Everything Else

...are you one of them? I don't believe at all in this 2012's Mayan stupidity... I'm so tired to hear all the people here taking about the end of the world... how anyone could believe in prophecies right now, in the age of information, computers, space shuttles, and DNA decyphering?

Arghhh... why the TV channels spread so stupid news all the time? I can't understand...

Is the people also bugging you with this BS at home, work, friends, customers, and/or any other social environments? ...or am I alone?

I have a young nephew who is convinced that the world is going to end. He just got over learning the truth about Santa Claus, and then this 2012 stuff start getting attention.

worry not diego, it ain't Mayan stupidity, human nature is still on a vicious circle

just turn off the TV and life's wonderful, grab your wife/partner and the kid and go for a walk
(btw, how's your little devil doing?)

ditto@josehill, just keep the kid(s) as far as possible from the tv box, it's bad for their imagination + perception

Nahhh... I'm not worried myself about the EOTW at all! ...in fact I'm hundreed percent sure that the damn thing will not happen at all! ...I can bet double against single that we will not see any other fact than a normal year as all the rest!
...still, the thing that worries me a bit is that A BIG LOT of people here (in my country, my city, etc.) is so conceirned about the Mayan prophecies that they are leaving their investments for tomorrow, more exactly for the time past 2012! ...and they are loosing a big oportunity and precious time without buying from me as much stuff as they should! Superstitions are something really annoying when they sit between my bussinesses and me!

...my kids are growing up so fast ...Wheeeeee!!! ...and they are both so brilliant that sometimes I feel myself as a stupid and underpowered 286 AT clone against a last generation multi-core machine! Seriously, they are something to watch! ...they already know the names for all my tools, instruments, machines, most part of softwares, etc...

[EDIT] Oh!, and they don't care at all about TV! ...they are way more interested on my cool gadgets! [/EDIT]

GeneratriX wrote: ...is that A BIG LOT of people..

that (probably) happens because they did not have access to (decent) education but they all have access to a tv box…be a hero and turn off all the tv sets in argentina

GeneratriX wrote: ...my kids are growing up so fast ...Wheeeeee!!!
...they are way more interested on my cool gadgets!

woohoo, if any of them wants to revive your video edit sw, gimme a ring

all the best D

It won't go with a bang, but with a whimper. Entropy will continue increasing. Things just won't be what they used to be.

While the end of the world will be many millions of years away, the end of the human species will be alot sooner, but not in a timeframe that you would notice.

There will be many bumps on the road due to limits-to-growth, but that is not the same as the end of the world.

fu wrote: that (probably) happens because they did not have access to (decent) education but they all have access to a tv box…be a hero and turn off all the tv sets in argentina

You know about this quote: "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos"
...but I guess TV is a mixed benefit ...you know, you can always watch "Mythbusters", or things like that!

fu wrote: woohoo, if any of them wants to revive your video edit sw, gimme a ring

...well, I don't know ...they are too smart! ...I don't know if they really would like to have those cronic back pains and headaches like daddy!

fu wrote: all the best D

Are you still a constant traveller? Cheers!
Diego

These "End of the World" stuff is completely stupid. Its worst enough when people sell books and dvds on how to survive 2012 and over stuff like that. Its just the end of their calendar, not the end of the world.

The world was supposed to end some time last millenium. There was a TV documentary on it. Then almost the same documentary a couple of years later with the date shifted. Looking back at history, people thought the world would end when the date ticked past 1000AD and then there was that whole y2k business..

But...
... 32bit UNIX time will come to end on the morning of Jan 19, 2038. (The number of (signed int32_t) seconds since (the UNIX epoch) 1/1/1970, will be greater than 2^31)
64bit UNIX time will be fine for a while yet.

it's like watching the odometer roll over. the car doesn't vanish leaving you with a skidmark on your ass. it just turns into a brand new car with 0 miles

sybrfreq wrote: it's like watching the odometer roll over. the car doesn't vanish leaving you with a skidmark on your ass. it just turns into a brand new car with 0 miles

The 2038 issue is already a problem for 32 bit code that calculates 30 year bond yields. If you can port the code to 64bit then problem solved. Easy.

Negative numbers are typically used to indicate error conditions. It doesn't just roll over to 0. If you have (yield_date - today) and yield_date is 1/1/1970 then you have a problem.

I'm also more worried about 2038 than the measly 2012.
I can live without a planet to call home but without 32-bit Unix....yikes.

sybrfreq wrote: it's like watching the odometer roll over. the car doesn't vanish leaving you with a skidmark on your ass.

Ha ! You never owned any of my cars !

hamei wrote:

sybrfreq wrote: it's like watching the odometer roll over. the car doesn't vanish leaving you with a skidmark on your ass.

Ha ! You never owned any of my cars !

Well... years ago, one of my first cars actually dissapeared below my ass, when I got stuck on a well transited street at the north of my city, at the middle of some very strong rain, and literally, these poor Fiat 600 was covered up to the windows with water... the flood was so strong that carried up with her every thing you could imagine... my salvation was a few guys that crossed the street to help, and with some big efforts (the Fiat 600 is not too heavy, but the car was flooded!) we managed to up the little thing to a higher area.

And yup, this is not a joke... so, yes, if you are 19' old and you drive a little blueish Fiat 600 at the middle of the rain, be careful!

The day after that, me and a friend of mine dissasembled a few parts around the engine, the seats, the doors, etc... everything majorly filled with very dirty water.

This is not the exact model that I had, but it was pretty close to that:

GeneratriX wrote: ...years ago, one of my first cars actually dissapeared below my ass..

diego you always have some crazy interesting stories to share ..fiat 600 is the perfect car for nightclubbing
(my last post was meant to be a pm, i messed up)

hmm what's the topic again? screw the end, it's only rock 'ay roll and we like it

i'm waiting for hamei's mad racing take

VenomousPinecone wrote: Thats essentially how I feel about. The experts and authorities are still human, so they make mistakes and make educated guesses.

Yes... and that in the best of cases... because it seems there is a lot of people that left behind educated guesses to just take prophecies as only guide. Of course: -Who am I to criticize them? But anyway, I can't share their apocalyptic enthusiasm; and mostly because I would not follow anyone without a proof of concept...

But, hey! ...I enjoy Class-B movies a lot, so... why not? ...there is no reason to not save some rations of beans, bullets, bandaids and bullion just in case the wind blows too much and the thin veneer of civilization finally peels away!

Anyway... honestly, despite the fact that such a massive event would be a very impressive experience to watch (even if last one!), I have to accept that it would also take away the chance to see how we manage to squeeze the energy from our planet, our sun, our galaxy, how we manage to open worm holes, travel in time, visit extra-solar places, etc. ...now way, Sir: the game is not finished yet!

VenomousPinecone wrote: Enrico Fermi once told Freeman Dyson that with four arbitrary parameters he could fit an elephant, with five he could make the trunk wiggle.

Heheh!, indeed! Very good quote!

VenomousPinecone wrote:

GeneratriX wrote: Same here... if the meteorogical service can't predict correctly the possibility of rain along a term of half of a week, I can't see how anyone else could predict a massive event for his next several hundreed/thousand years... no way. Those are patrañas, or whatever you call them.

Thats essentially how I feel about. The experts and authorities are still human, so they make mistakes and make educated guesses.

You guys have to be joking. I'm oldish for nekochan but not by geological terms ... within my lifetime, glaciers disappearing - glaciers that I used to go drink beer on - polar ice disappearing, ocean pH changing, the damned sea lions moving out of San Francisco ... no wars to reduce the population for the past fifty years, medicine keeping too many cripples alive, people turning into fruitcakes ... if you can't see that there's some big trouble ahead then you're in serious denial.

Here's what makes me think it's over : people seem to have lost their brains somewhere. For thirty years the right-wing in the US has been chanting "get government off the backs of business !" (we can see how well that turned out.) So when this SEC thing comes out, the same people moan and whine "Why were these people surfing the web for porn when they were supposed to be protecting us ?" No one says anything about the conflict here ? Or the way a good half the population has been screaming "Drill ! Drill ! Drill ! who cares about the damned caribou / fish / wildlife ?" Now that the Gulf of Mexico is on its way to becoming the LaBrea Tar Pits, all the same people are snivelling that "Obama didn't do enough ! Why didn't the government stop these people ?" We're big on "personal responsibility" as long as it's not us who has to be responsible ?

If people want to be right-wingers or left-wingers or believe that Jesus speaks to them through the towel dispenser in the executive bathroom, I don't care. But puh- lease , at least stick to the same idiot doctrine you've been spouting for the past twenty years ?

It's as if people couldn't recognize truth if it rose up out of the grunter and bit them in the ass. There is obviously massive operpopulation, overconsumption, overcapacity, serious issues with the world we live on and cannot escape and a disconnect from reality. Yeah, the Maya thing is stupid ... but the impending doom is not. Chanting "Even scientists are human" is ... less than honest with yourself.

Every single disaster of the past fifty years has been predictable and predicted but no one would listen. There's not a chance in hell that people will actually do what it's going to take, so there ya go. Fifty bucks says humanity will not make it to the next century.

I'll put the money in escrow

Fifty bucks says humanity will not make it to the next century.

If we're going down, I'm going down drunk and swing dancing.

Hey there, Hamei!

hamei wrote: Here's what makes me think it's over : people seem to have lost their brains somewhere.

Not me, my friend. But maybe I was not too specific with the subject. I'm not asking if you think the global warming is for real, or if you think that there are some (very noticeables, indeed!) environmental changes around, or if human stupidity growns up every day... I already know all of these things are already happening!

My real question was/is: "-Do you really think that at some point at the middle of 2012, the planet will blow up as per act of magic, just because the hopies, the mayans, and lately, Nostradamus predicted it?

I answer for myself: -No, I don't think so! And not even for a second!

But if you are asking if I think the planet, the tectonic plates, the human kind, the fauna, the flora, and our atmosphere are all of them healthy... my answer is: -No, I don't think so! ...the planet is mostly screwed up!

On the latest vacations I've taken with family one of the rivers where I accustomed to swim it was completely dried... only dry stones to see there... is this normal? No way. I visit these lands since 1974 and it never happened before.

But the case is... I don't think that everything will end at middle of the stupid 2012. Maybe it will end on around 50, 500, 5000, or 50000 years... but on couple years? ...I don't think so!

hamei wrote: It's as if people couldn't recognize truth if it rose up out of the grunter and bit them in the ass. There is obviously massive operpopulation, overconsumption, overcapacity, serious issues with the world we live on and cannot escape and a disconnect from reality. Yeah, the Maya thing is stupid ... but the impending doom is not. Chanting "Even scientists are human" is ... less than honest with yourself.

Yeah, I see the point... but I don't think the planet or the human kind will dissapear because operpopulation, overconsumption, overcapacity... or at least in less than a couple hundreed years... and for the case, we could also end conquered and squeezed by a bunch of aliens or anything else... it is another possibility too...

hamei wrote: Every single disaster of the past fifty years has been predictable and predicted but no one would listen. There's not a chance in hell that people will actually do what it's going to take, so there ya go. Fifty bucks says humanity will not make it to the next century.

I'll put the money in escrow

Predictable?: Probably! Avoidable?: I Doubt!
...you know ...all the real massive events ...call them tsunamis, earthquakes, or whatever you want, all of them are mostly unavoidable. The most powerful forces of nature are all of them colossals in magnitude... nothing to do against them.

Anyway, there are tons of many other things that are just mankind's resposability... all of them avoidable... and even there nothing is done to avoid them... so, why not? Maybe you're right and TEOTW is close... but not in 2012!

Fifty bucks says humanity will make it to -at least- up to 2013!

Since there's no delete button, I'll simply replace this post with something fabulous .