Man, I tell ya. Some people need to lighten up around here. People are now modding down funny comments with the overrated tag. Of course I'm grousing because it happened to me (wasn't my best work, but eh...)
I know you're all raging with teenage hormones, and life isn't fair, and how come she gets a car while I get a computer, and so forth.... Geez....take a break and just enjoy some levity once in a while.
(Blatantly stolen off Boingboing)
Okay, now this is absolute bullshit. It's stuff like this that drives me crazy.
During the pledge of allegiance recital at school, a kid decided to recite the Star Trek Pledge of Allegiance.
Mind you - nothing vulgar nor inappropriate, in fact, the ST PoA is something that quite nicely encapsulates the spirit of humanity.
And what happens? The kid gets suspended and the kid's Mom gets called to school. Not to mention, the kid gets a punishment of having to write the pledge 50 times.
The Mom's got the story in her blog.
"So, anyway. What did he do?" I picked at the hem of my sweatshirt, looked just to the right of her face. I couldn't meet her eyes. I felt nervous. I felt underdressed. I wondered where 8 was.
So she told me what he did. And as she told me, I started to laugh. I didn't laugh a little, either, but I belly-laughed and grabbed my stomach. My son stood with his class this morning, put small right hand over heart, faced the American flag, and recited his own personal pledge of allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species.
"Mrs. Jaworski. This isn't humorous. The Pledge is an extremely important and patriotic moment each morning in the classroom. I am ashamed of your son's behavior, and I hope you are, too."
I'm at a loss for words. I hope that stupid principal and teacher get kicked out - if anything, that kid needs to be applauded for his spirit and creativity.
Damn!
I submitted this a while ago, but no idea if it has been accepted. Anyway, thought I'd preserve it here for posterity!
metlin write "A very crucial step in the procedure of decrypting today's commonly used encryption codes by Quantum Computers has been demonstrated by physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). According to a paper which was published in this month's Science, physicists at NIST were able to demonstrate a quantum version of Fourier Transform using electromagnetically trapped beryllium ions as qubits. This is a big step in Quantum Computing as well as its applications, since the quantum version of FT is the most crucial and final step in Shor's algorithm -- an algorithm for finding the "prime factors" of large numbers -- the prime numbers that when multiplied together produce a given number. Paper abstract available here."
Turns out I've been banned from home. No, it's not DHCP - it's a static IP, and one day I'm able to post and the other day I'm not. No particular reason, either - I had have two of my comments modded down, but then I had been modded up atleast double that many times.
So, I mailed moderation@slashdot.org. And what do I get? A blindingly brilliant and insightful mail from the Einstein reincarnate Robert Rozeboom -
"You have been downmodded too many times and are in timeout for a bit."
Wow! Hey, genius.
Anyway, I mailed him back telling him in extremely precise terms that I can post from elsewhere, just not from my home. Even though I've been modded up, not down, in the recent past.
No response yet. I wonder what else his blindingly awesome intellect is going to conjure up next.
I call you my son not cause you shine boy, but 'cause you are my own. You ain't too bright, boy.
It may just be the mood I'm in tonight, or perhaps that I've had one too many drinks, but I got lost in my thoughts while perusing through my kitchen cabinet, looking for a bite to eat. I found a can of cashews, and without moving the containers, found the hostname, planters.com. My eyes drifted to a box of granulated sugar -- dominosugar.com. I glanced upon an old bottle of wine I had stashed away after a long, good weekend with a great friend of mine, and found kj.com. I looked at a box of cereal -- kelloggs.com. They were even lost in some mid 90's time warp, saying something to the effect of "Look! We're on the Internet!"
It donned on me that we're not on the fringe anymore, in fact, we're not even just an alternate. In some cases, we're the primary communication mechanism. This is a major change in just 10-15 years. There has seldom been a change of this magnitude in brand recognition or customer awareness possibly in the history of marketing. In short, they're on to us.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. After all, my previously superlative knowledge of the Internet and websites is something that allowed me to purchase my house and get financially established. It furthered my drive to learn more about the systems upon which I built these web applications for my employers and for myself and to understand at a low level what makes them tick and what people want and desire of them. It keeps me profitable today. But I'm also quite aware that I'm no longer a uniquity. There are countless kids coming out of high school even who have the skills and knowledge (if not the wisdom) that I have after 13 years of doing this for a living (if sometimes a quasi-living, but nonetheless). But it is simultaneously encouraging.
If this is the new world order, then my childhood passion and my adult decision to pursue this has definitely been the right choice. The concept of ubiquitous computing is something that endears itself to marketing schlock like this. Where ever there is a product, there is likely a need for the information behind that product -- where to find it, how it was made, who likes it. That kind of information greatly lends itself to information technologies, and although I may not be as up to date as the high school technorati, I'm at least aware that I'm on the right track.
But this is not about me. It's about the Internet -- a technology little known to the average person only 10 years ago is now found everywhere. You can't go anywhere, look at anything anymore, without finding a URL or at least a domain name on it. This of course exempts dated materials, like old books, or your dad's tools, or photo's your mom took of you in the 70's (assuming she hasn't scanned them all in and uploaded them to whatever picture-site-of-the-day is popular), but we're a throwaway society as it is, and it's, for lack of a better term, pervasive. I don't mean to say that as either positive or negative, but just that it is what it is. It's there. It's everywhere. It's unavoidable. It's sometimes annoying. It's sometimes disturbing (do I really need to know that Charmin has a website when I'm on the toilet? They seem to think so). The website has replaced the 1-800 number.
And way back, deep within some repressed part of me, it's sad. The answer isn't talking to someone, conversing my an actual person. It's reading a FAQ, or going to techsupport.emptybusiness.com. It's telling us "We can't be bothered with your request, please try to figure it out yourself". The exchange of ideas is there, but the face-to-face is gone. The picking up on facial expressions, and inflections in tone to understand more than words can express. We've evolved (devolved?) into a printed word society. And yet, I'm not immune that world. After all, you're reading this blog. You (and I) are part of the new world.
Mind you, it's not a problem, just....different. The rules aren't broken, but they're bending -- strongly. There's stress fractures on the old way of doing things, but we're coping. It is quite interesting to me when we, those so-called techno-geeks, get together to talk about things, and we are lost for words. But online, we are masters of an expression-rich environment. We express ourselves textually in a way that would make our 10th grade English teachers proud (my apologies to my English 10R prof -- I forget your name).
So what's next? We make do with what we've got, and we realize that we're only at the beginning of the Information Age. We've only begun to tap it's potential. It's both awesome and frightening in the same thought. The scene from "Minority Report" where Tom Cruise's character is being advertised to in the mall comes to mind. "We know who you are, where you are, and what you want. And gratification is but a step (click) away."
Welcome to now.
Gee!
Sometimes my powers of prescience startle me.
Just the one guy that I do not want elected Pope gets elected Pope.
Yeah, just what we need. Yet another hardliner right wing nut-job for a Pope. As if the world wasn't full of them already. Oh yeah, we need more of these folks. Absolutely. Yup.
I'll be surprised if the human race makes it very far.
Well, thanks to Ethelred Unraed for this one!
---
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
The Fireman's Manual.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Ayesha from "She", by H. Rider Haggard.
The last book you bought is:
The Egyptian Book of the Dead - (The Papyrus of Ani) by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge.
The last book you read:
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.
What are you currently reading?
The Egyptian Book of the Dead - (The Papyrus of Ani) by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge.
Eight Lectures in Theoretical Physics by Max Planck.
Death of Chaos (part of the Saga of Recluce) by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Five books you would take to a deserted island.
The collected journals of "Annalen Der Physik" - I'd die without having to do physics.
"The Bhagavad Gita", Hindu religious/philosophical codebook of sorts - every man needs to contemplate his existence
"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - like EU said, everybody needs to laugh once in a while.
"Lord of the Rings by Tolkien" - what can I say? I've read this again and again and again since childhood, and it never seems to lose its charm!
Well, either the "Table of Integrals, Series and Products" by Gradshteyn and Ryzbik or "On The Shoulders of Giants" by Stephen Hawking.
---
Damn, didn't realize I was that lost a geek.
Ah, yet another pristine example of the Slashdot groupthink.
For some odd reason, they cannot accept the fact that there maybe genuine folks out there who could use software patents.
Not to mention the fact that half the folks do not know the difference between patents and copyrights or the requirements and pre-requisites for getting the patent.
Nope, but we will however say things like, "I doubt you have ever been involved in a court case, never mind a patent infringement lawsuit." and mod-down those whom we disagree with rather than argue.
Bah, am just ranting. Fucking asshats.
But why oh why can't people see that there MAY be someone out there for whom something maybe beneficial? Perhaps it doesn't agree with your worldview, but that doesn't make it wrong.
Am serious here - am I the only one who seems to think that perhaps there is another side to things, too? It's disappointing to see one sided and biased arguments.
Okay, so a lot of you do know that am very picky about movie adaptations of books. So perhaps you should take this with a pinch of salt - but if you're indeed a big fan of Douglas Adams, I'd strongly advise you to NOT watch the movie.
I was in the theatre the other night to watch Constantine (which btw, was a good movie). And they show the trailer of the movie adaptation of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
It does not even look or feel anything like the books and a lot of it looks *SO* ridiculous that it grates on you. I could go on ranting about how they've changed a lot of things, but that probably doesn't make a difference -- what *does* make a difference is that they have made the humour very obvious and flagrant, almost like a standup comedy rather than the subtle PG Woodehouse-ish British humour that Douglas Adams was so famous for.
There are so many points that really are painful - Zaphod's second head comes upwards out of his tummy, Marvin looks *SO* ridiculous (white little thing), Trillian looks like a housewife and not an astrophysicist, Arthur is a short stocky guy and Ford Prefect cracks black humour jokes - if they can be called that. And they all talk in *AMERICAN* accents, for cryin' out loud. Vogons look like something George Lucas would create and the book is shown on a bloody LCD screen.
And the way the dialogues were rendered, nothing would make sense to folks who've not have read the book. While I do know that the movie did have Douglas Adams' blessing, am sure he's probably spinning in his grave.
Man, they're killing ALL my favourite works - Isaac Asimov, JRR Tolkien, Douglas Adams....
DAMN YOU!!!! Can't you guys just let the bloody books be? Can't you create something new rather than copying works of art and screwing them over? DAMN YOU ASSHOLES.
Update
Seems like I've been banned (yet again) for bad posting and am not even gonna try and do something about it. Bah. Maybe because a lot of my previous comments got modded down
Will reply to ya'll when I get back my "Right to Post" (TM).
What do I even say to this one?
A couple of teen-girls decided to be nice and distribute cookies to their neighbours in an act of kindness. And they get sued.
The worst part? The neighbour who sued them won the case for medical damages worth $900. Just how rotten can we get?
Lesson, kids. Please do not be kind to neighbours. Or for that matter, anyone.
Update: Allen Zadr has written a rant on the topic.
You know, you ought to let people post on some of your more interesting journal entries. =)
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.