(no subject)

Charles Babbage died in 1871.

He apparently (according to a node in Everything2) had expressed a wish to forfeit his life in exchange for living a few days, 500 years in the future.

If he had said 134 years instead, so that he showed up right about now, what would he think? Would we be able to explain computers to him? (A resounding yes. The man had practically invented one already.) The Internet? (I would guess so, but with some difficulty.)

As a thought experiment, how does this apply to Vernor Vinge's conjecture that his technological singularity will occur by about 2023? The idea suggests that, near that time, technology will rise to such a point as to be literally incomprehensible to modern humans, even particularly bright ones.

This message brought to you by Stupid O' Clock.

Okay, I'll bite.

1. What about me most bothers you?

2. What do you most like about me?

3. Comments are screened, because I truly want your honest opinion. Should I unscreen yours?

I will not log IPs; you are welcome to post using your name and I swear that, as well as I am able, I shan't hold it against you, but anonymous posts are also fine.

I have previously avoided indulging in these sorts of memes; but I am genuinely curious. We'll see how it goes. If I get a lot of responses, there are a couple other ones I might post.

return -EBADBROWSER;

I have been following the w3schools.com browser statistics recently. Firefox posted a measly 0.7% gain for the past month. (I don't bother accounting for Mozilla and Opera, other fine browsers, because they stayed the same and dropped 0.1% respectively.)

I find this slowing of Firefox's growth rate (previously showing over 2% in some months) quite disheartening. I therefore propose the following, in hopes that, if it spreads enough, it might boost those numbers:


What browser are you using to read this?
Why isn't it {Firefox|Mozilla|Opera}?
Is there a reason why you don't get Firefox right now?


Shake, don't stir. Spread vigorously. Wipe hands on pants.