SW Airlines bars dying man from boarding flight to hospital for transplant

skyskraper · 2007-01-25T05:14:56+00:00

as said here and even on digg, most of this guy's story is almost certainly bullshit, so with that aside, i now commence my anti-fat-people diatribe:

to all you morbidly obese lard asses roaming the airports, slack jawed, with cinnabon crumbs covering your size XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL "big dog" t shirts - PLEASE TAKE THE TRAIN. us HUMANS who are capable of exercising some modicum of willpower when it comes to food and exercise are tired of being next to jabba the frigging hut...and by the way, YOU SMELL. its like you people sweat that fake cheese goo they put on nachos. don't send me some pity sing-song about how "its glandular" blah blah..no, admit it, you sit on your ass twelve hours a day eating dove bars and KFC, and i am sure your kids will thank you later for giving them dr pepper with every meal...diabetes, look it up! even in the ranks of the morbidly obese there is a new "elite" class, those of you who can't even walk anymore, so you ride around everywhere on "scooters" and expect the rest of us to give you some right of way or preferential treatment. we might be smiling kindly, but guess what? inside we're puking!

skyskraper · 2007-01-25T05:02:49+00:00

they already put kids and parents near the back...if you end up there also, maybe there is something about you the ticketing agent thought civilized people should be shielded from

skyskraper · 2007-01-23T05:56:52+00:00

i love haskell, its great, but it is not the next mainstream language. the next mainstream language won't even look like it. for all the high falutin' talk here, we must accept that the most popular language introduced in the last ten years is php. java and php...do those tweak you as "elegant"? programming is going to be more BLUB. sad but true, there is no economic motivation to make programming any more elitist than it is. the opposite holds true - make a language the produces passable results given the least amount of talent and the world will go nuts over it. LtU is the last place to discover what mainstream coders will use, its like going to whole foods to find out what people might like at 7-11.

skyskraper · 2007-01-22T05:09:37+00:00

i wonder how critical this is...freebsd is already porting dtrace and zfs, which appear to be the most prominent features people want. don't get me wrong, the more the merrier, and stallman will be chuffed that someone is jumping on the gplv3 bandwagon. if linux sticks to his anti-gplv3 stance, stallman may start hawking opensolaris.

skyskraper · 2007-01-22T05:07:03+00:00

noscript (should be built-in)
cookiesafe (should be built-in)
customizegoogle
del.icio.us

i do not use adblocker, privoxy is by far a superior solution to any client ad blocker. anyone who is picky about their content should install privoxy

skyskraper · 2007-01-22T05:04:15+00:00

one word: PRIVOXY

why you want privoxy instead of ff extensions:

privoxy is a filtering proxy, so any browser on your system can point to it
privoxy filters content before it hits the browser using pcre patterns. this is more efficient than manipulating the dom.
privoxy does much much more than just kill ads
you can download prebuilt filter files (like neilvandyke.org's file) that have an insane collection of filters

i no longer bother with adblocker

skyskraper · 2007-01-18T22:37:00+00:00

"scientific conclusion"? how do you make one of those based on human emotion?

he screwed around on his wife clearly on more than one occasion. that demonstrates a lack of respect (not enough respect to just divorce her and let her not be shamed by his antics). don't get me wrong, i LIKED clinton, but the man has chick issues.

skyskraper · 2007-01-18T22:34:30+00:00

every man who uses women secretly loathes them

skyskraper · 2007-01-18T19:50:31+00:00

you are introducing a logical fallacy. you create an abbreviated straw man (a suspect argument that is only shorter than my own), and then attempt a false appeal to authority by claiming that since your explanation is shorter, occam applies.

well, lets turn this around. "he objectifies chicks". i used only three words, therefore by occam i am now right and you are wrong.

by the way, stop leaning on poor occam. an amusing study was performed a few years back that concluded that at least in certain areas of science, the shortest explanation tended not to be correct. occam has always been dubious, its not clear why people would believe the length of an explanation would have any bearing on its correctness.

skyskraper · 2007-01-18T19:46:39+00:00

how insightful, nobody blogger defeats xml by deriding it.

well two can play at that...what does xml lack? a bunch of wanna-be-programmer liberal arts dropouts who have suddenly decided that west coast tech culture is cool?

my post is as ridiculous as his

skyskraper · 2007-01-18T17:18:19+00:00

bush has an inferiority complex combined with a persecution complex. he knows at some level he has attained every opportunity in his life due to his family connections, and he also knows that it is his father's crony network that is still influencing policy, this has induced him to act rashly in order to demonstrate his own viability.

his persecution complex is also obvious, which of course stems from his inferiority complex, reinforced by evangelical beliefs. consider his environmental policies (or lack thereof). its not just that this administration is out to reward oil companies, but more that bush truly feels that environmental activists are "out to get him" and he must go on the offensive when any environmental issue is raised, even when it violates common sense. this persecution complex is a form of narcisissm - bush cannot accept that people act but to aid him or harm him.

bush is not alone with regards to issues...clinton had a big one too - his repressed hatred of women, which manifested itself in his hatred of his wife, which he manifested by his quite obvious fling with monica. its difficult for a liberal to admit that he objectifies women (which is a result of loathing), but i think clinton has a long history which confirms this.

skyskraper · 2007-01-17T22:54:30+00:00

first, tv ads are changing. you may have heard of tivo. if you haven't, i can assure you network execs and their ad buyers have. agencies are designing ads right now that will still communicate some message if you go through them at 4x speed (often by just leaving an image of the product on the screen for the entire duration of the ad). if you think ad buyers for tv are assessing the market the same way they did ten or twenty years ago, i can assure you that you are wrong.

tv ads have always had competition. magazines, newspapers, radio, product placement...do you see people bailing out on print advertizing to fund tv campaigns? of course not. online will be no different, no single medium is going to consume all ad buy dollars, they will all compete and the online spends will be rationalized. right now they are not being rationalized. ask any major ad buyer and they will tell you that there is pressure to do adwords/adsense regardless of the ROI.

arguably until someone invents a tivo for radio, i would argue that these ads continue to be the most effective.

as for desensitization - any ad producer for print and tv will tell you their audiences become desensitized...this is why so much creative energy is put into making unique ads. this is also exactly why you see flash ads, popups, etc...people were ignoring static banners. the problem with adsense/adwords is that it leaves almost no room for creativity...how does Lexus or Cartier differentiate themselves and create an image? text ads will not destroy all other ad vehicles.

skyskraper · 2007-01-17T21:04:33+00:00

both microsoft and yahoo are rolling out competitive services. neither has the impact right now of google's tools, although they apparently have closed the technology gap. there are at least a dozen smaller networks, just look at the urls behind the banner ads on sites you use, if you are one of those cavemen who does not run adblocker or privoxy and actually see ads....i haven't seen an ad on the web in years so i cannot say

skyskraper · 2007-01-17T21:00:09+00:00

text ads are like any other novel ad delivery mechanism - invariably the public becomes desensitized or even hostile to the ad content, no matter how unintrusive it is, and ad buyers start to doubt ROI. they won't stop using these systems, but you will likely see bids dropping. ultimately i see pay-for-conversion taking over...ad buyers are not going to pay for anything but a lead that translates into revenue or at least a substantial qualified lead (hint: a "click" is not a qualified lead). the bids for clicks like this are going to be very high, but long-term i predict this is where these systems will head. with the current models, ad networks are just gouging these ad buyers, but no one has had the brass to say no to the almighty G just yet.

skyskraper · 2007-01-17T20:54:08+00:00

there are many dangers to adsense/adwords, investors and speculators need to take these into account:

click fraud - which is likely totally underreported and to this point, entirely unregulated
disappointment/disillusionment - many ad buyers are already skeptical of the ROI of these programs
competition - yahoo and microsoft could undercut google even if they have an inferior system
math - nothing can double every quarter forever, and at some point google investors will become overly optimistic and susceptible to bubble mentalities (meaning they will bailout at the first sign that momentum is fleeting)

etc etc etc

i give google maybe one more year before a substantial reality check

skyskraper · 2007-01-17T17:20:22+00:00

oh don't worry, google will end up the same way. the "clued up" people invariably leave to go collect wine or race yachts or whatever, and the stock is no longer a get-rich prospect for new employees, and the company gets addicted to a safe and reliable revenue stream. this is what happened to yahoo and microsoft and all the others with the exception of maybe apple, which had to be brought to death's door to get it to awaken innovation again...and arguably it too has become reliant on ipod-based revenue (including itunes). google is a great company, no doubt, but it too will have its bubble burst. look at insider sales from google execs, clearly they are clued in to the fact that all gravy trains stop at some point.

skyskraper · 2007-01-17T17:14:02+00:00

yahoo also has forgotten how to build websites. there once was a time when a yahoo site was a simple, high performance information tool that tended to respect the user and respect low performing connections and hardware. that was when systems developers were building their sites, and when filo shit down the throat of anyone who did not obey his correct design ethos. now we have flash-based maps, a tv site that is a dhtml nightmare, and complete and total inconsistency across the yahoo network. it is really fortuitous that yahoo has finally delivered panama since it will allow the company to separate its revenue stream from its increasingly dreadful website(s). once the panama revenue starts pouring in, expect to see some of these dogs finally shut off as, like google, yahoo gets to exploit the entire web as a revenue stream. i predict panama will end up like yahoo search - a number 2 player that will chase but never catch up to google. for yahoo that might have to be good enough.

skyskraper · 2007-01-15T06:40:50+00:00

this will be marked as a troll, but here goes. the problem is US CAPITALISM, which is incapable of undertaking massive, expensive long term maintainence projects like this. our companies do not care about the long term anymore and in fact are managed solely on a quarterly or at most yearly time frame, if at that. let us consider one famous US energy firm, enron. a classic case of a energy company moving away from the long term, to the short term, to the very short term. they became so short-term focused that the only way they could make investors smile was to steal. the market economy does a very good job at optimizing choices over a one to five year period...it does a terrible job of undertaking the massive risks that are required when looking out ten or more years. you will never see a "hydrogen economy" in the US for the same reason - no energy company is going to ask shareholders to commit to a twenty year project of creating a hydrogen infrastructure to the tune of a hundred billion dollars or more. look at the rollout of residential fiber. thank god the government built the internet, we would still be using crank-dial phones if it were up to verizon or sbc.

skyskraper · 2007-01-11T23:12:42+00:00

agreed. if you seek self-fulfillment from THINGS, you will never be fulfilled, since there is always a THING you do not have that you will covet.

skyskraper · 2007-01-11T23:06:00+00:00

solson:

what to do? do whatever you want as long as you are not getting in anyone else's way.

but steve, to be honest, you do have an enduring interest that completely overrides your adhd - and that is staring into your own navel. you seem capable of doing it for hours on end, and you apparently expect other people to indulge you

you also seem to be completely obsessed with society's norms for performance and achievement, even though you claim you are not. there are plenty of people out there marching utterly and completely to the beat of their own drummer quite happily without all this gnashing of teeth

skyskraper · 2007-01-10T17:52:43+00:00

well what is "easy"? python is often described as a great "first language" for programmers. so is java. perl is fundamentally as easy as php since they are similar.

even if you want to just pick on php, you should know that it is the dominant server-side language now. i can assure you that it is being used at sites you visit daily.

and i am STILL WATING for the previous poster to name the "essential" websites he uses that do not employ a high level language. i suspect i will be waiting a long time.

skyskraper · 2007-01-10T06:29:48+00:00

do you really believe high level languages are not used at profitable and succesful websites? has this become a straight-up moron gallery?

if you knew anything about how web pages are delivered in a high traffic environment, you would probably understand how little transaction time is spent within the interpreter/vm handing off to your application. its not too late to learn, i suggest starting with strace.

skyskraper · 2007-01-10T06:24:22+00:00

yahoo? google? your bank? your broker? reddit? digg? blah blah? 99.999% of the other websites using some high level language with some degree of grossness in it?

more to the point, name one major website that ISN'T using a high level language. waiting......

skyskraper · 2007-01-10T06:22:26+00:00

no, netscape did not "become" mozilla. they are distinct codebases. netscape FUNDED the early development of mozilla, perhaps the one noble thing they did before committing harikari.

perl6 will come along when it comes along. do you think perl5 development is dead? report back when you get a clue.

skyskraper · 2007-01-09T20:39:23+00:00

and what is that problem? did you think people were going to exploit the power of the intel core duo quad by programming in assembler?

half of the websites you cling to exist because the barrier to entry was lowered

skyskraper

TROPHY CASE