The Official Status Thread
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Status: re-reading Solaris. Love this book so much.
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@Mikael_Svahnberg said:
Speaking of which, TIL that the idiom "polish parliament" is not as commonly recognised outside Sweden as I thought.
What does it imply?
General disorder, a meeeting where everyone speaks at the same time.
Sort of like the british parliament, actually. :-)
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It's the opposite of Congress, where one person speaks at a time and nobody listens. And then they either get nothing done or shut down some important public service for a few hours once a month.
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Jellypotato turned everyone at community.imgur.com into strippers.
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Started reading Land of Lisp. This book makes me happy.
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Status: re-reading Solaris. Love this book so much.
Didn't leave much of an impression on me.
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Wait, that is supposedly fixed?!
EDIT: IT IS?! Wow.
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Didn't leave much of an impression on me.
Both the movies focus on the human relationship and kind of trim out the science-y stuff. You might like it better then. Lem, naturally, hated that-- despite the human relationships being by far and away the most interesting part of the novel. (His theme, "you can't communicate with aliens because they're too alien" is... uh... well... that one sentence's worth of material, basically.)
The Russian 1970s version actually does the "drinking liquid oxygen" scene in amazingly gory detail.
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Both the movies focus on the human relationship and kind of trim out the science-y stuff. You might like it better then. Lem, naturally, hated that-- despite the human relationships being by far and away the most interesting part of the novel. (His theme, "you can't communicate with aliens because they're too alien" is... uh... well... that one sentence's worth of material, basically.)
The Russian 1970s version actually does the "drinking liquid oxygen" scene in amazingly gory detail.
The only thing I remember from the 1970-s Russian movie is a scene where they show sped-up car traffic with trippy music. I guess to signify depersonalization of the future technological society... or something?
Clooney movie is just totally forgettable. The book too. I guess I'm just not into "humans / science has limitations" kind of science fiction. For comparison, I really enjoy "humans rock" 50-ies style of SF, a-la the Gordon Dickson stuff.
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Haven't read Solaris - heard it was good, but a bit of a slog.
I enjoyed Fables for Robots and The Cyberiad when I was younger, though.
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Went out to buy Lemsips for my lurgy and came back with doughnuts and a milkshake because apparently I'm 12.
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Status: re-reading Solaris.
It's a great book.
Have you read The Cyberiad?
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Guess that makes me dumb, then. The actual WTF is still using non-extended ASCII, I suppose?
I think the terminology you're looking for is 8-bit clean.
And yes, expecting 8-bit cleanness in code from 2007 is a reasonable assumption IMNSHO.
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Status: I finally got the production server I've been waiting for for months. I promptly went mad with power, and am now bikeshedding the color of the global announcement on the sandbox saying to migrate to the new server.
I think mustard yellow? But maybe green is better? But red stands out more....
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Use a CSS3 animation and make it change colour as you look at it!
OSHI
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https://community.imgur.com/t/usercard-description-bug/11691/15
@codingwhorror said:Yeah, this was a little bug in the 1.3 beta.
Uh huh...
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For comparison, I really enjoy "humans rock" 50-ies style of SF,
Have you read much E.E. "Doc" Smith? Not just "Humans rock" but "scientists rock"
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Got to admit, I'm kinda tempted to sign up to that forum just to show how many ways there are to break it
I won't though; I'm not that sort of girl
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The only thing I remember from the 1970-s Russian movie is a scene where they show sped-up car traffic with trippy music. I guess to signify depersonalization of the future technological society... or something?
The story behind that scene is amazing. Look it up sometime.
The book too. I guess I'm just not into "humans / science has limitations" kind of science fiction.
That's not even slightly what it's about.
Look, the non-interesting thing is that human encounter a life form that's basically an ocean and it's completely inscrutable. That's the story Lem likes. Yawn.
The interesting story is that a man leaves his wife in an argument, and she subsequently commits suicide. When he arrives on Solaris Station, the inscrutable alien life form brings her back, still suicidal, but in a body that can't be killed. (Well-- possibly it can-- they never check whether the copy he blasts into orbit is still there.) Solaris creates these psychological nightmares for every crew member, none of them have any idea why. Is it an attack for earlier blasting the ocean with x-rays? (But Solaris has never shown hostility before, even with a nuclear engine exploded on its surface in accident...) Is it an attempt to communicate? (But the "guests" have seemingly have no knowledge or access to information other than the memories used to create them...) How do they enter the station, which is hermetically-sealed against the poisonous atmosphere? Why can they only be created while the person whose mind they are created from is asleep? What's the relation, if any, of the doppelgangers to the visions witnessed by the helicopter pilot early in the planet's exploration of the ocean "trying out" a human body, controlling it like a puppet?
Can Kelvin watch his wife die again? Can they preserve her life? Should they?
It's an amazing novel.
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Chartreus.
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Is that a cross between Chartreuse and Tartarus?
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Status: Neighbors are TRWTF.
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phone.
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Lemonchiffon
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The interesting story is that a man leaves his wife in an argument, and she subsequently commits suicide. When he arrives on Solaris Station, the inscrutable alien life form brings her back, still suicidal, but in a body that can't be killed. (Well-- possibly it can-- they never check whether the copy he blasts into orbit is still there.) Solaris creates these psychological nightmares for every crew member, none of them have any idea why. Is it an attack for earlier blasting the ocean with x-rays? Is it an attempt to communicate? How do they enter the station, which is hermetically-sealed against the poisonous atmosphere? Why can they only be created while the person whose mind they are created from is asleep? What's the relation, if any, of the doppelgangers to the visions witnessed by the helicopter pilot early in the planet's exploration of the ocean "trying out" a human body, controlling it like a puppet?
Can Kelvin watch his wife die again? Can they preserve her life? Should they?
See that's the part that's boring to me. It's like someone retelling their dream. It sounds interesting on the surface, but it has yawn-inducing few consequences to anything. The whole novel is people seeing things and going crazy. Nothing is tied up in the end, there's no explanation how any of this was possible.
I don't like soft SF with things like telepathy, I don't like fantasy-ish God-like aliens and I don't like horror of any kind, including psychological. I guess different tastes for different people and all that.
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Status: Wondering why Word's spellar/gramming check wants to change 'X calls as Y does something' to 'X call[b]a[/b]s as Y does something'
Since when is it right to replace the verb 'to call' with the noun 'calla'?
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STATUS:
Bad: Spend whole morning chasing obscure Ember bugs
Good?: I seem to be closing in. Hey, at least I'll get another "Ember woes" thread out of this, if nothing else.
Ugly: Realize it was actually my fault.
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See that's the part that's boring to me.
Not enough car chases for you?
The whole novel is people seeing things and going crazy.
They're not seeing things, and they're not crazy. They're secretive because Kelvin is a psychologist and they think he'll assume they're crazy-- until Kelvin has a "guest" of his own, then Snaut (at least) treats him more warmly.
A key conversation in the novel is when Kelvin realizes that Snaut acted so strange on their first meeting because Snaut had assumed Kelvin was a "guest". He was also blitzed on vodka, so.
Nothing is tied up in the end,
Harey's story is tied-up.
there's no explanation how any of this was possible.
That's kind of the point.
Even after a century of exploring Solaris, the best scientists of Earth have absolutely no idea what any of it means. Nor do they know how Solaris keeps itself in orbit (they give the vague explanation "it must be aware of Einstein's equation"), nor do they know how or why the "guests" are constructed.
That's the message of the novel that Lem thinks is so compelling.
I like books with a bit of a mystery to them. There's a million things Solaris never explains, mostly because it follows Kelvin and Kelvin never asks about them-- which drives me nuts, too. The guy has no curiosity. He doesn't ask why they locked-up the maintenance robots, he doesn't ask anything about who Snaut and Sartorius' guests are. (IIRC) He never listens to Gibarian's audio tape with his suicide note. EVEN AFTER HAREY DOES.
I don't like soft SF with things like telepathy,
It's unclear whether Solaris is reading minds. Remember Snaut's theory is that it's finding isolated clusters of neuron connections and simply copying those into the guests' minds. There's actually evidence Solaris is not using telepathy, for example, Harey knows about people that Kelvin met after her death-- if Solaris were reading his mind and understood its contents in any way, it would not have made that "mistake".
I don't like fantasy-ish God-like aliens and I don't like horror of any kind, including psychological.
I don't like the Star Trek kind, either.
I guess different tastes for different people and all that.
No! You must like all things I like!
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status had to experience some server cooties to understand this week's avatar theme. Congrats, @accalia.
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that reminds me.... @onyx, @RaceProUK, you gonna undo that little tweak now that the day is past?
;-)
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Not enough car chases for you?
cartman82:
Yeah... that's why I liked the futuristic car sequence from the Russian movie.
They're not seeing things, and they're not crazy. They're secretive because Kelvin is a psychologist and they think he'll assume they're crazy-- until Kelvin has a "guest" of his own, then Snaut (at least) treats him more warmly.
A key conversation in the novel is when Kelvin realizes that Snaut acted so strange on their first meeting because Snaut had assumed Kelvin was a "guest". He was also blitzed on vodka, so.
Now you're getting into things I have zero memories of, from 10 years ago when I read the book.
That's kind of the point.
Even after a century of exploring Solaris, the best scientists of Earth have absolutely no idea what any of it means. Nor do they know how Solaris keeps itself in orbit (they give the vague explanation "it must be aware of Einstein's equation"), nor do they know how or why the "guests" are constructed.
That's the message of the novel that Lem thinks is so compelling.
Exactly what I dislike.
I like books with a bit of a mystery to them.
Sure, but the author has to sell me he actually has the answers. I hate it when I just know the author didn't put much thought into the details and just wanted to get out their "big message" about "technology sucks, it's all about the feels" or whatever.
No! You must like all things I like!
#HEY EVERYONE, BLAKEY WANTS MORE LIKES!
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Oh... yeah, give me a minute to run a test here, I'll SSH in next compile cycle...
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No, but you must find all posts that he has liked and like them too. Blakeypointzzzzz!
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No, but you must find all posts that he has liked and like them too. Blakeypointzzzzz!
I'd rather take "like" in a conversational sense, as in blakey posts something = he must like what he posted.
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Sure, but the author has to sell me he actually has the answers.
Again, the entire point of the novel from Lem's perspective is that Solaris is inscrutable in the most literal sense. If the explanation for Solaris' actions were laid out for you, or even easily-deducible, that would ruin his thesis.
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Was going to post a thread on /r/thedailywtf because apparently 12.4s was an 'OK' response time, but then the server started working again.
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It is all becoming clear to me now. You are building your entire WTDWTF persona on Solaris!
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Status: When an ESXi server complains about having a full hard drive, yet has > 400 GB free space, it actually means there's something wrong with a VM snapshot somewhere. If I had a penny for every misleading error message I've encountered, I could retire.
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Status: It's always nice to open your wallet and discover a $20 you didn't know was there.
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Status: My new work machine has the USB3 ports on the back.
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FWP topic is
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Mine has USB3 ports on the front, but if I actually use them the USB2 port on the front quits working. That's a problem because I have my keyboard's wireless receiver there (signal strength isn't strong enough to reach the back ports for some reason)
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I think I already posted this there. But I just plugged a drive into the front and was reminded.
30MB/s write to the drive on the front, 100MB/s+ on the back.
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Mine has USB3 ports on the front, but if I actually use them the USB2 port on the front quits working.
Oh, that's lovely.
My home machine has a pair of each type on the top front, plus the motherboard came with a 3.5"-bay front panel with a second pair of USB3 ports, so it's not as if I don't have plenty there. (There's also about 4 more of each type on the back. I'm thinking of taking the front-panel thing in to the office, but then I would have to find a 3.5-5.25 space filler, since the work box only has 5.25" bays that open to the front.
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Status: should be being productive but am actually choreographing a lightsabre fight.
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Status: What the hell, why are my values not passed properly???
Wait... the last one is... what the...
QVariantMap sendFaxAction; .... sendFaxAction.insert("Variable", "FXS_INST_ID=0001"); sendFaxAction.insert("Variable", "FXS_EXTEN=328)"); sendFaxAction.insert("Variable", "FXS_NUMBER=XXXXXXXX"); sendFaxAction.insert("Variable", "FXS_HEADER_NUM=+385X XXX XXXX"); sendFaxAction.insert("Variable", "FXS_HEADER_NAME=FXS Test");QVariantMapMap
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There we go... Accepting multiple headers of the same name... Crazy Asterisk...
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When an ESXi server complains about having a full hard drive, yet has > 400 GB free space, it actually means there's something wrong with a VM snapshot somewhere.
Xen had an issue for a while where under some circumstances if you deleted a snapshot, or VM, it only removed the hypervisors association with it. It left all the files intact. This would quickly cause you to run out of space and even deleting all VMs would not rectify it.
It was pretty much a total pain in the ass when you ran into it.
The Cyberiad - Wikipedia
