[NeoTifa]

Pretty well. We're all wearing xmas gear. Ugly sweater competition, but I think the sexy analyst downstairs won it already (we haven't even started) as he has a whole suit.

[jon.kiparsky]

I guess I must be some sort of hipster of something - every time a new fad comes up, I find that I was sick of it before I even heard about it. Throw the "ugly sweater" business on the pile - kill it with fire, along with pirates, zombies, and autonomous cars.

[modi123_1]

Bah - the ugly sweater thing is funny as it only tends to last a few weeks a year. Some imaginative patterns out there.


Side note - this was posted on the FBI twitter via the EC3..


https://twitter.com/...318428163379200

[jon.kiparsky]

Dude, not cool. I looked at that link, and now I'm never getting those brain cells back.
What the hell is the point of twitter again? An idiotic advergraphic followed by a series of chimings-in from people who have nothing to say and can't write? Is this really the best we can do? Some of the best minds of the twentieth century come together and spend decades inventing a set of tools and protocols for communication capable of linking up all of humanity and elevating us to our best potential, and we come up with this?

Maybe global warming isn't such a bad idea, if it brings this crap to a crashing halt.

[modi123_1]

Twitter is, more or less, my active curated news feed. Give me an article title at 140 characters and a link to read more and I'm good. That and to receive mild threats on.

[jon.kiparsky]

Huh. I have a slightly different solution for that - it's called a newspaper.

Doesn't come with threats, though, unless you count the articles about the fascists rebranding for mainstream acceptability and the two bills passed in Ohio's state legislature to outlaw women. I find that sort of thing a bit threatening - not going to affect me today, but if I wait until it comes to get me, it'll be a little late.

[modi123_1]

Sure.. a newspaper is nice, but there is a massive dearth of news _I_ want. I augment the paper with specific information from companies, government entities, stock info, local police as it happens, etc. Until my futuristic transparent tablets start making the rounds with insane battery life, I'll take my specific news at my own pace. Sure folks probably use the Twatters in ways that are not like my news source, but so it goes.

[depricated]

jon, no matter how snarky I get, don't forget that I appreciate you most of the time.

This is one of them.

All of you really, or at least most.

But I do like autonomous cars and I don't think they're a fashion any more than conveyor belts and trains.

[jon.kiparsky]

Autonomous buses I'm relatively okay with. Private cars, autonomous or not, have to go, so I'm not really that buzzed about giving people a few years of buzzing about with Robby the Robot at the wheel. Just get over it - the twentieth century is dead. You don't need to have your own little wheelchair. Humanity lives in cities now, and cities are by definition "the places where owning a car is an idiotic thing to do".

If you actually live in a place where you need to own a car, and you're not a nihilist, you need to move some place where public transport or self-powered transport is an option. That's the world now. Cope.

(come on people, let's get it together - the most important thing to understand about the future is that in about 40 years time there will be 15 billion people on this planet, or else something far, far worse will have happened. plan accordingly)

[modi123_1]

Ah, no. You can keep your big ol' megalopolis BosWashs thank you very much. Sincerely, the Midwest.

[jon.kiparsky]

Sorry, not one of your options. See "the 20th century is dead".

[modi123_1]

You can toss that label out and what not, but saying that doesn't make the giant swaths of rural - and near rural - areas outside of your megalopolises.. megalopoli? megalopolonponises any less there. If you like your buses and giant cities - go nuts, but that doesn't mean other folk don't exist.

[ArtificialSoldier]

Quote

You don't need to have your own little wheelchair. Humanity lives in cities now, and cities are by definition "the places where owning a car is an idiotic thing to do".

Ah, you've never been to Phoenix, I see. A funny thing happens when an enormous city grows up quickly in an area with extremely cheap land. California has 51 buildings which are taller than any of ours. I was trying to figure out how many buildings in New York City are taller than anything in Phoenix, but the list on Wikipedia stopped after 113 buildings that are 600 feet or higher. Ours is 483 feet. Chicago, too, that list stops after 73 buildings and 550 feet.

New York has a building called the Met Life Tower, which at 700 feet was the tallest building in the world when it was finished in 1909. It's 213 feet taller than anything we've built in Arizona, and it's also 3 years older than our state. When it was built Phoenix had around 10,000 people.

There are 16 US cities which have 15 or more skyscrapers that are 400 feet or taller. That list includes such metropolises as NYC (444), Chicago (200), Jersey City (pop. ~250,000, 18 buildings), and Sunny Isles Beach (pop ~20,000, 18 buildings), but does not include Phoenix (4.5 million in the metro area, 2 buildings).

But we do have a lot of massive data centers, warehouses, and a ridiculous number of single-story homes spread far and wide. Several years ago I briefly dated a woman who lived about 40 miles west of downtown. When I was in high school one of the teachers lived 40 miles north of the school. The population of the metro area has increased twelve-fold since 1950. Even since I've been alive the population has tripled. We are the anti-California, people can spend a million dollars in California buying a house in a crowded area, then come out here and buy 4 different vacation houses for the same million, depending on which 20 golf courses they want to live near that week.

Whether Phoenix should even exist or not is one thing, but you definitely need a car here. One thing that didn't happen while the metro area was growing faster than anything else was mass transit. Our bus system starts late and stops early, and our very first light rail started operation in 2008. Before 2008 buses were the only option if you didn't have a car. The light rail system is still under construction and growing, but it's not going to be an option for the majority of people for a long, long time.

To see how much of a joke the rail system is here, this is our freeway system. Note how far East the 202 goes, people live all over the place there. That girl I dated lived West of the 303 off I-10. I live just south of the 51 marker. Yellow shows the incorporated places. Here is the light rail map, the little dots (on the single rail line) are existing stations and the blue areas are future expansion. Notice that the entire south and southeast parts of the city are missing from map, as is the entire 303. Oh, and the blue expansion areas (such as the one running up the 51) are projected as far out as 2044. So if I wait 25 years or so then I'll eventually be able to walk maybe 15 minutes to a bus stop (which, in 118 degree heat, is way more fun than it sounds), take that bus over to a light rail station a few miles away, and then take that train to a stop only about 15 miles from where I currently work. So I've got that to look forward to.

[depricated]

refuctoring 10 year old VB...

[modi123_1]

On the bright site - it's not Vb6.