plans once.
You would have LCD screens (my original vision had projectors; it was before LCD screens) on moveable, motorized walls and floors, each wall about the size of a standard door. A human would be physically inside the maze. The "ghosts" would be other humans outside the maze using terminals, to them the game would be much like a normal 1979 Pac Man.
Alas, it would take tons of money and I have only grams of it. But the idea would be a lot easier and cheaper with today's technology than when I first thought of it.
Only at slashdot would the first post be modded "redundant". Mods, please consult a dictionary, there are several on the internet. That was offtopic, not redundant.
As this comment will now directly address the parent, it is not offtopic. Mod it -1, lame.
Dude, robots are going to have to come a long, long way before... oops, bad choice of words.
Robots are going to have to, erm, get a lot more high tech before they'll satisfy. But at any rate, girlfriends go for twenty bucks here in Springfield. See A Nerd's Guide to Getting Laid. Unfortunately, there's nothing in that journal about robotics or the internet, although it does mention porn.
The poor people who do drugs are poor because of the drugs. I see a lot of them at Farley's here in Springfield (the hippie bar next door to the gay bar). I used to go there a lot when the beer was cheap, I seldom do any more since they raised the price of draft so it's the same as everyone else. As I'm thin, the gays next door sometimes think I'm gay and hit on me and I don't care for that at all.
Here are excerpts from two of my older journals about drug addicts and how they get their money. The second one is more germaine.
I'd let this woman named "Odie" (yes, the Garfield dog, and the name fit) who'd been evicted stay at my apartment for a few days, let her eat my food and drink my beer and Pepsi and let her use my computer. This was strictly out of the goodness of my heart; I wasn't even getting laid. Not even so much as a blow job.
Yes, I'm a fool; at least, when it comes to women. But I already said that, didn't I?
She stole my spare car keys and traded them for crack. I discovered the car missing the next morning. Odie had left with her friend (and, unknown to me, my keys) the night before. The next morning when I discovered my car missing I called the cops, who took a report about noon. Six o'clock that night after much beer and whiskey (what would you do if YOUR new car you'd only made one payment on got stolen?) the cops called and said they had my car back. I took a cab to the car, and the cop told me that the young woman they found with the car - not Odie but some other woman - had used it to try and kill her parents. This girl's mother was in the hospital with two broken legs. My driver window was smashed, there was glass all over the inside of the car, a mark on the front bumper (leg marks?) and a big scratch on the hood, along with some miscelaneous dings.
I stopped by Farley's after work for a beer, and I'm sitting there at a table sipping, listening to the annoying beeping of the illegal gambling machines that are in every bar in town when a skinny, ugly, skanky looking bitch sits down at my table.
"Hi, I like to fuck and smoke crack. My husband's in prison, he likes dick even more than I do. Ya wanna smoke some crack and fuck? Hey buy me a beer!"
The uncyclopedia has this to say about crack- "Crack is something that is sold by both drug dealers and prostitutes. The only difference is that a prostitute can wash her crack and sell it again."
I politely refused, but the bitch wouldn't leave me alone. That's what I get for walking into a bar like Farley's wearing my white collar shirt that buttons up the front that I wear to work; in that place I'd have looked like Donald Trump, only without the extra weight and stupid looking combover. Can't that damned fool afford a decent wig? I thought he was supposed to be rich? WTF?
But anyway, if you're looking for a prostitute don't pick one up in a dive like Farley's, and don't get a skinny one even if, like me, you''re attracted to thin women. Skinny whores are almost always crack whores. Find one that's got a good figure if you can afford her or a fat one if you're a cheapass like me.
As the skank was talking crack, I realized that we nerds have much in common with crackheads
It depends on the union. I was in the Teamsters when I worked at Disney in the early eighties, and they were in bed with management. They were a waste of money. The union I'm in now is completely different. With the Teamsters I felt my dues were wasted, with my union now I'm sure if it weren't for them I'd make less money and have no benefits.
Ok, everybody just stop buying now; wait for five years to see the new technology and then pay a premium to be the first.
I just bought an analog, 42 inch flat screen CRT less than five years ago. I have no reason whatever to buy Blu-Ray, as with my analog TV Blu-Ray won't look any different but the disks and players are damned expensive (I need a new DVD player, mine's worn out. $30 at Wal Mart, how much is Blu-Ray again?). I don't see buying a new TV any time soon, so I guess I'm lucky, I'll transition from DVD to whatever superceds blu-ray.
Hey, this is the entertainment industry we're talking about. You know, the same people who think that workable DRM isn't a pipe dream?
You know why Hollywood movies cost millions upon millions of dollars to make while Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning cost a few grand? Why RIAA CDs cost $20-$30 while indie CDs cost $5-$10? It's because cocaine is damned expensive, makes you greedy and sociopathic, gives you a sense of entitlemant, makes you stupid, and makes you think it makes you smart.
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like your union sucks. Unions are like governments - people usually get the ones they deserve.
I don't want childcare, I definitely don't want age related pay, I do want rewarding for contribution, I do want a trust relationship between myself, my manager and my staff.
My kids are grown and I don't need child care either, but my union doesn't pull for it and my employer doesn't offer it. There's no age-related pay, but layoffs are by seniority; I've worked there for two decades, they can't lay me off and hire some twenty year old at half my salary. I'm in my present position now because ten years ago a supervisor noticed that I was working way above my pay grade and got a promotion for me; the union didn't complain.
If you have a staff, you're probably not eligible to join the union anyway.
I hadn't heard of it either, so I googled, planning to ridicule you on your lack of research skills.
No ridicule here though, all the links google comes up with assume you already know about it. Wikipedia has no entry at all on "dream pinball". I fail it, too.
Somebody's retarded, and it ain't you.
'course, it'll still be pricey as hell, etc.
Not if you win; in the UK the loser pays.
Although I agree with you, trying to get them to do what we both would like to see is like trying to get a crackhead to stop smoking crack. It ain't gonna happen.
Well, damn. If only there were another option, a third option...
There are three pseudo-viable third options; parties that are on the ballot in enough states that should they win them all, they win the election.
Bob Barr
Cynthis McKinney
Chuck Baldwin
I plan on voting for Barr. Sure, he'll lose, but so will one of the two major party candidates. Why do the media insist that voting for a loser is a wasted vote? Could it be that they are owned by corporations, who bribe both candidates to get legislation (like the Bono Act and the PATRIOT act) passed with 100% or nearly so of the vote?
I know you're joking, but my friend Linda spent four months in Dwight Correctional Center for posession of a controlled substance. Shes on parole right now, not only a victimless criminal, but a victimless felon. Second amendment? She has no second amendment rights; she is banned from owning firearms for life, even though her crime was nonviolent and had no victims.
Police State: In USSA, cops hassle YOU (NSFW?)
Liberty? What liberty?
I don't fear being dead, but as I actually died once I don't look forward to the transition from life to death. Those who die in their sleep, or die without pain or suffering, are extremely lucky. My ex-wife's mother died in mid sentence, never knowing she was dying! That's the way to go, I think.
My grandmother lived a hundred years. She outlived her siblings, her friends, two husbands, and three of her four children. As a father I can't imagine anything worse than outliving one of your children. When Grandma was 95 she told me "I don't know why people want to live to be a hundred, it ain't no fun bein' old".
She was an infant when the Wright brothers flew that short powered flight at Kitty Hawk, and saw the moon landings. When she was born people pretty much lived exactly like they had five hundred years earlier, yet when she died it was 2003, to me the science fiction century. Stuff in Captain Kirk's Star Trek that was unbelievable fantasy when the show was filmed and I was a young teenager is now real - flat screen computers that fit on desks; doors that open automatically; routine space flight; "communicators" (cell phones) -- we even have technology that was impossible in the 23rd century when the movie Star Trek II came out. Kirk was allergic to the drug they used to cure age related presbyopia, so McCoy gave him reading glasses.
I was severly nearsighted all my life, became farsighted as well in middle age, and got an eye implant in 2006 that had just been FDA approved in 2003 that cured my nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism and a cataract that had occurred because of steroid eye drops. I have better than 20/20 vision now! Dr. McCoy would be jealous of my surgeons (I had surgery to my retina this past April, as well as the cataract implant in 2006); today's operating rooms make Dr. McCoy's tech look primitive.
As to living a few hundred years, I'd like to see what the future holds, but there's always more future in the future no matter where in time you live. And a person's perception of time is always a fraction of how long (s)he has lived. Time goes faster when you get older. When you're four, Christmas takes forever to get there - but the day after Christmas, Christmas is 1/4 of a lifetime away. A year to a four year old is the same as a decade to someone who is forty.
Time is a dimention, no different than space. You can only live in a limited space, and a limited time. Make the most of what you have of it!
I don't know if it's universally true that "men that live fully don't despair death" but I live life to the fullest. Hell, I'm 56 and I had sex with a 27 year old woman last month (cost me twenty bucks; although the next time around she stole my money).
I'm spending my remaining space, time, and money on enjoying myself as much as possible (and writing about much of it, which is also enjoyable), and helping others do the same. There's just too much misery in the world. Life's too short to sit around bored.
As you're truly AC there's not much chance of your seeing this, but I'm astounded at the number of times I'll make what I think is an obvious joke and get modded "insightful" or "interestin" rather than "funny".
Maybe they think I need the karma; I don't, it's excellent. Mut some of the mods seem brain damaged; I'll make a perfevctly coherent argument, voicing a sincere opinion and be modded "troll".
Mad moderation, both positive and negative, happens to everyone, I think. But it sorts itself out; the comment is now modded "funny" as it should be. And there's metamoderation; I metamoderated twice yesterday (I don't know how good your karma has to be to metamoderate). With metamoderation you moderate the moderators; you are given ten random comments and rate one of the comment's mods as "fair" or "unfar" (if was originally modded "funny" the metamoderation is "funny" or "unfunny"). If you're metamoderated down, you don't get any more mod points.
Not my CIA and FBI, I'm British. :p
Ah, yes, Mr. Bond, we know about MI5's friends across the pond.
I'm a bit duck-footed, and about anybody can recognize who I am before they're close enough to see my face. I'd probably have trouble fooling a human; if I held up a liquor store or a bank, a mask wouldn't help.
But a computer? Who do these people think they're fooling? Computers are brain-dead simple to fool about anything whatever.
As to resolution, well, this comes from my memory of a a newspaper article so take it with a grain of salt, but when Hubble was launched it was reported that if you put in in St Louis you could read the date on a dime in De Moines if it was focused properly. If they can aim Hubble up, they could aim another one down. Does anyboy have verification/rebuttal to this? I'm curious; as I said, I read it in the paper and they;re bad about getting science and technology wrong.
Yes, thank you for helping me think more clearly. Your sentence was much more clear than mine!
There is a long history in science fiction for robotic girlfriends.
Isaac Asimov's Robots of Dawn comes to mind, where the woman falls in love with a humaniform robot. An early STNG episode had Data having sex with Tasha Yar.
The sex industry would love to have a remote controlled sex doll/robot
I'd like one that wasn't remote controlled, but rather one that I could program to act in any way I wanted it to. If a woman wants sex with me, why would I want a robot involved? Unless, of course, I had a spouse on the other side of the continent (but I wouldn't have a long distance relationship).
So how is the GP offtopic?
My whole post was a joke; note that I linked the word "redundant" to the GP? And linked uncyclopedia of all places?
Heaven's Gate too nine years from script to premier and cost 200,000 per day. Yet by every account (I have never seen the movie) it sucked and sucked hard.
Star Wreck, otoh, was funny as hell.
You could control a robot playing tennis remotely! Oh wait.. What if the network lags.
The same thing that happened ten years ago when we were playing Quake over the internet. Except, of course, bots will be LEGAL. Look at the lag the Martian robots have, and they work incredibly well.
Ever since Pac man came out there is a robotic room I wanted to build. I wanted to make a 3D pack man game you actually got inside of. I even drew up plans once.
You would have LCD screens (my original vision had projectors; it was before LCD screens) on moveable, motorized walls and floors, each wall about the size of a standard door. A human would be physically inside the maze. The "ghosts" would be other humans outside the maze using terminals, to them the game would be much like a normal 1979 Pac Man.
Alas, it would take tons of money and I have only grams of it. But the idea would be a lot easier and cheaper with today's technology than when I first thought of it.
Only at slashdot would the first post be modded "redundant". Mods, please consult a dictionary, there are several on the internet. That was offtopic, not redundant.
As this comment will now directly address the parent, it is not offtopic. Mod it -1, lame.
Dude, robots are going to have to come a long, long way before... oops, bad choice of words.
Robots are going to have to, erm, get a lot more high tech before they'll satisfy. But at any rate, girlfriends go for twenty bucks here in Springfield. See A Nerd's Guide to Getting Laid. Unfortunately, there's nothing in that journal about robotics or the internet, although it does mention porn.
What was I talking about again?
No, they're not your overlords. You control them. Except for one part of the world --
In Soviet Russia, robots control YOU!
Science fiction writers have been saying this for decades. Actually, I think the esteemed Vincent Cerf has been talking to Captain Obvious.
Robotics will have to both become far less expensive, and far more developed than now before this happens. I'm already 56, I may not see it.
The poor people who do drugs are poor because of the drugs. I see a lot of them at Farley's here in Springfield (the hippie bar next door to the gay bar). I used to go there a lot when the beer was cheap, I seldom do any more since they raised the price of draft so it's the same as everyone else. As I'm thin, the gays next door sometimes think I'm gay and hit on me and I don't care for that at all.
Here are excerpts from two of my older journals about drug addicts and how they get their money. The second one is more germaine.
(From Ask Slashdot: Women Tuesday December 05 2006
From The Crackwhore and the Nerd Friday December 21 2007
Congressmen are probably cheaper than cocaine!
It depends on the union. I was in the Teamsters when I worked at Disney in the early eighties, and they were in bed with management. They were a waste of money. The union I'm in now is completely different. With the Teamsters I felt my dues were wasted, with my union now I'm sure if it weren't for them I'd make less money and have no benefits.
Obviously they think that nobody has any critical thinking skills. Gah!
Sadly, I'm afraid they're right.
What's sad is, just a couple of decades ago their stuff was top quality. Back when the walkman first came out you couldn't hurt the damned things.
...downgrade to standard definition retinas and just stick with DVD.
Damn the luck! And here I just had retina surgery a couple of months ago and a new high tech focusing lens implant a couple of years ago!
You guys and your hi-def monitors and blu-ray disks, being a cyborg is where it's at!
(caution: links may not be sfw)
Ok, everybody just stop buying now; wait for five years to see the new technology and then pay a premium to be the first.
I just bought an analog, 42 inch flat screen CRT less than five years ago. I have no reason whatever to buy Blu-Ray, as with my analog TV Blu-Ray won't look any different but the disks and players are damned expensive (I need a new DVD player, mine's worn out. $30 at Wal Mart, how much is Blu-Ray again?). I don't see buying a new TV any time soon, so I guess I'm lucky, I'll transition from DVD to whatever superceds blu-ray.
Hey, this is the entertainment industry we're talking about. You know, the same people who think that workable DRM isn't a pipe dream?
You know why Hollywood movies cost millions upon millions of dollars to make while Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning cost a few grand? Why RIAA CDs cost $20-$30 while indie CDs cost $5-$10? It's because cocaine is damned expensive, makes you greedy and sociopathic, gives you a sense of entitlemant, makes you stupid, and makes you think it makes you smart.
The ones in cartoons do. I live in Springfield, a butterfly flipped me the bird yesterday! Of course, I'd been drinking a little...