Posts tagged ‘irony’
An Entry
I realized I really should make an entry today, so here it is;
“Remember, Death is Nature’s way of telling you to slow down.”
A Minor Look Backward–How Many Geeks no Longer IM
One of the major attractions of the internet used to be things like IMs. Of course, they were for geeks like me, ICQ or something like that. Then that in particular began becoming steadily less safe, basically the more so the more people started using it. Somwhere of course in there came AIM and MS with whatever it originally was. Now, guess what? The geeks like me don’t use it, because it’s (the medium of Instant Messaging, I mean) taken up by neophytes and crooks. Certainly I wouldn’t want to use IM to meet anyone, and the very idea of something like a dating service based on information that would allow the construction of an accurate behavioral profile makes my paranoia feel paranoid.
Interesting.
–Glenn
footnotes (3)
Have you ever noticed that when someone goes on television to tell us to tighten their belts you know for sure they don’t have to do it?
If the Brits are so great how come they have to have directions for dressing?
Before you make absolutely sure you have the most beautiful teapot in the world, it might be wise to ensure it doesn’t leak. However, I doubt Microsoft or Apple can ever learn that.
I’m just as disturbed as John Brunner was by the constant misuse of the name Art. Personally, I’ve just gone back to calling him Arthur.
Nothing can prove causation, either in a single instance or as an operative concept. It looks fairly likely. Levels of causation cube the uncertainty factor. Predictivity based on the model is poor except in mechanical applications.
There is a necessary factor of uncertainty, or error, in any representation of anything. This is due to the fact that the one doing the representing has to decide what’s important. Generally she doesn’t bother to take notes on the unimportant stuff. The one who (poorly) explained what’s important, having had that explained to him by the boss, who nearly listened while the boss of the guy who had the person decide to have someone else do the actual study to determine what’s important…having had the assignment of definition handed to him by someone who had the need explained by a server-side-oriented-consultant…will be the one who’s expected to handle the data for a project which probably never is explained until it’s already underway. I don’t understand why most people say I have a dour outlook on life. Maybe it’s because I use Outlook.
It’s been proven as far as it can be that being constipated gives you a shitty outlook on life. So using Microsoft Office…?
Offhand=someone who’s right-handed trying to masturbate with his left. Then again, I had someone trying to convince me it stood for military intelligence.
If there was a society that had an observable tendency to increase in population and the society generally tried to defend the tendency in a variety of forms of languages, that could be taken as an indication that there was a disaster a long time ago. The disaster would probably have come fairly close to wiping out the society, and there would probably be a fairly high childhood mortality rate as it began recovering from it. Among other things, that society (as it survived) would probably be fairly aggressive. [In all gamed situations, the first to adopt aggressive tactics AND the best at their tactics wins. I would assume there are other possible situations.] Both the aggression and the need to increase population would be at a level where it would be difficult for the individual to manipulate their own feelings. Basic feelings which form the underpinnings of a society are not easily manipulable by experiential language, and language which sacrifices accuracy for the sake of consistency becomes a statement of religious belief and practice.*
Language first of all presents a set of protocols for described situations. Secondly, it presents a set of valorizational statements which defend the protocols. Thirdly, it attempts to thus present a framework of positive and negative motivation, as well as statements as to the “good” of the ruling structure. There is no possible statement of value which is not relativistically based.
*Restated, that’s something like this. We’re horny little bastards, but it looks like it’s not instinct. It’s memories in the forms of values we hardly know how to say. Most likely, the human race just about got wiped out by a glacial age that came on suddenly, and then there was global warming that occurred suddenly and drastically (it looks right now) about 50,000 years ago. There was a lot of disease and there was a lot of incest. More than that, population expanded faster than arable land or easy prey did. The catastrophe had wiped out the knowledge the human race had except for language and especially chants.
I have never attempted to make any statements about Cro-Magnon humans and their appearance, other than that all transitional skeletal elements thus far are either fakes or vast stretches.
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Glenn
footnotes 2: dry humor or at least not totally wet behind…never mind
The only thing ever bought or sold isn’t real; it’s only its representation.
In order to decide what’s true you have to know what’s real.
Have you ever thought about the phrase “Never mind?” Have you ever wondered if our government people take it too literally?
Have you ever really thought about the meaning of the word “footnote”? Leaving the need to be double-jointed aside (I did bite my toenails as a teenager), what did they use to write on the bottom of someone’s foot in the fifteenth century?
We just intuitively want the universe to mean something. That’s the first card in every con man’s pocket. “If it’s too good to be true, it isn’t true.”
Causation is an unprovable hypothesis.
Money is a matter of faith.
If we know anything certainly, it’s that life is change. That means the minute we start attempting not to change, we’re attempting to die.
It’s because identity has so little to do with names that we have problems identifying it. Of course, in the process we’re trying to use words, which are names.
If you can’t make the connections you don’t really have the knowledge.
Knowledge is priceless–once it’s organized. Disorganized knowledge is worthless.
Really, if we know anything certainly, it’s that we don’t know a damned thing certainly.
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Glenn
Wuala: more information
On a dual-core 64 bit 3 gig AMD processor (A8V-E deluxe motherboard) while running it uses about 3-4% CPU time. No significant RAM footprint. I have ‘lost’ internet connection during startup because it wants to connect. What does? the virtual drive and the virtual microsoft board, of course. I’ve taken it off startup (I’m on 7/1 DSL, so it’s fast) and since the Wuala program isn’t hogging everything trying to connect to the internet and Windows at the same time…the boot time has merely been reduced by about 90 seconds. The response practically reminds me of dialup. I’m getting close to the end of my testing on it.
I would use it to connect to others like me… [oregonnerd–gmail] I do have invitations.
–Glenn
8]-
(it’s just I wouldn’t wish this on anyone)
Okay, Enough With the Acronyms!
Look, I’m not the sharpest or savviest user there is. But when it’s a good thing that the author of an (old) Firefox review includes a definition for every other acronym (I feel I should be calling them acry’s or something), there’s something wrong. There are several dictionaries for these random [expletive deleted] collections of letters that increasingly defining our lives. Wi-fi. DSL. (Do you really know what it means? Digital Subscriber Line, and I had to look it up again at HowStuffWorks.com even though I watched it come and read all the articles.) Increasingly we’re defined by these little collections of letters.
…And one day, we’ll just forget how to talk to each other, trapped in all the acronyms and algorythms.
–Glenn
oregonnerd: differing views 