Is 'socially acceptable,' or was 'socially acceptable?' I am intelligent. I did not play dumb during my high school years. I would consider myself socially acceptable these days. In high school, not so much. When a nerd gets shunned from computer club, you know there's a problem. Of course, those high school years provided plenty of opportunities to get to see the dark side of human nature, and as socially functional as I am these days, I prefer to avoid human contact almost completely (I can count on one hand the number of people who can just call me up at random and I'll be happy to hear them. Ignore blood relatives, and the number drops to two.)
I've stated before that introversion is a symptom of high intelligence. We don't see people as blank slates anymore, we attribute to them all the weaknesses that we've seen on everyone we have gotten close to.
Finally, someone has discovered the reason behind the increasing trend towards divorce. 40+ years of marriage is getting to be one of those quaint things from previous generations.
Have not read DGHDA, but fictional works can provide prior art in some cases. Specifically, Arthur C. Clarke prevented anyone from patenting geosynchronous satellites by describing them in great detail before the first one went up.
The world doesn't need Yet Another Operating System
Whatever you're doing is already covered pretty well by something already out there. See the foolishness of that statement?
Yes. The existing search engines do a pretty good job. However, I've been brainstorming lately to try and figure out what the next big thing will be for search engines (so I can buy a load of stock when something shows up that does this) and the thing I keep coming back to is context. When I search for Chaos Theory, am I looking for Ian Malcolm or Sam Fisher? When I search for Errant, am I looking for sites where a friend of mine used that as his username, am I looking for a dictionary, am I looking for knights errant? This is the biggest thing that hasn't happened to search engines yet without using a bunch of clunky boolean expressions. Wikipedia et al are built for this. Searches that have a bunch of different things for the same terms hit a disambiguation page. This lets you tell the system if you care about a movie, a band, a person, or any number of other things that your search term might be referring to. I eagerly await what this will bring.
I'll assume you've never heard of negligent homicide, or involuntary manslaughter. The fact is that most crime does not require intent, if it did, we wouldn't have the phrase "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."
The companies that produce faulty hardware do suffer for it. Instead of making a couple hundred bucks per router sold, they get less than 50. This is because the crappy stuff costs less, just go to any used game store and compare a crappy used game to a good used game. One will have a higher price, I'll leave it to you to discover which one that is.
On the other hand, I can't think of a Linux user I know who doesn't prefer to build his own systems. Hell, I think the only computer I've purchased instead of built from parts in the past 15 years is a laptop. Yes, it makes good business sense to preload Vista instead of Linux, because the people who use Linux aren't buying prebuilt computers.
Simply put, Apple has a low market share in the computer industry because of a bad read of the market years ago. They decided people wanted quality, and they had it. But even a cheap computer was better than no computer, so the Cheap Readily-Available Product surged ahead. Apple kept things proprietary, and maintained its high standards and high price, while developers went to the platform with the greatest penetration. Now, of course they have a fanatically loyal base. It's still the best system, hardware-wise. But they will not beat Microsoft in the computer market because they have relegated themselves to being a niche machine. If you're doing a lot with graphics or music or video, you are probably using Apple. If not, you probably aren't, Windows and Linux do most other things better.
I'm right there with you. I'm currently on my second run of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. This time, I'm mainly enjoying all the banter between Prince and Dark Prince, and trying to not have the guardians trigger any of the Sand Gates. There is also, of course, the fun and thrill of virtually performing death defying feats of acrobatics.
By "new graphical interface," do you mean "GUI stolen from Xerox?" Apple wasn't the first, they just popularized it. Kinda like what Microsoft did with personal computing, or what Nintendo did with gaming.
I think the next animal would have to be sloths. My friend's dad has a truly hilarious story from when he was in Vietnam (or maybe Korea? Where do the sloths live?) When he got there, his CO gave him a fairly basic rundown of Do's and Don'ts, and at the end of it he said "Oh yeah, don't fuck with the sloths." Later, he was out on patrol or something, and the group happened to run across a sloth on the ground. So, naturally, they decided to have some fun with the sloth. They got a couple of sticks, and poked it, and basically decided to torment the sloth for no reason other than that they had been told not to. Then one of them stepped in to kick it. The sloth spins around, swings with the claws, and opens a big hole in the guys steel-toed boots. It then lets out a piercing scream, and books it up a tree. When they get back, the guy decides to go see about getting a new pair of boots, and the quartermaster looks at him with this knowing grin and says: "You fucked with a sloth, didn't you?"
I have no idea how true this story may be. I detected no lies, but he is really quite good at telling lies with a straight face. Makes sense though, when you've got an animal that is slow, does not breed heavily, is not poisonous, and is made of tasty meat, it's gotta have some defense mechanism.
As opposed to what? Speed run through the game, then get a new game? Diablo II style, where the map is always different, not like it matters anyway? Hell, most LAN parties are FPS, and they generally use the same level over and over again.
I don't think that the same level is necessarily boring all on its own, just that it is easy to do poorly if the company doesn't care to put enough effort into making it right.
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. In my example, the newsletter was the product. It presupposed that someone had taken the time to analyze the things I do online and had a paid newsletter that discussed the same things. Sorta like how I got hooked on 2600, except that was peer review more than anything else.
On the other hand, I am signed up for ThinkGeek's monthly email. It is a newsletter trying to sell me things, but I do purchase things from them on occasion. I have the opportunity to opt out, but I don't. It's the same reason as why I'm on Slashdot and other sites, I could go search through the various news sites to find things that interest me, but someone else has already gone through the work for me, so I go there. Depending on quality, I am willing to pay for similar types of services.
You believe that you will know if you need a product by whatever means, and would then like to go out and browse through all the products of that type until you find the one you want. I think that I probably wouldn't have even been aware of half the products that I know about if it weren't for advertising. Some of those products, I have decided would be nice to have, and I have purchased them. I certainly didn't need them, but if needs were all people went by, neither one of us would be on Slashdot right now. Neither would we have computers, or electricity. Hey, the Amish get along without, so they must not be necessities.
I believe that there is a place for well targeted advertising. I spend time on Darknet and Coding Horror and Slashdot and a bunch of news aggregators with a distinctly geeky spin. If someone were to gather my email address from one of these locations and send me an offer to subscribe to their geeky email newsletter, with a free copy of one of their more recent publications so I could see what it's like, I would likely subscribe. I like it when I do not have to go well out of my way to find things that are interesting to me. Bring on the targeted ads. It's only when I end up with a stack of crappy ads that try to sell me things I have no interest in that I start to become irate.
>Perhaps some people have uncontrolled mental imagery; I know I do. When someone says "fuck off" I >see a guy masturbating. When someone says "bullshit" I see a cowpie. I don't like those mental >images, but it's something you learn to deal with I guess.
Hmm. Goatse!
Yes, I am a jerk.
P.S. Almost said "Yes, I am an asshole." but I figured Goatse covered that. Or uncovered it, as the case may be.
This is why targeting is important. If I go to the local singles bar and hit on girls, it's assumed they wanted to be hit on, otherwise they wouldn't be in the local singles bar. If I go to the local gay bar, it is assumed that other men are going to hit on me, otherwise I wouldn't be there. If I go to the local fetish club, and a girl tries to interest me in something kinky, that's expected. None of these activities should stray to locations associated with the others.
I get refinance your home spam. I rent. I get pharmaceutical spam. I don't have any medical conditions that require drugs. I get incredible amounts of foreign lottery scams, and I've taken to replying with inquiries as to how my name ended up on their list and editorial corrections to their email. I'd like more spammers to be like this guy, at least 30% of his recipients wanted to get that mail.
The war on drugs has stated that drug use supports terrorism. The new executive order states that supporting terrorism can result in forfeiture of assets.
As much as I'm against drugs, I can't help but think that things have gone a little bit overboard when the occasional joint can result in all your stuff being taken away. I suppose the next step would be to be able to draft criminals into the armed forces. It'd go through, what with prison overcrowding and party loyalists. Then they can take your stuff, give you a gun, and drop you in the desert for smoking a little pot.
It could throw me the logs that Windows collects on its own. Less useful than a keylogger, but less suspicious too. Just have an updating thing for the game, and it gives a bunch of data that isn't actually related to the game.
Slashdot Mirror
It's because rich criminals get their criminal activities legalized.
So they send you a link claiming to be a kiddie porn site. When you go there, you find a "Nothing to see here" lookalike with a payload.
If they can get you to go to the site, what it looks like doesn't matter anymore.
Is 'socially acceptable,' or was 'socially acceptable?' I am intelligent. I did not play dumb during my high school years. I would consider myself socially acceptable these days. In high school, not so much. When a nerd gets shunned from computer club, you know there's a problem. Of course, those high school years provided plenty of opportunities to get to see the dark side of human nature, and as socially functional as I am these days, I prefer to avoid human contact almost completely (I can count on one hand the number of people who can just call me up at random and I'll be happy to hear them. Ignore blood relatives, and the number drops to two.)
I've stated before that introversion is a symptom of high intelligence. We don't see people as blank slates anymore, we attribute to them all the weaknesses that we've seen on everyone we have gotten close to.
Ding Ding Ding!
Finally, someone has discovered the reason behind the increasing trend towards divorce. 40+ years of marriage is getting to be one of those quaint things from previous generations.
Have not read DGHDA, but fictional works can provide prior art in some cases. Specifically, Arthur C. Clarke prevented anyone from patenting geosynchronous satellites by describing them in great detail before the first one went up.
The world doesn't need Yet Another Operating System
Whatever you're doing is already covered pretty well by something already out there. See the foolishness of that statement?
Yes. The existing search engines do a pretty good job. However, I've been brainstorming lately to try and figure out what the next big thing will be for search engines (so I can buy a load of stock when something shows up that does this) and the thing I keep coming back to is context. When I search for Chaos Theory, am I looking for Ian Malcolm or Sam Fisher? When I search for Errant, am I looking for sites where a friend of mine used that as his username, am I looking for a dictionary, am I looking for knights errant? This is the biggest thing that hasn't happened to search engines yet without using a bunch of clunky boolean expressions. Wikipedia et al are built for this. Searches that have a bunch of different things for the same terms hit a disambiguation page. This lets you tell the system if you care about a movie, a band, a person, or any number of other things that your search term might be referring to. I eagerly await what this will bring.
I'd get liposuction, give the state a lifetime supply of energy.
Crime has to have an element of intent?
I'll assume you've never heard of negligent homicide, or involuntary manslaughter. The fact is that most crime does not require intent, if it did, we wouldn't have the phrase "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."
The lady geeks have seen the geek menfolk. They don't want us to wear speedos regardless of whether or not they'll melt.
The companies that produce faulty hardware do suffer for it. Instead of making a couple hundred bucks per router sold, they get less than 50. This is because the crappy stuff costs less, just go to any used game store and compare a crappy used game to a good used game. One will have a higher price, I'll leave it to you to discover which one that is.
[SPOILER]The good game costs more.[/SPOILER]
On the other hand, I can't think of a Linux user I know who doesn't prefer to build his own systems. Hell, I think the only computer I've purchased instead of built from parts in the past 15 years is a laptop. Yes, it makes good business sense to preload Vista instead of Linux, because the people who use Linux aren't buying prebuilt computers.
Simply put, Apple has a low market share in the computer industry because of a bad read of the market years ago. They decided people wanted quality, and they had it. But even a cheap computer was better than no computer, so the Cheap Readily-Available Product surged ahead. Apple kept things proprietary, and maintained its high standards and high price, while developers went to the platform with the greatest penetration. Now, of course they have a fanatically loyal base. It's still the best system, hardware-wise. But they will not beat Microsoft in the computer market because they have relegated themselves to being a niche machine. If you're doing a lot with graphics or music or video, you are probably using Apple. If not, you probably aren't, Windows and Linux do most other things better.
I'm right there with you. I'm currently on my second run of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. This time, I'm mainly enjoying all the banter between Prince and Dark Prince, and trying to not have the guardians trigger any of the Sand Gates. There is also, of course, the fun and thrill of virtually performing death defying feats of acrobatics.
By "new graphical interface," do you mean "GUI stolen from Xerox?" Apple wasn't the first, they just popularized it. Kinda like what Microsoft did with personal computing, or what Nintendo did with gaming.
I think the next animal would have to be sloths. My friend's dad has a truly hilarious story from when he was in Vietnam (or maybe Korea? Where do the sloths live?) When he got there, his CO gave him a fairly basic rundown of Do's and Don'ts, and at the end of it he said "Oh yeah, don't fuck with the sloths." Later, he was out on patrol or something, and the group happened to run across a sloth on the ground. So, naturally, they decided to have some fun with the sloth. They got a couple of sticks, and poked it, and basically decided to torment the sloth for no reason other than that they had been told not to. Then one of them stepped in to kick it. The sloth spins around, swings with the claws, and opens a big hole in the guys steel-toed boots. It then lets out a piercing scream, and books it up a tree. When they get back, the guy decides to go see about getting a new pair of boots, and the quartermaster looks at him with this knowing grin and says: "You fucked with a sloth, didn't you?"
I have no idea how true this story may be. I detected no lies, but he is really quite good at telling lies with a straight face. Makes sense though, when you've got an animal that is slow, does not breed heavily, is not poisonous, and is made of tasty meat, it's gotta have some defense mechanism.
As opposed to what? Speed run through the game, then get a new game? Diablo II style, where the map is always different, not like it matters anyway? Hell, most LAN parties are FPS, and they generally use the same level over and over again.
I don't think that the same level is necessarily boring all on its own, just that it is easy to do poorly if the company doesn't care to put enough effort into making it right.
Better example than the near-death of Family Guy would be the one season run of Firefly.
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. In my example, the newsletter was the product. It presupposed that someone had taken the time to analyze the things I do online and had a paid newsletter that discussed the same things. Sorta like how I got hooked on 2600, except that was peer review more than anything else.
On the other hand, I am signed up for ThinkGeek's monthly email. It is a newsletter trying to sell me things, but I do purchase things from them on occasion. I have the opportunity to opt out, but I don't. It's the same reason as why I'm on Slashdot and other sites, I could go search through the various news sites to find things that interest me, but someone else has already gone through the work for me, so I go there. Depending on quality, I am willing to pay for similar types of services.
You believe that you will know if you need a product by whatever means, and would then like to go out and browse through all the products of that type until you find the one you want. I think that I probably wouldn't have even been aware of half the products that I know about if it weren't for advertising. Some of those products, I have decided would be nice to have, and I have purchased them. I certainly didn't need them, but if needs were all people went by, neither one of us would be on Slashdot right now. Neither would we have computers, or electricity. Hey, the Amish get along without, so they must not be necessities.
I believe that there is a place for well targeted advertising. I spend time on Darknet and Coding Horror and Slashdot and a bunch of news aggregators with a distinctly geeky spin. If someone were to gather my email address from one of these locations and send me an offer to subscribe to their geeky email newsletter, with a free copy of one of their more recent publications so I could see what it's like, I would likely subscribe. I like it when I do not have to go well out of my way to find things that are interesting to me. Bring on the targeted ads. It's only when I end up with a stack of crappy ads that try to sell me things I have no interest in that I start to become irate.
>Perhaps some people have uncontrolled mental imagery; I know I do. When someone says "fuck off" I >see a guy masturbating. When someone says "bullshit" I see a cowpie. I don't like those mental >images, but it's something you learn to deal with I guess.
Hmm. Goatse!
Yes, I am a jerk.
P.S. Almost said "Yes, I am an asshole." but I figured Goatse covered that. Or uncovered it, as the case may be.
This is why targeting is important. If I go to the local singles bar and hit on girls, it's assumed they wanted to be hit on, otherwise they wouldn't be in the local singles bar. If I go to the local gay bar, it is assumed that other men are going to hit on me, otherwise I wouldn't be there. If I go to the local fetish club, and a girl tries to interest me in something kinky, that's expected. None of these activities should stray to locations associated with the others.
I get refinance your home spam. I rent. I get pharmaceutical spam. I don't have any medical conditions that require drugs. I get incredible amounts of foreign lottery scams, and I've taken to replying with inquiries as to how my name ended up on their list and editorial corrections to their email. I'd like more spammers to be like this guy, at least 30% of his recipients wanted to get that mail.
There is something to be borrowed from the Middle East here. A thief loses a hand. A virus writer should lose their fingers.
Newsletter? Time for Gitmo for you!
Nah, all we have to do is post a /. article that says "Skynet is born!"
Luckily, most of us will survive all the flaming satellites crashing to earth as we're already taking cover in the basement.
The war on drugs has stated that drug use supports terrorism.
The new executive order states that supporting terrorism can result in forfeiture of assets.
As much as I'm against drugs, I can't help but think that things have gone a little bit overboard when the occasional joint can result in all your stuff being taken away. I suppose the next step would be to be able to draft criminals into the armed forces. It'd go through, what with prison overcrowding and party loyalists. Then they can take your stuff, give you a gun, and drop you in the desert for smoking a little pot.
It could throw me the logs that Windows collects on its own. Less useful than a keylogger, but less suspicious too. Just have an updating thing for the game, and it gives a bunch of data that isn't actually related to the game.