Now, I don't LARP (I only tried it once at a sci-fi convention) but I can see how it'd be a lot of fun. The examples you cite as being "unrealistic" are _of course_ so, but they're sacrifices to accomodate the ugly realities of real-life. The player doesn't really have super-hearing, so they have to PRETEND, as the eavesdropee has to PRETEND the other player isn't standing next to them. Rock-paper-scissors is a way to PRETEND to fight, without actually engaging in violence. You see a trend here, right? You say you like mudding, aren't you pretending that you're acting in a living, visible world instead of just typing and reading words? How is that different?
Not to mention forced materialism!
on
Virtual Simerica
·
· Score: 2
I know a lot of people who are very happy to live with very little in the way of material possessions. I'm not quite as healthy as that - I like to buy stuff but not just for the sake of "having better stuff". It bugs me to no end that in The Sims, materialism is a biological imperative - if you don't keep buying more luxurious possessions and expanding your home your Sim inevitably becomes unhappy. There's no option to be a hippy who's content as long as they have a guitar and some decent clothes to wear.
What, you thought Jar-Jar Binks was just a clumsy idiot? He's a clumsy idiot who survived being at ground zero of a planetary invasion, went from being an exile to hooking up with two Jedi, and made it through the droid battle alive despite having no combat skills. I think he's got a subconcious control of some very serious Force power. Too bad he's too old to train...
"...you can't make money giving away your main product." Now, there are exceptions (television programming comes to mind)"
Just in case you actually read this... I think television doesn't give away its main product. A broadcaster's main product is eyeballs. Our eyeballs. They sell this product to advertisers, for a lot of money. Their programming is only "free" for us in the same sense that farmers give wheat "free" fertilizer. Payback comes when it's harvest time, or when we conciously or unconciously make purchasing decisions based on the ads we've seen. I don't mean to be pedantic here, I'm just saying it like I see it. Your points about weaning the users off of a free service are valid, it's like the old saying about slowly boiling the frog, right?:-)
Your friend should have put up a sign saying "Free Dry. Max. 2 dryers per customer". Granted, I expect laundromat employees wouldn't be keen on enforcing it, but it'd be the only way to make it work. In terms of free e-mail though, the server can monitor free accounts for abuse (ie. spamming) constantly, and cancel the obvious abusers. The paying customers have a "key to the deluxe dryer room" where the dryers are bigger and have more heat settings, and there's complimentary fabric softener and comfy chairs.
I currently work for a university, and my internet access is through their dial-up server (free!). I have an e-mail address through my employer, but I don't feel it's appropriate to use it for some tasks: eg. personal e-mails to friends, and online shopping etc. I've had my Yahoo account for years, since going to grad school at _another_ university, where I also had e-mail provided. I moved, my e-mail address stayed the same.
At any rate, I'm fine with 3 attachments per message and 4 MB of space. For now at least, and if I ever need more, I'll pay. It's not much.
Plus, when you pay your dollar-a-day overdue fee you get a warm fuzzy feeling for giving to the library, as opposed to handing four bucks to some mumbling chowderhead at the video megalopoly outlet.
I consider library fines to be one of my major modes of charitable donation. I don't deliberately keep books overdue, it just works out that way... a lot;-) Yeah, paying late fees at Roger's or Blockheads^H^H^H^H^Hbuster really sucks. And yes, local libraries can have a surprisingly good selection, everything from arty European stuff to Kurosawa to four copies of The Matrix:-D
Besides, good music died along with the 70s. All the new stuff coming out is just new tricks, and I'm such an old dog.
Your statement about the death of good music is loathsome to me (as it effectively rules out most of my favourite bands - and no I don't mean Linkin Park and Eminem), but at least you're willing to admit the problem mostly only exists between your own ears.
What?! You mean all this time I thought college was supposed to be about popping antacids like candy, futilely attempting to score with tons of chicks, and skipping sleep to catch up on schoolwork from that wild 3 hour lecture the night before, and it wasn't?! Man, I sure wasted the past 8 years!
Under NAFTA Chapter 11, companies can sue governments for passing laws which restrict their ability to do business. From citizens.org:
Called "investor-to-state" dispute resolution, this extraordinary mechanism empowers private investors and corporations to sue NAFTA-signatory governments in special tribunals to obtain cash compensation for government policies or actions that investors believe violate their new rights under NAFTA.
I don't know if this would apply here, but I wouldn't be surprised. It's been used already in numerous cases (see link).
Uh yeah. "Fuck them up their stupid asses"... This isn't moviepoopshoot.com;-)
i.e., if you buy, for example, 50 CDs a year, you get unlimited downloading
50 CD's a year?! That's almost a thousand bucks (plus about another $480 for a fast enough connection)! Geez, for that kind of money I'd expect Hillary Rosen to come to my house and receive a "download" from me.
It is not optimal for a virus to kill its host. Ever. End-of-story.
Evolution selects for whatever increases reproductive success RIGHT NOW, not what might be theoretically optimal. It might be situationally "optimal" to the virus for the host to walk into a crowded room and explode in a shower of highly infective blood. This is basically what happens with Ebola, the patient becomes incredibly infectious to people around them. To be fair, your wife is (of course) correct that this sort of transmission usually is associated with new hosts, as in the case of Ebola. I bet the "wild" host for Ebola carries the virus without dying, perhaps having periodic bouts of the bloody runs to assist in spreading the virus to its conspecifics.
If the RIAA has sex with your wife, you haven't lost anything...
The Irish song says it best:
"As I slither'd home on sunday night, as drunk as drunk could be, I saw a man, climbing out the window of the room where I should be. I called to my wife and I said to her, (HEY WIFE!) Could you kindly tell to me, who is that man, climbing out the window of the room where I should be?
Ah, you're drunk, you're drunk, you silly old fool, until you cannot see, That's an English tax collector that the Queen has sent to me! Now many's the day I've traveled, a hundred miles or more, but an Englishman who could last 'til three, I've never seen before!"
Well, it's interesting you should mention whale penises. They "emerge to fire" for exactly the same reasons that this turret would. If they were sticking out all the time, they'd disrupt the animal's streamlined shape, and also could get damaged. Funny how effective natural selection is, really...
So in essence, most of your lengthy reply is just a waste, and only encourages them. But you're probably right about him needing a blowjob. Though like most trolls it would likely be his first and only;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Now, I don't LARP (I only tried it once at a sci-fi convention) but I can see how it'd be a lot of fun. The examples you cite as being "unrealistic" are _of course_ so, but they're sacrifices to accomodate the ugly realities of real-life. The player doesn't really have super-hearing, so they have to PRETEND, as the eavesdropee has to PRETEND the other player isn't standing next to them. Rock-paper-scissors is a way to PRETEND to fight, without actually engaging in violence. You see a trend here, right? You say you like mudding, aren't you pretending that you're acting in a living, visible world instead of just typing and reading words? How is that different?
I know a lot of people who are very happy to live with very little in the way of material possessions. I'm not quite as healthy as that - I like to buy stuff but not just for the sake of "having better stuff". It bugs me to no end that in The Sims, materialism is a biological imperative - if you don't keep buying more luxurious possessions and expanding your home your Sim inevitably becomes unhappy. There's no option to be a hippy who's content as long as they have a guitar and some decent clothes to wear.
Slashdotted already... *beep beep beep*
Evidence of "Welcome to Amerika, kiddies!"
What, you thought Jar-Jar Binks was just a clumsy idiot? He's a clumsy idiot who survived being at ground zero of a planetary invasion, went from being an exile to hooking up with two Jedi, and made it through the droid battle alive despite having no combat skills. I think he's got a subconcious control of some very serious Force power. Too bad he's too old to train...
"...you can't make money giving away your main product." Now, there are exceptions (television programming comes to mind)"
:-)
Just in case you actually read this... I think television doesn't give away its main product. A broadcaster's main product is eyeballs. Our eyeballs. They sell this product to advertisers, for a lot of money. Their programming is only "free" for us in the same sense that farmers give wheat "free" fertilizer. Payback comes when it's harvest time, or when we conciously or unconciously make purchasing decisions based on the ads we've seen. I don't mean to be pedantic here, I'm just saying it like I see it. Your points about weaning the users off of a free service are valid, it's like the old saying about slowly boiling the frog, right?
Your friend should have put up a sign saying "Free Dry. Max. 2 dryers per customer". Granted, I expect laundromat employees wouldn't be keen on enforcing it, but it'd be the only way to make it work. In terms of free e-mail though, the server can monitor free accounts for abuse (ie. spamming) constantly, and cancel the obvious abusers. The paying customers have a "key to the deluxe dryer room" where the dryers are bigger and have more heat settings, and there's complimentary fabric softener and comfy chairs.
I currently work for a university, and my internet access is through their dial-up server (free!). I have an e-mail address through my employer, but I don't feel it's appropriate to use it for some tasks: eg. personal e-mails to friends, and online shopping etc. I've had my Yahoo account for years, since going to grad school at _another_ university, where I also had e-mail provided. I moved, my e-mail address stayed the same.
At any rate, I'm fine with 3 attachments per message and 4 MB of space. For now at least, and if I ever need more, I'll pay. It's not much.
You're the kind of alien geek who probably thought "Earth Girls are Easy" was a documentary, right?
Hey, maybe black marker ink would be enough. I hear that it makes your CD's sound better too!
So what's your point? I don't have one either, but at least this guy can fix his bike whenever he wants to ;-)
Plus, when you pay your dollar-a-day overdue fee you get a warm fuzzy feeling for giving to the library, as opposed to handing four bucks to some mumbling chowderhead at the video megalopoly outlet.
;-) Yeah, paying late fees at Roger's or Blockheads^H^H^H^H^Hbuster really sucks. And yes, local libraries can have a surprisingly good selection, everything from arty European stuff to Kurosawa to four copies of The Matrix :-D
I consider library fines to be one of my major modes of charitable donation. I don't deliberately keep books overdue, it just works out that way... a lot
Besides, good music died along with the 70s. All the new stuff coming out is just new tricks, and I'm such an old dog.
Your statement about the death of good music is loathsome to me (as it effectively rules out most of my favourite bands - and no I don't mean Linkin Park and Eminem), but at least you're willing to admit the problem mostly only exists between your own ears.
Have to wonder, though - will the /. community cheer the said [pornographic] production similarly? ;^)
Well, that gives a whole new meaning to "the sound of one hand clapping"...
Heh, my P1 233 beats your P2 266 :-)
What?! You mean all this time I thought college was supposed to be about popping antacids like candy, futilely attempting to score with tons of chicks, and skipping sleep to catch up on schoolwork from that wild 3 hour lecture the night before, and it wasn't?! Man, I sure wasted the past 8 years!
I don't know if this would apply here, but I wouldn't be surprised. It's been used already in numerous cases (see link).
Bzzzt! I lose ;-)
Fuck the RIAA and the MPAA.
;-)
Uh yeah. "Fuck them up their stupid asses"... This isn't moviepoopshoot.com
i.e., if you buy, for example, 50 CDs a year, you get unlimited downloading
50 CD's a year?! That's almost a thousand bucks (plus about another $480 for a fast enough connection)! Geez, for that kind of money I'd expect Hillary Rosen to come to my house and receive a "download" from me.
Bzzzzzt! You lose ;-)
It is not optimal for a virus to kill its host. Ever. End-of-story.
Evolution selects for whatever increases reproductive success RIGHT NOW, not what might be theoretically optimal. It might be situationally "optimal" to the virus for the host to walk into a crowded room and explode in a shower of highly infective blood. This is basically what happens with Ebola, the patient becomes incredibly infectious to people around them. To be fair, your wife is (of course) correct that this sort of transmission usually is associated with new hosts, as in the case of Ebola. I bet the "wild" host for Ebola carries the virus without dying, perhaps having periodic bouts of the bloody runs to assist in spreading the virus to its conspecifics.
The Irish song says it best:
"As I slither'd home on sunday night,
as drunk as drunk could be,
I saw a man, climbing out the window
of the room where I should be.
I called to my wife and I said to her,
(HEY WIFE!)
Could you kindly tell to me,
who is that man, climbing out the window
of the room where I should be?
Ah, you're drunk, you're drunk,
you silly old fool, until you cannot see,
That's an English tax collector that the Queen has sent to me!
Now many's the day I've traveled,
a hundred miles or more,
but an Englishman who could last 'til three,
I've never seen before!"
Well, it's interesting you should mention whale penises. They "emerge to fire" for exactly the same reasons that this turret would. If they were sticking out all the time, they'd disrupt the animal's streamlined shape, and also could get damaged. Funny how effective natural selection is, really...
So in essence, most of your lengthy reply is just a waste, and only encourages them. But you're probably right about him needing a blowjob. Though like most trolls it would likely be his first and only ;-)
Don't make fun of poultry production. No poultry production experts, no food for geeks...