I never use slashes in dates because the slash tends to look like a 1 and confuse things. I always use a dash as a separator, so that's just not an issue for me. I would, however, like to be able to put more punctuation in file names. Question marks in particular.
Yeah, that'd be a pretty lousy movie. Best case I can think of offhand is 'The Invention of Lying,' where the character lives in a non-theist world and invents religion as a lie that everyone takes seriously.
Thanks for the reminder of Windows+E, which is really handy for the tech support guy who can't figure out from one cluttered desktop to the next where the user hid their "My Computer" icon. Win 7's better, but in XP it's not always in the computer menu if it's been put on the desktop (if I recall correctly, I'm mostly on servers now).
Brilliant! Thank you for this little pointer. I knew about Paste Special and knew how to use the dropdown, but had somehow missed the set default bit. I swear, if it had said "preferences" instead I'd have gone right to it.
Re:The best sci fi might still be untranslated.
on
The 2011 Hugo Awards
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· Score: 1
C. S. Friedman would like to have a word with you, then, as she's got 4 books that genre. (One trilogy, that's basically fantasy, but there's a sci-fi backdrop; one standalone that's pure sci-fi.)
Mostly I consider it a last resort explanation because it was heavily overused in the past and currently doesn't adequately serve as an answer to anything in my experience. That says to me I should stop going there before checking out the other options which have a better track record.
I had a friend as a kid who thought everything was a ghost. The first few times is was spooky and exciting when the door moving back and forth was a ghost, until we realized it was the breeze from the window doing it, or the mystery sounds from the bathroom were another person, and so on. After a few hundred times of ghost this and ghost that, none of which were correct, I got to the point where the next "ghost" he identified I was pretty sure wasn't a ghost, and I'd run through all the other options before I'd even start to consider the overused and always incorrect pet theory as a possible answer. The bad track record pushes it down the list of options. For me, god is also one of those types of answers.
To be fair to that viewpoint, most of the "impossible" things we notice tend to become plausible and then understood within a few decades. And with every one of those discoveries, it does reinforce the idea that the next impossible thing we notice is also likely to soon be understood. There's a point where it seems silly to turn to god as an explanation unless everything else is exhausted first. There may be a fine line between one person's philosophy "god's our last resort explanation, which we never seem to fall back on" and the next person's "we might as well just say god's not an acceptable answer."
You do, but nevertheless they are not. For example, test for other people in the room. Now, test for gods. This much should be obvious.
What would a test for gods look like? "Is anything impossible happening right now?" I think most of us have a low-level scan going on for anything dangerous or unusual, so in a way that's something we're all running most of the time.
No, they know how to plug the cord in to the computer. Problem is they're too dumb to realize a cord has two ends.
And before you think I'm completely user bashing, I'm an old tech support veteran who on multiple occasions has shown up after the user assured me the device was plugged in, only to then admit, "Oh, I didn't check THAT end of the cord."
He also thinks that the normal botnet-infested user, presented with a Linux interface, is going to have the impression their computer "finally works" rather than "looks all weird and don't work at all." Also cute.
Possibly. But you should also have plenty of instances of "a crime happened and we were only a block away so we caught the guy" instead of "a crime happened and when we showed up 30 minutes later he was long gone" as evidence that this system works.
But is there any scenario where knowing the algorithm is more useful than, say, just creating a giant distraction on the other side of town to draw attention away? If you're planning that much, just cause your own diversion. Far easier than gaming the algorithm.
The internet's definitely at play. Not just the preponderance of facts, but the preponderance of ideas. Things get thrown at you from every direction, and there so many people throwing them around. As an extension of that I think there's both 1) a lot of dilution because there are so many voices, and 2) a lot of gridlock from masses of quasi-anonymous voices quibbling with each other. One of the more valuable, but also frustrating, things I've learned from slashdot is the numerous means for debunking bad arguments. There's a point where, even if you've got enough integrity not to stoop to ad hominems and appeals to authority, by the time you've waded through the straw men, hyperbole, bad logic, etc., it often feels there's very little left that's safe to say. It's probably not really true. There's probably a great deal that's still worth saying. But it's easy to be so steeped in the the sea of crappy small ideas and self-correcting yourself to silence that it *feels* like there's no real point in trying to put forth a good idea. We've learned cynicism and irony will eventually wear down the next "big idea" and call it off before it really gets started.
I had someone spoil Soylent Green for me as we were walking to the theater to see it. This was long after it had been released, but as a freshman in college it was going to be my first time to see it. The girl shouted the famous phrase and then immediately turned and asked if we'd all seen it. She was that kind of obnoxious person in general, though. Definitely thought it took away some of the shock value of the movie for me.
Overall I don't really get too hung up on not having things spoiled (and can enjoy a Vonnegut novel, where he often goes out of his way to tell you how things are going to end), but one thing I really can't stand is someone who wants to tell me about "this funny part" right before I'm about to read it in a book. I find universally the out-of-context attempt at relaying the joke is never that funny, and then when I get to the line in context I often find myself saying, "yeah, that would have been funny right there, except I've already heard the joke."
And then you get weird cases like Pluto, where the original story had it working much like Neptune -- searched for and found because of irregularities in Neptune's orbit. Except when found Pluto was too small to explain the irregularities which (if I'm getting the story right) were actually something like math errors rather than real irregularities.
I'm with you. One of the office printers has been flashing "only XXX pages left!!!!" for six months now. It started counting down from a thousand, and we print maybe a couple dozen per week on average. Still haven't replaced the toner, though we may actually be gettinc close now.
While we're complaining, I'd like to bitch about my HP inkjet which is designed to try to use up color ink at all times, even with black and white printing. I have to go through five extra clicks each time to tell it "yes, I really just want grayscale, and yes, I really want grayscale to mean you don't print colors on top of that grayscale because I can't see them anyway." After being fooled into replacing the color ink once and then having it all run out again after printing 100 or so grayscale pages (and we're talking text-only here, not images, truly just grayscale), I simply refused to put any more color ink in the printer, and it's been running okay on just black ever since, as long as I remember to tell it not to try to use the color cartridges. Still obnoxious, though.
I'd accept "I don't have the time and energy to study and also manage family life" without any argument, but "I'm not allowed to type in a different room if my wife is sleeping" has "serious relationship problem" written all over it.
That probably sounds worse than I mean it, but if that's your primary obstacle it's a shame.
Slashdot Mirror
I constantly want to include question marks in file names, and it's really frustrating when I can't. Maybe I'm just a really tentative guy?
I never use slashes in dates because the slash tends to look like a 1 and confuse things. I always use a dash as a separator, so that's just not an issue for me. I would, however, like to be able to put more punctuation in file names. Question marks in particular.
Yeah, that'd be a pretty lousy movie. Best case I can think of offhand is 'The Invention of Lying,' where the character lives in a non-theist world and invents religion as a lie that everyone takes seriously.
Globally, I'm pretty sure the median is 6, for all creatures with legs.
Thanks for the reminder of Windows+E, which is really handy for the tech support guy who can't figure out from one cluttered desktop to the next where the user hid their "My Computer" icon. Win 7's better, but in XP it's not always in the computer menu if it's been put on the desktop (if I recall correctly, I'm mostly on servers now).
Brilliant! Thank you for this little pointer. I knew about Paste Special and knew how to use the dropdown, but had somehow missed the set default bit. I swear, if it had said "preferences" instead I'd have gone right to it.
C. S. Friedman would like to have a word with you, then, as she's got 4 books that genre. (One trilogy, that's basically fantasy, but there's a sci-fi backdrop; one standalone that's pure sci-fi.)
Mostly I consider it a last resort explanation because it was heavily overused in the past and currently doesn't adequately serve as an answer to anything in my experience. That says to me I should stop going there before checking out the other options which have a better track record.
I had a friend as a kid who thought everything was a ghost. The first few times is was spooky and exciting when the door moving back and forth was a ghost, until we realized it was the breeze from the window doing it, or the mystery sounds from the bathroom were another person, and so on. After a few hundred times of ghost this and ghost that, none of which were correct, I got to the point where the next "ghost" he identified I was pretty sure wasn't a ghost, and I'd run through all the other options before I'd even start to consider the overused and always incorrect pet theory as a possible answer. The bad track record pushes it down the list of options. For me, god is also one of those types of answers.
To be fair to that viewpoint, most of the "impossible" things we notice tend to become plausible and then understood within a few decades. And with every one of those discoveries, it does reinforce the idea that the next impossible thing we notice is also likely to soon be understood. There's a point where it seems silly to turn to god as an explanation unless everything else is exhausted first. There may be a fine line between one person's philosophy "god's our last resort explanation, which we never seem to fall back on" and the next person's "we might as well just say god's not an acceptable answer."
That makes them suspiciously like the chemicals being analyzed in the moon rocks!
You do, but nevertheless they are not. For example, test for other people in the room. Now, test for gods. This much should be obvious.
What would a test for gods look like? "Is anything impossible happening right now?" I think most of us have a low-level scan going on for anything dangerous or unusual, so in a way that's something we're all running most of the time.
No, they know how to plug the cord in to the computer. Problem is they're too dumb to realize a cord has two ends.
And before you think I'm completely user bashing, I'm an old tech support veteran who on multiple occasions has shown up after the user assured me the device was plugged in, only to then admit, "Oh, I didn't check THAT end of the cord."
He also thinks that the normal botnet-infested user, presented with a Linux interface, is going to have the impression their computer "finally works" rather than "looks all weird and don't work at all." Also cute.
If that's the subcompact, I'd hate to see the effects of a standard size.
Possibly. But you should also have plenty of instances of "a crime happened and we were only a block away so we caught the guy" instead of "a crime happened and when we showed up 30 minutes later he was long gone" as evidence that this system works.
But is there any scenario where knowing the algorithm is more useful than, say, just creating a giant distraction on the other side of town to draw attention away? If you're planning that much, just cause your own diversion. Far easier than gaming the algorithm.
You mean you don't keep a panic button taped to the underside of your desk, where you can surreptitiously bump it with a knee?
The internet's definitely at play. Not just the preponderance of facts, but the preponderance of ideas. Things get thrown at you from every direction, and there so many people throwing them around. As an extension of that I think there's both 1) a lot of dilution because there are so many voices, and 2) a lot of gridlock from masses of quasi-anonymous voices quibbling with each other. One of the more valuable, but also frustrating, things I've learned from slashdot is the numerous means for debunking bad arguments. There's a point where, even if you've got enough integrity not to stoop to ad hominems and appeals to authority, by the time you've waded through the straw men, hyperbole, bad logic, etc., it often feels there's very little left that's safe to say. It's probably not really true. There's probably a great deal that's still worth saying. But it's easy to be so steeped in the the sea of crappy small ideas and self-correcting yourself to silence that it *feels* like there's no real point in trying to put forth a good idea. We've learned cynicism and irony will eventually wear down the next "big idea" and call it off before it really gets started.
I had someone spoil Soylent Green for me as we were walking to the theater to see it. This was long after it had been released, but as a freshman in college it was going to be my first time to see it. The girl shouted the famous phrase and then immediately turned and asked if we'd all seen it. She was that kind of obnoxious person in general, though. Definitely thought it took away some of the shock value of the movie for me.
Overall I don't really get too hung up on not having things spoiled (and can enjoy a Vonnegut novel, where he often goes out of his way to tell you how things are going to end), but one thing I really can't stand is someone who wants to tell me about "this funny part" right before I'm about to read it in a book. I find universally the out-of-context attempt at relaying the joke is never that funny, and then when I get to the line in context I often find myself saying, "yeah, that would have been funny right there, except I've already heard the joke."
Maybe the planet is tidally locked, and this is a system for distributing light across the day and night sides in a more uniform/controlled fashion?
Though I for one actually believe if we replaced all instances of "whom" with "who," nothing would be lost, and much would be gained.
And then you get weird cases like Pluto, where the original story had it working much like Neptune -- searched for and found because of irregularities in Neptune's orbit. Except when found Pluto was too small to explain the irregularities which (if I'm getting the story right) were actually something like math errors rather than real irregularities.
I'm with you. One of the office printers has been flashing "only XXX pages left!!!!" for six months now. It started counting down from a thousand, and we print maybe a couple dozen per week on average. Still haven't replaced the toner, though we may actually be gettinc close now.
While we're complaining, I'd like to bitch about my HP inkjet which is designed to try to use up color ink at all times, even with black and white printing. I have to go through five extra clicks each time to tell it "yes, I really just want grayscale, and yes, I really want grayscale to mean you don't print colors on top of that grayscale because I can't see them anyway." After being fooled into replacing the color ink once and then having it all run out again after printing 100 or so grayscale pages (and we're talking text-only here, not images, truly just grayscale), I simply refused to put any more color ink in the printer, and it's been running okay on just black ever since, as long as I remember to tell it not to try to use the color cartridges. Still obnoxious, though.
I'd accept "I don't have the time and energy to study and also manage family life" without any argument, but "I'm not allowed to type in a different room if my wife is sleeping" has "serious relationship problem" written all over it.
That probably sounds worse than I mean it, but if that's your primary obstacle it's a shame.
Terrible weather? We talking compared to southern Spain, here, or Chicago?