Sometimes the lack of social cues is a good thing. There have been times when I've been irritated at someone and sent them email and realized upon getting their response that they didn't get my irritation - it didn't come across in email, and this was actually a positive thing. Obviously that's a limited case, but it does happen too.
If one comes with the logo of your car brand and the other comes in a plastic bag with chinese instructions. Easy choice.
Unfortunately, #2 ("plastic bag with Chinese instructions") describes many of the "real" computer parts I've bought...
I agree with you in part; anybody who decides that the "BUY H3rb@| V1@gRa N0W!!!!!!!!" email is worth checking out is probably a lost cause. But a lot of people don't know how to tell what's real and what's not on the Internet, because it's not as simple as PBwCI. Some of the phishing emails I've gotten are awfully professional-looking. I have not-very-technical friends who are really afraid of the big computer-internet-box-thingy and are constantly afraid of doing something wrong. If they get an email saying "You must fill out this form or your account will be cut off!", they're going to think it's real and they're going to do it.
This reminds me of part of what impressed me about the Combat Mission games: the AI will learn very quickly to avoid dangerous areas. If you set up on the defensive, covering an area, and then when the enemy rolls in you open up and zap a few of their tanks, they will figure out how to take cover from you and flank you.
Not that the AI was perfect, but it was very good at reacting like that. The thing that bugged me most about the AI of troops under your command was this: You order a unit to run from cover, across 100 yards of open terrain, to some other cover. They'll get up and start running, taking some fire, and then when they're 90% of the way there, they'll decide to TURN AROUND AND RUN BACK, across 90 yards of open field AGAIN, instead of forwards 10 yards to cover. I guess this is because the AI doesn't know that the place they're running to is cover - it only knows about places the unit has already been.
I really don't want to get into the g*n c*ntrol argument here YET AGAIN, but suffice it to say that in most countries, it would be a huge legal hassle to arm your ship/crew, especially with automatic weapons. This is something international sailors really do have to deal with; you don't want to dock in Frobozzia only to have the local cops say "An illegal gun! 20 years in prison for you!"
That said, some ships do use other kinds of "weaponry", such as sonic devices, or the simple expedient of keeping fire hoses playing on the water around the ship, which will make it difficult for small boats to approach without being swamped.
While there may be a legal difference, there is not much of a practical difference to the detainee. Are you free to leave whenever you like? If not, you have been de facto "arrested" whether they call it that or not. After all, "arrest" does simply mean "to bring to a stop, to capture".
It barely even nudged the needle on my meter; maybe yours needs recalibrating? Now, if he'd complained about the fact that his local grocery doesn't regularly carry every product from Unibroue or the difficulty of finding sufficient quantities of Hitachino Nest, we'd be getting somewhere.
Really? I liked Use of Weapons, but I'm not sure it was the geekiest of his books. I might have given that laurel to The Player of Games, perhaps? Then again, it's been a while since I read Consider Phlebas, and there's other Banks I haven't read.
The thing is if your crack team of scientists "reverse engineer" the coke formula Coca Cola is going to throw a fit and quite likely you'll get sued back to the stone age and that is not exactly something people want to deal with. The idea is the Coke formula is a trade secret and violating that would cost you.
Please don't post in ignorance. If you reverse-engineered Coke's formula (which has already been done), the Coca-Cola corporation would have absolutely no legal grounds on which to sue you. If you stole it, that would be one thing, but if you simply figure it out, you're in the clear. They have no legal protection from duplication for their formula; it's protected by being a secret. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe the University of Nebraska.
"Well, Mr. Smith, you have Cat Scratch Fever. I'd estimate that the first time you got it you were just ten years old. I can give you the cure, but you're probably gonna get it some more."
Something strikes me as funny about the explorer screenshot. Look at the little icons by "Public" and "Network Shortcuts". It took me a minute to realize what they were: they're folders, but turned sideways. But why? It's not like there was a lack of space to display the old-fashioned right-side-up folder. And don't things fall out of folders if you turn them sideways? I guess I shouldn't think about it too hard...Microsoft's UI designers obviously didn't.
Police snipers don't generally use.50 BMG. Too much potential for overpenetration. (This is not to say that no police department has them - the NYPD does.) And "bulletproof" glass is already available anyway. Not to mention this new technology called "walls".
I was going to ask "WTF is a wink?" but then I found out by googling "MSN messenger wink". God, that's stomach-turning. I'm more thankful than ever I use GAIM and turn off images. If that makes me a "less fun person to IM"...well, shucky darn. Here I thought it was content that might make you want to communicate with someone.
The Senate was intended to be more conservative (in a sense that has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats), more exclusive, and slower to move. Unfortunately, that kind of thing plays very poorly in more populist times and places, which is why we ended up with a democratically elected Senate, which has the end effect of pretty much erasing the distinctions between the House and Senate. A bit of advice for anyone interested in the history of the US government: read Livy's The Early History of Rome. The Founders did, and the US government (the one described in the Constitution, anyway, not the one we have now) is closely modeled after the Roman Republic.
Thanks for pointing this out. I was doing some research on NASA knowledge management a while ago, and I came across a quote to the effect that "The Shuttle was built to supply the ISS, and the ISS was built to give the shuttle someplace to go", which I think fits in pretty well with what you mention. The only thing I'd disagree about is why Bush is talking up the Moon/Mars again - I think it has little to do with China, it's just that he knows it sounds good and inspiring, but all the real problems and expenses will be safely pushed onto his successors.
That's true. A true hacker could, however, combine the Lazer Trip Wire, the Room Defender, and the Pan/Tilt Network Camera. (I think they used to have a face-tracking camera, which would have been perfect, but it doesn't seem to be there now.)
Year after year you see big chunks of Florida and other states destroyed to the ground. Year after year, it gets rebuild. And year after year it's same shoddy wooden construction. What's up with that?
Well, heck, if it's just going to get destroyed every year, why would you put a lot of money into it? Ha ha only serious, as they say - there's some truth to that logic, but really, I suspect that "big chunks of Florida" do not get "destroyed to the ground" "year after year": there's some damage in parts of Florida every few years, you just don't hear about the other times and places because "Today, there was not a hurricane in Florida" doesn't sell newspapers.
Why doesn't the government (state or federal) impose some construction standards for Hurricane areas?
Do you have some particular evidence that there aren't any? Just asking.
I don't want to sound like an ogre - I'm glad she was saved - but can we really say this so uncritically? As the article points out, this is the first time anyone has been saved in the UK, and there are eight UK pools with the system; that makes the cost not £65,000 but 8 * 65000, or £520,000, plus whatever maintenance costs the system has. Let's not forget the difference between what is seen (girl saved by Poseidon system) versus what is not seen (whatever else could have been done with £520,000). It's possible that there might have been some better use for over half a million pounds. It's hard to argue against someone's life being saved, but that's because we can't see every alternative (two people's lives being saved by operations? many people's lives being improved?)
I also find it easy to imagine a day when there is a law that all pools, or at least all public pools, must have a system like this. But these systems are expensive, so some people might decide to build something else, not a pool. And if a child doesn't learn to swim because there isn't a local pool and ends up drowning somewhere else, would the connection ever be drawn? If a thousand children get less exercise because a pool isn't built, how do we account for that?
I'm not saying the system is a bad thing - I'm just saying we always need to think critically about possible tradeoffs.
You only think you're joking! This sort of thing does happen - if one company has more money than brains, it sometimes goes looking for another company that has more brains than money. I've seen this happen at one of my old employers; flush with VC money but lacking a decent business plan, we bought another company which did have its head screwed on right, and despite theoretically being the ones that got bought, they ended up calling the shots because they were the ones with the workable plan.
So, when you want to perform music, you pay all three of these organizations. [ASCAP, BMI, SESAC] Rather than asking you which particular songs you're playing, they just charge you a blanket rate for access to their entire catalog; and then they make their own decision on how much of your money to pass along to the various copyright holders. They do this statistically, by looking at the popular music charts: rather than paying the particular artists you've played, they just assume that almost all of your money should go to the most popular stars.
I just googled for Fry's (I figured it was probably frys.com, but I wanted to be sure), and what I saw in the search results made my jaw drop:
We apologize to all of our Lynx users for our framed format.
A major chain that's actually aware of Lynx?! And apologizes for using frames? This is one of the signs of the Apocalypse, isn't it? OK, so it was probably just the work of one dedicated geek in the IT department, but it's still impressive.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes the lack of social cues is a good thing. There have been times when I've been irritated at someone and sent them email and realized upon getting their response that they didn't get my irritation - it didn't come across in email, and this was actually a positive thing. Obviously that's a limited case, but it does happen too.
Unfortunately, #2 ("plastic bag with Chinese instructions") describes many of the "real" computer parts I've bought...
I agree with you in part; anybody who decides that the "BUY H3rb@| V1@gRa N0W!!!!!!!!" email is worth checking out is probably a lost cause. But a lot of people don't know how to tell what's real and what's not on the Internet, because it's not as simple as PBwCI. Some of the phishing emails I've gotten are awfully professional-looking. I have not-very-technical friends who are really afraid of the big computer-internet-box-thingy and are constantly afraid of doing something wrong. If they get an email saying "You must fill out this form or your account will be cut off!", they're going to think it's real and they're going to do it.
This reminds me of part of what impressed me about the Combat Mission games: the AI will learn very quickly to avoid dangerous areas. If you set up on the defensive, covering an area, and then when the enemy rolls in you open up and zap a few of their tanks, they will figure out how to take cover from you and flank you.
Not that the AI was perfect, but it was very good at reacting like that. The thing that bugged me most about the AI of troops under your command was this: You order a unit to run from cover, across 100 yards of open terrain, to some other cover. They'll get up and start running, taking some fire, and then when they're 90% of the way there, they'll decide to TURN AROUND AND RUN BACK, across 90 yards of open field AGAIN, instead of forwards 10 yards to cover. I guess this is because the AI doesn't know that the place they're running to is cover - it only knows about places the unit has already been.
I really don't want to get into the g*n c*ntrol argument here YET AGAIN, but suffice it to say that in most countries, it would be a huge legal hassle to arm your ship/crew, especially with automatic weapons. This is something international sailors really do have to deal with; you don't want to dock in Frobozzia only to have the local cops say "An illegal gun! 20 years in prison for you!"
That said, some ships do use other kinds of "weaponry", such as sonic devices, or the simple expedient of keeping fire hoses playing on the water around the ship, which will make it difficult for small boats to approach without being swamped.
While there may be a legal difference, there is not much of a practical difference to the detainee. Are you free to leave whenever you like? If not, you have been de facto "arrested" whether they call it that or not. After all, "arrest" does simply mean "to bring to a stop, to capture".
And it gets filehandles scattered everywhere.
So coming out of cryosleep is like graduating with a liberal arts degree, then?
They aren't.
They did.
It barely even nudged the needle on my meter; maybe yours needs recalibrating? Now, if he'd complained about the fact that his local grocery doesn't regularly carry every product from Unibroue or the difficulty of finding sufficient quantities of Hitachino Nest, we'd be getting somewhere.
Please stop repeating this myth. QWERTY was not "designed to slow typists down" - some of the early speed-typing competitions were won with QWERTY.
Really? I liked Use of Weapons, but I'm not sure it was the geekiest of his books. I might have given that laurel to The Player of Games, perhaps? Then again, it's been a while since I read Consider Phlebas, and there's other Banks I haven't read.
Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
Please don't post in ignorance. If you reverse-engineered Coke's formula (which has already been done), the Coca-Cola corporation would have absolutely no legal grounds on which to sue you. If you stole it, that would be one thing, but if you simply figure it out, you're in the clear. They have no legal protection from duplication for their formula; it's protected by being a secret. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe the University of Nebraska.
"Well, Mr. Smith, you have Cat Scratch Fever. I'd estimate that the first time you got it you were just ten years old. I can give you the cure, but you're probably gonna get it some more."
Something strikes me as funny about the explorer screenshot. Look at the little icons by "Public" and "Network Shortcuts". It took me a minute to realize what they were: they're folders, but turned sideways. But why? It's not like there was a lack of space to display the old-fashioned right-side-up folder. And don't things fall out of folders if you turn them sideways? I guess I shouldn't think about it too hard...Microsoft's UI designers obviously didn't.
Police snipers don't generally use .50 BMG. Too much potential for overpenetration. (This is not to say that no police department has them - the NYPD does.) And "bulletproof" glass is already available anyway. Not to mention this new technology called "walls".
I was going to ask "WTF is a wink?" but then I found out by googling "MSN messenger wink". God, that's stomach-turning. I'm more thankful than ever I use GAIM and turn off images. If that makes me a "less fun person to IM"...well, shucky darn. Here I thought it was content that might make you want to communicate with someone.
The Senate was intended to be more conservative (in a sense that has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats), more exclusive, and slower to move. Unfortunately, that kind of thing plays very poorly in more populist times and places, which is why we ended up with a democratically elected Senate, which has the end effect of pretty much erasing the distinctions between the House and Senate. A bit of advice for anyone interested in the history of the US government: read Livy's The Early History of Rome. The Founders did, and the US government (the one described in the Constitution, anyway, not the one we have now) is closely modeled after the Roman Republic.
Thanks for pointing this out. I was doing some research on NASA knowledge management a while ago, and I came across a quote to the effect that "The Shuttle was built to supply the ISS, and the ISS was built to give the shuttle someplace to go", which I think fits in pretty well with what you mention. The only thing I'd disagree about is why Bush is talking up the Moon/Mars again - I think it has little to do with China, it's just that he knows it sounds good and inspiring, but all the real problems and expenses will be safely pushed onto his successors.
That's true. A true hacker could, however, combine the Lazer Trip Wire, the Room Defender, and the Pan/Tilt Network Camera. (I think they used to have a face-tracking camera, which would have been perfect, but it doesn't seem to be there now.)
Well, heck, if it's just going to get destroyed every year, why would you put a lot of money into it? Ha ha only serious, as they say - there's some truth to that logic, but really, I suspect that "big chunks of Florida" do not get "destroyed to the ground" "year after year": there's some damage in parts of Florida every few years, you just don't hear about the other times and places because "Today, there was not a hurricane in Florida" doesn't sell newspapers.
Do you have some particular evidence that there aren't any? Just asking.
I also find it easy to imagine a day when there is a law that all pools, or at least all public pools, must have a system like this. But these systems are expensive, so some people might decide to build something else, not a pool. And if a child doesn't learn to swim because there isn't a local pool and ends up drowning somewhere else, would the connection ever be drawn? If a thousand children get less exercise because a pool isn't built, how do we account for that?
I'm not saying the system is a bad thing - I'm just saying we always need to think critically about possible tradeoffs.
You only think you're joking! This sort of thing does happen - if one company has more money than brains, it sometimes goes looking for another company that has more brains than money. I've seen this happen at one of my old employers; flush with VC money but lacking a decent business plan, we bought another company which did have its head screwed on right, and despite theoretically being the ones that got bought, they ended up calling the shots because they were the ones with the workable plan.
A major chain that's actually aware of Lynx?! And apologizes for using frames? This is one of the signs of the Apocalypse, isn't it? OK, so it was probably just the work of one dedicated geek in the IT department, but it's still impressive.