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Submitted by cartechboy

Comment: Re: Truly (Score 1) 99






User Journal

Journal: Fifteen years ago...

Journal by mcgrew

I've been busy working on "Mars, Ho!" lately. There should be a new chapter posted in a week or two. So for now, here's some crap from the last century, this month fifteen years ago. It tells a tale of how to decimate a popular site: be a web gypsy.

There is mention of a weekly column I wrote for Kneel over at Katalystic called "The Weak End Hell hole", but the wayback machine has no clue it ever existed. Those columns are gone, lost in time, like tears in the rain...

Comment: Re:the phone is pure profit (Score 1) 206

by mcgrew (#46375345) Attached to: How I Cut My Time Warner Cable Bill By 33%

Why in the world would anybody need POTS in the first place? And why would anybody pay $40 per month for it?

Also, the title is misleading -- TFA says he didn't have cable, only phone and internet. No cable, no cable bill, he had a phone/internet bill.

I don't have cable, an antenna is good enough since TV went digital. I'm paying $40 for unlimited everything on my Android, $46 for DSL (unfortunately that's the cheapest internet available here, cable internet is almost twice DSL and since I live alone, DSL suffices nicely).

+ - Using Handheld Phone GPS While Driving Is Legal In California->

Submitted by jfruh
Link to Original Source

+ - Lessig Wins Fair Use Case->

Submitted by just_another_sean


Link to Original Source

Comment: Sorry... I'm in a good mood. (Score 1) 4

by mcgrew (#46353749) Attached to: God, I'm old and cranky today

Beta was just the straw that broke the camel's back, what you're talking about has been bothering me and others for quite some time. Apparently, Ars covered it but I can't find the link.

Try Soylent News. It's full of folks tired of /.'s direction. I'm staying at /. at least for a while, but S/N is refreshing. I'm posting my journals there before here, they can use it and Dice doesn't need it.

Oh, but the REAL reason I'm in such a good mood is someone owed me a shitload of money and paid me back in reefer and I'M RETIRING! Tomorrow is my last day of wage slavery!

Comment: Re:First blacks, (Score 1) 917

by mcgrew (#46347613) Attached to: Apple Urges Arizona Governor To Veto Anti-Gay Legislation

First, I don't understand the religious aspect. Whose freedom of religion are they trying to protect, Islam? Because Christians are forbidden from judging others, and ordered to love everyone. Neither Jesus nor Bhudda would agree with this law.

Second, why are you bashing the US rather than Russia or Uganda, where you can go to prison for life for being gay?

Third, WTF is this doing on "news for nerds?" The fact that a tech company, Apple, joined the NFL and a lot of other anti-nerd groups in opposing this does not make it "news for nerds". News for gays, news for bigots, news for Arizonans, yeah, but not "news for nerds".

Having stories like this on slashdot is worse than Beta, they're trying to attract a "wider audience" which means bringing in even more greengrocers and other aliterates (if you think that is a misspelling, you may be an aliterate!). This attracts all those n00bs who say "Nasa is a waste of taxpayer dollars" and "global warming is a hoax" and "they spent my tax money studying THAT??"

In short, they're attracting the folks I come here to escape from. I get enough non-nerd ignorance IRL.

Comment: Re:None of the above (Score 1) 293

by mcgrew (#46347561) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Essays and Short Stories Should Be In a Course On Futurism?

Well, that's the thing. They're honestly going to have a college class about fortune telling? What's next, tarot and tea leaves? Futurism is bunk! Nobody seriously envisioned the internet, althogh Asimov had written about "mltivac" and Murray Leinster came damned close to predicting it in 1946, although his PCs were "logics", servers were "tanks", and his internet was heavily censored (in fact, the story revolved around how horrible it would be if a bug in a program overcame the censorship).

Nobody but Roddenberry foresaw cell phones. Nobody I heard of foresaw the end of the analog era. And more telling, the only ones who even came close weren't futurists, but fiction writers. The "futurists" have been wrong every single time. Flying cars? Disney's "home of tomorrow"? The "singularity"? Fusion power? Wrong every single time.

Yet you want to teach a class on it? Amazing.

I'd rather be led to hell than managed to heavan.