Solemn Meditation on the stock market
IHCOYC XPICTOC
in stocks and mutual funds. This pleases me.
I find myself wondering why.
It isn't like the money was there for spending, and now I cannot. All
of my investments are tied up in tax-deferred retirement accounts.
The gains they posted were all the gold of fairyland in any case,
especially since I doubt I will live so long as to ever actually be
entitled to withdraw this money.
I liquidated my non-retirement stock and fund holdings in mid-2000,
when the writing was on the wall. This was not the result of some
game plan, or even prudence or foresight on my part. It had more to
do with the realisation that the transmission on my old car was
failing. In hindsight, that was a good time to sell.
I never wanted to play the stock markets anyways. I call it wagering,
not because I sought risky stocks, but because my deepest prejudices
say that putting your money in a financial market rather than a bank
is a kind of gambling. Almost all of my holdings are traded on the
New York Stock Exchange.
I put my savings there quite reluctantly, mostly because it became
impossible to find savings accounts paying more than diddly-squat in
interest in the go-go Nineties. The lag between stocks and interest
rates made it seem foolish to keep money in the banks back then. So I
moved it.
My game plan ever was to invest in stocks or funds of established,
dividend-paying corporations with real assets in mature markets. So
far this has generally succeeded, in that the value of my portfolio
has fallen less than the markets generally have; being deeply
cautious and risk-averse by nature, my portfolio was chosen mostly by
these mental habits. So far it has worked.
In a way, I am richer than before. If everybody else is bleeding more
than me, I am likelier to survive. This is not quite the explanation.
Optimism is an obnoxious, beet-faced, backslapping lout with a loud
voice. Optimism remembers your name long after you have forgotten
his, and calls out to you from across the room with a wave. Optimism
is an asshole.
Pessimism is a far more congenial companion. Pessimism is pale and
retiring, and clothed in dark colours. Pessimism wishes to be left
alone to brood on its misfortunes, and is willing to leave you to the
same fate.
Then again, you already know you want Pessimism to be in charge of
your finances. This is not quite the explanation.
All my life, I have lived in hope of Apocalypse. The descent of some
awful calamity that at once absolves you of your conduct in the past,
and of responsibility for the future. Quick deaths for the lucky,
freedom from the constraints of existing institutions for the
survivors. Won't it be glorious?
A good strong financial panic is as good a harbinger of Apocalypse as
anything else. It might lead to other things, like a vast change in
political mood, which at present seems as welcome as an actual
revolution. It might save the nation from itself. $15,000 is a small
price to pay for such a boon.
Hard times and bread lines. A world where there is no blame for not
working, where all are dressed in second-hand clothes, and where the
dust from the untilled fields blows across the prairies --- it sounds
rather serious, rather sombre, and therefore inviting: an antidote to
frivolity.
And there is what is perhaps the greatest satisfaction in all of
this: the inner glow that comes from having been right all along,
from having prepared for the worst: the solemn pride of the prudent
and the doom-ridden. The satisfaction of being able to say, "I told
you so."
When the panic selling begins in earnest, won't it be fun?
--
IHCOYC XPICTOC http://members.iglou.com/gustavus ihcoyc(at)aye.net
+Solum semel vitam percurris, donec maximo gusto fruere, tanto quo potes.+
+ Free is when you don't have to pay for nothin' or do nothin'. +
**** This message has been placed here by the Tijuana Bible Society ****
St. Marc the Perpetually Amused
"IHCOYC XPICTOC" <gust...@shell1.iglou.com> wrote in message
news:3d3c7...@news.iglou.com...
> All my life, I have lived in hope of Apocalypse. The descent of some
> awful calamity that at once absolves you of your conduct in the past,
> and of responsibility for the future. Quick deaths for the lucky,
> freedom from the constraints of existing institutions for the
> survivors. Won't it be glorious?
I can only hope you've visited this site:
If not, give it a try. You might like it.
St. Marc
Nyx
> All my life, I have lived in hope of Apocalypse. The descent of some
> awful calamity that at once absolves you of your conduct in the past,
> and of responsibility for the future. Quick deaths for the lucky,
> freedom from the constraints of existing institutions for the
> survivors. Won't it be glorious?
Oh, god, me too. I'm so disappointed I'm not living in some postapocalyptic
movie. I spent so much time preparing for it, but it never happened. The
Road Warrior was always my favorite, but I think I ended up in Brave New
World, which is *not* what I wanted.
Nyx
--
"My generation played a really mean trick on me. I thought we were all
goofing off together, but it turns out everybody else went and got rich
while I was sleeping." Mission Hill.
www.sxxxy.org
aim: nyxxxxx yahoo: nyxxxx icq: 9744630
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Canticle
"IHCOYC XPICTOC" <gust...@shell1.iglou.com> wrote in message
news:3d3c7...@news.iglou.com...
> Over the last several months I have lost at least $15,000 wagering
> in stocks and mutual funds. This pleases me.
Ja, and I've broken even. It's more fun than gambling, I'll give it that. I
have an unfair advantage though, I know how people react to things. And the
stock market has never been about rationality, no matter what economists
want people to think.
I've snipped the remainder because I agree with it in so many ways it really
doesn't bear repeating. Wealth is a very relative thing. I have a roof over
my head, I can travel, I can help out my friends, I can eat well, and all
that other stuff, but what counts to me is whether or not I am content with
who and what I am. When I see calcified bitches like Ken (Kenny Boy to
Dubya) Lay's wife weeping hysterically about how much they've 'lost' while
surrounded by the wretched excess obtained through salacious greed, all I
can really muster is a vague loathing for people who were never wealthy to
begin with.
Jeff-boy, Eater of Worlds
"No flesh shall be spared"
Panurge
>I'm so disappointed I'm not living in some postapocalyptic
>movie. I spent so much time preparing for it, but it never happened.
Some rock mag in the early '90s pointed out that it _did_ happen, in
Somalia. It was quick to note the dearth of Hot Babes in leather bikinis.
>The Road Warrior was always my favorite,
>but I think I ended up in Brave New World,
>which is *not* what I wanted.
They never made that into a movie, did they? Still, I'll give you that.
--
"Tradition is only valuable if it looks forward." --Christoph von Dohnányi
Nyx
24070201...@user-37kbasf.dialup.mindspring.com:
>>The Road Warrior was always my favorite,
>>but I think I ended up in Brave New World,
>>which is *not* what I wanted.
>
> They never made that into a movie, did they? Still, I'll give you that.
Not that I know of. Strange, that. Someone should jump on a script for it.
Probably wouldn't even have to buy the rights, it may be public domain by
now.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
<snips>
> All my life, I have lived in hope of Apocalypse. The descent of some
> awful calamity that at once absolves you of your conduct in the past,
> and of responsibility for the future. Quick deaths for the lucky,
> freedom from the constraints of existing institutions for the
> survivors. Won't it be glorious?
You goth, you.
>
> A good strong financial panic is as good a harbinger of Apocalypse as
> anything else. It might lead to other things, like a vast change in
> political mood, which at present seems as welcome as an actual
> revolution. It might save the nation from itself. $15,000 is a small
> price to pay for such a boon.
>
> Hard times and bread lines. A world where there is no blame for not
> working, where all are dressed in second-hand clothes, and where the
> dust from the untilled fields blows across the prairies --- it sounds
> rather serious, rather sombre, and therefore inviting: an antidote to
> frivolity.
This frivolity must end. FWIW, if I had a gajillion dollars, I'd augment the
Sun Micro stock I bought at $27.50 with about ten times as much bought at
yesterday's close, which was about $3.75. FWIW, their P/E ratio is very very
good.
>
> And there is what is perhaps the greatest satisfaction in all of
> this: the inner glow that comes from having been right all along,
> from having prepared for the worst: the solemn pride of the prudent
> and the doom-ridden. The satisfaction of being able to say, "I told
> you so."
>
> When the panic selling begins in earnest, won't it be fun?
Feh.
It's like when 9/11 and then the anthrax scares happened. I'd been
predicting something of the sort for some years, and me being my mopey self,
when the things I predict happen (in this case later and of less magnitude
than I've long predicted) it does not make me feel good at all, mostly
because nobody benefits.
What did I do shortly after 9/11 and the anthrax scare? I took a bus cross
country to give a good home to an old Cadillac. Haven't worked since, and
have long since exhausted unemployment etc and my stocks are so low they're
not worth selling. So what do I do?
I sit in the Caddy a lot.
A friend of my mom's called up the other day. Mom was out. This was the
worst day on Wall Street in more than a decade and I think she wanted to ask
Mom some financial advice. She mentioned the carnage on Wall Street, and
allowed as how it was pretty grim. "Bad times, it looks like", said the ol'
gal, "I wonder what else could go wrong." This rather set me off into a
minimalist (don't want to upset the nice lady) Rant of the Mopey to the
effect of "let's see, the Rockies and points west are all burning, the
farmers in the midwest are plowing the crops under and slaughtering their
unfeedable cattle due to the lack of rain, the wells are going dry all
across the country, we're in a never-ending war against an invisible enemy
that probably lives right down everyone's street even as the government
re-organizes itself into a sort of sharing caring fascism. what could be
worse? Hrm, I know, Mexico could successfully invade the US... oh that's
right, they've been doing that for ten years, old hat now isn't it. China
maybe? Nuke war between India and Pakistan? I dunno."
She did tell me that she'd seen it as bad or worse, and that I might want to
start picking my mom's brains on how to survive a Depression of the sort
that we goffy folks have never experienced.
But hell. I've been homeless before and probably will be again. Only this
time I might have lots more company, and since probably lots of these new
homeless won't be career bums but rather will be fellow IT workers,
historians, engineers, and financial-uindustry people, at least the all
night conversations huddled around the rusted 55-gallon drums filled with
burning refuse will conversations of high quality.
Personally, I think nothing will do right now except of course a war against
someone, anyone. A war that expends lots and lots of munitions that will
have to be replaced, propping up at least one industry: the merchants of
death.
--
Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae.
Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow. <-----> http://earthops.net/klaatu/
St. Marc the Perpetually Amused
news:3D40401F...@earthops.net...
> IHCOYC XPICTOC wrote:
> >
> <snips>
>
> > All my life, I have lived in hope of Apocalypse. The descent of some
> > awful calamity that at once absolves you of your conduct in the past,
> > and of responsibility for the future. Quick deaths for the lucky,
> > freedom from the constraints of existing institutions for the
> > survivors. Won't it be glorious?
>
> You goth, you.
That was a good one.
> > A good strong financial panic is as good a harbinger of Apocalypse as
> > anything else. It might lead to other things, like a vast change in
> > political mood, which at present seems as welcome as an actual
> > revolution. It might save the nation from itself. $15,000 is a small
> > price to pay for such a boon.
> >
> > Hard times and bread lines. A world where there is no blame for not
> > working, where all are dressed in second-hand clothes, and where the
> > dust from the untilled fields blows across the prairies --- it sounds
> > rather serious, rather sombre, and therefore inviting: an antidote to
> > frivolity.
>
> This frivolity must end. FWIW, if I had a gajillion dollars, I'd augment
the
> Sun Micro stock I bought at $27.50 with about ten times as much bought at
> yesterday's close, which was about $3.75. FWIW, their P/E ratio is very
very
> good.
Um, no offense, but whatever you're smoking, can I have some? I can pay you
in multiples of their P/E or EPS, whichever you like.
http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?page=full&mode=basics&symbol=SUNW%60&sele
cted=SUNW%60
> > And there is what is perhaps the greatest satisfaction in all of
> > this: the inner glow that comes from having been right all along,
> > from having prepared for the worst: the solemn pride of the prudent
> > and the doom-ridden. The satisfaction of being able to say, "I told
> > you so."
> >
> > When the panic selling begins in earnest, won't it be fun?
>
> Feh.
No, it will be fun! Watch!
> It's like when 9/11 and then the anthrax scares happened. I'd been
> predicting something of the sort for some years, and me being my mopey
self,
> when the things I predict happen (in this case later and of less magnitude
> than I've long predicted) it does not make me feel good at all, mostly
> because nobody benefits.
You do! You get to be right! That's fun, right?
> What did I do shortly after 9/11 and the anthrax scare? I took a bus cross
> country to give a good home to an old Cadillac. Haven't worked since, and
> have long since exhausted unemployment etc and my stocks are so low
they're
> not worth selling. So what do I do?
Sell 'em so you don't lose any *more* money? Or do you mean they're so low
the commission would wipe out the sales proceeds? Now *that's* low.
> I sit in the Caddy a lot.
There are worse things. It could be a Yugo.
> A friend of my mom's called up the other day. Mom was out. This was the
> worst day on Wall Street in more than a decade and I think she wanted to
ask
> Mom some financial advice. She mentioned the carnage on Wall Street, and
> allowed as how it was pretty grim. "Bad times, it looks like", said the
ol'
> gal, "I wonder what else could go wrong." This rather set me off into a
> minimalist (don't want to upset the nice lady) Rant of the Mopey to the
> effect of "let's see, the Rockies and points west are all burning, the
> farmers in the midwest are plowing the crops under and slaughtering their
> unfeedable cattle due to the lack of rain, the wells are going dry all
> across the country, we're in a never-ending war against an invisible enemy
> that probably lives right down everyone's street even as the government
> re-organizes itself into a sort of sharing caring fascism. what could be
> worse? Hrm, I know, Mexico could successfully invade the US... oh that's
> right, they've been doing that for ten years, old hat now isn't it. China
> maybe? Nuke war between India and Pakistan? I dunno."
Not a bad list. You left off the fact that we're either about to cross or
are already on the far side of the Hubbert peak, the fact that we're about
to start trucking 32 million pounds of nuclear waste across the country, and
the fact that you just can't get a decent soda anymore, but I think you were
doing well for a minimalist of mopeyness.
> She did tell me that she'd seen it as bad or worse, and that I might want
to
> start picking my mom's brains on how to survive a Depression of the sort
> that we goffy folks have never experienced.
Lotsa good books about stuff like that. I have several. They fascinate me.
> But hell. I've been homeless before and probably will be again. Only this
> time I might have lots more company, and since probably lots of these new
> homeless won't be career bums but rather will be fellow IT workers,
> historians, engineers, and financial-uindustry people, at least the all
> night conversations huddled around the rusted 55-gallon drums filled with
> burning refuse will conversations of high quality.
That's one way to look at it. I like it.
> Personally, I think nothing will do right now except of course a war
against
> someone, anyone. A war that expends lots and lots of munitions that will
> have to be replaced, propping up at least one industry: the merchants of
> death.
No good. The Debtberg is about to roll over. (See
http://www.urbansurvival.com and look for articles about the Debtberg.)
Deficit spending will just make it happen harder and faster. Gotta flush the
system out before we can rebuild, although we can't rebuild - not enough
time before the resources crunch.
Gotta go stock up on leather bikinis. Chains and shackles I always have in
stock.
St. Marc
Joe Brenner
> Over the last several months I have lost at least $15,000 wagering
> in stocks and mutual funds. This pleases me.
Yes, I can never suppress a grin at a stock market panic,
even when I've got money in the market myself, even though
I know that these insane panics actually make it difficult
for me personally, e.g. to find my next job...
I've always thought that it was incredibly gauche to talk
about the stock market in public, and being a long-time
Silicon Valley hanger-on, I've heard my fair share of
this, and I'm about to commit the same sin here...
(I had to look up the spelling for gauche. How gauche is that?)
>I never wanted to play the stock markets anyways. I call it wagering,
>not because I sought risky stocks, but because my deepest prejudices
>say that putting your money in a financial market rather than a bank
>is a kind of gambling.
Yes. I make an effort to think of etrade as "my bookie",
partly to help keep gambling fever in control. You don't
want to start thinking of yourself as a "smart speculator"
or some damn thing like that... that way lies "day-trading"
and a life in hell.
(Speaking of which, I'm thinking of switching bookies...
anyone know one with some respect for web standards? Etrade
keeps flirting with Flash, and they've always been really
slow on a dail-up connection.)
>Optimism is an obnoxious, beet-faced, backslapping lout with a loud
>voice. Optimism remembers your name long after you have forgotten
>his, and calls out to you from across the room with a wave. Optimism
>is an asshole.
>Pessimism is a far more congenial companion. Pessimism is pale and
>retiring, and clothed in dark colours. Pessimism wishes to be left
>alone to brood on its misfortunes, and is willing to leave you to the
>same fate.
Apt descriptions of the way I feel, too... but then, I'm
also pretty pessimistic about pessimism as a way of life.
The optimist seems like a total fool, wasting time on
quixotic endeavors; but then the optimist at least engages
in *some* endeavor... and there's always room to fall back on
pessimism later on.
Hey if you don't play, you can't win. Step right up.
>All my life, I have lived in hope of Apocalypse. The descent of some
>awful calamity that at once absolves you of your conduct in the past,
>and of responsibility for the future. Quick deaths for the lucky,
>freedom from the constraints of existing institutions for the
>survivors. Won't it be glorious?
>A good strong financial panic is as good a harbinger of Apocalypse as
>anything else. It might lead to other things, like a vast change in
>political mood, which at present seems as welcome as an actual
>revolution. It might save the nation from itself.
Yes, the "other things" is what I'm interested, rather than
Apocalypse (or so I tell myself). Many people watching the
San Francisco Bay Area during the dotty years feel much the
same way... a lot of us were praying for an economic
collapse to slow things down a bit before anything with a
shred of character could be plowed under.
(The best description of the scene I've run across:
http://www.crackmonkey.org/faq.html#ANSWER38
)
I find myself scribbling notes like "the business cycle as a
generator of diversity?". There are always some marginal
enterprises around that seem to thrive on bad times: cheap
rent, empty store fronts, unsettled times... When everyone
is scrambling about "getting rich", the marginal characters
get squeezed out. The artists, the punk rock bars, the
little businesses without business-plans...
At the very least we can hope for a return of pulp/Noir
fiction.
IHCOYC XPICTOC
: I've always thought that it was incredibly gauche to talk
: about the stock market in public, and being a long-time
: Silicon Valley hanger-on, I've heard my fair share of
: this, and I'm about to commit the same sin here...
It is one of those perennial topics that don't really require much actual
knowledge to discuss. Rather like the endless wank about subatomic
physics and black holes that I used to read on BBSes. I could venture all
sorts of conjectures about where it's going, but why?
: Yes. I make an effort to think of etrade as "my bookie",
: partly to help keep gambling fever in control. You don't
: want to start thinking of yourself as a "smart speculator"
: or some damn thing like that... that way lies "day-trading"
: and a life in hell.
I bought stocks mostly for survivability in stuff like this. If people
get so poor they stop using soap, there'll be bigger problems than the
fact that the money's gone.
: Hey if you don't play, you can't win. Step right up.
If you don't play, you can't lose, either. This has always loomed more
important for me.
: At the very least we can hope for a return of pulp/Noir
: fiction.
Of course, a lot of that stuff seems to relate mostly to killing people
over pretty paltry stuff. . . .
IHCOYC XPICTOC
: This frivolity must end. FWIW, if I had a gajillion dollars, I'd augment the
: Sun Micro stock I bought at $27.50 with about ten times as much bought at
: yesterday's close, which was about $3.75. FWIW, their P/E ratio is very very
: good.
That's pretty good for a tech stock. And Sun's been around for a while;
they won't dry up and blow away.
: start picking my mom's brains on how to survive a Depression of the sort
: that we goffy folks have never experienced.
I feel lucky now to be old enough to have heard the stories. "Use it up,
wear it out, make it do, or do without."
Then again, I'm a bankruptcy lawyer. I am not afraid.
: Personally, I think nothing will do right now except of course a war against
: someone, anyone. A war that expends lots and lots of munitions that will
: have to be replaced, propping up at least one industry: the merchants of
: death.
The problem will be finding a credible enemy.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> wrote:
>
> : This frivolity must end. FWIW, if I had a gajillion dollars, I'd augment the
> : Sun Micro stock I bought at $27.50 with about ten times as much bought at
> : yesterday's close, which was about $3.75. FWIW, their P/E ratio is very very
> : good.
>
> That's pretty good for a tech stock. And Sun's been around for a while;
> they won't dry up and blow away.
Like I said; if I had the bucks, I'd buy a gob.
>
> : start picking my mom's brains on how to survive a Depression of the sort
> : that we goffy folks have never experienced.
>
> I feel lucky now to be old enough to have heard the stories. "Use it up,
> wear it out, make it do, or do without."
>
> Then again, I'm a bankruptcy lawyer. I am not afraid.
You will be the only person making a dime!
>
> : Personally, I think nothing will do right now except of course a war against
> : someone, anyone. A war that expends lots and lots of munitions that will
> : have to be replaced, propping up at least one industry: the merchants of
> : death.
>
> The problem will be finding a credible enemy.
German-Americans! They're pale and useless for daytime outdoors labor, plus
they're easy to get a bead on in the dark! They generally refuse to breed
like rats and therefor they are the admitted enemies of the American
Limitless Growth Economic Model. They eat all of that nasty weinerschnitzel
and sauerkraut crap. The men are all alkies and the women get all roly-poly
unless you starve them or they're speed freaks. Plus they're so damned
orderly and obsessed with thinking things through, they couldn't be less fun
unless maybe they were Presbyterian. In fact, that's where we start!
Presbyterian German-Americans! (The Amish are harmless and sort of cute in
their backwardness.) And as we all know, they're responsible for every
historic wrong ever done anywhere. Just ask anyone! And that damned
oom-pah-pah music is enough to get on anyone's nerves!
Drive the kraut oppressors into the sea! Well, okay, maybe just drive them
into the Great Lakes.
Ian Sturrock
, Panurge <jbl...@mindspring.com> gibbers
>Nyx <nyx...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>I'm so disappointed I'm not living in some postapocalyptic
>>movie. I spent so much time preparing for it, but it never happened.
>
>Some rock mag in the early '90s pointed out that it _did_ happen, in
>Somalia. It was quick to note the dearth of Hot Babes in leather bikinis.
>
>>The Road Warrior was always my favorite,
>>but I think I ended up in Brave New World,
>>which is *not* what I wanted.
>
>They never made that into a movie, did they? Still, I'll give you that.
'Course they did:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0080468#comment
ISTR it was pretty good, too, though it's probably 22 years since I've
seen it.
Apparently there was a shit 1998 version with Leonard Nimoy, too:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0145600
--
"Such a day, rum all out - Our company somewhat sober - A damn`d confusion
among us! - Rogues a-plotting - Great talk of separation - so I looked sharp
for a prize - Such a day took one, with a great deal of liquor on board, so
kept the company hot, damned hot; then all things went well again." (Teach)
Joe Brenner
>Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> wrote:
>: This frivolity must end. FWIW, if I had a gajillion dollars, I'd augment the
>: Sun Micro stock I bought at $27.50 with about ten times as much bought at
>: yesterday's close, which was about $3.75. FWIW, their P/E ratio is very very
>: good.
>That's pretty good for a tech stock. And Sun's been around for a while;
>they won't dry up and blow away.
Actually, I think Sun is one of the likely casulties of
Linux. Most of what people would want from a Sun workstation
they can now get on commodity PCs running linux or BSD.
Near term, Sun may scrape by, but long term they need a new
business to be in really badly. (Java something or other
tools? Linux support?)
I don't know what they're doing for money at the moment --
there must be someone out there buying some sort of gazonga
servers from them to run Oracle centered businesses, or
something like that.
But then Oracle is another big company that's going to hit
the wall any day now... postgresql is getting much to good
for anyone to want to waste money on Oracle licenses.
It would be nice to think that Microsoft would crash
*before* these guys do, but unfortunately I don't think it's
too likely (and I'm the kind of guy who's been predicting a
Microsoft crash in the next year or two for the last fifteen
years).
>: Personally, I think nothing will do right now except of course a war against
>: someone, anyone. A war that expends lots and lots of munitions that will
>: have to be replaced, propping up at least one industry: the merchants of
>: death.
>The problem will be finding a credible enemy.
That's a difficulty limited only by the supply of the
credulous.
Joe Brenner
>On 29 Jul 2002 13:16:26 GMT,
>Joe Brenner <do...@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote:
>: IHCOYC XPICTOC <gust...@shell1.iglou.com> writes:
>
>:>That's pretty good for a tech stock. And Sun's been around for a while;
>:>they won't dry up and blow away.
>
>: Actually, I think Sun is one of the likely casulties of
>: Linux. Most of what people would want from a Sun workstation
>: they can now get on commodity PCs running linux or BSD.
>: Near term, Sun may scrape by, but long term they need a new
>: business to be in really badly. (Java something or other
>: tools? Linux support?)
>: I don't know what they're doing for money at the moment --
>: there must be someone out there buying some sort of gazonga
>: servers from them to run Oracle centered businesses, or
>: something like that.
>What they sell is more reliable hardware,
Depending on what you're doing, you don't really need it
though. Rather than counting on the hardware not failing,
it's much better to automatically fail-over to backup
hardware. Once you've got fail-over working, multiple
cheapo PCs start looking like a better deal.
>with usable service contracts.
I could point you at what Philip Greenspun has to say about
Sun's service reps (I think the phrase is "clueless board
swappers"). (He prefers HP, last I looked.)
>PC hardware is cheaper than Sun hardware if you buy candy;
>if you're buying server-grade stuff, it's comparable.
That sounds like a bit of a surprise, but if you're telling
me you've priced this out, I'll have to believe you.
>That and Solaris scales up much better than Linux at this point in time.
I could be convinced that this is true, but I'd want to be
convinced.
>For workstations, there's less and less point to Sun stuff -
>the current Sun desktops are pretty much PCs with SPARC
>chips.
Exactly. One caveat though, the PC hardware has a
bottleneck in it's IO bus. I can imagine for some purposes
they would be better at say, pumping graphics around fast.
>But the server side is quite different. (For the time
>being.)
And that's the point. I can imagine that there are sensible
reasons for buying some Sun products, but those reasons are
starting to go away fairly quickly. I would say if you've
got Sun stock you should plan on dumping it within a year.
If you want financial advice from someone who would've told
you to short Microsoft 15 years ago.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> IHCOYC XPICTOC <gust...@shell1.iglou.com> writes:
>
> >Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> wrote:
>
> >: This frivolity must end. FWIW, if I had a gajillion dollars, I'd augment the
> >: Sun Micro stock I bought at $27.50 with about ten times as much bought at
> >: yesterday's close, which was about $3.75. FWIW, their P/E ratio is very very
> >: good.
>
> >That's pretty good for a tech stock. And Sun's been around for a while;
> >they won't dry up and blow away.
>
> Actually, I think Sun is one of the likely casulties of
> Linux. Most of what people would want from a Sun workstation
> they can now get on commodity PCs running linux or BSD.
>
> Near term, Sun may scrape by, but long term they need a new
> business to be in really badly. (Java something or other
> tools? Linux support?)
>
> I don't know what they're doing for money at the moment --
> there must be someone out there buying some sort of gazonga
> servers from them to run Oracle centered businesses, or
> something like that.
>
> But then Oracle is another big company that's going to hit
> the wall any day now... postgresql is getting much to good
> for anyone to want to waste money on Oracle licenses.
Um, you seem to not quite be aware of just how good Sun's _hardware_ is.
Even Sun would be pretty quick to admit that Solaris "ain't all that".
However, NetBSD or a security-conscious Linux can turn an Ultra II into a
very nice box. Though actually I understand that if you want to spend a lot
of time patching holes in the stock distribution of Solaris, Solaris is very
very nice in terms of unkillability especially with respect to the number of
concurrent threads, which is some ridiculously and absurdly high number.
So why not get an Ultra II and run Linux and postgresql ??
Joe Brenner
>Um, you seem to not quite be aware of just how good Sun's _hardware_ is.
>Even Sun would be pretty quick to admit that Solaris "ain't all that".
>However, NetBSD or a security-conscious Linux can turn an Ultra II into a
>very nice box.
[...]
>So why not get an Ultra II and run Linux and postgresql ??
Well, the point is taken, and I do see that there are some
people out there arguing that Sun wins if Linux suceeds
(because then all software under development will run on Sun
hardware).
I think there are two problems: (1) The demand for
high-quality boxes is always going to be a lot lower than
the demand for cheap ones; (2) it's entirely possible to
build high quality systems with cheap boxes.
Remember, I'm not trying to tell you that Sun is dead
tomorrow, I'm saying that after a year or two, I expect
they'll be in trouble.
Peter H. Coffin
> I think there are two problems: (1) The demand for
> high-quality boxes is always going to be a lot lower than
> the demand for cheap ones; (2) it's entirely possible to
> build high quality systems with cheap boxes.
IMBiasedO, in (2) the sum of the parts to build your high-quality system
from cheap boxes approches the cost of the high-quality box for equal
values of quality.
Pretend a high-quality box costs $5000, and a cheap one costs $1000.
Pretend repairs cost $300 for the HQ box and $150 for the cheap one.
(Can't do much to fix labor costs.)
That is, if the high-quality box is down one hour in 10,000, and the
cheap one is down one hour in 2,000, you need two cheap ones to meet the
uptime, and you have at least one system down one hour out of every 1000.
That means double the percieved cheap cost for initial setup, and a
whopping 20 times the repair cost.
Three years is a typical writeoff time. But that's inconveniently
26297.28 hours, so let's pretend management stalls it out to 30,000
hours for easy math.
HQ system breaks down three times, is down for 3 hours, and costs $900
in repairs, for a total of $5900.
Cheap systems break down 30 times in the same period, have no downtime,
and cost $4500 to repair. Total cost is $6500.
This assumes also that rackspace and electricity are free too.
--
94. When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a
useless trinket of purely sentimental value.
--Peter Anspach's list of things to do as an Evil Overlord
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> writes:
>
> >Um, you seem to not quite be aware of just how good Sun's _hardware_ is.
> >Even Sun would be pretty quick to admit that Solaris "ain't all that".
>
> >However, NetBSD or a security-conscious Linux can turn an Ultra II into a
> >very nice box.
>
> [...]
>
> >So why not get an Ultra II and run Linux and postgresql ??
>
> Well, the point is taken, and I do see that there are some
> people out there arguing that Sun wins if Linux suceeds
> (because then all software under development will run on Sun
> hardware).
>
> I think there are two problems: (1) The demand for
> high-quality boxes is always going to be a lot lower than
> the demand for cheap ones; (2) it's entirely possible to
> build high quality systems with cheap boxes.
No. Cheap tin shit is cheap tin shit.
Trust me, I have to Athlon boxes that are nice and fast and stay up for
about a day at a time under any amount of load, high to low. I have little
ol' Toshiba laptops that stay up a year at a time with a load-average of 2.
The difference is that the Toshiba were top of the line, and the Athlon
boxes were prelimary pieces of filth that only had to run well-enough to put
some market pressure on the competitors.
I've spoken to many many people since I made my ill-advised purchases of
Athlon boxes, that if I didn't have enough class to buy even an old slow
SPARCStation, I had better stick to Pentium if I intended to have serious
uptime and anything resembling reliability.
> Remember, I'm not trying to tell you that Sun is dead
> tomorrow, I'm saying that after a year or two, I expect
> they'll be in trouble.
They're in trouble now, judging by the stock price. However, the P/E is very
nice indeed compared to anyone else in the industry.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> On 31 Jul 2002 11:38:33 GMT,
> : Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> writes:
>
> :>Um, you seem to not quite be aware of just how good Sun's _hardware_ is.
> :>Even Sun would be pretty quick to admit that Solaris "ain't all that".
>
> (I say "yet".)
I wasn't talking about the kernel, I was talking about the rest of Solaris.
Sorry to have been unclear. As you note elsewhere, most people go to GCC
ASAP.
>
> : I think there are two problems: (1) The demand for
> : high-quality boxes is always going to be a lot lower than
> : the demand for cheap ones; (2) it's entirely possible to
> : build high quality systems with cheap boxes.
>
>
> Rather, people will look at the low price tag on the shitboxes and use them
> instead of something decent. Until they're bitten once too often and
> realise not using shit is a better idea.
I am at that point. I sort of don't give a crap about cutting-edge speed for
what I'm trying to do, I just want uptime, uptime, uptime. I want to be able
to take a 'wanderjahr' and come back and find the server running despite
20megs of spam in the inbox.
>
> Look at the prices on even Compaq or Dell server boxes, including service
> contract prices. They're comparable to a Sun box of equivalent power.
> Except the Compaq/Dell will more likely be used in the field as a Win2k
> server, which means you need twice the box anyway. Because MANAGEMENT ARE
> POINTY HAIRED FUCKHEADS AAAAAAAAAHHH!
>
> : Remember, I'm not trying to tell you that Sun is dead
> : tomorrow, I'm saying that after a year or two, I expect
> : they'll be in trouble.
>
>
> I think they're well aware of this, which is why they're approaching Linux
> side-on so that their current customer base doesn't panic.
Side-on? Care to elaborate? Seriously, you're closer to the world-of-work
than I am right now, I would wager.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> On Thu, 01 Aug 2002 02:24:51 +0000,
> :> On 31 Jul 2002 11:38:33 GMT,
> :> Joe Brenner <do...@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote:
> :> : Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> writes:
>
> :> :>Um, you seem to not quite be aware of just how good Sun's _hardware_ is.
> :> :>Even Sun would be pretty quick to admit that Solaris "ain't all that".
>
> :> No they wouldn't, and nor would I. Linux is not there yet, nor is *BSD.
> :> (I say "yet".)
>
> : I wasn't talking about the kernel, I was talking about the rest of Solaris.
> : Sorry to have been unclear. As you note elsewhere, most people go to GCC
> : ASAP.
>
> optimised for the OS). But yeah.
Okay, last time I was working with SunOS it was either version 4, or the 2.5
in which the `cc` was pretty broken. Hell, at that time, sun.com had links
to `gcc` stating more or less "sorry we shipped a shite version, use this
for now, please".
>
> :> : I think there are two problems: (1) The demand for
> :> : high-quality boxes is always going to be a lot lower than
> :> : the demand for cheap ones; (2) it's entirely possible to
> :> : build high quality systems with cheap boxes.
>
> :> Rather, people will look at the low price tag on the shitboxes and use them
> :> instead of something decent. Until they're bitten once too often and
> :> realise not using shit is a better idea.
>
> : I am at that point. I sort of don't give a crap about cutting-edge speed for
> : what I'm trying to do, I just want uptime, uptime, uptime. I want to be able
> : to take a 'wanderjahr' and come back and find the server running despite
> : 20megs of spam in the inbox.
>
>
> Those who push the 'Linux will win cos the hardware is cheap' line: I'd
> like you to take a look at http://www.netapp.com/ and work out what sort of
> people would pay those apparently insane prices for mere data storage. Then
> work out why NetApp does a roaring trade and many a BOFH swears by them.
The NetApp is in fact pretty damned nice. Um remember, I was actually
gainfully employed in a combination co-location facility and generic
NetCenter. Outside of the main purview of my employment, there were lots of
interesting toys "doing stuff". One was a NetApp. Many times I was called
down to kick this or that box's power-switch. The NetApp needed no attention
whatsoever from me in the whole year I was onsite.
As much as I like Linux, I like the rest of the *NIX as well, I don't want
to seem to short-shrift Solaris, even if it does have fluky weirdness with
the LD_LIBRARY_PRELOAD and other such things, not quite amounting to the
hellishness of needing /etc in $PATH as in Irix.
>
> :> : Remember, I'm not trying to tell you that Sun is dead
> :> : tomorrow, I'm saying that after a year or two, I expect
> :> : they'll be in trouble.
>
> :> I think they're well aware of this, which is why they're approaching Linux
> :> side-on so that their current customer base doesn't panic.
>
> : Side-on? Care to elaborate? Seriously, you're closer to the world-of-work
> : than I am right now, I would wager.
>
>
> I mean they're not embracing Linux fully, they're sort of adding
> Linuxability to things in a slow and orderly fashion without shouting "GIVE
> UP ON SOLARIS, LINUX IS THE WAY OF THE FUTURE".
Point taken. Remember when they were giving away a freeware version of
Solaris for the i386 platform? I almost wish I'd taken them up on it. Linux
does have some strengths and weaknesses, same with Sun. What bothers me
about Sun is the price of a lot of their peripherals. Fuck, an ethernet
10Mb/sec card is, what, U$200? Not to mention what their monitors cost.
> GNOME as a desktop does
> presume a lot of GNU in the userland. That sort of thing.
>
> Hmm. I wonder if GNOME builds under the Sun compiler.
Um. Good question. Probably --ns-- could chime in? I know there are troubles
with the CDE and exploitability, as shipped from Sun. Also, to tell the
truth, I strongly suspect that there are huge piles of exploitability that
is as-yet unexplored, much less documented, in the GNOME development tree. I
use it, I like it, but I also totally fear it. But what am I going to do, go
back to OpenLook `olvwm'? Yeesh.
Dag
> On 31 Jul 2002 11:38:33 GMT, Joe Brenner wrote:
<SNIP>
> HQ system breaks down three times, is down for 3 hours, and costs $900
> in repairs, for a total of $5900.
>
> Cheap systems break down 30 times in the same period, have no downtime,
> and cost $4500 to repair. Total cost is $6500.
The no downtime thing assumes that failover actually fails over gracefully
to the other machine and not onto a big puddle onto the floor. Also it
asumes that the data is actually correctly mirrored and not almost sort
of mostly mirrored. And of course, as these things tend to go, the two
boxes might feel some sort of cosmic bond and decide to form a suicide
packt and die together.
Also high quality systems tend to fail more gracefully. For example they
come with RAID, so disk-loss doesn't equal data loss or even downtime. And
they might have a UPS and redundant power supplies. Meaning you often have
some choice when you want your downtime and sometimes you can even de-fuck
the machine without taking it down.
You have also failed to put a value on being able to go to sleep each
night and being reasonably sure things haven't gone straight to hell when
you wake up.
Dag
Dag
>>>The Road Warrior was always my favorite,
>>>but I think I ended up in Brave New World,
>>>which is *not* what I wanted.
>>
>>They never made that into a movie, did they? Still, I'll give you that.
>
> 'Course they did:
>
> http://us.imdb.com/Title?0080468#comment
>
> ISTR it was pretty good, too, though it's probably 22 years since I've
> seen it.
>
It's not bad. It's also the most accurate book to movie conversion I have
ever seen, to the point where almost all of the dialog is lifted word for
word from the book.
Dag
Dag
>>with usable service contracts.
>
> I could point you at what Philip Greenspun has to say about
> Sun's service reps (I think the phrase is "clueless board
> swappers"). (He prefers HP, last I looked.)
The reason he preferd HP is that they kept giving him large quanities of
free hardware in exchange for his prais, so I would take his oppinion with
a grain of salt. Although I have no personal experience with Sun support.
>
>>PC hardware is cheaper than Sun hardware if you buy candy;
>>if you're buying server-grade stuff, it's comparable.
>
> That sounds like a bit of a surprise, but if you're telling
> me you've priced this out, I'll have to believe you.
I while back my company bought a 4-way SGI Origin 200 server with 1 TB
FibreChannel RAID and a matching backup system and the SGI sollution
was cheaper the the HP-Linux sollution once everything was included.
The Sun sollution was a bit more than SGI and and about the same as HP.
And this is a relativly small set up in the scheme of things.
>>That and Solaris scales up much better than Linux at this point in time.
>
> I could be convinced that this is true, but I'd want to be
> convinced.
Run linux on a 16+ CPU box, and see what happens...
>
> Exactly. One caveat though, the PC hardware has a
> bottleneck in it's IO bus. I can imagine for some purposes
> they would be better at say, pumping graphics around fast.
>
>>But the server side is quite different. (For the time
>>being.)
>
> And that's the point. I can imagine that there are sensible
> reasons for buying some Sun products, but those reasons are
> starting to go away fairly quickly. I would say if you've
> got Sun stock you should plan on dumping it within a year.
Right tool for the right job is again the magic phrase to remember. I
think Linux is great and use it for all kinds of server tasks. It is,
however, far from perfect for all tasks, and much of that can be blamed
on the hardware it runs on. For 1-4 CPU machines with relativly low
I/O or memeory needs Linux is grand and my first choice for many tasks.
Linux is improving fast, and it will keep shaving away it the lower end
markets of the big Unix players, but I doubt we'll see linux running on
a 512CPU machine, like for example Irix, any time soon.
Dag
Peter H. Coffin
> As much as I like Linux, I like the rest of the *NIX as well, I don't want
> to seem to short-shrift Solaris, even if it does have fluky weirdness with
> the LD_LIBRARY_PRELOAD and other such things, not quite amounting to the
> hellishness of needing /etc in $PATH as in Irix.
IMUninformedO, Irix exists solely to run some killer applications that
don't run elsewise, and would have been boiled in its own pudding long
ago except for those apps.
Linux.... well, I've kind of gotten to the point that I look at it as a
good choice for people bound and determined to buy the cheapest hardware
possible and still make a moderately stable desktop box out of it.
For preference, I choose OpenBSD for anything exposed to outside
influences, and Solaris for anything that's important enough to make a
huge investment of time oo money in. Well, unless there's a LOT of money
involved or serious reliablility and uptime is needed. Then, I recommend
scrapping *nix all together and getting an AS/400. But I'm weird about
those. In that case, though, you can forget about $200 10Meg NICs;
expect to pay $500. You will probably NEVER need to buy a replacement
though.
--
87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I
will not construct walkways above them.
Peter H. Coffin
> Sun is the one that thinks 'sysadmins' should do serious work logged into
> CDE as root and using admintool and its brethren. Eegh. I did Solaris Admin
> II and the room of BOFHen disparaged this idea quite eloquently. The
> instructor agreed.
One four-letter word: SMIT
Peter H. Coffin
> developers' haids.
Also, one six-letter word: screen
Peter H. Coffin
This is a fine arguement to take to admins. It works poorly with
beancounters. However, between the two posts above, anyone except
management can be convinced that cheap boxen are not cheap.
We'd need articles in SkyMall or something like that for management.
--
87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I
will not construct walkways above them.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
<snip snip>
> Right tool for the right job is again the magic phrase to remember. I
> think Linux is great and use it for all kinds of server tasks. It is,
> however, far from perfect for all tasks, and much of that can be blamed
> on the hardware it runs on. For 1-4 CPU machines with relativly low
> I/O or memeory needs Linux is grand and my first choice for many tasks.
> Linux is improving fast, and it will keep shaving away it the lower end
> markets of the big Unix players, but I doubt we'll see linux running on
> a 512CPU machine, like for example Irix, any time soon.
Um, Dag, how about 512 Linux boxes with a Beowulf load?
http://www.beowulf.org/ and definitely see http://www.scyld.com/
You could probably informatively state whether it might be cheaper to build
a Beowulf cluster, or buy the SGI setup.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> In article <slrnakfthp....@othin.ninehells.com>, Peter H. Coffin wrote:
> > On 31 Jul 2002 11:38:33 GMT, Joe Brenner wrote:
>
> <SNIP>
>
> > HQ system breaks down three times, is down for 3 hours, and costs $900
> > in repairs, for a total of $5900.
> >
> > Cheap systems break down 30 times in the same period, have no downtime,
> > and cost $4500 to repair. Total cost is $6500.
>
> The no downtime thing assumes that failover actually fails over gracefully
> to the other machine and not onto a big puddle onto the floor. Also it
> asumes that the data is actually correctly mirrored and not almost sort
> of mostly mirrored. And of course, as these things tend to go, the two
> boxes might feel some sort of cosmic bond and decide to form a suicide
> packt and die together.
Heh. It's fairly rare if you have a clue -- or the bucks to do things the
right way -- but I have in fact seen the network equivalent of a cascade
failure. The most nasty part of that is that if you've done the glob in such
a way that this can happen, sometimes one gets the feeling one is back in
the days where you had to start a DEC PDP-11/70 by actually flipping
register stitches into the boot configuration, and then turn on the machine
and peripherals in specific order, switching the register paddles as you go.
>
> Also high quality systems tend to fail more gracefully. For example they
> come with RAID, so disk-loss doesn't equal data loss or even downtime. And
> they might have a UPS and redundant power supplies. Meaning you often have
> some choice when you want your downtime and sometimes you can even de-fuck
> the machine without taking it down.
>
> You have also failed to put a value on being able to go to sleep each
> night and being reasonably sure things haven't gone straight to hell when
> you wake up.
You know, this is why many corporations take out life-insurance on their
sysadmins, with or without the sysadmins' knowledge. If you get up to find
that not only has the cluster gone to hell, but also that you can't take it
anymore, goodbye cruel world, they can just take the money and exit the
business with a slight profit.
IHCOYC XPICTOC
: You could probably informatively state whether it might be cheaper to build
: a Beowulf cluster, or buy the SGI setup.
I know there's some technical meaning to "Beowulf cluster," and it
has something to do with parallel processing on multiple Linux or
Unix boxes. I really only know of the name.
Still, it's a phrase I cannot look at without forming a mental
picture of some kind of orgy involving scaly monsters and blond
bodybuilders with He-Man hair.
Dag
>> Linux is improving fast, and it will keep shaving away it the lower end
>> markets of the big Unix players, but I doubt we'll see linux running on
>> a 512CPU machine, like for example Irix, any time soon.
>
> Um, Dag, how about 512 Linux boxes with a Beowulf load?
>
> http://www.beowulf.org/ and definitely see http://www.scyld.com/
>
> You could probably informatively state whether it might be cheaper to build
> a Beowulf cluster, or buy the SGI setup.
That's a very different beats. That's 512 different linux kernels with
512 different RAM and disk images running on 512 different machines
With Irix you get one machine running one kernel with one RAM and disk
images on 512 CPU. Thus no problem keeping data in sync or worrying
about insanely slow I/O between CPU's, all the CPU's can access the same
data structure in memory, one single locking and threading mechanism to
worry about etc. etc.
Beowulf clusters are great if you have a problem which can be divided
into 512 discreet and independant parts. But if you have what is
basically one indivisable calculation that requires 512 CPUs to solve
then a beowulf cluster isn't what you want.
On the price side then, sure, 512 Intel grey boxes will be cheaper than
one 512 CPU sgi Origin3000 box. But the two machines solve different
problems so it's not really a simple comparison to make.
Dag
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> wrote:
>
> : You could probably informatively state whether it might be cheaper to build
> : a Beowulf cluster, or buy the SGI setup.
>
> I know there's some technical meaning to "Beowulf cluster," and it
> has something to do with parallel processing on multiple Linux or
> Unix boxes. I really only know of the name.
>
> Still, it's a phrase I cannot look at without forming a mental
> picture of some kind of orgy involving scaly monsters and blond
> bodybuilders with He-Man hair.
Um. Not to drop names, but I worked for the contractor at NASA Goddard who
was one of the major authors and developers of the Beowulf concept.
Given the scene at Goddard at the time, and some of the staff, your vision
is surprisingly apropos.
Basically, a Beowulf cluster is a sort of generic term given to a pile of
Linux boxes, all of which have their own CPU and board, drive, and ethernet
cards. One of the NASA clusters was, IIRC, 32 Pentium II with Tulip 10/100
fast-ethernet cards, all pretty state-of-the-art at the time.
For any sort of job which could take advantage of parallel processing
algorythms -- where the job is essentially interations and reiteration --
this is very fast indeed, and if you scale the costs compared to something
such as a Cray, it's exceptionally cheap. The sort of thing that Goddard was
trying it on was such things as proper star motion calculations, which are
massively repetitive. More or less, you move a dot, do the same thing with
the next dot, there being about a kajillion dots. Once you do that, you
calculate how each of those dots has moved relative to the rest of the dots,
their gravity and vectors, etc, and calculate the next position for each dot
and then move the dot, repeat the whole process a kajillion times for each
of the kajillion dots. This is the sort of thing where it screams.
However, if you're just trying to play a nice game of Quake, it's no better
than one box, and really not quite as good because of the overhead on
communicating with the rest of the boxes and telling them "nothing going on
but a game of Quake, nothing for you to do".
Peter H. Coffin
> On Sat, 03 Aug 2002 14:12:44 GMT,
> --nightshade-- <ns_de_cybax_yahoo...@microsoft.com> wrote:
>: In article <3D49F51B...@earthops.net>,
>: Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> wrote:
>
>:> Point taken. Remember when they were giving away a freeware version of
>:> Solaris for the i386 platform?
>
>: SPARC.
>
>
> It's slower than Linux or BSD on the same box. And being a PC, it doesn't
> have Open Firmware. But it's honest to goodness Solaris, and almost all
> your apps will run identically with a recompile. (The exception being
> bit-twiddling falling afoul of the different endianness.)
My GF played with it a bit, and though slower overall, it did seem that
it was much much harder to stagger than the linux distro (whichever it
was) she was running on another drive. Much in the same way a GE Dash 8
is slower than a Freightliner Columbia, I know which one I'd rather have
handling mail for 4000 users.
--
"This system operates under martial law. The constitution is suspended. You
have no rights except as declared by the area commander. Violators will be
shot. Repeat violators will be repeatedly shot...." -from "A_W_O_L"
Peter H. Coffin
> network stack, etc. great bang for the buck, but until beowulf gets a
> 'killer app' to support, it's got a problem, and that problem is
> in-house application development.
In-house application development is not the problem. In-house
application development is the solution! Sell the results.
Note that I sling bits in-house for a living. I expect that that means
that I am biased.
--
80. If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best
troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he
gets closer and closer to my fortress.
Peter H. Coffin
> Plus they're so damned orderly and obsessed with thinking things
> through, they couldn't be less fun unless maybe they were
> Presbyterian.
I'm showing my heritage that I can walk through the downtown section,
see something like 37 publically visible clocks, and all but one
function and are showing the correct time within the limits of the
display.
This does not obtain in Richmond or C-ville VA, which is where I
compared it to at the time.
> (The Amish are harmless and sort of cute in
> their backwardness.) And as we all know, they're responsible for every
> historic wrong ever done anywhere. Just ask anyone! And that damned
> oom-pah-pah music is enough to get on anyone's nerves!
Heh. Lately, it's been the Latinos that have been playing the oompahpah
music.
--
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Berlioz
Aidan Skinner
<ns_de_cybax_yahoo...@microsoft.com> wrote in
<ns_de_cybax_yahoo.com_not.re...@news.comcast.giganews
.com>:
> i imagine that there's only su much market for processing astronomical
> or meteoroligical data. you don't want to sell your IP package to the
Yeah, but the people who do want this will normally want people on
hand for ad-hoc work, so the programmer should be safe. ;)
- Aidan
--
ai...@velvet.net http://www.velvet.net/~aidan/ aim:aidans42
finger for pgp key fingerprint |- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
01AA 1594 2DB0 09E3 B850 | World Domination, once crack
C2D0 9A2C 4CC9 3EC4 75E1 | smoking hacker at at time
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> In article <3D434B23...@earthops.net>,
>
> > they're easy to get a bead on in the dark!
>
> not all people of teutonic descent are pale.
Eh, who's talking about just the teutonics? I was fixating on the people who
were once more-or-less the Rhinelanders before they got more than decimated
through war and starvation and finally gave it up as a bad job and walked
out of the Germanies on the frozen Rhine circa 1730. Most are pretty pale,
given the opportunity, though probably most can tan without too much
problem. I suppose I should include the Saxons as well, eh?
(klaatu must pause to admit that by february he's got a nice case of
white-as-fishbelly, but can be pretty brown by mid-September. And no, klaatu
isn't a blonde either.)
>
> > They generally refuse to breed
> > like rats and therefor they are the admitted enemies of the American
> > Limitless Growth Economic Model.
>
> i'm telling you: give it time, and refusing to have children will be
> classified an act of socioeconomic terrorism.
I can see it now:
The revolutionary, outnumbered and outgunned, paused to
scream at the advancing squad: "I won't breed! I won't!
You can't make me!"
The squad paused in its advance; it had surrounded him in
any case, and his weapons were exhausted. Then, almost as
one, the squad raised its face shields. There were, in
all of those eyes, a bit of a merry twinkle, and the
squad began to shed their flak jackets, and their carapaces,
and then their plastrons, and then their corsets...
The squad leader, a buxom betty if a bit over-buff,
stepped forward with an evil grin and said,
"How much you wanna bet?"
>
> > They eat all of that nasty weinerschnitzel and sauerkraut crap.
>
> that's a myth. weinerschnitzel isn't nasty.
But is it or not totally true that the German national spirit is suffering
even now over the discovery that the Koreans make better sauerkraut than
they do?
>
> > The men are all alkies and the women get all roly-poly
> > unless you starve them or they're speed freaks.
>
> :-P
Hell, you can say that about _everyone_. Unfortunately, with a fair amount
of truth.
>
> > Plus they're so damned
> > orderly and obsessed with thinking things through, they couldn't be less fun
> > unless maybe they were Presbyterian.
>
> party on wayne.
Most excellently, Garth!
>
> > Drive the kraut oppressors into the sea! Well, okay, maybe just drive them
> > into the Great Lakes.
>
> you missed a few key points, and a major opportunity. first, we'll eat
> even the most disgusting scrap of meat, provided you stuff it into the
> intestines of another animal, or congeal it it lard and gelatin. so
> we're easy to feed.
Guess who invented SPAM, and why? Well, _we did_, and why? _because we LIKE
it_[1].
> second, we can be trained: we're quite good at
> marching in straight lines behind crooked leaders. also, we can fix
> mechanical shit. you might want to rethink our utility before marching
> us into the sea, even though it'd be the picture of orderly lemmingism...
Picture this, the aforementioned overly orderly lemmings hiking to the
cliff's-edge and passing out instruction manuals and a bag of groceries to
the invaders and then hopping off the cliff, because it's the orderly thing
to do.[2]
>
> now those swedish americans...
>
> --nightshade-- {who claims maybe 10% the latter, before anyone has a
> lapse in sense of humour.}
Heh, --klaatu, who only has to dress in all black homespun to be entirely
indistinguishable in any Amish community in which he'd like to hide.
BTW, this revelation about yourself is just totally ruined my "how do you
picture" misconception of you as a {$STEREOTYPE}.
Remarks:
1. Gramma used to get very upset if she didn't get her morning scrapple
served up extra greasy.
2. Um, did I direct you to my new website? Complete with embedded babelfish.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> On Sun, 28 Jul 2002 01:38:43 +0000, Tiny Human Ferret wrote:
> > Plus they're so damned orderly and obsessed with thinking things
> > through, they couldn't be less fun unless maybe they were
> > Presbyterian.
>
> I'm showing my heritage that I can walk through the downtown section,
Where's this then? Madison?
> see something like 37 publically visible clocks, and all but one
> function and are showing the correct time within the limits of the
> display.
And I betcha everyone there is constantly setting their watches by them! Not
that anyone would need all of those clocks for any other reason, everyone of
course having at least one chronometer on their person. (klaatu don't like
watches much, won't wear one unless he can finally find another wind-up.)
>
> This does not obtain in Richmond or C-ville VA, which is where I
> compared it to at the time.
Ah. "Southern time".
>
> > (The Amish are harmless and sort of cute in
> > their backwardness.) And as we all know, they're responsible for every
> > historic wrong ever done anywhere. Just ask anyone! And that damned
> > oom-pah-pah music is enough to get on anyone's nerves!
>
> Heh. Lately, it's been the Latinos that have been playing the oompahpah
> music.
Which is why I occasionally threaten to genuinely dismay the neighborhood by
purchasing a bagpipe and teaching myself to play. So they'll know how I feel
about those damn "narcocorrida" polkas. For a while there, when everyone was
competing to have the loudest woofers in their cars, it was like living at a
Polish wedding in Hell.
Then again, considering the Gothic influence on Spain, somehow this
predilection to oompahpah music is almost understandable.
Kaf
>"Peter H. Coffin wrote...
> > --nightshade— wrote…
> > what do people in general here think of time; do you maniacally track
> > every second? constantly checking watches, checking watches against
> > other clocks? or do people have a more relaxed attitude toward time?
Actually, this strikes a little too close to home. I'm very glad to
hear I'm not the only person who doesn't wear a watch. Somehow, I just
fell out of the habit while in college and the feeling of something
constricting my wrist is very disconcerting. (Although, I gather other
people use much more complicated devices to simulate this feeling.) As
far as tracking time, work requires that I am on time and know what
time it is at all times. Outside of work, while I simply have to know,
about what time it is, I don't care much for exactly what time it is.
Perhaps my internal chronometer simply has an error factor of plus or
minus ten minutes.
Somehow, I have gotten in the odd habit of turning my bedroom clock
ahead twenty minutes to help me get in each morning on time.
Logically, it shouldn't make any difference, but psychologically, if
the clock was reset to the proper time I'd constantly be late. I've
met a couple other people who do this, but none of us have been able
to explain exactly when the habit started or why it continues.
> I don't routinely monitor the time, though I do have a little bit of an
> obsession with it when I have deadlines that need to be met. I carry a
> pocketwatch in case I discover that I need to know what time it is, but
> since I don't have it on my wrist, I also don't get asked much what time
> it is. I do get very irritated at people that need to know what the time
> is but cannot be bothered to carry the means of knowing this.
For awhile I carried a pocket watch, but eventually it became just
another thing in my pocket I had to remember. Thankfully, cell phones
will give me the time whenever I look for it. The amusing thing is
that for some reason my family seemed to take the failure to wear a
watch just something too weird to exist. As a result I have half a
dozen watches littering my apartment that never get worn.
Kaf
Fascinet
> --nightshade-- wrote:
> >
> >
> > > They eat all of that nasty weinerschnitzel and sauerkraut crap.
> >
> > that's a myth. weinerschnitzel isn't nasty.
>
Weinerschnitzel sucks ass.
Saurkraut kicks ass.
>
> But is it or not totally true that the German national spirit is suffering
> even now over the discovery that the Koreans make better sauerkraut than
> they do?
>
I repeat: saurkraut kicks ass, wherever its made.
You can make krautburgers with it.
Just fry up some saurkraut with a little ground German, roll it up in
some dough, cover with tin foil, and bake it it.
Then you can have some cannibalistic fun at the local high school
football game, because it's the only live entertainment within two
hundred miles.
>
> >
> > > The men are all alkies and the women get all roly-poly
> > > unless you starve them or they're speed freaks.
>
Speed kicks ass.
>
> > you missed a few key points, and a major opportunity. first, we'll eat
> > even the most disgusting scrap of meat, provided you stuff it into the
> > intestines of another animal, or congeal it it lard and gelatin. so
> > we're easy to feed.
>
> Guess who invented SPAM, and why? Well, _we did_, and why?
> _because we LIKE it_[1].
>
SPAM kicks ass.
One reason to love Minnesota.
>
> > second, we can be trained: we're quite good at
> > marching in straight lines behind crooked leaders. also, we can fix
> > mechanical shit. you might want to rethink our utility before marching
> > us into the sea, even though it'd be the picture of orderly
> > lemmingism...
>
Fucking German dickwads.
We can replace all of you bitches with little chink chicks at a tenth
of the price.
>
> > {who claims maybe 10% the latter, before anyone has a
> > lapse in sense of humour.}
>
> BTW, this revelation about yourself is just totally ruined my "how do you
> picture" misconception of you as a {$STEREOTYPE}.
>
The tall blonde part or the blue-eyed, fair-skinned part?
>
> Remarks:
> 1. Gramma used to get very upset if she didn't get her morning scrapple
> served up extra greasy.
>
Scrapple kicks ass, too.
Best breakfast on earth.
Fascinet
Spreading Sweetness and Light to the Genetically Inferior
`Una
>what do people in general here think of time; do you maniacally track
>every second? constantly checking watches, checking watches against
>other clocks? or do people have a more relaxed attitude toward time?
I pay attention to time only out of necessity.
That is, if I miss the bus I have to wait
an entire HOUR for the next one. If I have an
appointment or a job I'll be aware of the general
time so I'm not late, but otherwise I won't even
look at a clock.
When I was in high school I was obsessively aware
of the time. I was never without a watch. One day
I got sick of it and threw the thing across the room.
I haven't worn one since, but I have a pocket watch
so that I can check the time if I think I might miss
my bus.
`Una - the love platypus
Do you have the time?
For what? I have the time for this post, but not enough
to watch the grass grow.
--
Gothae Una Verus, The Young Locust
http://www.velvet.net/~una
You just got boob screwed by a mailbox!!
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> In article <3D4EFBF5...@earthops.net>,
> Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> wrote:
>
> > > i'm telling you: give it time, and refusing to have children will be
> > > classified an act of socioeconomic terrorism.
>
> > I can see it now:
>
> > The revolutionary, outnumbered and outgunned, paused to
> > scream at the advancing squad: "I won't breed! I won't!
> > You can't make me!"
>
>
> > The squad leader, a buxom betty if a bit over-buff,
> > stepped forward with an evil grin and said,
> > "How much you wanna bet?"
>
> klaatu. *shudder*
No, actually it's what sells on television, IIRC. Or Veerhoeven epic
translations of classic disreputable Heinlein, apparently being played on at
least one cable channel once per evening.
Hey, could be worse. It could _be_ actual Heinlein. Virginia, not Robert.
</retch>
My real sexual fantasy world? "You want the truth, you can't _handle_ the
truth."
Several year ago it involved obscure interactions between highly posthuman
beings mostly interacting sexually in the fractal dimensions of Kaluza-Klein
Space, while simultaneously solving towards point-source fusion in the
context of surviving nanotech infestation through propagation of meme
complexes into the farside Creation after the present universe collapses in
the Big Crunch, but that got a bit tame for me. Right now I'm working on
stuff that would make even Greg Egan barf. But at least I'll have the taste
to not put it into print.
Lesser crap shite of the sort that 14-YO might consider interesting will
continue to erupt in mass media. Blame Joss Whedon if you must.
>
> > But is it or not totally true that the German national spirit is suffering
> > even now over the discovery that the Koreans make better sauerkraut than
> > they do?
>
> dunno. about the only application of that vegetable i can contend with
> is coleslaw. though, i'm sure i have childhood olefactory flashbacks
> just waiting to happen the next time i walk into a kitchen of boiling
> cabbage.
Vinegar. Boiling vinegar. With cabbage in it.
>
> > Guess who invented SPAM, and why? Well, _we did_, and why? _because we LIKE
> > it_[1].
>
> it's caught on with some of the mexicans. i used to work with someone
> who was fond of making a concotion of Spam and spanish onions in the
> microwave at work. suffice it to say i stuck to cold lunches and
> suppers.
There are reasons I hide in my basement and eat out of cans. Cow orkers'
cooking ranks first-and-foremost among those reasons.
>
> > BTW, this revelation about yourself is just totally ruined my "how do you
> > picture" misconception of you as a {$STEREOTYPE}.
>
> 10% is hardly enough to show. come to think of it, i'm not entirely
> certain of that. it's something i think i remember my grandmother
> saying. there's not a whole lot of record that i can hunt down, but
> most of the traceable family names are decidedly german. though, i'd
> not be surprised if i'm more mutt than i am aware.
If you look at the history of that general region of Europe, muttness is
sort of a given, unless maybe one is descended from some tribe of
cave-dwellers that didn't come out of their little niche of the woods until
a day or two before they hopped the transatlantic.
Me? I've given up trying to sort it out.
But all of the traceable names, other than one Cherokee gal several
generations back, are very germanic with the exception of one eminently
saxon english name; and my mom's mom's name, or a variant of it, appears to
be related to the entire state of Pennsylvania (with a large showing in the
liberal-arts graduating classes of the universities of that commonwealth)
and to a lot of points west, with the exception of the Texas/Gulf-Coast
germanics who were generally from a rather later migration. Clue, Mom's
birth was registered in Lebanon PA.
I think I'll go dress in black homespun and raise barns, thanks, this
InterNet thing may be even more frivolous than digital bread toasters with
X10 controls.
Whisper
> Actually, this strikes a little too close to home. I'm very glad to
> hear I'm not the only person who doesn't wear a watch.
I haven't worn a watch in some time. I always wear them upside-down,
out of habit and because I can't stand the thought of glancing at my
wrist every two minutes. Unfortunately, after only a few days, I
develop an allergic reaction to the metal.
> Somehow, I have gotten in the odd habit of turning my bedroom clock
> ahead twenty minutes to help me get in each morning on time.
> Logically, it shouldn't make any difference, but psychologically, if
> the clock was reset to the proper time I'd constantly be late. I've
> met a couple other people who do this, but none of us have been able
> to explain exactly when the habit started or why it continues.
I am obsessive about time, sadly. I have at least two--and usually
three or more--clocks in my bedroom. I have a double-alarm clock
(radio and beepy noises) that is set about 20 minutes ahead. I have a
third alarm clock that is set 10-15 minutes fast. My computer clock
is closer to the actual time, but I even set that at least five
minutes fast. I don't recall when this obsession began; however, I am
sure that it had something to do with guilt over being horribly late
for something of great importance. Now, I think that I continue my
habits out of fear, and to curb my obsession, if only a bit. Think,
if I can never be sure of the exact minute, then there is less chance
for me to time my waking rituals...and consequentially, make myself
late again. I know, it's ridiculous.
> > I do get very irritated at people that need to know what the time
> > is but cannot be bothered to carry the means of knowing this.
I will run all through a building to search for a wall clock before
I'll ask a stranger for the time; however, I have to give in, on
occasion. I am irritated that I have to be irritating. Hopefully, I
won't be cell phone-less forever.
> As a result I have half a
> dozen watches littering my apartment that never get worn.
>
> Kaf
I have several watches lying about, but sadly, they are all dead...and
yet somehow, I can't bring myself to get rid of them, or bother myself
to get new batteries. I suppose my relationship with time is and
always will be of the love-hate variety.
~Whisper
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> Tiny Human Ferret <ixnayamsp...@earthops.net> wrote in message news:<3D4EFBF5...@earthops.net>...
> > --nightshade-- wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > > They eat all of that nasty weinerschnitzel and sauerkraut crap.
> > >
> > > that's a myth. weinerschnitzel isn't nasty.
> >
>
> Weinerschnitzel sucks ass.
>
> Saurkraut kicks ass.
Sauerkraut as a tasty bed for a mixed plate of blutwurst, knackwurst, and
dumplings, it is in fact a rare treat, especially with apple pie drowned in
cream on the side, bock beer for chaser, and don't make too much noise in
the morning before I've had my aspirin and barfed.
>
> >
> > But is it or not totally true that the German national spirit is suffering
> > even now over the discovery that the Koreans make better sauerkraut than
> > they do?
> >
>
> I repeat: saurkraut kicks ass, wherever its made.
>
> You can make krautburgers with it.
>
> Just fry up some saurkraut with a little ground German, roll it up in
> some dough, cover with tin foil, and bake it it.
>
> Then you can have some cannibalistic fun at the local high school
> football game, because it's the only live entertainment within two
> hundred miles.
Ah, lived in New Braunfels, have you.
And then there are the recipes of the Louisiana Alsatians, you know, wrap
some mudbugs in sauerkraut, foil and broil, toss it in some gumbo with the
extra spicy gator tail.
>
> >
> > >
> > > > The men are all alkies and the women get all roly-poly
> > > > unless you starve them or they're speed freaks.
> >
>
> Speed kicks ass.
Nothing like a nice skinny germanic gal, eh? Unless it's any other sort of
nice skinny gal, I guess.
Seriously, speed doesn't kick ass, it will kick your ass. Badly.
>
> >
> > > you missed a few key points, and a major opportunity. first, we'll eat
> > > even the most disgusting scrap of meat, provided you stuff it into the
> > > intestines of another animal, or congeal it it lard and gelatin. so
> > > we're easy to feed.
> >
> > Guess who invented SPAM, and why? Well, _we did_, and why?
> > _because we LIKE it_[1].
> >
>
> SPAM kicks ass.
>
> One reason to love Minnesota.
What, the Minnesotans invented SPAM? Gentlemen, aim yer nukes.
>
> >
> > > second, we can be trained: we're quite good at
> > > marching in straight lines behind crooked leaders. also, we can fix
> > > mechanical shit. you might want to rethink our utility before marching
> > > us into the sea, even though it'd be the picture of orderly
> > > lemmingism...
> >
>
> Fucking German dickwads.
>
> We can replace all of you bitches with little chink chicks at a tenth
> of the price.
Um... don't let the Canadians overhear this...
>
> >
> > > {who claims maybe 10% the latter, before anyone has a
> > > lapse in sense of humour.}
> >
> > BTW, this revelation about yourself is just totally ruined my "how do you
> > picture" misconception of you as a {$STEREOTYPE}.
> >
>
> The tall blonde part or the blue-eyed, fair-skinned part?
Of course, the individual in question is, just because this is my
{$STEREOTYPE}, a very tall and skinny individual with an pronounced
epicanthic fold, raven hair and coal-black eyes, surgeon's (or strangler's)
hands, and is commonly forced to run screaming through the streets 'I am
_not_ a Vulcan, you rabid Trekkie, why can't you leave me alone and get a
fscking LIFE!"; else, is a person of exactly five feet in height, exactly
four feet in breadth, exactly four feet in thickness, grey hair, grey eyes,
grey attire, living in a grey house in a grey city amidst a greying
population, and generally set about the task of being absolutely perfect at
being absolutely remarkable, and succeeding quite well at this, of course.
Or they might look a lot like my extended family... astoundingly
unremarkable, still water running deep.
>
> >
> > Remarks:
> > 1. Gramma used to get very upset if she didn't get her morning scrapple
> > served up extra greasy.
> >
>
> Scrapple kicks ass, too.
>
> Best breakfast on earth.
Bud, _nothing_ will wake you up better than coffee -- black as horse piss
with the foam blown off -- and fried shredded pork snouts.
Bad for the liver, tho'.
--klaatu, headed for his final nighty-night and probably within six months
at best. My advice? Don't drink, don't smoke, don't have fun, don't live.
>
> Fascinet
> Spreading Sweetness and Light to the Genetically Inferior
--
Hatter
> "Peter H. Coffin" wrote:
> >
> >
> > Heh. Lately, it's been the Latinos that have been playing the oompahpah
> > music.
>
> Which is why I occasionally threaten to genuinely dismay the neighborhood by
> purchasing a bagpipe and teaching myself to play. So they'll know how I feel
> about those damn "narcocorrida" polkas. For a while there, when everyone was
> competing to have the loudest woofers in their cars, it was like living at a
> Polish wedding in Hell.
>
> Then again, considering the Gothic influence on Spain, somehow this
> predilection to oompahpah music is almost understandable.
I find it odd growing up half Polish, hearing all that coming from the
windows in Upper Fell's Point where I live from the Latinos. I
wouldn't quite qualify it as Oompahpah but polka. Oompahpah is
similar, but way more Germanic.
Hatter
Just because you really are being hunted by killer robots from the
future does not mean you are not crazy.
IHCOYC XPICTOC
: I haven't worn a watch in some time. I always wear them upside-down,
: out of habit and because I can't stand the thought of glancing at my
: wrist every two minutes. Unfortunately, after only a few days, I
: develop an allergic reaction to the metal.
That I carry a pocket watch and never a wristwatch is one of my oldest
eccentricities. Never liked the idea of having something hanging around
one of my hands.
There was one fellow in my high school who was fascinated by this, and any
time he passed me he would ask me for the time. He's now serving 50 years
on a charge of murder for hire, but with good time he should get out in
another ten or so.
Hatter
> Over the last several months I have lost at least $15,000 wagering
> in stocks and mutual funds. This pleases me.
>
> I find myself wondering why.
>
> It isn't like the money was there for spending, and now I cannot. All
> of my investments are tied up in tax-deferred retirement accounts.
> The gains they posted were all the gold of fairyland in any case,
> especially since I doubt I will live so long as to ever actually be
> entitled to withdraw this money.
>
>
> All my life, I have lived in hope of Apocalypse. The descent of some
> awful calamity that at once absolves you of your conduct in the past,
> and of responsibility for the future. Quick deaths for the lucky,
> freedom from the constraints of existing institutions for the
> survivors. Won't it be glorious?
>
Actually there is some scholarly research on the appeal of the
apocalypse.
While it seems appealing in a visceral sense, and of course
identification with the outsider(who here doesn't?), the reality it
wouldn't be all that heroic: fighting off smallpox and scurvy, and
giging rats for food. I think what you are feeling is a warm
rumination of your youthful "The world is going to hell and I'm going
to be on top of the trashheap" fantasy; as opposed to the ever
shrinking freedoms, and dullness of retirment accounts and mortgage
payments of reality and responsibility. It comes from a projection of
you as immortal youth, without the complications of modern living in
an overpopulated and controlled world.
Hatter
Jennie
IX wrote:
>> All my life, I have lived in hope of Apocalypse. The descent of some
>> awful calamity that at once absolves you of your conduct in the past,
>> and of responsibility for the future.
It is, I think, a symptom of living in the latter half of the
twentieth century, and something which many of us carry with us. Growing
up under the seemingly ever-present threat of imminent nuclear holocaust
was a miserable thing, and the temptation was always to rebel somehow, to
stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. There was a feeling that it
actually happening was the only thing which might relieve that awful
tension. And it was kind of like personal death, in that, no matter what
science may conclude, one could never really _know_ what it might be like
until it happened. Science fiction has often presented us with future
societies which worship nuclear bombs or similar artifacts. There is
something religious about it all. And, of course, there's the persistent
human belief that we are living close to the end times, as everyone has
thought for centuries - everyone else has merely lived in the middle of
history - how honoured we would be were we to bear the distinction of
living at the end. It would be almost as if we had conquered time. Most of
us, most of the time, can do very little to affect how most people live,
but by playing our part in the apocalypse we could strongly affect how a
whole species (and, perhaps, life on Earth) dies.
>> Won't it be glorious?
Glorious indeed.
>Actually there is some scholarly research on the appeal of the
>apocalypse.
I should think so. Has this been tied in to historical
obsessions, or does it concentrate on recent phenomena?
>While it seems appealing in a visceral sense, and of course
>identification with the outsider(who here doesn't?), the reality it
>wouldn't be all that heroic: fighting off smallpox and scurvy, and
>giging rats for food.
I learned a valuable lesson when my illness was diagnosed.
Until then, I had entertained the usual fantasies regarding how much nicer
the world would be if only there were less people in it, and I knew that,
following a civilisation-shattering disaster, I would be advantaged by my
intellect [1] and particular areas of knowledge. Realising the extent of
my weaknesses, and the way in which they're likely to develop, put that
into perspective. Sure, I could probably still get by for a while, but my
life expectancy would be slashed, and the process of living would be
pretty miserable. I'd wager that most people's experience would be
similar, albeit perhaps less dramatic. I am now a great defender of
civilisation and developing technology, because, frankly, I realise how
much I need it.
>rumination of your youthful "The world is going to hell and I'm going
>to be on top of the trashheap" fantasy; as opposed to the ever
>shrinking freedoms, and dullness of retirment accounts and mortgage
>payments of reality and responsibility.
I don't think it has to be one extreme or the other. There are
still glorious things to be found in everyday life, and one doesn't have
to play other people's games all the time, no matter what the TV says.
Jennie
[1] This one is particularly tempting because intellect seems like such a
_disadvantage_ whilst civilisation flourishes, doesn't it? Down amongst
the masses, anyway.
--
Jennie Kermode jen...@innocent.com
http://www.triffid.demon.co.uk/jennie
winter
digital watch. But I pitched it after realizing that the need to know
one's place in history down to the millisecond is best left in the
hands of sinewy leggy types who run around on tracks.
When I do wear a watch, my preference is a loose fitting brushed metal
one which has the crystal designed in such a manner that it can only
be read at certain angles. It suits my ambivalence well.
I dislike alarms more than timepieces per se...especially being awoken
by some annoying little beeping or clattering noise. Generally I wake
up on my own and arrive at work at a reasonable, albeit slightly
flexible, time. Of course it helps to discourage colleagues from
setting early morning meetings. Either way, it feels like a small
victory in an entirely over-organized society.
Winter
IHCOYC XPICTOC
: While it seems appealing in a visceral sense, and of course
: identification with the outsider(who here doesn't?), the reality it
: wouldn't be all that heroic: fighting off smallpox and scurvy, and
: giging rats for food. I think what you are feeling is a warm
: rumination of your youthful "The world is going to hell and I'm going
: to be on top of the trashheap" fantasy; as opposed to the ever
: shrinking freedoms, and dullness of retirment accounts and mortgage
: payments of reality and responsibility. It comes from a projection of
: you as immortal youth, without the complications of modern living in
: an overpopulated and controlled world.
That isn't quite it. My fantasies about apocalypses more or less
assumed that I would not be one of the long term survivors. I knew
from the beginning that I was physically weak, relatively free from
guile, and would not last long in the post-nuclear wilderness.
What was more gratifying to me was the few moments before the wall
of fire struck, when I could tell the panicking normals, "I told you
so! I told you so! See! This is the life you have made for
yourselves, and it couldn't have happened to more deserving people."
Nyx
news:ns_de_cybax_yahoo.com_not.really.at-
043F21.150...@news.comcast.giganews.com:
> but i _am_ a mutt, by midwestern standards: i'm half catholic-german,
> half lutheran-german. it's a crime against nature, i tell ya.
It appears that a lot of my ancestors are German Catholics. A bunch of them
settled here to get away from the Lutherans.
Nyx
--
"My generation played a really mean trick on me. I thought we were all
goofing off together, but it turns out everybody else went and got rich
while I was sleeping." Mission Hill.
www.sxxxy.org, www.weirdco.com
aim: nyxxxxx yahoo: nyxxxx icq: 9744630
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Jodi
>but i _am_ a mutt, by midwestern standards: i'm half catholic-german,
>half lutheran-german. it's a crime against nature, i tell ya.
>
Heh. My mother's family are German catholics (very nominally). All
three of her brothers married German lutherans and nobody cares.
Apparently much relief that they married Germans. Then again, my dad is
neither german nor catholic, and they don't care much about that either.
Jodi
I am angry I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking
- Magazine, "A Song from Under the Floorboards"
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> On Sat, 17 Aug 2002 19:02:26 GMT, --nightshade-- wrote:
>
> >but i _am_ a mutt, by midwestern standards: i'm half catholic-german,
> >half lutheran-german. it's a crime against nature, i tell ya.
> >
> Heh. My mother's family are German catholics (very nominally). All
> three of her brothers married German lutherans and nobody cares.
> Apparently much relief that they married Germans. Then again, my dad is
> neither german nor catholic, and they don't care much about that either.
Egads. I think it's about time for the "how many goffs are germanic sorta"
p*ll.
--ns-- you mixed-marriage weirdo! <grin>
I'm still sort of trying to figure out how I wound up being raised as a
Presbyterian by the daughter of a nominally Lutheran family and the son of a
JW convert from a community of Mennonites.
I suspect that I may top the p*ll for freakish diversity of parent cultures
while still remaining almost purely one of those freakish northerners who
walked out of the Rhinelands hills in the 1730s. I'm probably as inbred as
the Amish, which might explain a tendency to wear black and like gardening.
Doesn't explain the shears grafted to my wrists, tho.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> In article <3D6F99D0...@earthops.net>,
> > while still remaining almost purely one of those freakish northerners who
> > walked out of the Rhinelands hills in the 1730s.
>
Heh, one of the waves who came because the relatives in the US sent back
letters saying "the farming's good and the people let you be"?
>
> > I'm probably as inbred as
> > the Amish, which might explain a tendency to wear black and like gardening.
> > Doesn't explain the shears grafted to my wrists, tho.
>
> haven't humans in general been fairly 'inbred' by today's US standards?
That's where the various "types" came from. You know, those weird white
northerners, very well adapted for standing around in freezing swamps, etc.
and being well adapted to standing around in freezing swamps, preferred to
live there where nobody else wanted to live, so it was marry a cousin or die
childless. And so it was that the Great Northern Swamp Monkey came to
dominate the globe, and be really funny looking, too.
> those standards being that, for example, other than people who moved to
> the US from other countries, almost _everyone_ i've known has been of
> mixed descent (or safely-assumed so).
Sure. Pretty much. I suppose one of the reasons I feel so freakish is
because, outside of that eensy bit of cherokee from waaay back when, I
appear to be about as germanic as you can get, if you consider the little
bit of english to be generally germanic. I suppose I'm about as Gothic as
the actual Goths. Who knows. But the rare actual German usually tries to
speak Deutsche to me, apparently mistaking me for their misplaced tourist
guide.
The closest things to actual "purebreds" I've seen around here in recent
years are a few transplanted Boston Irish and the equally-transplanted
immigrants from Africa, and really old folks. Um, and some recent Russian
immigrants etc. Basically I guess that the fastest way for me to guess if
someone's from elsewhere is if they are clearly a "type". Locally, mostly
the white folks are German-Irish or maybe Irish-Italian, German-Scots,
German-Scots-Italian-Polish-Irish etc., not too many of the pure-Polish who
used to be all over the neighborhood back in the day, nor the pure Italians,
nor much of the pure-anything. "Blond" is the color you get out of a bottle,
as generally is "Auburn", not something that just grows out of people's
scalps.
I know that probably most humans who have ever lived are alive now; and
further, that outside of maybe Brazil or possibly Oz, there's probably no
population more mixed than that in the US. I suppose this is a good thing.
Time will certainly tell, I guess.
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> In article <3D7D1A9D...@earthops.net>,
>
> > > we were late 19th century emigrants.
>
> > Heh, one of the waves who came because the relatives in the US sent back
> > letters saying "the farming's good and the people let you be"?
>
> don't think there's anyone alive anymore who could answer for why we
> came.
This is one of the things that one probably does well to do: ask those who
can answer, before they are beyond reach of your asking. I remember my dad
telling me all sorts of stories when I was a kid. I wasn't very interested
then, but I count myself lucky to be able to remember most of it. I probably
really _should_ get out west and ask around personally and see if anyone's
got any records to shed any more light on matters while it's still remotely
possible to document something approximating an actual family history. Even
with my mom's fairly extensive geneological researches, actual facts are few
and far between. We did, however, discover that I have a slightly older
second-cousin twice-removed who's in the cemetery memorials business, which
I suppose is pretty gothic.
> but my maternal grandmother, the oldest of her siblings, said
> that her mother was essentially sent over on the boat for a better life,
> IIRC, with her older brother. these are the fairer side of the family.
> i don't think there was anyone waiting for that side of my family when
> they arrived. if they heard that life was good, it prolly wasn't from
> relatives who'd made the move first. but it's hard to say. it's all
> piecemeal. i know very little af my maternal grandfather's family,
> except that they were the gaunt, darker variety of german,
GOTHS!
heh heh heh. Sorry, couldn't help it.
> owned an
> older home in a near-north suburb for a while, were, by name, religious:
> Christ bore Matthew, Clement, and perhaps four others. i don't think
> anyone knows much for sure any more, and i doubt it matters much to
> anyone. the old family home that smelled of pipe tobacco and had the
> organ in the parlour was torn down when i was quite young.
>
> most, if not all of my family settled straight away in the chicago area
> and north side, AFAIK; some just in time for the big chi-town smoke out.
> i think we mostly became city folk, working in industry and such.
> workers.
Backbone of the modern US, if you ask me. Sadly, a vanishing breed. I just
saw an article recently quoting Census figures, claiming that the number of
persons calling themselves "german american" or identifying german origins
had declined from about 58 millions at the last census/survey, down to about
42 millions at this one. That's down by about a quarter in a mere decade. I
can only hope that this huge plunge is due to a lot of elders from the
generation of very large families passing on, rather than a total failure to
reproduce or to other less obvious causes, such as not electing to
self-report on ancestry, etc., in the secondary polls and surveys from which
the Census Bureau evidently draws their conclusions.
> though some of the families fared well, i don't think any came
> pre-educated.
Well I guess we could all give thanks to the formerly-good US public
schools. BTW -- something good for casual rumination when so inclined is the
influence on nation-building of compulsory elementary education in the US.
Apparently "schoolmarms" had to learn to be fairly "prepared for anything
and everything" if they took positions outside of familiar territory. Read
some of the earliest Zenna Henderson stories for a bit of an odd take on
that, and then read her explanation as to the stories she started to write
and then adapted to her much-more-positivist "The People" series. But
anyways, in the end we got a uniformly educated final product that seemed to
work very well through most of the last century.
IHCOYC XPICTOC
> don't rightly know, but it wasn't the farming what brought us here.
My grandfather came here to avoid being drafted into the Swedish army in
World War I, a fact that continues to make me swell with pride.
--
IHCOYC XPICTOC D. G. IMP. LAVRASIAE & GONDWANALANDIAE
http://members.iglou.com/gustavus
PAX, SAX, SARAX, HOLA, NOA, NOSTRA!
--- Ka-Bala, mystifying oracle!
Tiny Human Ferret
>
> Nightshade wrote:
>
> > don't rightly know, but it wasn't the farming what brought us here.
>
> My grandfather came here to avoid being drafted into the Swedish army in
> World War I, a fact that continues to make me swell with pride.
This begs for elaboration.[1]
As best I can discern, most of my ancestors -- very early on compared to
many others -- as Bill Murray puts it so eloquently in the movie "Stripes",
were "kicked out of every decent country". I'm not entirely sure whether
that makes us, or them, reprehensible (or whatever).
Remark:
1. While researching +sweden +"world war" +first , I inadvertently found
_this_: http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/wahlverwandtschaft/19ekatalog.htm
FWIW.