Wading through moronic molassas
|
|
Rex recently was trying to solve a problem with one of his many computers - an aged machine that he fondly likes to refer to as "grampsware," you know, old enough that no one is really taking care of it but young enough that it's still fun and isn't ready to be euthanized. So he's trying to find a way to "flash" the bios (ie: update it with better firmware) - he has the latest bios update, but the machine doesn't have a floppy drive (and neither does Rex - neither built-in nor USB nor personally).
So, what does a rational person do? Well, a rational person attempts to find answers from others who might know, probably from the Internet. And there are such people out there (yes, all five of you). However, most of the answers that you will receive are more useful for drunken cocktail humour than actual knowledgeable answers.
For example, Rex typed in "flash bios without a floppy drive" into his trusty search engine and, as expected, a plethora of discussions appeared using this very phrase, or something very close. And guess what he gets? Such responses as:
"Unless you know what you're doing don't flash your bios [dude] you could [like] totally [expletive] your computer [dude]"
Like, dude, that's like totally like, dude such a ... a ... a ... pass the joint, dude because I like totally like ... lost my ... dude ... like look at those fancy colours ... like ... oh yeah ... like totally ... oh, wait ... I'M TRYING TO GET TO KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
A Rex's Advice Moment - Sleep it off
Here's an alternate translation:
Like, you don't want to do that because that's what I do for a living and you'll put me out of business (my exclusive business of flashing bioses - I don't know how to do anything else).
Another Rex's Advice Moment - LEARN SOMETHING ELSE
Or you get a response that's something like:
"Only a complete tard doesn't know how to do that! Go and get some help because you're such a complete NOOOOB"
A Rex's Translation Moment - "I have no idea but I like to belittle people on the Internet because I don't know what to do with my life because I'm so disgruntled because I have a very small penis (microscopically small)"
And then there's the ever popular:
"This doesn't belong on this board because this board is especially dedicated to 'putting lipstick on ferrets' and not 'putting thigh-high stockings on ferrets' so take it somewhere else, you pervert!"
A Rex's Reaction Moment - "I prefer squirrels - can you at least direct me, vaguely, in the right direction?"
But let's not forget the most famous useless response:
"It's all right here: www.deadlink.com/booting/c480BC/etchedinstone.html"
or (with regards to flashing the bios without a floppy drive):
"It's all right here: www.netrap.com/flashing/bios/fromfloppy.html"
So, to conclude - human race: do one simple thing ... THINK. Attempt to help your fellow man. Recognize that you are actually really stupid and try to impart the less stupid parts of yourself onto your fellow man (or woman - another Rex rant to follow on that).
The truth is Rex and I are convinced that Internet discussion boards are simply a room full of chimps randomly attempting to type Shakespeare and coming up with this useless crap. Or a room full of (or several rooms of one) drug-fucked would-be raster(s) who shouldn't be contemplating complex technological questions, but should be wondering if ants dream of candy canes (which Rex admits is a serious question).
But, most of them are useless, self-absorbed assholes who feel that their existence can only be justified by ranting abuse at those who genuinely want to learn because they have such intimate knowledge of computers and the Internet because they dabble with them in between shifts at the Dairy Queen (registered trademark of Dairy Queen - www.dairyqueen.com) and once got a two day data entry job at the local dentist.
These are the people that rant "yew are stoopud - onlie a nooob would ask such a noooby nooob kwestun, yew nooob!" They are as ugly as Frank Zappa after a sex change, five quarts of vodka and a tab of acid, have the vocabulary of a three year old and the IQ of a turnip and only use the pages of the dictionary to clean up after an Internet / self-flagellation session.
In the interest of the universal spirit of intellectual cooperation that the Arpanet was developed with a hope toward (and, yes you "nooob", you are an ignorant moron and should probably look up the history of this medium that you're abusing)
Anyway, here are:
Rex's Rules for Internet Cooperation:
1 - If you don't know the answer and only have an opinion then don't answer (get a blog - hey, try blogger.com)
2 - If you think you know the answer (and even if you're 100% positive) RESEARCH IT FIRST (before actually proving to the world that you're an arrogant, know-it-all, but ignorant asshole)
3 - You're stupid! (assume that - even if you've recently won a Nobel Prize. Always "quote" and [reference] in your response)
4 - Answer the Question! "why would you want to do that?" is not a legitimate answer to "how can I flash my bios without a floppy drive" If you can't answer the question then shut the fuck up (or reserve such comments to your blog - refer to rule 1) or go to night class the learn the difference between "can I have people's opinion on..." and "what is the answer to...".
5 - Don't be an asshole. You will be in their shoes one day (refer to www.solipsology.com) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Winter Wonderland
|
|
Ok people! It's time for the old Winter Solstice favorite. This year Rex and I have decided to post it here LIVE (on prerecorded video - compliments of Youtube). This one has done the Winter Solstice joke circuit for over a year now (which means only one Winter Solstice season but, well, hey, all traditions have to start somewhere).
Enjoy!
rts
Post Script: What? It's been removed? That's so rude. I guess it's a seasonal thing and we'll all have to wait until next year. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Ethics of Advertising
|
|
Ok, people, it's time to speak out about those anti-abortionist protesters. You know know the ones, those people who sit out on street corners with their placards boasting slogans about how abortion is murder or how women who have abortions have ruined their lives. Or they parade about in peak-hour traffic in their cars or trucks plastered with bumper stickers or huge signs that state how society is in decay when we will happily allow a life to be slaughtered before it is even given a chance.
We're not going to speak of whether or not it's a good cause nor will we be discussing the ethics of the practice, itself. What irks Rex is that they usually chose to express their distain by a shock tactic - depicting an unborn, aborted foetus. This clearly demonstrates that these protesters hate, not only the society that allows this practice (which Rex is somewhat sympathetic to), not only the people who oppose them, but also young children - those who are struggling to understand the world during their fledgling years.
Yes, people, children. While the anti-abortionist protester is busily going about their business of horror tactics in an effort to demonstrate their proclaimed love of life, they are causing more harm than good for the future. These images (which, incidentally, are extremely misleading and could, to all intents and purposes be dismissed as misrepresentation as they portray, not only the Univerally condemned third-trimester abortion, but an extremely Photoshopped version at that) do not really achieve their desired purpose and, in fact, achieve a far more nefarious agenda.
Do these people not realize that these are graphics images of disfigurement? Of course they do. Do they not realize that there are potentially children viewing these horrific portrayals? Of course they don't. And they don't care, either. If they save one unborn child from being terminated then they must consider that they have done well. On the other hand, if that is at the expense of a young child who passes by haplessly in a car and sees the image and gets the wrong message - perhaps that child mutilation is what these people are really arguing for - and that child grows up to be a child molester, child beater or Freddy Krueger, then are they really helping society?
A young child doesn't understand the debate, nor should he or she be expected to. The child, on the way to the dentist where, by chance, there happens to be a family planning clinic that is being protested and sees these graphic pictures doesn't, by cognition, think to him or her self "ooh, yes, abortion is wrong because it will look like that baby." They see a mutilated baby and who knows where that will lead their young minds?
At best they will need some psychotherapy and at worst they become the worst serial killer since Jack the Ripper. Think, people, think! Rex does not deny your right to protest. Rex does not deny your freedom of speech and, until now, Rex did not take a stance on the anti-abortion lobby ... until now. No matter how just you feel your cause to be, that does not give you the right to terrorize young children. At the end of the day, that's all these displays do. Adults can handle it and most rational adults have already considered the issue and taken a stance. It's unlikely that these shock tactics will sway them. But think about the children - those who have been born - to them this is nothing short of terror.
And anyone who deliberately causes terror is, by definition, a terrorist. What we see from the anti-abortion lobby, as they stand on street corners or driving their anti-abortion hate-mobiles can be deemed as nothing short of terrorism - emotional terrorism. And the message has been lost. We don't get the message that abortion is a barbaric practice (it may well be) we get the message that these people hate everyone, from the wizened old GYN who has been practicing for years to the delicate infant who will have his or her mind irreparably damaged by their horrific, photoshopped depiction.
Clearly, anyone who stands on a street corner, or drives a vehicle with this imagery doesn't care about society or children or even the unborn, for that matter. They care about one thing and one thing only: themselves. They want to be known and they want to make a statement and who gives a damn if they cause terror to little children. |
|
|
Ethel the Chicken
December 11, 2008 9:53 PM
|
| Question: Exactly when does a 'fetus' become 'human'? |
|
Rex the Strange
December 11, 2008 10:55 PM
|
| Ethel, in your case that's still to be determined (although Rex and I suspect that you're neither - probably a bot). This is not to be used as a forum for the pro-choice/anti-abortion debate. It simply is not about that. If anyone feels it is then Rex suggests you reread the post because you have clearly missed the point. But Rex has allowed this comment because it demonstrates how narrow minded and mechanized some people can be. |
|
Ethel the Chicken
December 15, 2008 3:13 AM
|
| Why does a simple question upset you so? |
|
Rex the Strange
January 10, 2009 11:44 PM
|
Because you're, clearly, a narrow-minded automaton (either figuratively, or literally) who hasn't even the mental capacity to understand what Rex is saying. I repeat "this is not a forum for the pro-choice/anti-abortion" debate. It is Rex's comment that people, such as yourself, are so self absorbed in their own personal crusade that they are incapable of either recognizing the damage they may be causing by their tactics or digesting other viewpoints, whether directly related to their argument or, in this case, indirectly.
The "simple question" upsets neither Rex nor myself. But I put it to you, Chicken - why can you not address this piece: that anti-abortion protestors who display offensive and misleading imagery in the clear view of minors are insensitive and narrow-minded, hypocrites - in context?
Sadly, the reason is the same as why you cannot understand, through your miniscule synaptic functions, that your question is, quite simply, completely irrelevant to what Rex is saying (but, of course, you will never know that because (a) you have clearly never read the post - or started to read and began to rant at the term "abortion" - and (b) are [sigh] really fucking stupid). |
|
|
|
|
|
Becoming Illiterate - Standard Stupidity
|
|
There's a sure fire way to guarantee that you'll never be able to speak English correctly. Just become a computer programmer and follow the standards that are emerging in the industry. When you think about it, if we wrote in the style that programmers program then no one would be able to understand us. Let's take a look at some of the most ridiculous notions.
Cryptic Symbols
The languages of choice these days are those derived from the C Programming Language. This language was developed, presumably, by people who can't type (yes, I'm saying Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie couldn't type). If you look at some more reasonable languages, like Pascal or Basic you see that when they want to say "this or that" or "this and that" then they use the words "and" and "or". But that's not good enough for our C programmers. They have to use && for "and" and || for "or". Clearly this is so they don't have to go looking all over the keyboard for a-n-d and o-r.
It gets worse. To begin a section a far more reasonable person would use the word "begin" or, in the case of Basic, simply the name of the routine or section (like "function", "if" or "loop"). So it makes absolute sense that in C you use { and } (&&huh?)
Parenthesis
Would you think me of sound mind if I used parentheses incorrectly( like this )? Putting a space after the beginning parenthesis and before the closing one with no spaces outside is becoming the norm in programming. Why? Because it helps make code unreadable which helps the programmer with job security (but, of course, job security is a myth because programming jobs go out the window in a recession faster than short-order waiters).
Abbreviations
Programmers love abbreviations. It made sense once upon a time when there was a limit to the amount of characters you could use for identifiers (Apple II basic limits identifiers to three characters) or file names (CP/M limited filenames to eight characters with a three character extension after the period). But there's no such limit anymore. So why do programmers insist on saying things like "vrylrgidntfr" when they mean "verylargeidentifier"? Quite simply, again, because they can't type (or are just very lazy). But, of course, they make it more sensible by using capitalization like VryLrgIdntfr - more on this semi-lobotomized behaviour, later.
On the subject of cryptic symbols and abbreviations, there's the common misconception that if you can type code out quickly then you can increase productivity. This is also a myth. The fact is that you end up with unreadable crap that takes longer to understand and debug. In addition, it also means that you need liberal commenting which also slows down productivity. If you create readable (English type) code then comments become almost redundant.
Mixed Case
This is my favorite. He's now RexTheStrange and this paradigm is creeping into the regular English language (look at the products in your local supermarket one day and you'll see people adopting this nonsense). This comes from the fact that you can't use spaces in your identifiers so, you want multiple words, when run together, to be readable (this is the first time programmers are attempting to make something readable and they just plain get it wrong).
There's a perfectly useful symbol on your keyboard which can allow you to space your words in your identifiers and keep them as one: it's called the underscore. These days people scream and hide under beds when you mention the underscore, but it is, without a doubt, the most useful way of creating multiple words to be one. MySquishyIdentifier isn't as obvious as my_squishy_identifier. But again, lunacy has taken the place of common sense.
Zero Indexing
Let count something. How about your fingers. Let's count them: zero, one, two...nine. So you have nine fingers, do you? Nope, you have ten (or most people do). You don't count one as zero when counting fingers, but programmers do when they count the slots in arrays. So, to find out how many spaces there are you have to add one. How stupid.
More Cramming
C Programmers, in particular, love to cram things together, like an equation will read as:
"result"( oops, sorry - try again is retard language ) "rslt=x+y"
Shouldn't it be:
"result = x + y"?
Seems a little more readable to me.
Sadly this crap is becoming the norm in the industry. Poor Niklaus Wirth is turning over in his grave (ok, he's not dead - I'm surprised that this defecating on the industry isn't killing him, though). I can give many more examples of why C has crapped on the industry. Wirth gave us a clear, crisp language in Pascal (which Basic follows, but the .NET implementation templates have crapped up with C-isms, as have the templates created in Delphi - the modern implementation of Pascal) and now just about every new language follows the C garbage standard.
In fact, it's getting so bad that if you have this debate with a new, young programmer he or she may well say "well, what else is there?" as though there are no other alternatives and this C crap is the way it's always been. There's also the argument that Pascal is dead - everyone programs C - even Visual Basic is losing favour in favour of C#. So, because we've all accepted a crappy language because we're all too stupid to know any better, we should all go with the flow?
Not this little black duck!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
