What amazes me to this day is that a less hi-tech approach would be to plant a frigging tree.
Given that they seemed most interested in using this glass on skyscrapers, those would need be some mighty tall trees! That, and I don't think I'd want to hang a smaller tree in front of my car either.:)
Ten years later, every desktop computer in the world offered similar features; but in 1984, they were only on the Mac.
Then my Amiga, and the GeOS package running on my C64 were figments of my imagination? Or was the author of that article still in the alternate universe?
Communication and information are NEVER detrimental to doing a good job
Correction: Accurate and Trustworthy information is what is not detrimental, and given that the information is on the public Internet it cannot be assumed to be either. Think of the havoc you could cause if you quietly hacked their database and made subtle changes to random bits of medical 'information'.
You might as well stay home - your doctor looks up information online.
Looking stuff up online is a fairly recent practice. Has it saved lives, or encouraged a lazy attitude towards diagnosis? I guess time will tell. Before that, they got by, and at the same time didn't have to worry about the issues raised by this article. Just because something has a big "PROGRESS" label on it, doesn't mean it's a good thing for anyone.
You want a doctor that never reads medical journals, consults with colleagues, participates in research studies,...?
I certainly never said that. What I implied is that there's a lot of fluffly information on the internet, and if my doctor is relying on that as a resource then I'm not sure I'm in good hands. The Internet is to informational skill, as a calculator is to mathematical skill. Both encourage laziness. Why remember something and *learn* it when you know you can just go look it up on the 'net and then forget it again because it will still be there next time? Isn't that kind of risky? What if my doctor, all unprepared as he is, goes to get his WebMD fix for my case, only to find that there's yet another attack against the root DNS servers or something like that?
"Uh sorry Mr. Jones, I can't decide what medication to use on you because the internet is down."
They have these things called CDs that hold lots of information on them, and they don't need to be plugged into the net 24/7 to be used.
One solution would be to totally cut off the hospital from the internet, but that wouldn't be very practical and would piss off a lot of doctors to boot!
Seems to be the only solution that makes sense though. Fuck the doctors, they can surf pr0n at home! Seriously, why does the whole hospital network need to be left attached to the public Internet? Have a few stand-alone surf-stations available in the building so they can go look up stuff they need to. Though really, if my doctor *has* to go check something on the internet before he can figure out what to do with me, I'll just stay home, thanks. And if that's not what he needs the net for, he can do that shit at home.
Surprised to see Amazon influencing the content of their reviews pages.
I don't think there's any evil being done by Amazon here, those reviews were not about the book, but rather the publisher, and hence, off-topic. The point of a book review is to inform the potential reader of what they may find for themselves in the pages. Political opinions surrounding anything not IN the book are not relevant, and just lower the signal-to-noise ratio in the review section.
You can reasonably allege that IMs are ruining kids' spelling, but not that they are ruining their typing skills.
If anything, IM-ing is probably doing more for their typing accuracy.. You can misspell a real word and the other person will still likely understand what you mean, but if you're doing all that chatspeak crap, typos can throw meanings all out of whack. Plus you have to know where all the keys are to be able to make all those stupid cutesy emoticons.
Yep, I'm in the same ballpark, and for me it also came as a result of just doing lots and lots of typing. Back in my C64 days I did a lot of programming, and one day I noticed that I wasn't looking down anymore. It just sort of formed on its own. Real handy when I got into MUDding years later, before there were well-known MUD-clients and you had to use raw telnet: type fast or die a lot. Stress is a good motivator for developing speed also.:)
If someone has a good reason for me to learn I'm all ears.
The only people to have ever commented on my lightning-fast typing have been female, and most of them pretty cute. It seems to impress them that a guy (non-secretary, I think that is their reasoning) would type that fast. Does that work for you?
Back when I got on the net in 1990, I was addicted to MUDs. I'd been phreaking before finding the internet, and it was kind of a relief to be able to go around the world without it being illegal at the same time. About a month went by, and I was firmly addicted. But then some guys abused the little-known gateway we were using and it got locked down. I felt I had no choice, went back to scanning other networks for outdials in other cities where I would eventually find another open gateway (MIT) and from that point forward about a year I was using the net and phreaking at the same time, but I didn't care anymore, I had my 16 hour days on the net back.
Nowadays I don't care quite as much, but it's still like part of my body or something.
You could take a genunine email and alter the URL and you'd never know you'd been duped if you went by the examples in this test
Viewed through a web browser though, as you hover over that URL, the status bar in either Firefox or IE will show where it really wants to go. One of the fraud messages had that, the visible link to click looked genuine, but the target was actually somewhere else, clearly seen in the status bar.
I like Asimov's take on it better. "The dinosaurs are extinct because they didn't have a space program."
Yes, exactly! We need to get to the point where the whole lot of us can just get the hell out of Dodge with just a few years notice of a major impact that we can't deal with. We need to get out of this galaxy too, I read somewhere that in about 3 billion years another galaxy is going to plow into us. Sure I'll be long dead by then but I care anyhow, if humanity is to survive as long as possible we need to master space.
Anyone got a phone number for NASA? I think I want to leave the planet...
You just need an electronic thumb. I'd lend you mine but I might be using it soon...
But yeah, this should be amusing, since people like to bash movies based on the books that came before them. In this case it's a bit different, as the radio plays were actually first, and the books came after. Many are likely to forget that in this massively cross-media story, very little can be taken as canon.
As long as the dialogue style fits properly, I'll be happy. I'm more keen on the continued radio series than the movie anyhow.. Nice to see they've got a lot of the original cast in it.
I read slashdot from somewhere in the deep black pit of my crushed soul. No idea how far it is to the surface but it's several thousand miles at least.
That's something that bothers me though.. Someone in love goes through some incredibly wonderful highs, that are analogous to drug addiction and/or mental illness. But it's GREAT! Would someone immunized against a coke/heroin high grow up with a sort of 'yeah whatever' attitude towards love? And if they figure out that's why all their relationships have fallen apart after a couple weeks, will they be able to sue the government for basically wrecking their life?
I had a demo tape sent to me years ago promoting a new 3D sound technology, that was really quite amazing and I haven't seen it implemented anywhere. At the time, I think they were negotiating with the makers of Jurassic Park to use their sound technology, but I don't know if it happened or not. This demo tape was amazing though.. A guy talks to you from various points and distances, then suddenly right behind you whispering into your ear (freaked my buddy out when I showed him, he whipped the headphones off and jumped up), and some other neat things like putting a rustling paper bag over your head, music (really sounded cool), and nature sounds.
In a bunch of cities in Canada, they have a bunch of "If this light is blinking, prepare to stop" lights. Tends to help the traffic flow and mood of the drivers quite a bit.
Those often work fairly well, and some spots even show an estimate of what speed you should maintain to make the green light up ahead around the corner.
Something cool I saw a long time ago, when I was a kid visiting another city, was a main drag that spanned the whole city, with many intersections along it. You could make every single light if you stayed at a certain speed while on this strip. I wish we had something like that here, it seemed to work very well there.
The last thing the IT user says is really condescending. This is exactly what the article talks about.
True, it's condescending.. But dammit, that luser brought it on themselves! I mean, an error message pops up, they don't read it, and hit cancel. Then come bitching to you that it doesn't work. You ask them if the program says anything as it's in the course of not-working, and they say yes, but even though they've seen that error dialog several times now, they didn't read it. Not once. Like it's written in sanskrit or something. WTF???
Couple that with the people who have something that pops up EVERY time they start their computer, it annoys them, and they just wish it would go away. You go over and check the box marked "Do not show this again", trying not to glare at them as you do so. If someone is going to refuse to read the things their interface is trying to tell them, helping them with their machine is much more like babysitting than anything else, with the age-maturity deficiency fully implied.
Only one thing worse than punctuation/spelling flames, and that is punctuation/spelling flames that have either bad spelling or punctuation in them.
Please stop this madness people!! It's the lamest activity on the internet! Those who miss a proper punctuation mark, or don't know how to spell something, are NOT GOING TO LEARN IT FROM YOU, so just give up. Please, for the love of (insert deity), give up!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
What amazes me to this day is that a less hi-tech approach would be to plant a frigging tree.
:)
Given that they seemed most interested in using this glass on skyscrapers, those would need be some mighty tall trees! That, and I don't think I'd want to hang a smaller tree in front of my car either.
Well close enough. Raving about a machine that was '10 years ahead of everyone else' for only a year?
From the article:
Ten years later, every desktop computer in the world offered similar features; but in 1984, they were only on the Mac.
Then my Amiga, and the GeOS package running on my C64 were figments of my imagination? Or was the author of that article still in the alternate universe?
Communication and information are NEVER detrimental to doing a good job
Correction: Accurate and Trustworthy information is what is not detrimental, and given that the information is on the public Internet it cannot be assumed to be either. Think of the havoc you could cause if you quietly hacked their database and made subtle changes to random bits of medical 'information'.
Are you seriously arguing that a doctor who slept through lectures is qualified?
You might as well stay home - your doctor looks up information online.
Looking stuff up online is a fairly recent practice. Has it saved lives, or encouraged a lazy attitude towards diagnosis? I guess time will tell. Before that, they got by, and at the same time didn't have to worry about the issues raised by this article. Just because something has a big "PROGRESS" label on it, doesn't mean it's a good thing for anyone.
You want a doctor that never reads medical journals, consults with colleagues, participates in research studies,...?
I certainly never said that. What I implied is that there's a lot of fluffly information on the internet, and if my doctor is relying on that as a resource then I'm not sure I'm in good hands.
The Internet is to informational skill, as a calculator is to mathematical skill. Both encourage laziness. Why remember something and *learn* it when you know you can just go look it up on the 'net and then forget it again because it will still be there next time? Isn't that kind of risky? What if my doctor, all unprepared as he is, goes to get his WebMD fix for my case, only to find that there's yet another attack against the root DNS servers or something like that?
"Uh sorry Mr. Jones, I can't decide what medication to use on you because the internet is down."
They have these things called CDs that hold lots of information on them, and they don't need to be plugged into the net 24/7 to be used.
One solution would be to totally cut off the hospital from the internet, but that wouldn't be very practical and would piss off a lot of doctors to boot!
Seems to be the only solution that makes sense though. Fuck the doctors, they can surf pr0n at home! Seriously, why does the whole hospital network need to be left attached to the public Internet? Have a few stand-alone surf-stations available in the building so they can go look up stuff they need to. Though really, if my doctor *has* to go check something on the internet before he can figure out what to do with me, I'll just stay home, thanks. And if that's not what he needs the net for, he can do that shit at home.
Surprised to see Amazon influencing the content of their reviews pages.
I don't think there's any evil being done by Amazon here, those reviews were not about the book, but rather the publisher, and hence, off-topic. The point of a book review is to inform the potential reader of what they may find for themselves in the pages. Political opinions surrounding anything not IN the book are not relevant, and just lower the signal-to-noise ratio in the review section.
You can reasonably allege that IMs are ruining kids' spelling, but not that they are ruining their typing skills.
If anything, IM-ing is probably doing more for their typing accuracy.. You can misspell a real word and the other person will still likely understand what you mean, but if you're doing all that chatspeak crap, typos can throw meanings all out of whack. Plus you have to know where all the keys are to be able to make all those stupid cutesy emoticons.
Yep, I'm in the same ballpark, and for me it also came as a result of just doing lots and lots of typing. Back in my C64 days I did a lot of programming, and one day I noticed that I wasn't looking down anymore. It just sort of formed on its own. Real handy when I got into MUDding years later, before there were well-known MUD-clients and you had to use raw telnet: type fast or die a lot. Stress is a good motivator for developing speed also. :)
If someone has a good reason for me to learn I'm all ears.
The only people to have ever commented on my lightning-fast typing have been female, and most of them pretty cute. It seems to impress them that a guy (non-secretary, I think that is their reasoning) would type that fast. Does that work for you?
Back when I got on the net in 1990, I was addicted to MUDs. I'd been phreaking before finding the internet, and it was kind of a relief to be able to go around the world without it being illegal at the same time. About a month went by, and I was firmly addicted. But then some guys abused the little-known gateway we were using and it got locked down. I felt I had no choice, went back to scanning other networks for outdials in other cities where I would eventually find another open gateway (MIT) and from that point forward about a year I was using the net and phreaking at the same time, but I didn't care anymore, I had my 16 hour days on the net back.
Nowadays I don't care quite as much, but it's still like part of my body or something.
You could take a genunine email and alter the URL and you'd never know you'd been duped if you went by the examples in this test
Viewed through a web browser though, as you hover over that URL, the status bar in either Firefox or IE will show where it really wants to go. One of the fraud messages had that, the visible link to click looked genuine, but the target was actually somewhere else, clearly seen in the status bar.
I like Asimov's take on it better. "The dinosaurs are extinct because they didn't have a space program."
Yes, exactly! We need to get to the point where the whole lot of us can just get the hell out of Dodge with just a few years notice of a major impact that we can't deal with. We need to get out of this galaxy too, I read somewhere that in about 3 billion years another galaxy is going to plow into us. Sure I'll be long dead by then but I care anyhow, if humanity is to survive as long as possible we need to master space.
Anyone got a phone number for NASA? I think I want to leave the planet...
You just need an electronic thumb. I'd lend you mine but I might be using it soon...
But yeah, this should be amusing, since people like to bash movies based on the books that came before them. In this case it's a bit different, as the radio plays were actually first, and the books came after. Many are likely to forget that in this massively cross-media story, very little can be taken as canon.
As long as the dialogue style fits properly, I'll be happy. I'm more keen on the continued radio series than the movie anyhow.. Nice to see they've got a lot of the original cast in it.
The limit as stated on the quota page is 1000MB, not 1GB. That's why he's at 102%.
I read slashdot from somewhere in the deep black pit of my crushed soul. No idea how far it is to the surface but it's several thousand miles at least.
I want a hands-free car-to-car phone, addressable by license plate.
'Car! Call WJF-390, Alberta Canada'
*ring*
"Hello?"
'Hey asshole, drive much???'
That's something that bothers me though.. Someone in love goes through some incredibly wonderful highs, that are analogous to drug addiction and/or mental illness. But it's GREAT! Would someone immunized against a coke/heroin high grow up with a sort of 'yeah whatever' attitude towards love? And if they figure out that's why all their relationships have fallen apart after a couple weeks, will they be able to sue the government for basically wrecking their life?
I had a demo tape sent to me years ago promoting a new 3D sound technology, that was really quite amazing and I haven't seen it implemented anywhere. At the time, I think they were negotiating with the makers of Jurassic Park to use their sound technology, but I don't know if it happened or not. This demo tape was amazing though.. A guy talks to you from various points and distances, then suddenly right behind you whispering into your ear (freaked my buddy out when I showed him, he whipped the headphones off and jumped up), and some other neat things like putting a rustling paper bag over your head, music (really sounded cool), and nature sounds.
In a bunch of cities in Canada, they have a bunch of "If this light is blinking, prepare to stop" lights. Tends to help the traffic flow and mood of the drivers quite a bit.
Those often work fairly well, and some spots even show an estimate of what speed you should maintain to make the green light up ahead around the corner.
Something cool I saw a long time ago, when I was a kid visiting another city, was a main drag that spanned the whole city, with many intersections along it. You could make every single light if you stayed at a certain speed while on this strip. I wish we had something like that here, it seemed to work very well there.
The last thing the IT user says is really condescending. This is exactly what the article talks about.
True, it's condescending.. But dammit, that luser brought it on themselves! I mean, an error message pops up, they don't read it, and hit cancel. Then come bitching to you that it doesn't work. You ask them if the program says anything as it's in the course of not-working, and they say yes, but even though they've seen that error dialog several times now, they didn't read it. Not once. Like it's written in sanskrit or something. WTF???
Couple that with the people who have something that pops up EVERY time they start their computer, it annoys them, and they just wish it would go away. You go over and check the box marked "Do not show this again", trying not to glare at them as you do so. If someone is going to refuse to read the things their interface is trying to tell them, helping them with their machine is much more like babysitting than anything else, with the age-maturity deficiency fully implied.
Only one thing worse than punctuation/spelling flames, and that is punctuation/spelling flames that have either bad spelling or punctuation in them.
Please stop this madness people!! It's the lamest activity on the internet! Those who miss a proper punctuation mark, or don't know how to spell something, are NOT GOING TO LEARN IT FROM YOU, so just give up. Please, for the love of (insert deity), give up!!!!
...and intelligence must exist external to earth.
;)
I think I can guarantee that. *If* there is intelligent life in the universe, it is most certainly external to Earth.