Technology News – US Airways installs Vista flight-software.
(U.S. Airways Flight 1549)
picture: dunno source, via our lol builder. lol caption: MisterAJ
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Technology News – US Airways installs Vista flight-software.
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Good job, Sully! Now there’s a man who knows where his towel is.
H2G2 reference = automatic superwin
i second that!
I 42nd it.
Pointing out obvious references so you can show the world how smart you are for getting the joke = fail.
Since you felt the need to share and enjoy, feel free to now go stick your head in a pig.
In their ass please.
have you seen that video where the elephant sits on the dude, and the dude is engulfed? i laughed so much i pee’d a little
Would you mind altering your handle a bit?
PK already has a poster who goes by OMG, so it could get
confusing.
Thanks!
And the true meaning of “Don’t Panic.”
are the book(s) better then the movie?
Infinitely.
but not better than the radio show…
Ugh, but not the fifth one…
Much as I love Adams’ other work, Mostly Harmless was proof that “But you’re under contract for one more book!” is not the proper way to spur a writer to produce.
Frank Herbert is the poster boy for that axiom.
I thought FH was the ‘I’m paid by the word and it shows’ axiom
Despite several pleas, the Melville heirs refuse to release the title.
hey you sass that hoopy!
so… still not as good as the other captions, but at least this one made me lol just because it makes fun of vista…
Yeah, coulda been better. But I’m with you, anything anti-vista is lolworthy, what with me being a Linux sysadmin and all.
And the whole story just makes me smile. The pilot did an awesome job, everybody remained reasonably calm and helped each other, quick thinking and action got plenty of rescue vehicles there in plenty of time (even though the plane was drifting down-river and sinking) and most importantly, nobody died.
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I wouldn’t want to be the guy who’s wife texted him, “my plane is crashing” though. The pilot’s wife didn’t even know about it until he called her up, “Yeah, honey, I’ll be a little late today, I had to crash land in the Hudson, don’t worry, everything’s fine.” Props to the four police officers who commandeered a ferry, and got it to the plane where two of them tied themselves to the other two and went overboard into freezing water to rescue people. And to the helicopter dive crew that got the poor hypothermic woman out of the water. And, well, to everyone who remained calm while standing on the wings of an aircraft sinking in freezing water, there were babies on board who probably wouldn’t have survived a panic.
Props to the heros who helped in the rescue. But the real props go to the pilot for putting the plane down in the Hudson, instead of downtown Manhattan, which could have been a very distinct possibility. And for doing it in such a manner as to have ALL passengers and crew survive the crash with very few injuries to boot.
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Man, could you imagine being the guy in the 18′ bay boat out for a nice morning of fishing? “Man, you should have seen the one that got away!”
Yeah, I gave props to the pilot first and foremost (he goes by Sully) because, yeah… that could have been really ugly, and even making it into the river, to have NO casualties? You know, wikipedia has a page on airliner water ditchings, and I looked over their list of incidents. I couldn’t find a single other case with no casualties.
I hope he can name his price or at least get a raise. Epic win is epic.
raise? dood should get a medal and an all expense paid cruise around the world…
That he should but at least a raise. I tend to realize that the world doesn’t give a damn and thus have low expectations of reward for any deed.
Well, Bloomberg did give him the key to the city. And Sully seems like the kind of no-nonsense guy who probably chalks it up to ‘all part of the job.’ Click my name for a bio, the guy was a hero well before this incident.
Manliness, he has it.
Guy shoulda been President on 09/10/2001.
Champion, that man. That’s one industry advisor who you can trust with advice. I’m glad Seth found Sully’s CV (I had it but lost it), because it’s a remarkable read.
I spent time in aviation, and while advisors-to-industry like him are still more common than you’d expect, the numbers are dropping.
They’re becoming pasty faced accountant more and more with time…
i wouldn’t just give him a key to the city i’d give him my house!
your house is better than the city?
Fewer junkies lying around… less litter…
Oh, so not *my* house, then… Whew!
Completely different to chez Fester then [link]
Ooo-la-la!
Not too sure he’ll want to be around water for awhile…
I understand pilots for his airline get paid about 42k a year, but I have no documentation on that.
He also runs his own safety consulting company. I imagine he flies commercial jets mostly to keep a hand in the business. And because he likes it. I would also expect he gets a good deal more than the average pay at his airline. [LINK] to the yahoo answers page for average airline pilot salary. US Airways is the fifth largest airline in the US, so based on that, I’m guessing he earns well over $100,000 a year. And obviously worth every penny. Still, it seems many airline pilots are sadly underpaid. Lets all pause a moment and thank good old uncle Ronnie for the deregulation and union busting that gave us regional airline pilot salaries starting at $15,000 a year. Remember that the next time you get on a plane.
In August, 1981, Ronald Reagan fired over 11,000 air traffic
controllers for going on strike. [LINK] Did that situation
eventually lead to low regional airline pilot pay, or was
there something else?
The strikes in the months around that by others should have been punished the same way, but the airline workers were in breach of contract, and were held to it. The double standard with the other unions was sickening, but I can’t say that I have a hell of a lot of sympathy. There are unions you can belong to that don’t have a ‘no strike’ clause, and unions are stupid to agree to them if they actually want to hold the company hostage for better benefits.
The strike, or the ability to threaten one, is the only
tool I can name in any union’s arsenal. Am I
missing something?
I understand that striking air traffic controllers is a
safety issue, so we can agree to that. The situation
is tough, but those air traffic controllers weren’t
striking for no good reason. The aftermath of the
firings was not pretty, either.
I think you an frou are agreeing that for a union to agree to a no strike clause is dumb…
True that. It’s a pickle.
with Airbus tech, he was bloody lucky he still had some control… I loathe airbus.
I think you need an eye-roll here.
That’s “: roll :” without the spaces.
What – a sausage-roll with even more protein?
Like that?
Wooo! Awesome, rhorho! Thanks for figuring that one out and passing it on. I’ve been in dire need of an eyeroll smiley before and had no idea.
Rho is always awesome…
@ Unc and diss: Thank you, but I just stumbled
across the WordPress smiley codes [LINK] last
night.
and that doesn’t qualify for ‘awesome’ in which universe? Hmm?
Just happy to find it. After all, an Unc without
an eyeroll is like a week without lurex…
I’m still trying to figure out under what circumstances you would need the “neutral” smiley.
(as possible example)
I see what you did there.
Maybe “My lobotomy went very well, thanks.
”
And, yeah, there’s a lot of use for
now that we know how!
And knowing is half the fun!
Ooooooooohhh, the devil smiley’s creepy….
Not to be trollish, but had you all not had such disdain for the ICHC site and its peeps, you could have had all this and more from Cweenmj’s website long ago.
Speaking for myself only, it’s not a disdain so much as an aversion to the lolspeak in the comments. I actually like the lols; but lolspeak comments just…well, make me :headdesk:
*le sigh* We red-headed step-children are
destined to pick these things up from the
streets.
Now don’t you wish there were a smileypic to go with :headdesk:?
And some of the lolspeak comments are very creative in their (mis)use of language and spelling, more like surgery than butchery. I enjoy both sites, but have to be in the right mood for each. ICHC has such a different vibe, especially because they know they get a lot of youngsters, so they police for rudeness and “R” content, whereas here it’s all part of the give-and-take among adults.
Oops, where’d that face come from?
Yeah, I seriously can’t deal with that crap.
It reminds me too much of the people who aren’t doing it intentionally.
I’ll also admit that when voting on captions here, if there’s more than one or two words in that format, it’s pretty much guaranteed to get a fail from me.
@LurkinMerkin: Yes…a :headdesk: smiley would be awesome.
@rhorho:
Okaiz, eetz liek dis: Ai wint to dah LOLcatzes,
n lukt up cweenmjz websietz fur us non-
cheezee peeps.
Iz linkt under mai naim…
*hed asplodez*
@rhorho: :headdesk:
But thanks.
Wel dun, R. Yew haz teh brave! *coff, coff* Adn egg-salad skillz.
Thank you, LM!
I has the brave, but I also has the dead.
*wooo-ooo*
I agree with what others say…I don’t ‘loathe’ the ICHC folks, I love the adorable cat LoL’s, I just can’t read the comments.
test
Me too!
Yay!
Rhorho you are wonderful.
Thank you anyway, but it wasn’t all that.
In case you missed it further up, here is a [LINK]
to some more smileys.
Geez, props to the pilot, co-pilot, the flight attendants, and probably to most of the passengers as well as to many people on the boats and shore in the area. There are a lot of ways this could have ended in tragedy, and not many ways it could have ended so well, and numerous people obviously did exactly the right thing to get it to come out like it did.
We should all be very impressed.
intelligent person WIN
THX…
No, not the greatest, I laughed harder at others…
But i felt Vista needed a kick in the gonads, and this was an
excellent opportunity…
this is one of the funniest to me (a mac user) because thats what’s would have happened.
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to our heros
HAHA! That’s awesome.
Eh, my caption (and a lot of others) where way funnier.
Of course they were… now, don’t shoot up a school…
ROFLMFAO…
Nice reply, mate…
Try shooting up liquid plumber.
Maybe *that’s* what happened to Joe…
No, he sniffed it…
emergency landing, you did it rite!
Does anyone here know how rare a ditch on water with survivors actually is?
And the Airbus is fly by wire. the fact the pilot still had *any* control is so remote as to be unheard of…
It’s so rare that I can’t think of any off the top of my head that have actually worked. Also, a little further up, Seth mentioned that he had looked up ditchings, and couldn’t find any with no casualties.
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I heard something that said that conditions were perfect for them to crash, if that’s what they had to do. If they had been going cross-country and had a full load of fuel, they probably wouldn’t have floated for so long……had it not been a couple of minutes after take-off they would have been going too fast to ditch properly…….had the pilot and co-pilot not been total bad-asses the plane probably would have caught a wing-tip and flipped……
Usually the plane just shatters on impact and sinks…
and I was watching during the old airbus tests and the early adoption… I’d not have flown airbus until this century…
I thought with fly-by-wire you still had an ass-load of redundant routes to the control surfaces?
Still, Sully’s lived up to the maxim of “any landing you walk away from is a good one”, nicely played!
fester was not really referring to the routes to the control surfaces but rather the fact that the pilot has less of a feel for what the control surfaces are actually doing…
No. By wire means it’s all in the computer’s ‘hands’…
Both are right… sorta. Yes, the Airbus A320 family is almost completely fly-by-wire; certainly all the major control surfaces are computer-activated. Yes, the pilot has “feel” for what the surfaces are doing, as the “stick” also behaves like a VERY good modern joystick with feedback.
There ARE several redundancies built-in, in anticipation of a major catastrophe, and this is one of the very few cases where everything (after it ate some geese) went exactly right. The other incident specifically involving Airbus was an A300 belonging to DHL that landed after being shot by a missile (I think Kabul… see if I can reference it).
Uncle Fester – when fly-by-wire is on top of its game, it’s no worse than the old ways of cable-to-actuator… just as many things to go wrong.
I’m old enough to remember the early adoption… it was far from nice…
In fairness, no worse than early-adoption of any new system / device. (Pressurisation – Comet?) Concorde is probably the only one that comes to my mind that employed so much brand-new tech that NEVER killed it in service.
No… only thing that took down a concorde was crap on the run way…
I understand the pilot also had his sailplane rating. Not much in common there other than the lack of engines, but interesting nonetheless, if it’s really true. Googling usairways pilot glider seems to confirm it.
With the latest Service Pack, Windows Vista’s security is now literally water-tight!
Only in MS’ universe. Gimme Unix any day…
No thank you sir..I want to drive my car..not build it from scratch.
Vista X64 user here.
No complaints because I bought quality components for my computer.
Hey what do you call the guys with no balls who built an operating system?
Eunuchs..Unix..
Jihadist Geese?
Were any of them wearing turbans?
10 years out of date on Linux fail… same with the BSD family…
But you keep kicking out the tired old clichés and one or two may believe you.
and your high quality hard drive will die quicker because of vista’s constant page filing. defend that.
The joy of ‘memory management by page error’ coupled with the interminable snapping the view ports to allow the fancy ’3d’ window task swapper… which also squirts itself into the pagemem file…
I think that word is spelled “turbines.”
*snork* *wipes Dr Pepper off screen*
LOL…
GOLD. pure gold.
In other travel news, US Air also announced two new in-flight dinner options: goose and fish.
Goose is good eatin’! I’m making it a mission to eat my way through most of the animal kingdom, partly to experiece the difference, but mostly to annoy PETA.
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
minced goose is only any good if it’s boned before you mince it…
…. ask ANY jet engine and they’ll agree!
So your preferred texture of snarge is smooth and creamy rather than chunky?
(Snarge is my new favorite word this week [link])
This newsletter sounds very relevant to my interests. Where do I subscribe? I’ve gotten quite a few good critters on my plate so far! Alligator and Elk are two of the best so far. Whitetail Deer of course is a seasonal favorite here in Wisconsin. The little ones are the most delicious! Pheasants are average, nothing to write home about (chickens are bigger and better tasting) Goose…I don’t like. The meat is dry and reminds me of liver. Chocolate covered ants…well…you can take anything crunchy that doesn’t taste like anything and cover it with chocolate and it will taste good!
PITA must hate me! (Mission: Going according to plan)
Why would flat bread hate you?
Well, I guess if you consider PETA to be a Pain In
The Ass, it works that way, too.
Gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘goose the engine.’
i’m still surprised no one has made any ‘top gun’ references….
I’m just grateful… keep quiet, ‘kay? Ssshhh…
now i’m sad :<
Oh, go ON then, if you must…
*Ducks behind the sofa as Kenny Loggins roars into life*
I never had a problem with Vista other than I kept accidentally deleting my recycle bin :\
To hear about a plane crashing in the FREEZING Hudson River (which is gross I might add) and everyone surviving was a total fluke
Thank goodness all those water taxis are there, had the plane hit the water a few hours later (it gets very dark there) I can only guess how many would’ve died
obviously, they were SO lucky
Sucks for those geese though
Sucks for those geese though
If they were Honkers (Canadian Geese), they probably deserved it. Those suckers are mean and probably attacked the plane intentionally!
You’re a really cute troll!
Nah, scum’s not a troll. Just has a different perspective on geese than you do.
Are you a member of the CGRA? (Canadian Goose Rights Association)?
I grew up in MN where Canadian Geese are plentiful. Trust me, they’re mean suckers. They will chase you and bite you. They will gang up on kids, adults, old people. They think they own all of the lakes in the cities and they go to war to defend their territory. If they thought they owned that piece of the sky, I can see them attacking to defend it.
(Only part of this is tongue in cheek – now you just have to figure out which cheek…)
But thanks for the cute comment….
Geese, for the most part, are as bed tempered and bloody minded as wasps…
I’ve got a bone to pick. It’s not with this pic or this caption or anything said here so far, but at least one of the other captions to this or a similar pic of this accident, referred to the passengers as heroes.
No, surviving an accident or any type of tragedy does not make you a hero. Using the word in that sense diminishes it’s true meaning and for those to whom it does apply, reduces its value.
Was the pilot a hero? For landing the plane in the manner he did and for allowing everyone to survive, was he heroic? No. He was incredibly skilled and apparently kept his wits about him and, with some additional shear luck, accomplished an amazing task. He wasn’t putting his life at risk in order to save others. His life was also at risk.
Now, was he a hero for staying in the plane and making doubly sure that everyone got off safely? I’d say that’s closer to being heroic. It was certainly brave. I’m not trying to diminish anything, anyone did, but hero is has become one of those words that is applied incorrectly so often, it’s losing its true value.
For example, not all of the soldiers fighting over seas are heroes. Some of them are, without a doubt, but most of them are just average people doing an incredibly difficult job that most people wouldn’t want to go near.
The word Hero should mean something.
From personal experience…. surviving an accident of the crash type isn’t ‘hero’ status…it’s being to stubborn to die then… and leave the wounded and run.
and as an addendum… fighting over seas does NOT imbue ‘hero’ status. If that’s true then being sponsored by Nike makes you a hero.
The passengers did not panic. That lack of panic saved lives. Maybe hero is too strong a word, but they sure acted better than the average disaster victims.
That’s a valid point. I do agree that hero is too strong a word to describe the lack of panic. If they didn’t panic, then rushed into a sinking plane, risking their own lives to save others, then we can talk about using the word.
Certainly there could be a hero or 5 amongst them, but the simple act of surviving an accident does not a hero make.
I was also just using this as a soapbox from which to comment about the practice in the US of calling all soldiers heroes. It’s simply not true.
I’ll back Seth on that – very unusual, and in an environment most likely to cause panic. Even in a completely controlled environment (massive swimming pool with rafts), the stews being trained in emergency procedures panicked regularly. Some of those were veterans. This is a remarkable bunch of people. I’m not buying into the hero-or-not thing, but these pax ALL deserve a good pat on the back.
I’m guessing it was a combination of factors. The simple shock of being alive and mostly unhurt probably raised everyone’s spirits. Then there was the pilot and crew’s calm demeanor, and putting the passengers first probably made everyone feel they had something to live up to. Finally, they got outside and they were in the middle of New York city surrounded by boats with all eyes on them. Nobody wants to look like a panicky fool in front of the whole nation.
I think it’s more familiarity with the concept. People generally panic in a laien situation… Planes, and the crashing thereof, is becoming zeitgeist.
ALIEN and ARE… I think the phrase ‘too late at night sums things up at this end…
i think this is what you’re trying to say: people see so many false things ( i cite mythbusters special on Hollywood stunts ) that they forget the forces in play are much more, and you will die or get Very hurt. Could this be an explanation to their relative calm of the situation? could you of used the word “zeitgeist” in an incorrect tense?
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these things we shall never know.
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Zeitgeist [tsyt‐gyst], the German word for ‘time‐spirit’, more often translated as ‘spirit of the age’. It usually refers to the prevailing mood or attitude of a given period.
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Get some sleep
This is obviously not the OMG we know.
Second word fail.
Nouns don’t have “tenses,” and he used the noun correctly.
Get some brain.
you missed the word is ‘HAVE’ not ‘OF’ also… but please, continue ripping the retarded id-jacker more holes…
Oops! I misovercorrected. Thanks for catching that slip:
You are a true zeitgeist of a guy.
I would *have* corrected his correction of you more
harshly, but the poor thing might “die or get Very hurt.”
Not my usual stance in view of such idiocy, but evidently
“the forces in play are much more.”
Zeitgeist also has the shade of meaning that implies ‘Collective Consciousness’, thus “Anti-Semitism was a major part of the Western Zeitgeist in the 1930s…” is a correct and accepted usage.
And you are a moron…
So how exactly do you define a hero?
It’s like a hoagie or a grinder.
…or a submarine.
the guy who wrestled an airbus into a ditch… that’s a hero.
Someone who gets other people killed
Your helpful contibution is noted. I thank you from the heart of my bottom.
Now go away.
You seriously didn’t catch it?
That’s a line from Serenity, during the reserve heist.
Serenity win!
He was quoting one of my favorite movies. IMDB link behind name.
The simplest definition I can come up with would be that it’s choosing to put your life or even simply your safety at risk in order to help someone else.
If you don’t make the choice, or if you are not putting yourself at risk, then no, I don’t think it qualifies for hero status. For instance, the pilot was saving his ass as much as everyone else’s. From what I’ve heard about Sully, probably was more concerned for everyone else, but still, he didn’t choose to put himself in danger while saving everyone.
When he stayed in the plane to make sure everyone got off ok, then maybe. I can’t know if he felt he was in imminent danger. I can’t know if the plane was sinking and he thought he could go down with it, so I don’t know.
Firemen. In spite of all of the safety equipment and procedures they have, and even though it is their job, I still think they qualify for many if not most of the dangerous situations they enter.
Policemen, pretty much the same thing.
Does that help? If you disagree, how would you define the word?
Then couldn’t you say that soldiers who volunteer to put their lives in danger by going into a war zone to protect lives qualify as hero’s?
No, at least in my mind it can’t be applied that easily or broadly or it loses its true meaning.
The word eclectic has come to mean a mish-mash of items taken from a large variety of [insert appropriate superset here].
Example, a living room with one or two pieces of furniture each from many different, incompatible styles. The whole is called eclectic.
What the word originally meant was more like ‘one thing out of many’, meaning that from a large field of choices, you chose that one, truly remarkable or special item.
I see hero in the same way. Of the soldiers you mention, many of them will never see combat. Many of them will never be put in a position where they distinguish themselves from the backgound noise of all of the other soldiers who signed on to do the same job. I’m not saying they’re not brave. I’m not saying that they don’t have hero potential. They may, but are never put in a position where they need to distinguish themselves in such a way.
Hero is an eclectic term; rare and special.
I think you’ve pointed out my mistake. I think I was too generous with applying it too easily to firemen and policemen. I think many of them are heroes, or potential heroes. See, it’s an easy trap to fall into.
“The word Hero should mean something.”
Amen, and thank you. Very well said.
For what it’s worth. Ubuntu has crashed on me way more than Vista. Vista has actually never crashed for me.
Hmmm…. not someone who uses podcasts or MTP players…
He may be talking about post Service Pack 1.
No… it’s still crap with MTP post SP1…
And SP1 was a joke.
I’d not altered the base config of my laptop since I got if from the manufacturer, but I had to poke around it’s innards in CMD to get the bloody thing to install SP1.
I had to turn off a service that, MS state you cannot turn off on my model
laptop., to get SP1 to load. Then SP1 removes the ‘essential service’…
I expect to have to know my way around the *nix command line, but M$ sells itself on being ‘load and go’…my entire, alabaster like, English arse it’s load and go…
I cheated the Matrix, and bought a laptop with SP1 preloaded. I
haven’t had any trouble with MTP, PTP or podcasts, but perhaps my
days are numbered. (My only religion fail is a staunch belief in the
phenomenon of “jinx.”)
Thank you. You’ve just made a happy man feel very old. I have no idea what the joke is here. And I don’t CARE!
Huh?
Think he’s saying he don’t know what Vista is, or how crappy it is…
Right! And you don’t knoww…..”I know what it is to be young but you don’t know what it is to be old.”
While we’re ranting, why is “flight-software” hyphenated? Or is bad grammar and spelling just part of the LOL meme?
LOL: Still good, though I think it could have been better with something like:
“NYC: Planes go in, but they don’t come out!” (latent 9/11 reference for extra spiciness)
“I said, ‘I’d rather drive.’ And then YOU said, ‘Flying is safer.’ Jerk.”
“Geese: Serious Business”
“Look, when I said we should crash this party, I meant…”
And yeah. Not seeng heroics here. Fast thinking and cool heads all around? Definitely. Worth a hearty handshake and a free meal or two? Sure. But heros? Medals? This kind of thing happens every day. It’s just usually not this spectacular or caught on the news.
i like the “Geese: Serious Business” one, personally.
and i think the hyphen between flight and software was just a typo/oversight by the author, not necessarily a symbol of adherence to the lolcats meme.
I’d buy the guy a hero. Genoa salami with extra provolone cheese.
*drools*
If liberals really thought Obama was some kind of a Messiah, we’d all be screaming that this is a Sign. But maybe we should be. Oh, not about Obama, hear me out. Our economics problems really boil down to a lack of faith. And here we have something that looked as if it could have been a horrible disaster, yet turned out to be something where no one was seriously hurt and everyone got to rally ’round and feel good for having overcome the problem. A miracle, if you will. Now I’m not suggesting magical thinking, as if this really was some kind of sign. But people are superstitious, illogical creatures, for the most part. Present company excepted, of course. Just putting it out there…
Vista makes birds try to attack the hardware that’s running it?
Never had that problem with my laptop, must be the newest update.
Vista anti-virus offers no protection against the bird flu, apparently…
Ya, miracle is another one of those words which gets used far too often.
I prayed they’d have the chocolate donuts with the almond sprinkles and they DID!! It’s a miracle!!”
Ok, I exaggerate. Slightly.
PK loser, oh, I mean PK user, NOBama08 has already created two captioned pics where the theme, like so many of his others, is him pretending to be a liberal, blaming the event on Bush. [Link]
I think I understand your point in this, but it’s not faith that kept those people alive. It was a whole bunch of skilled people, from the designers, manufacturers, and pilot and other crew members. It was luck that they hit the geese where and when they did as the flaps were still extended for takeoff and gave them a better glider ratio. There were countless other things/people involved, but no, I don’t think anyone is going to start claiming this as a holy sign of the divinity of Obama.
Hell, everything that goes right during his terms is going to be used by some to prove that he is indeed the anti-christ.
If you don’t already know the site, you must check out FSTDT. com
(Fundies Say The Darndest Things).
I’m assuming this was a reply to me, so, spelling it out: If we pretend like this is a sign the economy will get better it might get better. Not even pretend, just speculate in front of the simple minded and gossipy. It becomes a meme and spreads, and people start believing the economy will get better and start spending again, making the economy get better. Or maybe that’s just my altered state of mind on a Friday night talking…
Why haven’t we been doing that the last 6 months, then? Why, when gas prices were going up to $4 and more a gallon, we were showing the highest possible prices in the city instead of the lowest? We were conditioning people to think that paying $3.98 per gallon was ok, because some poor sap down the way had to pay $4.
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Want me to really piss you off? Rush Limbaugh said nearly the same thing you just said this week on the radio (I read his site to get caught up, hehe)
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We need to be positive. We need to hope for and expect the best. And we need to expect our leaders, newpapers, tv news, and everyone else to help us get to that best.
Why not for the last six months? Because there were some very serious shocks to the system, and merely hoping for the best at that point would have been silly. Now we are dealing with domino effects, really more of a positive feedback cycle (positive meaning amplifying the effect, not damping it down.) So belief becomes a larger factor than it was, as it is one of the amplifiers. Panic and fear breed selfishness and hoarding. Good points though. My respect and fondness for you continue to grow.
See, this goes to bolster my point that you’re so far to the left that you’re almost on the right again
Oooh. I’m going to have to go with fact fail on that one. Can you
imagine Seth crossing through the troll zone to the right of you?
Positive thoughts have to be encouraged. You have to feed them or like any living organism, they die. In the environment of the last 8 years or so, there was little to no food left for positive thoughts. With any new administration people have hope again. Bush killed that hope early on and for eight years, dug the grave deeper and deeper.
Rush isn’t stupid, he’s just selfish and evil. Pretty much everything he does is for his own benefit. That’s the selfish part. He doesn’t seem to care if he lies, steels, cheats, or who or what gets damaged as a result. That would be the evil part. He’s not an idiot, no matter how many times I call him one.
*steals*
Hehe, I was going to say the exact same thing about Rush. Selfish, evil, but not an idiot. Goes for Bush, too, despite how I love to make fun of his verbal gaffs. He’s not an idiot, per se, but his post-alcoholic syndrome and other drug use couldn’t have been good for whatever natural intellect he was born with.
You still trust that lying junkie?
If you’ll notice, I didn’t make a judgement call about the words said, I was simply illustrating what was said to make a point. My trusting or not trusting of Rush Limbaugh has nothing to do with the conversation at hand.
True… I was just asking…
One of the great things about no being liberal…
I can be REALLY intolerant of his hypocrisy about drugs, and no one can touch me
I enjoy listening to him when I can, but since I work second shift, I am rarely around the radio when he’s on. I’m not paying the membership fees to listen to him online (it’s not that important to me), so I read his website to get caught up on the latest right wing doings. I read Huffington for the same reason.
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I was just doing my best to irritate Seth by pointing out that he almost quoted word for word what Senor Limbaugh was saying last week
I enjoy watching people doing stupid things on youtube and hurting themselves… doesn’t mean I crow about it…
Yes Seth, that was a response to your post. I’m failing when it comes to responding to posts near the bottom of the page.
I see what you’re saying. Basically it’s the old ‘think positively and positive things will happen.’ It actually does work, if only because we make them happen by thinking they will. I think (positively) that this is where you were going.
Yes, it can work when it comes to something like economy, which is just a lot of psychology anyway.
.
(The current financial crisis is a much bigger problem to some individuals than it should have to be, because media is painting it in darker colours than it needs to be. I can’t give you a sensible source for this statement, I was listening to interviews on one of the more in-depth programs on my lovely talk radio. A lot of people were getting panicky for no ohter reason than having read in the papers that they probably should. Yay.)
It’s the same concept behind showing the highest possible gas prices on the news and slowly getting the masses to accept said higher prices, because at least they’re not paying what the poor sap down the road is paying. Things are almost never as bad as the media portrays them to be, because the worse the news, the more revenue is had by the media outlets.
Yep.
“OMFG WE GONNA DIE!!!!”
sells a lot more than
“Things aren’t good, but not as horrible as they could be.”
.
Then again, combined with “w00t! NUDITY SHOCK SENSATION*” anything seems to sell though. I can’t decide what I loathe most: media or the people who buy it. As in “buy it”, not just hand money over.
.
*) One such nudity shocker thing I once noticed turned out to be something about an actor having appeared on stage in underwear. Very w00t.
Even I started to get nervous when I heard that BofA had asked for another 20 Billion. I didn’t realize they changed their mind and took money the first time. I instantly thought, should I take my money out and put it under the mattress or something. Then I flashed on the scenes from movies of the great depression and the runs on the banks, which resulted in the banks failing. I all of a sudden understood exactly how it happened the first time.
Obviously, I didn’t put any money under my mattress, so if anyone knows where I live, you’re not going to find it there. I know FDIC should protect my money…
FDIC will protect your money as long as the government has the money to pay back. Unless I’m misunderstanding the point of a government insurance program? I wouldn’t trust it right now as far as I could throw my brother uphill against the wind, and he’s a really big guy.
I’m in complete agreement, but I’m also trying to not be one of those
foolishly panicking people Danbala mentioned .
I also flashed on the Savings and Loan scandal where people did lose their life savings, with no recourse. I know it was a different situation where FDIC didn’t apply, but if the government didn’t have the money, at best I’d get a portion of my money back, at worst nothing.
Nothing good can come out of panicking.
A very scary bit about how people seem to function (in my perception) is that if media says “if people panic, things will go down the drain” a lot of people will think along the lines of: “Well, I am not one to panic, but other people are morons and probably will panic, so I’d better hurry up and get my money out of the bank before the panicky people get there”. Something like that.
And that’s pretty much what ran through my head.
The, the money’s not here.
Well, your money’s in Joe’s house…
that’s right next to yours.
And in the Kennedy House, and Mrs. Macklin’s
house, and, and a hundred others.
Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it
back to you as best they can.
Now what are you going to do?
Foreclose on them?
I’m something of an American culture illiterate, but thanks to Google found out where that’s from. Maybe I should watch that movie some time, after all.
It took me a second to figure out what it was from, but yes, you totally need to watch that movie
It’s a classic. Even though you’ve not yet seen it, you will recognize a lot of it because it’s been mimicked in books, movies and tv shows for
60 years.
I personally can’t stand it anymore because it’s been played to death every christmas. But it is a must see, at least once.
When opportunity arises, I’ll give it a chance.
But that’s exactly what we’ve had for the last several months. I may be wrong here, but I’m of the opinion that the recession we’re in now (job losses, revenues down, people hoarding their money) is a lot worse than it should be, simply because it’s been played up. Employers see other employers dropping jobs because of a slower economy, they think they need to cut their losses before they get that bad, drop jobs themselves, and BOOM, you’ve got yourself a full-blown recession.
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I’m all for people knowing what’s going on in the world, but the spin that is put on it is unnecessary. And, some things are best left reported on after the fact, IMO.
I agree with your assessment of what’s been happening, and that it includes a certain amount of panic already happening. I’m not sure I can agree that it’s better to keep people in the dark over such matters.
Obviously there are national security issues which can’t be shared, and you’re right that there are many people just looking to panic over anything. I think maybe what you were getting at is that if we had non-sensationalistic reporting, things would not be as bad as they are today. With that, I would have to agree.
I also think that many people just aren’t smart enough to understand the nuances of a world economy, I’m not. I think people like to think they are, and like to think they know what they’re doing and demand that things be done their way or else. Under these circumstances, I have to be able to step back and trust those who really do know what they’re talking about, and who aren’t just in it for themselves (that discounts most politicians unfortunately).
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear in my post. I don’t want to keep people in the dark, but there is no need in causing a panic at the slightest little dip in the stock market. People are convinced that the entire country is affected by the ‘recession’ we’re in. It’s not. I’ve mentioned before that we have jobs in Texas. We’re constantly hiring here, and around here. We have oil jobs out there for the taking. Even with oil and gas prices what they are. And these jobs aren’t all laborer jobs or line worker jobs. They’re good, somewhat high-paying jobs in everything from line working to upper management. Other states have jobs, and aren’t in the recession that some states (such as Michigan) are in. Detroit is losing jobs. Ok. That’s not the entire country. Life moves on. We were told that the world was going to end unless Congress voted in TARP and the bailout money. It was voted in, wasn’t used right away, and the world didn’t end. The companies and houses it was supposed to save didn’t get any help from it, and the world is still spinning, people are still going to work, going to the grocery store, still driving their cars around……
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The nuances of a world economy isn’t going to affect the Joneses down the street. Normal people don’t suffer when the stock market dips. This false sense of panic is silly, it’s harmful, and it’s unnecessary. As far as having non-sensationalist reporting, we’ll never get that. It’s what sells papers, internet ads, and radio advertisements. I just wish we could stick to the type of reporting that sensationalizes Britney Spears getting her kids back as opposed to jobs being lost in a couple of states and being made to appear as though the entire country is in the same boat.
As long as I’m not forced to read the Hollywood sensationalist crap, fine, have at it. I think it’s my fault for not understanding what you wrote.
A lot of people across the country are being directly affected though. maybe, being where you are, you’re not seeing it quite as strongly as some others are. Yes, you can certainly chalk some of that up to panic. Some of it is planning. Some of it is reality. A lot of people have lost their jobs. A lot of companies have failed. A lot more have had layoffs. I know quite a few people who are out of work now due to layoffs. In one of the industries in which I’ve worked, the companies rely on massive amounts of funding for between 10 – 20 years before the investors will see actual products put on the market. Much of that funding has dried up and these business are laying off so they can continue to run on what they currently have, in order to not fold in 6 months.
They’re being careful because it’s not a stable economy. This isn’t panic, it’s safeguarding. But to the people who are getting laid off, and finding that the other companies in the same industry aren’t hiring either, that’s panic.
Don’t even get me started on the lack of regulation the republicans insisted not be in the ‘banking bailout’, or the wimpy ass democrats who once again didn’t stand up for what they knew, or should have known needed to be done. They’re so damned afraid of looking like wimps, so they act like wimps. Our government sucks. But I digress…
I don’t think Obama is a financial genius, and I don’t think he thinks he is either. I do think he will surround himself with the best advisers available, and I do think he’ll listen to them. At this point there’s little to do but watch and wait.
I like the even-handedness of your assess-
ment. Nobody was watching the kids, and
everybody’s now *shocked* to find an empty
cookie jar…
Yeah and I really want a cookie, dammit.
*gives Scum a damm cookie*
That was my next-to-last one, too, dammit!
Problem is, the ‘cream of the crop’ are pretty crappy… these are people who still sing the same hymn sheet as the last lot
@Unc: I think a little less theocracy up top
will help, and Obama doesn’t have those big
ears for nothing, yes?
Unless there’s a cull of economists, it’s not going to be earth shattering, just a band aid to let things limp on for another few years…
I hope you’re at least a little off on your
assessment, though you’re likely right.
In the physical world, cleaning a mess takes
longer than making one, and it’s likely true
in economics, as well.
h0h0…
How many decades has this particular mess taken to make? :/
Truth be told, this particular mess can be traced back to Nixon, and beyond. It’s more complicated than blaming this party or that party. It took a long time for this house of cards to be built.
People are convinced that the entire country is affected by the ‘recession’ we’re in. It’s not.
Oh, I think the whole world is affected, and I don’t think the word recession needs quotation marks. However, I don’t think the entire world is devastated or that everything, everywhere must come to a grinding halt. It’d be as silly to ignore that we have a global financial crisis as it is to make people believe they’ll all be homeless before the year is over because of it. That’s how I perceive the situation from my corner of said world, at least.
I certainly don’t want to ignore the actualities, I just don’t feel it’s necessary to try and portray them as worse than they are.
Hear, hear.
Quite why banks screwing eahc other became an issue that the banks needed baling is beyond me… surely it would have been simpler to underwirte peope’s savings and let the banks duke it out (actually I know this answers, since asI’ve said elesewhere, laissez faire economics favours the stable points of monopolies or cartels… The great myth of the ‘free market’ is that it’s a negatives feed back system, when actually it’s a positive one… which is why I class economics as a relion rather than a science, since the observable behaviour is 100% at odds with what we’re told, and economists pretend, it does…)
“which is why I class economics as a relion rather than a science”
My agreeingz – let me show u it.
.
People all over the world tend to refer to the Nobel prize in economics, unless they actually want to spare poor ole Alfred all that grave-spinning (it’s hell for the back, I hear). It’s not a Nobel prize. (I am sure you know that already, but I try never to miss an opportunity to point it out, just generally.) Its name “Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne” does contain the phrase “economic sciences” though, but that’s just make-belief. ;P
Froo, you made a good point about what I call the “bank
run” mentality, but, if there is a recession coming, don’t
you think it’s better, in the long run, to warn people?
Understand, I’m talking about the long run. Someone
about to enter the housing market at the edge of a
recession may buy a house just before being laid off.
That’s not better, in the long run, than having that
same person staying put, waiting for tides to turn,
with a roof overhead in the meantime?
Yes and no. It’s all a crap shoot. If you warn all of those people about the impending doom of a recession or depression, you’re helping to make it happen by inciting panic behavior.
If you don’t warn them and it never happens, cool. If you don’t warn them and it does happen, maybe it won’t be as bad as it could have been? Eh, it’s a crap shoot, and I’m no expert.
You’re right. I didn’t include a line about my
general disdain for the “Chicken Little” style
journalism we see in these days of 24-7 news.
Sticking with my nursery story theme, I’m afraid
we will soon experience panic fatigue, and
develop a “Boy Who Cried Wolf” reaction to
news about which we actually *should* panic.
Climate change and foreign oil dependency
make my list…
Scum,
it was a crap shoot brought down by the side bets…
Warn, don’t sensationalize. Inform, don’t cause. Show the downfalls while still showing the possibilities. If you put a positive spin on it, or at least DON’T put a negative one on it, then hope won’t be lost and there will be something to strive for. Or, in the case of those who are at the edge of said recession, something to plan for and hope for the end of. When you show people jumping off a cliff and portray it as being normal, you can’t be shocked when people start jumping off themselves because they think it’s the only way. (sorry, that’s a blanket, but I’m trying to illustrate a point)
Good illustration. I did neglect to throw in a
comment or two about how the news should
*report,* and not *create* the news.
In my earliest cognizant days, airplane hijacking
was all the rage. People were up in arms then,
saying that reporting hijacking was furthering
the causes of the hijackers, who did so for
attention. It was the same argument then: We
can’t be kept in the dark, but it’s wrong to
encourage criminals, and give others ideas.
I see those as similar arguments, at any rate.
Media here has some sort of general agreement to not report very much about suicides, because back when they did, statistics apparently have shown that after media attention to one suicide, the rates go up. People on the verge get that extra push. :/
(This is not directly related to the issue we’re discussing, I just throw it in as a side comment.)
@Danbala: The suicide statistics are totally
in line with the rest. How do reporters do a
good job (reporting) while not creating news
in the process?
@ Danbala & rhorho
Example:
I lived in SF for many years. The Golden Gate Bridge is notorious for jumpers. There was one very popular DJ (Alex Bennett on Live 105) who decided one day that they were going to give the family of the 1000th GG bridge jumper prizes like radio station t-shirts, mugs, maybe some cash, I can’t remember. This was about 15 years ago. (I also don’t remember if it was the 1,000th jumper or what the count really was at that time). The City and Country of SF reported jumpers as part of the regular public stats.
This stunt on his show became very popular. Every time someone jumped, the DJ reported it and seemed to encourage more people to get the number up to the magic 1,000 or whatever. It appeared to work. There appeared to be an increase in the number of suicides from the bridge. This went on for at least a few weeks, but if I remember right, it was more like a few months. Then the City and County of SF pulled the plug on reporting those particular stats. He wasn’t doing anything illegal so they couldn’t stop him. Instead they just kept the information non-public.
Is there any way to know whether the num-
bers decreased as a result?
@rhorho
I think they still reported the stats annually, so I’m sure there was a way to know the effect of both.
I didn’t pay that much attention back then, so I’m not sure of the results.
Yes. My interpretation of the discussion here is that it is more about the “There’s a recession, the economy will be slow and groth rates smaller than we’ve grown used to lately”-reporting compared to “We crash! We burn! Run for the woods everyone!”-reporting.
GROTH!
Growth, maybe.
Y2K comes to mind.
By referencing Y2K, I’m thinking that you mean that there was wide panic over Y2K and that it was all for naught, because almost no problems came of it? Would I be right?
I could not begin to tell you how many hundreds of hours I personally put in to make sure that none of my
companies / clients would have problems. There were untold thousands of programmers, accountants, managers, auditors etc working to ensure that everything was accounted for and we wouldn’t implode.
Now after writing the above, it dawned on me that that might be exactly what you meant by your Y2K comment, that you were agreeing with FooFrou above about informing, but not panicking. If so, I’ll have to agree
Yes, that’s what I mean. The problems with code not supporting a new millennium were real, the risks as portrayed in the reporting absolutely ridiculous (especially considering that people were doing what you were).
(I’m a programmer by profession today, but fortunately I was still in uni while you other poor suckers were grinding through those endless lines of code.
)
… and that Simpsons treehouse episode comes to mind now! (Life’s a glitch, then you die)
@Danbala
In that case, good analogy and let’s hope it plays out as well.
I can see the trouble in the news industry. If
you don’t tease well, your viewers will go to
another network, and you’ll lose sponsors.
Show of hands: How many people watch as
much C-Span as they do anything else?
Yep. Me, too.
I can see the trouble in the news industry.
Yes, and the problem to civilisation is that too many people have never learned critical viewing/listening/reading. “I read it in the newspapers, so it must be true!”
@rho:
We don’t really get cspan here. I tried to watch when I lived in the states, but … meh. ;P
What we do have here is license-funded public service. It stays a bit more sane than commercial media, I think, but of course, they too have to attract the attention of their potential audience, so it’s also very far from perfect in reporting. (And can’t afford to research everything on their own, ofc)
“public service media“, I was going to say.
Hm. Lots of writing errors for me lately… Hang on, I know:
I currently write this badly to illustrate another problem I have with media here – they all seem to have fired their proof-readers. That’s why!
Education, if not savvy, is what’s required.
A good knowledge of history could easily
buffer some of the panic. Remember the
LOL depicting people going through the Big
Depression? People need only see some of
those images to compare how much better
we will fare, even if all of the doomsayers
turn out to be correct.
You know, with all the phone cameras and other video recording going on in today’s world, I’m surprised that no one in a city of 8.2 mil managed to get a vid of it actually hitting the water.
I work on the Hudson River (Jersey Side) and this plane was 1 – 2 miles away from us and we didn’t even hear it land in the water or anything. Its weird. I think a lot of people didn’t notice until they got on the Ferry.
I think the whole “8.2 mil” may be the whole problem…
You get so used to all the “back ground noise” in such a big city
that a plane without any engine noise (I understood it so that they
lost all engine power) sounds like… the subway “whisssss” or whatever…
WHA is better suited than me to tell you for sure…
I… think he actually did. And he is. So he did. Why did you?
Good question…
Let me meditate on that for a month, then I’ll get back to you…
Footage from several security cameras released today. The last one apparently at some point somebody noticed what was going on and zoomed in to film the rescue. [link]
SWEET! Thanks for that!!
Thanks!
and um, Fox? We know you know how to edit, this could use some of that.
I think Fox’s staff has the next four days off…
Heh. True enough, although I have a love of unedited raw footage when I can get it. Fox was just the top listing on GoogleNews with the new footage.
LOL; I sent this to my computers prof, who’s rather… shall we say outspoken about his support for open-source software, and his dislike (mildly put) for Microsoft.
This speaks the truth….vista fails…when im writing this message i might get an error and my comp will crash…you never kno—ERROR
Yeah, I like linux, but I am getting sick of the Vista bashing for the sake of Vista bashing. Just a bunch of lemmings making linux users look like ingnorant jerks, IMHO.
I’ve never had any problems with Vista crashing. The security prompts can be tedious _but that isn’t a flaw_! It is working as intended and advertised.
But hey Graphic Artists and English Lit Grad Students, continue to be impressed with Macs. They only cost more, do less, and the hardware and software are made by the same company. Getting an I-Phone? Hope you like ATT wireless and not having the option to buy risque apps.
Bill? Is that you?
First, just because it is ‘working as intended’ does not mean that it isn’t a flaw. In the language of this site, that OS is a FAIL. It’s crap on a platter.
The security prompts are simply an overly intrusive (to the consumer) way for MS to Cover its own ass. They put that ‘feature’ in there so they can’t be held liable for when anything and everything breaks through the massive security holes in their product.
‘risque apps.’? Did you mean RISC apps or did you really mean Risqué?
Oh, dear. One does not have to be a mac-maniac to find windows a general pita. What kind of religion is it that requires this worship of an OS?
I posted this pic on a flight sim forum and was soundly criticized for it. I’m glad that there are still some people in the world with a sense of humor.
The crits are just sour grapes…
So one could actually read from this, that because Vista was installed, it was able to be successfully put down into a river, in one peice, even after catostrphic engine failure, without any loss of life.
Go Vista!
If one worked for Microslop, then yes, one could read it that way.
We who have had Vista thrust upon us however, have a more realistic view.
I was going to use the ‘I know it when I see it’ reference from Potter Stewart too.
[Link]