I was somewhere between 12 and 14 in the situation I described. I managed to obscure my "DORK" image by growing an afro (I'm white, and my school was almost devoid of blacks, the few who were there didn't have fr0s) and smoking pot, at which points I was known as freak and then pothead.
I guess the lesson, for any young students reading this, is that what I did was slightly less ineffective than what dragonweezel did -- I got beat up by the bully on my own terms: In a relatively safe place (school) where he was sure to get in trouble (as was I).
Even more effective is to learn to fight, and (important!) get the confidence to execute your learned skills (don't kick your loose shoe off; kick some ass).
Better still, learn to avoid fights -- there's usually a way to walk away if you can keep cool and think logically. Before you get to that point, though, you can often defuse it way ahead of time -- the bully builds up to wanting to beat on you. Sometimes that's difficult, though, if he's chosen you as his target and persists despite your brush-offs/smartass replies.
Most effective is to avoid all of it altogether -- be cool by laughing at yourself (bully says "Your sister's a whore", you say "If you want an appointment with her, I'll need a $20 downpayment"), admitting to the stupid or weird things you do and laughing at them (bully says "That answer you gave the teacher was retarded", you say "Yeah...I rode in on the short bus today"), come up with a distraction (my fr0), get in with some crowd* that doesn't get picked on, etc.
*: Not the stoner crowd like I did, though; that wasted a lot of my money and got me in some trouble. Then again, maybe in this day and age, computer geeks get some respect. Anybody care to report the status of computer geeks respect in high school?
Pardon my grammar naziesque intrusion, but...sometimes funky grammar is merely a minor annoyance, and other times, it has quite an effect on readability.
For example, when I read "could suck money out of an Enron Execs. hand!", I thought you meant that they could suck money out of Enron executives, and just had a gratuitous "an" shoved in there (or accidentally pluralized "Exec"); and I couldn't understand the seemingly misplaced exclamation "hand!" So, I read it as follows:
"...could suck money out of an Enron executive.
Hand!"
This thoroughly confused me. It took me way too long to determine that you were attempting to properly abbreviate the word "executive" while also making it posessive. While probably not more gramatically correct, a clearer way to write it would be:
"...could suck money out of an Enron exec's hand!"
Now, if I thought it took a long time to figure out what you meant, imagine how much time I've wasted writing this!
ObSymantec: I try to discourage people from using Symantec products. In my ~14 years experience with their stuff, I've found that their antivirus is expensive, slows the computer down way too much, and is no more effective than any other; and I've also found that their other utilities tend to be mostly snake oil. It wasn't always that way -- DOS and even Windows 3.1 versions of Norton Utilities were actually useful _and_ unique. Since the program that gazillions of folks use to secure their machine is opening holes, maybe it's time for everybody to move on.
Just recently, I was considering that I could probably do something cool with discarded satellite dishes on three houses, internet-linked to one computer. My house, my parents' house, and my best friend's house form an almost equilateral triangle, roughly 20 miles on each of two sides and 24 miles on the third. I wonder what could be done with that idea...
I suspect that ultra-deep ocean life here still depends on light indirectly. For example, there's probably something light-dependent in their food chain. Maybe a deep dark octoplatyfungusapus eats deep dark selopodonkens, which feed on sunken plankton or which rise to feed on less deep fish who, in turn, feed on holy mackerel...
That's not to say that light-free life couldn't evolve independently, ultimately getting it's energy geothermally. Aren't there bacteria that have been found sustaining on geothermal energy? I vaguely recall something about them either being found in hot springs or ocean-bottom geothermal vents.
He threatened me constantly, and kept insisting to fight me.
If he did it on school grounds, that would definitely be within the school's jurisdiction to stop.
We finally met at a local park where he proceeded to kick the shit out of me.
I can't imagine a reason why that should be punished by the school. That's a police matter. Also a stupidity matter -- bully threatens you and requests your presence at his chosen location for your own ass-kicking, and you show up? Unarmed? You were forewarned, why weren't you forearmed?
In school, I was always a geek (before it was cool), and sometimes a victim, but I never allowed myself to end up in such a dire situation. I had one bully who threatened me, and requested the same sort of off-site meeting for my beating. I refused to have anything to do with it. I didn't want to play his game. I insisted that if he wants to fight me, he's going to have to do it at school.
We fought twice. Actually, I took a minor beating twice; although the second time, I managed to throw my shoe at him in an attempt to kick him (the shoe was loose, my kick was useless).
Either way, it happened in an environment where I knew I wouldn't get beaten too severely before somebody stepped in, and where I knew the bully would get punished. I got punished too, but I was always happy to get suspended; to me, it was just an unexpected day off from school, which was the last place I ever wanted to be.
AC is right. The police would be the proper authority to protect you; also, it should be in the bowling alley's interest to disallow such activity at their establishment.
That said, I would have found a way to defend myself. For example, did you consider applying a bowling ball to the bully's head? He'd never bother you again, except possibly to drool on you from his wheelchair...
I seen kids stumped by older versions of windows because they only know XP and lack any kind of skill in just being able to figure things out.
For the record, that phenomenon is ageless. A long time ago, I only observed it in older folks, probably because people my age who used computers were hobbyists. These days, since everybody uses computers for widely varying purposes, I observe it in young and old alike. I was surprised when I first started observing it in young people...
You make the example of Montana (which is not so much of a hunter-gatherer society, but whatever).
Hunting is not wrong just because it's not necessary for the sustenance of society.
Following your argument, we may legalize pretty much anything: cocaine makes politicians and CEOs work better, crack can be used responsibly, acetyc anhydride is useful for a lot of chemical reactions (also production of heroine, that's why you have to fill a ton of paperwork to buy/move/use it),
I, personally, am not so against the legalization of such drugs. It's not my business what people do with their own bodies.
and whatever dangerous stuff that has some sort of far-fetched legal use (nukes have been used in civil engineering).
Sure, if nukes can be used safely in civil engineering and have no reasonable substitute, then I'm all for a controlled-access model. However, I don't have faith that they can be used and secured safely enough. Also, they would cause huge destruction when wielded ineptly or maliciously. Meanwhile, other options seem to work well enough that nukes aren't necessary.
Let's bring it down to street level. Real life. Actual people doing actual constructive work with tools that are commonly used by criminals in order to perpetrate crime. Here's a better analogy than I've seen in this discussion: crowbars. If you don't know what a crowbar is (I'm not sure that "crowbar" is the globally accepted word for it; I'd be interested in the etymology), it's a steel pry bar that's generally two to three feet (or 2/3 to 1 meter) in length. It is used daily by demolition and construction professionals. It is also used daily by criminals breaking into locked houses. It makes quick work of most wood-framed doors. Perl, nmap, nessus, and such, are all used similarly -- they are the bread and butter of the professional, as well as the criminal.
he demonstrated the features of EMACS to an audience that could only be described as disguested.
The audience had their guests removed?
If you absolutely must troll, at least don't pawn off rejected words on me...use only brand new, first quality, properly packaged words bought from a reputable retailer.
In theory, I agree with what you've said. However, in practice...well, do you have a verifiable report of somebody buying something from a spammer? How about even an unverifiable one? Did you're aunt's friend's roommate's cousin's pen pal overhear a bus conversation about a news story of somebody who has actually attempted to buy something as a result of a piece of spam that has a subject of "mike, lizards in asf7ghh house bone" and a body that says "buy v1kagra w1th0ut a pr3scr1pt10n as4asrf7a"?
Somewhere in this discussion, somebody mentioned phishing -- but that's an entirely different problem with mostly different solutions, although there is some overlap (I suspect that Blue Security's strategy would be effective if most users were able to identify phishing).
Don't feel sorry for the people who get scammed for thousands, because they are the reason our inboxes are all full.
You mean like 409 scams? That's a different problem too...
A methane gas-fired electric plant sited at the landfill recovers the methane gas. Some of the electricity produced powers the electricity plant, and the rest is sold back to New England Power Company, where it is directed to the general grid for consumer use.
In fact, they used to have these _huge_ barrels (or were they the ends of enormous pipes) sticking out of the mountain, with huge methane fires blasting out of them at all times. It was a really cool sight to see.
Egads, man! That article says that your walking catfish came from Thailand...same place that had the gigantic 620lb catfish (about which I posted in a different thread above, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183243&cid=151 37820 )
Agreed. This is especially the case for those of us who are musically challenged. At the age of maybe 14, I took an interest in learning to play the guitar. I started just trying to learn from books and online. Then, I began taking lessons. By the age of 22, I gave up. I could play a few major and minor chords decently, a few licks from some songs (never, however, a whole song).
Somewhere in there, I tried learning bass. I figured that it appears to have simplicity and fault tolerance. No better.
End result? I'm musically challenged. I don't think I have a tin ear; I can hear even slight differences in tone, and sometimes think I know when somebody's instrument is out of tune. However, I can't play a note that I heard; I can (through trial and error) play a note I'm currently hearing, at best. I am only capable of playing an instrument mechanically -- finger this fret, pluck this string; I can't play by sound.
Practical upshot for others: If you start trying to learn, and find that you can only play mechanically, learn _sound_ before you learn an instrument. I imagine that singing lessons would be the best way to do this, but I no longer have the time and the motivation. ObSoftware: Maybe there's software that teaches singing (through a microphone)?
Now, I have a small collection of guitars -- a good one that I love (Vantage 12 string acoustic; sounds good even when played by me), a few that I couldn't make any useful amount of money selling, and one Fender Squire P-Bass. I keep them all around and visible hoping that one day they will motivate me...after all, I'm a geek and love toys, especially when I can do stuff with them electronically (and nowadays I could filter a signal through the computer to get for free all those effects I couldn't afford when I was 18).
Of course, last October I severed the end of the middle finger on my left hand and, while it was reattached successfully, I can not fret a string with it (too numb for accuracy, to painful to give the string enough pressure).
Slashdot Mirror
I was somewhere between 12 and 14 in the situation I described. I managed to obscure my "DORK" image by growing an afro (I'm white, and my school was almost devoid of blacks, the few who were there didn't have fr0s) and smoking pot, at which points I was known as freak and then pothead.
I guess the lesson, for any young students reading this, is that what I did was slightly less ineffective than what dragonweezel did -- I got beat up by the bully on my own terms: In a relatively safe place (school) where he was sure to get in trouble (as was I).
Even more effective is to learn to fight, and (important!) get the confidence to execute your learned skills (don't kick your loose shoe off; kick some ass).
Better still, learn to avoid fights -- there's usually a way to walk away if you can keep cool and think logically. Before you get to that point, though, you can often defuse it way ahead of time -- the bully builds up to wanting to beat on you. Sometimes that's difficult, though, if he's chosen you as his target and persists despite your brush-offs/smartass replies.
Most effective is to avoid all of it altogether -- be cool by laughing at yourself (bully says "Your sister's a whore", you say "If you want an appointment with her, I'll need a $20 downpayment"), admitting to the stupid or weird things you do and laughing at them (bully says "That answer you gave the teacher was retarded", you say "Yeah...I rode in on the short bus today"), come up with a distraction (my fr0), get in with some crowd* that doesn't get picked on, etc.
*: Not the stoner crowd like I did, though; that wasted a lot of my money and got me in some trouble. Then again, maybe in this day and age, computer geeks get some respect. Anybody care to report the status of computer geeks respect in high school?
Time to update it again. From now on, "Hand!" means "I participated in a silly thread on Slashdot about Symantec and not-quite-grammar."
Hand!
For example, when I read "could suck money out of an Enron Execs. hand!", I thought you meant that they could suck money out of Enron executives, and just had a gratuitous "an" shoved in there (or accidentally pluralized "Exec"); and I couldn't understand the seemingly misplaced exclamation "hand!" So, I read it as follows:
This thoroughly confused me. It took me way too long to determine that you were attempting to properly abbreviate the word "executive" while also making it posessive. While probably not more gramatically correct, a clearer way to write it would be:
Now, if I thought it took a long time to figure out what you meant, imagine how much time I've wasted writing this!
ObSymantec: I try to discourage people from using Symantec products. In my ~14 years experience with their stuff, I've found that their antivirus is expensive, slows the computer down way too much, and is no more effective than any other; and I've also found that their other utilities tend to be mostly snake oil. It wasn't always that way -- DOS and even Windows 3.1 versions of Norton Utilities were actually useful _and_ unique. Since the program that gazillions of folks use to secure their machine is opening holes, maybe it's time for everybody to move on.
Oh yeah, and...
Hand!
Just recently, I was considering that I could probably do something cool with discarded satellite dishes on three houses, internet-linked to one computer. My house, my parents' house, and my best friend's house form an almost equilateral triangle, roughly 20 miles on each of two sides and 24 miles on the third. I wonder what could be done with that idea...
I suspect that ultra-deep ocean life here still depends on light indirectly. For example, there's probably something light-dependent in their food chain. Maybe a deep dark octoplatyfungusapus eats deep dark selopodonkens, which feed on sunken plankton or which rise to feed on less deep fish who, in turn, feed on holy mackerel...
That's not to say that light-free life couldn't evolve independently, ultimately getting it's energy geothermally. Aren't there bacteria that have been found sustaining on geothermal energy? I vaguely recall something about them either being found in hot springs or ocean-bottom geothermal vents.
In school, I was always a geek (before it was cool), and sometimes a victim, but I never allowed myself to end up in such a dire situation. I had one bully who threatened me, and requested the same sort of off-site meeting for my beating. I refused to have anything to do with it. I didn't want to play his game. I insisted that if he wants to fight me, he's going to have to do it at school.
We fought twice. Actually, I took a minor beating twice; although the second time, I managed to throw my shoe at him in an attempt to kick him (the shoe was loose, my kick was useless).
Either way, it happened in an environment where I knew I wouldn't get beaten too severely before somebody stepped in, and where I knew the bully would get punished. I got punished too, but I was always happy to get suspended; to me, it was just an unexpected day off from school, which was the last place I ever wanted to be.
AC is right. The police would be the proper authority to protect you; also, it should be in the bowling alley's interest to disallow such activity at their establishment.
That said, I would have found a way to defend myself. For example, did you consider applying a bowling ball to the bully's head? He'd never bother you again, except possibly to drool on you from his wheelchair...
Let's bring it down to street level. Real life. Actual people doing actual constructive work with tools that are commonly used by criminals in order to perpetrate crime. Here's a better analogy than I've seen in this discussion: crowbars. If you don't know what a crowbar is (I'm not sure that "crowbar" is the globally accepted word for it; I'd be interested in the etymology), it's a steel pry bar that's generally two to three feet (or 2/3 to 1 meter) in length. It is used daily by demolition and construction professionals. It is also used daily by criminals breaking into locked houses. It makes quick work of most wood-framed doors. Perl, nmap, nessus, and such, are all used similarly -- they are the bread and butter of the professional, as well as the criminal.
Community-based word development is fine, but I think that wasn't open source. Give me source or give me death!!
Er, wait, let me amend that quote. Those who would give up source for properation* deserve neither.
No, that feels wrong too. We the geeks of Slashdot, in order to form a more perfect verbiage...no...um...aw, to hell with it.
*: Source for that word -- operation (when something works as expected) + proper (not incorrect).
If you absolutely must troll, at least don't pawn off rejected words on me...use only brand new, first quality, properly packaged words bought from a reputable retailer.
Somewhere in this discussion, somebody mentioned phishing -- but that's an entirely different problem with mostly different solutions, although there is some overlap (I suspect that Blue Security's strategy would be effective if most users were able to identify phishing).You mean like 409 scams? That's a different problem too...
Well, he'd probably have to enter the plane through the exhaust orifice...
Despite being funny, it's quite a valid point.
Mod parent and GP up for links to freaky giant catfish that breathes, walks on land, and EATS PET DOGS!!!!
Egads, man! That article says that your walking catfish came from Thailand...same place that had the gigantic 620lb catfish (about which I posted in a different thread above, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183243&cid=151 37820 )
Reminds me of the Snakehead ( http://www.biodiversitypartners.org/state/fl/snake head.shtml ), a fish that can breathe air, survive out of water for up to a week, crawl to other bodies of water, and can grow to be some five feet long.
What, you mean one like http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/0 1/0628214 ??
Agreed. This is especially the case for those of us who are musically challenged. At the age of maybe 14, I took an interest in learning to play the guitar. I started just trying to learn from books and online. Then, I began taking lessons. By the age of 22, I gave up. I could play a few major and minor chords decently, a few licks from some songs (never, however, a whole song).
Somewhere in there, I tried learning bass. I figured that it appears to have simplicity and fault tolerance. No better.
End result? I'm musically challenged. I don't think I have a tin ear; I can hear even slight differences in tone, and sometimes think I know when somebody's instrument is out of tune. However, I can't play a note that I heard; I can (through trial and error) play a note I'm currently hearing, at best. I am only capable of playing an instrument mechanically -- finger this fret, pluck this string; I can't play by sound.
Practical upshot for others: If you start trying to learn, and find that you can only play mechanically, learn _sound_ before you learn an instrument. I imagine that singing lessons would be the best way to do this, but I no longer have the time and the motivation. ObSoftware: Maybe there's software that teaches singing (through a microphone)?
Now, I have a small collection of guitars -- a good one that I love (Vantage 12 string acoustic; sounds good even when played by me), a few that I couldn't make any useful amount of money selling, and one Fender Squire P-Bass. I keep them all around and visible hoping that one day they will motivate me...after all, I'm a geek and love toys, especially when I can do stuff with them electronically (and nowadays I could filter a signal through the computer to get for free all those effects I couldn't afford when I was 18).
Of course, last October I severed the end of the middle finger on my left hand and, while it was reattached successfully, I can not fret a string with it (too numb for accuracy, to painful to give the string enough pressure).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_cow
No worries...It will get where it's supposed to be sooner or later.