Turn off the internet!
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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Oh gawd, yes - I forgot speeling cheekers! :thumbsup: I would have real problems without them now - I have even one running in VS to check my comments! And the Google Chrome textbox one is superb, especially with the "Ask Google for suggestions" option turned on, which adds better correction options and checks the grammar at the same time. Unfortunately, I am posting this from Firefox, which is pants in that department...
The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)
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Griff Said:
I am posting this from Firefox...
Now why would someone want to do that :confused:
Never underestimate the difference you can make in the lives of others.
Because Chrome has decided that Tuesday is "slug mode" day, and takes around a minute to open a new page. It has sessions like this from time to time, so I try to scare it by using FireFox (which opens the same pages almost immediately) for a day or so and it starts to behave again... :sigh:
The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)
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Actually, that's a good point that you make. Farcebook divides us into those that do and those that don't. I was foolish enough to neglect to read the terms when I signed up about 7 years ago. Consequently I didn't realize that I couldn't nuke my account - merely 'de-activate' it. As a consequence I've had one basically the whole time and have watched it turn into a popularity contest and a me-me-me-me fest. There has been utility at times of family travelling abroad, but far and away, the biggest use I have for the pig-of-a-thing is to pre-screen contact attempts from people I've known in the past. Twenty years ago, I had a good idea of who would grow up to be an ass. Without farcebook, I wouldn't have had proof and would have said yes to far too many undoubtedly painful catch-up requests. So, in closing - I too love the fact that they're all to busy with one-another to notice me any anybody I really care about. Aint life grand!
Make it work. Then do it better - Andrei Straut
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Because Chrome has decided that Tuesday is "slug mode" day, and takes around a minute to open a new page. It has sessions like this from time to time, so I try to scare it by using FireFox (which opens the same pages almost immediately) for a day or so and it starts to behave again... :sigh:
The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)
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Now there's a noble pursuit! Where’s the Donate button?
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Just login to FaceBook, it's in the lower left corner.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES! Abraham Lincoln
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Rob Philpott wrote:
Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
With each other even. The other kind, politicians and lunatics, still do a lot of talking.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES! Abraham Lincoln
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
The internet, like everything else, has it's good and bad points. I don't worry about Facebook and am not on Twitter, but finding information and being able to remote operate my computer and conduct remote meetings is fantastic. We use Skype to communicate, no matter where we are, and stay in touch (actually talk) with family and friends that we couldn't afford to years ago. I noticed the same problem with air conditioning in Houston. When I was a kid there was no air conditioning and we were always outside in the evenings all summer long - kids playing, adults walking around and chatting. Everyone knew everyone. Kids couldn't get into much trouble, because everyone in the area knew us and would call our parents if we did anything. Now people stay indoors in the summer, watching TV. No one knows much more than their immediate neighbors. Should we turn off all air conditioning? I think not. Everything comes with it's pros and cons.
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr., P. E. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Rob Philpott wrote:
Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by
False. First, Ppeople didn't know more then, except that they knew there wasn't any effective way to find it out anyways, so they didn't bother asking. Second, no one can ask a question about something that they know nothing about. For example if you don't know a horse exists they you can't ask how one saddles a horse. Computers have made more people aware of more topics and thus they can ask questions about everything.
Rob Philpott wrote:
As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support.
Perhaps you should find something to do during your commute besides worrying about how other people are doing on their commute?
Rob Philpott wrote:
Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm
Twitter is a great place where very average people have a chance of having their views seen by other people.
Rob Philpott wrote:
I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Yep, back when a husband could beat his wife into submission and sexually abuse the children and for a bit of change on the weekend attacking someone of a different color or even better with a different sexual orientation certainly demonstrated what good times were. And for the select majority they could express their views, at least as long as it met with approval of the rest of the majority. Otherwise there was always the late night drunken beat down to deal with those that strayed from the correct path.
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
The internet isn't much different than a huge (and incredibly wellmaintained) library, with some associated rooms for discussions of hot topics. When I was at university, whenever I tried to find a solution to some tricky problem, I spent hours and days to try and find it myself before asking others or going to the library. And then I spent even more time finding the right information, if I found it at all. Today, when I have some tricky problem, I might think an hour or two about possible solutions, but if I come up empty, or with a method that I consider impractical, I'll check on the internet. Compared to university 30 years ago, it takes a lot less time to find relevant information, but that information is also very often unreliable and needs double-checking, or it isn't specifically suited to my case and needs adaption. As a result, I still have to do a lot of work by myself, unless it really is a common and well-known problem, in which case there would be no point in "inventing the wheel again". In that respect, I consider the internet a blessing: it lets me gather information on a very specific problem, but still won't dumb me down, because I still have to use my brain for sifting through the information and adapting it to my special case. That said, it shouldn't come as a surprise that a tool invented to aid research would be helpful for researching. ;) As for people really dumbing down, the one aspect that I noticed this happening, is grammar and orthography: especially young people spend so much time in forums, chat rooms, and on social networks, that they don't bother watching their typing: their only goal is to confer information and as long as the people they're talking to understand what they write, that's good enough for them. I'd say that's not a problem as such, if those typing habits wouldn't spill over into areas where it is considered more important: e. g. at school, or at work. Also the way people interact with each other gets a lot more casual due to the way they interact via internet: some people seem to have forgotten there is a difference beteween twittering about a new game or writing an e-mail to your boss! Then again, this seems more like a generation problem: those who learned how to properly address your superiors, elders, and other people in spoken and written form before the advent of the internet may have trouble accepting the sloppy and casual internet communication style spilling over into real world communication. But younger people who grew up with the inter
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As you point out yourself... why are you on CP then...? Anyway, yes, you are right to an extent, but the internet has done good things that we couldn't have achieved otherwise too, you know? Twitter and Facebook saved lives in the big earthquake in Japan in 2011. Children with rare incurable heart disease have been able to receive life saving transplant thanks to donations collected over the internet from people who wouldn't have known about their plight otherwise. Personally, online dictionaries have helped my work immensely. I couldn't rely on an old paper dictionary because half the terminology I use won't be in there. And what's wrong with being able to look things up on the fly anyway? My university tutor used to say that it's not necessary to know everything; what's important is that you know where to look them up. People used to be happier because they used to talk more, eh? Well, now with the internet giving me endless amounts of information, I have more to talk about and more people to talk to. I miss my friend from primary school whom I lost touch with; snail mail was too much of a hassle when you just wanted to say and the only thing you could say was "Hi" (being a complicated teenager). If Facebook had been around then, I bet I still have contact with her. The internet makes dumb people dumber and clever people cleverer.:cool:
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
Right on Paulowniak. These people are talking poisonous rubbish because they fear for their status when almost anybody can know what they know with a few clicks of a button.
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Rob Philpott wrote:
In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it.
That's the Google effect.
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I don't know if I can agree with you. Instead of having to waste hours and hours or never being able to find out how to do cetain things because of lack of resources, we now have all the resources a brain can eat up and more. No longer do we have to spend useless time and energy on arithmetic calculations because of the calculator... We can rather spend it on learning something else. I don't think that we are becoming more stupid. With all the information and resources at our finger tips I'd say we're becoming more intelligent. If you take a intelligent person from the past with his limitations of being in the past (no google/no internet) and you take a average intelligence person from the present (google and internet) and you give them exactly the same question on whatever topic. I guarantee you that the person with a average intelligence and google as his resource supplier will give a more accurate answer than the intelligent person.
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." << please vote!! >>
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Too often today people are trying to dictate to others. Why not just do what you think is right and let others make that choice for themselves? It's simple to believe that our own choices are the best, but it's outrageous to think they're best for everyone. As the song says, "Everybody wants to rule the world".
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I had no idea what the word "tumid" meant...so I googled it. Sorry!
Rob Philpott wrote:
I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier?
Well, maybe white straight men were, the rest probably not so much :) On a serious note, I don't think that the Internet has dumbed people down so much as exposed them for the morons they always were. Back in the day you had to be an accomplished writer to spew your thoughts to the world, now any idiot who can make it through a CAPTCHA validation can do the same. Literacy optional. Back in the '90s I thought that the Web was the best thing ever, information would be free and knowledge would explode. Little did I know that 99.9% of the information explosion would consist of BS shrapnel. However, I do enjoy the irony in the fact that "social" media is dominated by antisocial narcissists. EDIT: I forgot to mention the best thing about the Internet: Web programmers like me have jobs.
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Right on Paulowniak. These people are talking poisonous rubbish because they fear for their status when almost anybody can know what they know with a few clicks of a button.
Knowledge is easy, understanding is the tricky bit :) Otto: Apes don't read philosophy. Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it!
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Knowledge is easy, understanding is the tricky bit :) Otto: Apes don't read philosophy. Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it!
Nice quote.
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
Obliged XKCD comic[^] Without the internet certainly I would be able to do my job, but it will take longer and i'll be reinventing the wheel very often, so for me it's a blessing, of course there are a few buts, but overall I think the positive parts win.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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The internet isn't much different than a huge (and incredibly wellmaintained) library, with some associated rooms for discussions of hot topics. When I was at university, whenever I tried to find a solution to some tricky problem, I spent hours and days to try and find it myself before asking others or going to the library. And then I spent even more time finding the right information, if I found it at all. Today, when I have some tricky problem, I might think an hour or two about possible solutions, but if I come up empty, or with a method that I consider impractical, I'll check on the internet. Compared to university 30 years ago, it takes a lot less time to find relevant information, but that information is also very often unreliable and needs double-checking, or it isn't specifically suited to my case and needs adaption. As a result, I still have to do a lot of work by myself, unless it really is a common and well-known problem, in which case there would be no point in "inventing the wheel again". In that respect, I consider the internet a blessing: it lets me gather information on a very specific problem, but still won't dumb me down, because I still have to use my brain for sifting through the information and adapting it to my special case. That said, it shouldn't come as a surprise that a tool invented to aid research would be helpful for researching. ;) As for people really dumbing down, the one aspect that I noticed this happening, is grammar and orthography: especially young people spend so much time in forums, chat rooms, and on social networks, that they don't bother watching their typing: their only goal is to confer information and as long as the people they're talking to understand what they write, that's good enough for them. I'd say that's not a problem as such, if those typing habits wouldn't spill over into areas where it is considered more important: e. g. at school, or at work. Also the way people interact with each other gets a lot more casual due to the way they interact via internet: some people seem to have forgotten there is a difference beteween twittering about a new game or writing an e-mail to your boss! Then again, this seems more like a generation problem: those who learned how to properly address your superiors, elders, and other people in spoken and written form before the advent of the internet may have trouble accepting the sloppy and casual internet communication style spilling over into real world communication. But younger people who grew up with the inter
Stefan_Lang wrote:
Compared to university 30 years ago, it takes a lot less time to find relevant information, but that information is also very often unreliable and needs double-checking, or it isn't specifically suited to my case and needs adaption
Versus the university where there was only the single source and no way to check it at all.
Stefan_Lang wrote:
As for people really dumbing down, the one aspect that I noticed this happening, is grammar and orthography: especially young people spend so much time in forums, chat rooms, and on social networks, that they don't bother watching their typing
You are claiming that 30 years ago in social gatherings that young people used proper grammar? And were you attending parties where you gave spelling tests?
Stefan_Lang wrote:
Then again, this seems more like a generation problem: those who learned how to properly address your superiors, elders, and other people in spoken and written form before the advent of the internet may have trouble accepting the sloppy and casual internet communication style spilling over into real world communication.
Then again those who had very, very limited social mingling 30 years ago (or 50) might presume that absolutely everyone acted in one way, and thus with the internet they should now realize that there are many, many ways for people to act. And hopefully they might question their assumption about how people (everyone) acted 30/50 years ago.
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but look what's happened. Firstly everyone has dumbed down. In the same way that you don't need to be able to do arithmetic because a calculator is close by, now you don't need to know anything because Google is close by. Brazil? Wozzatt? Dunno, Google it. As well as becoming more stupid, it's making us more inward looking and vain. That's what Facebook is for, and if you ask me a good cure for world over-population would be to find out exactly who is on facebook and kill them. Then there'd be no more-touched up photographs or tumid biographies of dull lives clogging up the wires. As a commuter I get so depressed watching people nurturing their Facebook profile on their iPhones as if it were their life support. Twitter is a great place to voice your bigoted views and get ignored or occasionally incite an enraged storm. And as for the CodeProject Lounge, God, where do you start? Yes, I am aware of the irony of this post. I saw something on the TV recently about the 1950s. Were people happier? “I think so, they talked more.”
Regards, Rob Philpott.
I have been pondering this a lot lately. Many people are saying the same thing, that the Internet is making people ignorant. Indeed, someone discussed this with me only today. I think that the Internet has passed its best for a number of reasons: annoying adverts, censorship (often politically or irrationally motivated), annoying adverts, corporate web sites with cluttered pages full of rubbish (looking for the obvious and most important links is like looking for a needle in a haystack), annoying adverts, garbage download sites, annoying adverts, free software that isn't free, annoying adverts, non-downloadable content, annoying adverts, slow browsers with crashamatic plug-ins, annoying adverts, rude egotistical anti-social trolls on blogs, annoying adverts, search engines that find nothing but: trash, stolen content, corporate rubbish and annoying adverts .... . There can be no doubt, the Golden Age of the Internet is already over, it is now well into its Silver Age and heading towards an Age of Brass. :((
