I was at Second Cup once and heard this really cool song, so I asked one of the employees "cool music, is this [perky female with guitar]?" He looked at me like I'd grown a second head, and informed me he had no way of knowing what was being played.
I'm sure the condom story will cause the most general hilarity though - shades of 'Riotous Assembly' by Tom Sharpe - which I heartily recommend if you want people to wonder why you suddenly burst out laughing...
Man, I thought I was the only person who ever read that book. "Miss Hazelwood and her infamous rubber room" indeed. I did think it was (disturbingly) hilarious, and in fact a pretty thought-provoking satire about South Africa's racism, not to get all serious or anything...
This would make sense if everyone still wore traditional robes etc. but don't most politicians and businessmen (I'm thinking of Mr. Biniasa here) etc. usually wear western-style clothes, ie. pants? Maybe there's just less cultural baggage to inhibit old people from being active - in the West it's assumed that after about 60 you NEVER have sex, and any evidence to the contrary is often met with horror and disgust (for aesthetic reasons related to the mental image of the event). Being put in icky nursing homes probably doesn't encourage romantic yearnings either.
I don't know if not wearing pants would affect "tool" size either, but damn, if it does, I'm buying a utilikilt or two.
105'F is only 41'C. That's probably not any more painful than a warm shower.
I'd also heard this was a traditional birth control method in parts of Africa. Like many of these things, you'd have to wonder how anyone came up with the idea in a pre-scientific society, but you never know. Contraception is a highly desired thing in many societies, in part because it assists with engaging in undetected "extra-pair copulations" ie. having affairs.
Ok, so they translated OpenOffice to Swahili, but now can anyone use it? I'm sure the English word "File" in Swahili is, indeed, "Faili" (see the picture in the article), but will any Swahili speakers understand what that means?
It's possible that it's a Swahili technical neologism based on the English word, either during colonial times or after. After all I imagine that many Swahili speakers have been creating and managing files for quite a while now, and they did need a word for them even if the language traditionally lacked one. Icelandic apparently had the same issues to deal with, and they simply adapted existing words to have new context-specific technical meanings.
And anybody using OpenOffice in Swahili will know what a file is. They'll probably have one full of TPS reports on their desk that they have to finish, in Swahili.
I don't know if I'd consider most of the "affordable housing" in the world to be a very good model. bombadillo's reply mentions fire codes etc - you worry a lot less about fires when your house has no electricity or gas, or maybe one light bulb. Modern western style homes are death traps compared to a nice safe mud hut in rural Kenya... unless they're up to code.
Also, and I'm really not trying to start a flame war here, but first, what's wrong with a janitor having a laptop, and why assume that it's a janitor stealing the laptop? I would guess that it's a disgruntled employee or just-fired employee (that's not properly escorted out) that would pull a stunt like that. And I would think that laptops are stolen from public places like libraries and parks rather and work places where I think a system like this might not be as useful.
Thank you for mentioning this. My first thought upon reading that was "What a classist thing to say". I too suspect that laptop theft by janitors is in the distinct minority. I can much more easily imagine office employees stealing "their" own laptops. They can walk around with them without getting funny looks for one thing.
Ah, suck it up, you'll just have to move back to NoAm and suffer here like the rest of us - no more hot Japanese women dating you just because your accent is cute.
"Half-life 2 uses a MMO style activation where you create an account and enter your key. One account, one key. Once a key is registered to an account is cannot be used on any other accounts. The only thing that could possibly happen people getting their steam accounts hacked"
So you might have to give them your Steam account too, presumably they would have to rename it, and change the contact info. Hmm.
My bad, I admit it. Maybe "Mod Parent 'Overly Hasty'" would have been a better title?...
Half-life 2 uses a MMO style activation where you create an account and enter your key. One account, one key. Once a key is registered to an account is cannot be used on any other accounts. The only thing that could possibly happen people getting their steam accounts hacked
So you might have to give them your Steam account too, presumably they would have to rename it, and change the contact info. Hmm.
But the game itself is woefully overrated. I'd say, "Off to eBay with this," but who knows whether HL 2 will work if it has to be reactivated by a new owner?
Presumably, if Steam still exists, and you sell the original CD key along with the game discs, the game can be reactivated (after all you can activate it on multiple machines). Now, if you sold it but kept a copy, and try to still use it yourself, your use of that key will conflict with the new owner's. But doing that would be quite naughty anyway, and the new owner (and Valve) would be justified in being right pissed at you. Just make sure you uninstall, and the new owner should be perfectly happy.
Levels are split at arbitrarily unidentified points, so you never know when you're going to get hit with another minute-long delay--or make that 2-3 minutes, if you decide you want to go back to explore or find supplies.
I can see why this pisses you off. It's annoying. I do find that the load points tend to be in "quiet" areas - deserted tunnels, empty rooms etc. I.e. areas that you're just passing through, so the pause is less jarring than it might be otherwise. However, I doubt that mid-level loads are avoidable in a complex 3D game with today's desktop technology level. Until computers can hold the whole level in memory at once, we'll have to cope with it.
The wheels look *very* similar. Also the low, compact, angular chassis with no protrusions - the "Aliens" APC was a design which would actually make sense for air transport to a combat zone (which of course was its role in the movie).
"You can't just start in off-line mode... I wish that were an option but it's not. To get it into off-line mode, you must not be connected to the internet, which may involve disabling your network card."
Odd. On my system, all I have to do is log out of my DSL, or not log in when I start up. Steam happily (if somewhat slowly) starts in offline mode and off I go. I heard all these horror stories about people having to physically unplug their network cable but I'm not sure why you'd have to do that. Are they all on isolated LANs?
Don't compare Steam to Kazaa, it doesn't spy on you. If you could pay for Kazaa, it probably wouldn't either.
Presumably, people will not tolerate "content delivery" software that attacks competing software on their computer. Also, even a lot of clueless end users despise spyware. One would hope that major companies like Sony would not bite themselves in the ass PR-wise just to deliver a few banner ads to your desktop (considering how much profit would come from selling music etc. downloads).
Of course, amazingly stupid things are done all the time by otherwise sensible companies. Which is why we have to make a big noise every time they try to screw us. Also, if running a bunch of different Steam-like apps at once hoses your computer so none of them work, it's similar to the "tragedy of the commons", in that no one company has intended to make your computer nonfunctional (why would they want to when you use it to buy media from them?) but all together they bugger it up.
I don't mind the concept of Steam, but they really should have provided an alternative for users with NO internet connection (or a really slow one, like 33.6), as rare as they may be. It could be as simple as a phone call to tell them your CD key and get a code to punch in to activate. Those people wouldn't need multiplayer anyway, after all, so Steam wouldn't be needed for that.
One who hasn't been tracking HL2 would assume that it's been released if it's on store shelves, ya know?
Hmmm. "Released" has so many meanings... Here it apparently means "the time, days after we may have accepted your money, when we actually give you a useable product.":P
... until the actual release date? I wasn't even planning to go look for it until wednesday or thursday. The release date is the 16th, I never expected to even see the game box until at least then.
It always cracks me up to think about what fools we'll feel like in the future for paying top dollar for the latest and greatest hardware now.
The key word is NOW. Why is it foolish, if you need state of the art hardware to do work (or play games) on, to pay the current prices for it? Sure, it'll be 1/2 the cost in 1 year but that's in 1 year. You need it/want it immediately, so you pay the current market rate. If your need for the item is less urgent, or you have less money, you will perhaps wait and buy the same item later, for less, ie. you sacrifice immediate usage for affordability. Applying financial hindsight in this situation is what's foolish.
Slapstick, FPS-style
on
Humor in Games?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Tons of interactive user-created violent slapstick occurs in FPS/action games, especially during multiplayer. Everything from some guy rocket-jumping and exploding on impact, to accidentally driving the Hellbender off a cliff when two other teammates are riding on top is FUNNY. It's just very unsophisticated humor, which is part of what the article is complaining about.
Sadly, I always sucked at the funniest games - even Monkey Island had me reaching for a walkthrough every ten minutes or so, because while the game is brilliant, it's a little *too* brilliant for me to solve half the puzzles on my own. And being frustrated, or "cheating" are not so much fun even when you can appreciate the game's humour.
Have I read it? It's great! I'm not sure if a society like the Gands would really work (at more than a basic agrarian level) but it sure was entertaining to read about.
Slashdot Mirror
I was at Second Cup once and heard this really cool song, so I asked one of the employees "cool music, is this [perky female with guitar]?" He looked at me like I'd grown a second head, and informed me he had no way of knowing what was being played.
:-(
Corporate coffee shops suck
I'm sure the condom story will cause the most general hilarity though - shades of 'Riotous Assembly' by Tom Sharpe - which I heartily recommend if you want people to wonder why you suddenly burst out laughing...
Man, I thought I was the only person who ever read that book. "Miss Hazelwood and her infamous rubber room" indeed. I did think it was (disturbingly) hilarious, and in fact a pretty thought-provoking satire about South Africa's racism, not to get all serious or anything...
This would make sense if everyone still wore traditional robes etc. but don't most politicians and businessmen (I'm thinking of Mr. Biniasa here) etc. usually wear western-style clothes, ie. pants? Maybe there's just less cultural baggage to inhibit old people from being active - in the West it's assumed that after about 60 you NEVER have sex, and any evidence to the contrary is often met with horror and disgust (for aesthetic reasons related to the mental image of the event). Being put in icky nursing homes probably doesn't encourage romantic yearnings either.
I don't know if not wearing pants would affect "tool" size either, but damn, if it does, I'm buying a utilikilt or two.
105'F is only 41'C. That's probably not any more painful than a warm shower.
I'd also heard this was a traditional birth control method in parts of Africa. Like many of these things, you'd have to wonder how anyone came up with the idea in a pre-scientific society, but you never know. Contraception is a highly desired thing in many societies, in part because it assists with engaging in undetected "extra-pair copulations" ie. having affairs.
Ok, so they translated OpenOffice to Swahili, but now can anyone use it? I'm sure the English word "File" in Swahili is, indeed, "Faili" (see the picture in the article), but will any Swahili speakers understand what that means?
It's possible that it's a Swahili technical neologism based on the English word, either during colonial times or after. After all I imagine that many Swahili speakers have been creating and managing files for quite a while now, and they did need a word for them even if the language traditionally lacked one. Icelandic apparently had the same issues to deal with, and they simply adapted existing words to have new context-specific technical meanings.
And anybody using OpenOffice in Swahili will know what a file is. They'll probably have one full of TPS reports on their desk that they have to finish, in Swahili.
... "Oh. Tell them my ovaries say hi". Just be glad you didn't brag about how many Korean chicks CHUNG was going to sleep with.
/obscure?
I don't know if I'd consider most of the "affordable housing" in the world to be a very good model. bombadillo's reply mentions fire codes etc - you worry a lot less about fires when your house has no electricity or gas, or maybe one light bulb. Modern western style homes are death traps compared to a nice safe mud hut in rural Kenya... unless they're up to code.
Also, and I'm really not trying to start a flame war here, but first, what's wrong with a janitor having a laptop, and why assume that it's a janitor stealing the laptop? I would guess that it's a disgruntled employee or just-fired employee (that's not properly escorted out) that would pull a stunt like that. And I would think that laptops are stolen from public places like libraries and parks rather and work places where I think a system like this might not be as useful.
Thank you for mentioning this. My first thought upon reading that was "What a classist thing to say". I too suspect that laptop theft by janitors is in the distinct minority. I can much more easily imagine office employees stealing "their" own laptops. They can walk around with them without getting funny looks for one thing.
Ah, suck it up, you'll just have to move back to NoAm and suffer here like the rest of us - no more hot Japanese women dating you just because your accent is cute.
THEN blow the whistle in HIS (or her) ear. Tele pool managers are usually assholes from what I hear.
I posted a second reply:
From downthread:
"Half-life 2 uses a MMO style activation where you create an account and enter your key. One account, one key. Once a key is registered to an account is cannot be used on any other accounts. The only thing that could possibly happen people getting their steam accounts hacked"
So you might have to give them your Steam account too, presumably they would have to rename it, and change the contact info. Hmm.
My bad, I admit it. Maybe "Mod Parent 'Overly Hasty'" would have been a better title?...
From downthread:
Half-life 2 uses a MMO style activation where you create an account and enter your key. One account, one key. Once a key is registered to an account is cannot be used on any other accounts. The only thing that could possibly happen people getting their steam accounts hacked
So you might have to give them your Steam account too, presumably they would have to rename it, and change the contact info. Hmm.
But the game itself is woefully overrated. I'd say, "Off to eBay with this," but who knows whether HL 2 will work if it has to be reactivated by a new owner?
Presumably, if Steam still exists, and you sell the original CD key along with the game discs, the game can be reactivated (after all you can activate it on multiple machines). Now, if you sold it but kept a copy, and try to still use it yourself, your use of that key will conflict with the new owner's. But doing that would be quite naughty anyway, and the new owner (and Valve) would be justified in being right pissed at you. Just make sure you uninstall, and the new owner should be perfectly happy.
Levels are split at arbitrarily unidentified points, so you never know when you're going to get hit with another minute-long delay--or make that 2-3 minutes, if you decide you want to go back to explore or find supplies.
I can see why this pisses you off. It's annoying. I do find that the load points tend to be in "quiet" areas - deserted tunnels, empty rooms etc. I.e. areas that you're just passing through, so the pause is less jarring than it might be otherwise. However, I doubt that mid-level loads are avoidable in a complex 3D game with today's desktop technology level. Until computers can hold the whole level in memory at once, we'll have to cope with it.
The wheels look *very* similar. Also the low, compact, angular chassis with no protrusions - the "Aliens" APC was a design which would actually make sense for air transport to a combat zone (which of course was its role in the movie).
"You can't just start in off-line mode... I wish that were an option but it's not. To get it into off-line mode, you must not be connected to the internet, which may involve disabling your network card."
Odd. On my system, all I have to do is log out of my DSL, or not log in when I start up. Steam happily (if somewhat slowly) starts in offline mode and off I go. I heard all these horror stories about people having to physically unplug their network cable but I'm not sure why you'd have to do that. Are they all on isolated LANs?
It's telling that it took me a few seconds to realize that 1) you weren't being serious, and 2) you weren't CORRECT.
I just had a frightening image of Sheila Copps getting in Natalie Portman's pants...
*scrubs visual cortex*
Don't compare Steam to Kazaa, it doesn't spy on you. If you could pay for Kazaa, it probably wouldn't either.
Presumably, people will not tolerate "content delivery" software that attacks competing software on their computer. Also, even a lot of clueless end users despise spyware. One would hope that major companies like Sony would not bite themselves in the ass PR-wise just to deliver a few banner ads to your desktop (considering how much profit would come from selling music etc. downloads).
Of course, amazingly stupid things are done all the time by otherwise sensible companies. Which is why we have to make a big noise every time they try to screw us. Also, if running a bunch of different Steam-like apps at once hoses your computer so none of them work, it's similar to the "tragedy of the commons", in that no one company has intended to make your computer nonfunctional (why would they want to when you use it to buy media from them?) but all together they bugger it up.
I don't mind the concept of Steam, but they really should have provided an alternative for users with NO internet connection (or a really slow one, like 33.6), as rare as they may be. It could be as simple as a phone call to tell them your CD key and get a code to punch in to activate. Those people wouldn't need multiplayer anyway, after all, so Steam wouldn't be needed for that.
Considering this is a site full of *non-disabled* guys that can't manage to get laid,
I think that was the point... Their disability is a social one, and partly self-inflicted.
One who hasn't been tracking HL2 would assume that it's been released if it's on store shelves, ya know?
:P
Hmmm. "Released" has so many meanings... Here it apparently means "the time, days after we may have accepted your money, when we actually give you a useable product."
... until the actual release date? I wasn't even planning to go look for it until wednesday or thursday. The release date is the 16th, I never expected to even see the game box until at least then.
It always cracks me up to think about what fools we'll feel like in the future for paying top dollar for the latest and greatest hardware now.
The key word is NOW. Why is it foolish, if you need state of the art hardware to do work (or play games) on, to pay the current prices for it? Sure, it'll be 1/2 the cost in 1 year but that's in 1 year. You need it/want it immediately, so you pay the current market rate. If your need for the item is less urgent, or you have less money, you will perhaps wait and buy the same item later, for less, ie. you sacrifice immediate usage for affordability. Applying financial hindsight in this situation is what's foolish.
Tons of interactive user-created violent slapstick occurs in FPS/action games, especially during multiplayer. Everything from some guy rocket-jumping and exploding on impact, to accidentally driving the Hellbender off a cliff when two other teammates are riding on top is FUNNY. It's just very unsophisticated humor, which is part of what the article is complaining about.
Sadly, I always sucked at the funniest games - even Monkey Island had me reaching for a walkthrough every ten minutes or so, because while the game is brilliant, it's a little *too* brilliant for me to solve half the puzzles on my own. And being frustrated, or "cheating" are not so much fun even when you can appreciate the game's humour.
Have I read it? It's great! I'm not sure if a society like the Gands would really work (at more than a basic agrarian level) but it sure was entertaining to read about.
why should an author/musician's child expect to get income unless he writes/sings/etc?
Your reasoning gives us the horror that is Brian Herbert's writing.