FDA regulations require that if you tell people what a medication is used for in an ad, you must devote equal time to telling people what side effects the pill has as well. I hope to some day be rich enough to be able to schedule a doctor's visit to just sit there on the paper covered exam table and say "hey, doc, I think I need this purple pill I see on TV.... No? Well what about the pink ones? No? Well what about this prescription shampoo I saw in Reader's Digest? No? Well what about this new once-a-day allergy pill? No, I'm not allergic to anything, but they said I should ask..."
Like that fucked up one for Discovery Channel's "Ancient Egyptians" with some idiot dressed like King Tut berating people on the street about ancient Egpyt.
I love the Discovery Channel and between it and The Learning Channel, they account for greater than 80% of my TV viewing. I'm also a big fan of anything dealing with Egypt, but I for one will intentionally avoid watching this show because of the intellectually insulting commercials they used to advertise it roughly every 11 minutes.
the designers at all directly influenced by Snow Crash?
Yeah, and I'm sure they'll come right out and admit it, because in the world we live in you can say things like that and not worry about a legal clerk knocking on your door 20 minutes later with a notice of intent to sue for violation of copyright, trademark, patent, etc.
It would also require a secure method of communicating from the ground, which would have to be kept secret so someone couldn't build their own ground based transmitters
And it should be a small, self-contained box with blinking lights and/or LED numeric display that can fit into a pocket and can plug into a box built by people who've never seen the original device... or it will never make it into a Bond movie.
The original recipe for Coca-Cola (and hence it's name) was Coca leaves (the plant that produces cocaine) and Kola nuts. Scientists at Coca-Cola worked for years to reduce the amount of actual cocaine in the recipe, but for years they kept the Coca leaves in the mix to protect their name. They couldn't trademark their 'secret formula' but they could trademark the name, and they were worried that without Coca in the mix that they wouldn't be able to continue to use (and protect) their valuable brand name.
Check out Snopes.com and you'll find that Coca-Cola didn't add cocaine to their soda, it was part of the original formula (Coca leaves and Kola nuts) and was originally designed as a medicine, not as a beverage.
You'll also find that the chemists at Coca-Cola worked hard to remove every last trace of the 'cocaine' part of the coca leaves extract, but management felt there had to be some coca leaf extract in the formula so they could keep their every important Trademark.
The only feature I wish I had with IE had was tabbed browsing...
Go here and download a copy of CrazyBrowser for Windows.
It's a wrapper for IE that adds pop-up blocking AND tabbed browsing, but still uses the IE engine. It shares the same folders for favorites, history, temporary internet files, etc., so once you load CrazyBrowser it will look and act just like IE with all your favorites and everything already in place.
Any idea what kind of pre-compiled apps are already available for one of these machines?
I currently use an older model WinCE (version 3? it's the last rev before PocketPC 2000) machine but would really like to switch to a Linux based PDA.
However, if it means that I'm going to have to hunt down obsolete versions of obscure packages so I can get it downloaded source files to compile properly, maybe I'll stick with WinCE.
My assumption (and I admit it's wrong to assume things) is that the software would sort my library information *within* iTunes, not that it would manipulate the actual files on the hard drive.
As I pointed out in an earlier posting, the options that you mention are not intuitive nor are they conveniently located in one spot.
Turn on the 'Safe Sound' feature (I think that's what it's called) where it will try to normalize your audio levels from song to song. Then watch your CPU utilization climb to 85% - 95% while it goes through your list of MP3s. I let it get half way through before I stopped it. When I tried again later it started back at the first song again... doesn't it save it's findings? Do I have to let my PC come to a screeching halt every time I start iTunes?
I've also noticed that it doesn't seem to remember your display settings from instance to instance, so if you turn off columns you don't want to see, dont' assume they'll still be off when you restart iTunes.
And there's an option in Preferences to turn off the track number in the file name
Yes there is, it's on the Importing page of the preferences and it says "Create filenames with track number".
If you don't allow iTunes to organize your music and leave that checked, it does not add track numbers on import.
Pretty much anyone with half a brain is going to read that text, in that context, and believe that when I *CREATE* a new file it will include a track number in the filename. There is no reason to suspect that it will *RENAME* existing filenames to include a track number.
Bzzzzt! Wrong! I have spent hours naming my MP3 files, updating the MP3 information inside, etc. and getting all my files just the way I like them. I keep all of my music MP3s in one big directory. Why? Cause that's the way I like it.
I don't give a rat's ass about album titles. When I want to find a song by The Rolling Stones, I want to scroll down the list to 'Rolling Stones, The' and find the song I'm looking for, I don't want to have to think 'was that on Sticky Fingers or Tattoo You?'.
But now thanks to the JOY and WONDER that is iTunes, all of my files have been renamed without the artist's name, with an arbitrary track # in the title and sorted under several hundred subdirectories. Yippee, yeah rah!
Did I fuck up by clicking OK? You betcha. Did Apple fuck up by not specifing 'by the way, when we say 'organize' we actually mean 'rename your files and remove identifying information and then sort everything into a zillion subdirectories where you'll never find your files'. Yes.
Blame yourself for not checking the preferences or the Read Me
Excuse me? This is supposed to be Apple software... designed for people who are too artistic to be bothered with something as plebian as a Readme file. Where's all the fucking grace and elegance that you apple hippies have been bragging about for 20 years?
I forgot to mention that after moving all my files manually, there wasn't a convenient way to clear the imported library, so I had to delete the library file and re-import my library to be able to play music again.
So far I'm failing to see what has kept the Mac people so friggin' happy with this software.
Downloaded, installed it, imported my existing music library. It asked if I wanted to sort my music library (or something like that) and I said OK. Now all of my MP3s are sorted into a million subdirectories based on artist and album information, all files are renamed to just the track number and the song title. I had all of my MP3 files in "Artist - Song Title.mp3" format and that is now all gone.
I then do a Windows Explorer search for all.MP3 files and move them back into my main MP3 directory and start getting overwrite questions because now two different versions of American Woman have the same file name, same for two different versions of Burning Down the House, etc.
Other than the fact that it's fucked up my music library and I'll now have to spend hours sorting and renaming files, it's great.... Grrrr...
In almost all MMORPG games the only way to get experience is to kill something, whether it be monsters, other players or whatever.
The reason for this is simple: If you give players a way to 'level up' without some sort of risk, then all the 'cheaters/hackers/macroers' will never fight and will find whichever trade skill grants the most xp and develop a macro or cheat program that allows them to 'level up' until they are the highest level possible in the game so they can: a) Tell everyone they 'won'. b) become a player killer and slaughter all the 'stoopid noobs' who try to 'level up' the way the game's designers intended, or c) Immediately lose interest in the game as there is no longer any challenging content and unsubscribe.
Check the track record of any MMORPG out there (and I've played a lot of them, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Shadows of Yserbius, The Realm) and you'll find that somewhere, someone found a way to get easy experience (or money or the magic widget) without any risk to themselves, word spread at somewhere approaching the speed of light and within hours/days the servers had to be brought down for emergency maintenace to fix the problem.
EverQuest has a relatively interesting way of handling trade skill development. They make almost all the good trade skill recipes (that create items that other players are willing to buy) require either very expensive items (i.e., jewelry making) or rare ingredients that can't be purchased in stores (brewing, etc).
Asheron's Call is different in that most trade skill items can be be purchased in stores, are very reasonably priced, but in most cases require that you visit multiple stores/vendors to acquire all that you need *and* that all the good trade skill items require fairly high trade skill numbers. Unlike a lot of other games you actually earn experience by successfully completing trade skills, but the experience goes directly into that trade skills number. They have also recently added the ability to earn trade skill experience by completing some minor 'quests', but unfortunately those quests involve performing trade skills on the teeth of an Ash Gromnie (a small, lightning breathing dragon-type creature) so someone needs to go out and slay a Gromnie to recover a tooth before a trade skiller can use it.
When I played AC I created a trade skiller who was trained in Alchemy, Fletching and Cooking, but who was also able to hold his own in a fight against most lower level creatures. I got him high enough level that he could perform the trade skills I needed and then switched to a different character for my regular adventuring play.
To the best of my knowledge, Ultima Online is the only MMORPG that truly allows you to be a tradesman and completely ignore combat. It also does not have a non-PvP (Player vs Player) server so your tradesman is always at risk of being ganked by some 12 year old punk with too much time on his hands.
Prior to my current girlfriend, I went out with a different stripper and her home phone number had CID-block on by default so any time I got a call with no CID information I knew it was her.
So, by not answering CID-blocked calls, you're passing up receiving a booty call from an attractive, young stripper.
1) get your cell phone number on all the marketing lists you can
By applying to the lists you are granting people permission to call you and thus you can't sue them when they do.
2) turn off phone and let your mailbox fill up
Turning off your phone causes calls to roll to voice mail. Unless you have a funky cell provider you do not get charged for calls that roll to voice mail or for voice mail messages. No charge = no sue.
Are you referring to the ability to use chips at a different casino? It's no fallacy, I've done it numerous times, but it really only works if you stay within the corporation (as I said in my previous post), i.e., all Circus Circus properties will allow usage of their chips at other Circus Circus properties.
The standing joke at the tables is when someone asks if it's OK to use so-and-so chips here, the dealers will call the boxman over and he'll ask "Is that place still open?". They seem to think that's really funny.
Slashdot Mirror
FDA regulations require that if you tell people what a medication is used for in an ad, you must devote equal time to telling people what side effects the pill has as well.
I hope to some day be rich enough to be able to schedule a doctor's visit to just sit there on the paper covered exam table and say "hey, doc, I think I need this purple pill I see on TV.... No? Well what about the pink ones? No? Well what about this prescription shampoo I saw in Reader's Digest? No? Well what about this new once-a-day allergy pill? No, I'm not allergic to anything, but they said I should ask..."
Like that fucked up one for Discovery Channel's "Ancient Egyptians" with some idiot dressed like King Tut berating people on the street about ancient Egpyt.
I love the Discovery Channel and between it and The Learning Channel, they account for greater than 80% of my TV viewing. I'm also a big fan of anything dealing with Egypt, but I for one will intentionally avoid watching this show because of the intellectually insulting commercials they used to advertise it roughly every 11 minutes.
Personally, I'd like to see the re-introduction of Oliver Wendell Jones.
Me Too!
It says "INTENTIONAL" as "you intended to defraud people", not "INTERNATIONAL"...
the designers at all directly influenced by Snow Crash?
Yeah, and I'm sure they'll come right out and admit it, because in the world we live in you can say things like that and not worry about a legal clerk knocking on your door 20 minutes later with a notice of intent to sue for violation of copyright, trademark, patent, etc.
Oh wait, that's the world I *want* to live in...
It would also require a secure method of communicating from the ground, which would have to be kept secret so someone couldn't build their own ground based transmitters
And it should be a small, self-contained box with blinking lights and/or LED numeric display that can fit into a pocket and can plug into a box built by people who've never seen the original device... or it will never make it into a Bond movie.
Cocaine was not *added* to Coca-Cola. Period.
The original recipe for Coca-Cola (and hence it's name) was Coca leaves (the plant that produces cocaine) and Kola nuts. Scientists at Coca-Cola worked for years to reduce the amount of actual cocaine in the recipe, but for years they kept the Coca leaves in the mix to protect their name. They couldn't trademark their 'secret formula' but they could trademark the name, and they were worried that without Coca in the mix that they wouldn't be able to continue to use (and protect) their valuable brand name.
Dude,
Check out Snopes.com and you'll find that Coca-Cola didn't add cocaine to their soda, it was part of the original formula (Coca leaves and Kola nuts) and was originally designed as a medicine, not as a beverage.
You'll also find that the chemists at Coca-Cola worked hard to remove every last trace of the 'cocaine' part of the coca leaves extract, but management felt there had to be some coca leaf extract in the formula so they could keep their every important Trademark.
The only feature I wish I had with IE had was tabbed browsing...
Go here and download a copy of CrazyBrowser for Windows.
It's a wrapper for IE that adds pop-up blocking AND tabbed browsing, but still uses the IE engine. It shares the same folders for favorites, history, temporary internet files, etc., so once you load CrazyBrowser it will look and act just like IE with all your favorites and everything already in place.
Oh, and did I mention it's free (as in beer)?
And if you have not seen Real Genius, I hereby revoke your Slashdot priveleges until such time as you have.
Go now.
Rent it.
Watch it.
Live it.
Any idea what kind of pre-compiled apps are already available for one of these machines?
I currently use an older model WinCE (version 3? it's the last rev before PocketPC 2000) machine but would really like to switch to a Linux based PDA.
However, if it means that I'm going to have to hunt down obsolete versions of obscure packages so I can get it downloaded source files to compile properly, maybe I'll stick with WinCE.
My assumption (and I admit it's wrong to assume things) is that the software would sort my library information *within* iTunes, not that it would manipulate the actual files on the hard drive.
As I pointed out in an earlier posting, the options that you mention are not intuitive nor are they conveniently located in one spot.
Turn on the 'Safe Sound' feature (I think that's what it's called) where it will try to normalize your audio levels from song to song. Then watch your CPU utilization climb to 85% - 95% while it goes through your list of MP3s. I let it get half way through before I stopped it. When I tried again later it started back at the first song again... doesn't it save it's findings? Do I have to let my PC come to a screeching halt every time I start iTunes?
I've also noticed that it doesn't seem to remember your display settings from instance to instance, so if you turn off columns you don't want to see, dont' assume they'll still be off when you restart iTunes.
And there's an option in Preferences to turn off the track number in the file name
Yes there is, it's on the Importing page of the preferences and it says "Create filenames with track number".
If you don't allow iTunes to organize your music and leave that checked, it does not add track numbers on import.
Pretty much anyone with half a brain is going to read that text, in that context, and believe that when I *CREATE* a new file it will include a track number in the filename. There is no reason to suspect that it will *RENAME* existing filenames to include a track number.
Sorry, no, iTunes didn't rename the MP3s
Bzzzzt! Wrong! I have spent hours naming my MP3 files, updating the MP3 information inside, etc. and getting all my files just the way I like them. I keep all of my music MP3s in one big directory. Why? Cause that's the way I like it.
I don't give a rat's ass about album titles. When I want to find a song by The Rolling Stones, I want to scroll down the list to 'Rolling Stones, The' and find the song I'm looking for, I don't want to have to think 'was that on Sticky Fingers or Tattoo You?'.
But now thanks to the JOY and WONDER that is iTunes, all of my files have been renamed without the artist's name, with an arbitrary track # in the title and sorted under several hundred subdirectories. Yippee, yeah rah!
Did I fuck up by clicking OK? You betcha. Did Apple fuck up by not specifing 'by the way, when we say 'organize' we actually mean 'rename your files and remove identifying information and then sort everything into a zillion subdirectories where you'll never find your files'. Yes.
Blame yourself for not checking the preferences or the Read Me
Excuse me? This is supposed to be Apple software... designed for people who are too artistic to be bothered with something as plebian as a Readme file. Where's all the fucking grace and elegance that you apple hippies have been bragging about for 20 years?
I forgot to mention that after moving all my files manually, there wasn't a convenient way to clear the imported library, so I had to delete the library file and re-import my library to be able to play music again.
So far I'm failing to see what has kept the Mac people so friggin' happy with this software.
Downloaded, installed it, imported my existing music library. It asked if I wanted to sort my music library (or something like that) and I said OK. Now all of my MP3s are sorted into a million subdirectories based on artist and album information, all files are renamed to just the track number and the song title. I had all of my MP3 files in "Artist - Song Title.mp3" format and that is now all gone.
.MP3 files and move them back into my main MP3 directory and start getting overwrite questions because now two different versions of American Woman have the same file name, same for two different versions of Burning Down the House, etc.
I then do a Windows Explorer search for all
Other than the fact that it's fucked up my music library and I'll now have to spend hours sorting and renaming files, it's great.... Grrrr...
In almost all MMORPG games the only way to get experience is to kill something, whether it be monsters, other players or whatever.
The reason for this is simple: If you give players a way to 'level up' without some sort of risk, then all the 'cheaters/hackers/macroers' will never fight and will find whichever trade skill grants the most xp and develop a macro or cheat program that allows them to 'level up' until they are the highest level possible in the game so they can:
a) Tell everyone they 'won'.
b) become a player killer and slaughter all the 'stoopid noobs' who try to 'level up' the way the game's designers intended, or
c) Immediately lose interest in the game as there is no longer any challenging content and unsubscribe.
Check the track record of any MMORPG out there (and I've played a lot of them, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Shadows of Yserbius, The Realm) and you'll find that somewhere, someone found a way to get easy experience (or money or the magic widget) without any risk to themselves, word spread at somewhere approaching the speed of light and within hours/days the servers had to be brought down for emergency maintenace to fix the problem.
EverQuest has a relatively interesting way of handling trade skill development. They make almost all the good trade skill recipes (that create items that other players are willing to buy) require either very expensive items (i.e., jewelry making) or rare ingredients that can't be purchased in stores (brewing, etc).
Asheron's Call is different in that most trade skill items can be be purchased in stores, are very reasonably priced, but in most cases require that you visit multiple stores/vendors to acquire all that you need *and* that all the good trade skill items require fairly high trade skill numbers. Unlike a lot of other games you actually earn experience by successfully completing trade skills, but the experience goes directly into that trade skills number. They have also recently added the ability to earn trade skill experience by completing some minor 'quests', but unfortunately those quests involve performing trade skills on the teeth of an Ash Gromnie (a small, lightning breathing dragon-type creature) so someone needs to go out and slay a Gromnie to recover a tooth before a trade skiller can use it.
When I played AC I created a trade skiller who was trained in Alchemy, Fletching and Cooking, but who was also able to hold his own in a fight against most lower level creatures. I got him high enough level that he could perform the trade skills I needed and then switched to a different character for my regular adventuring play.
To the best of my knowledge, Ultima Online is the only MMORPG that truly allows you to be a tradesman and completely ignore combat. It also does not have a non-PvP (Player vs Player) server so your tradesman is always at risk of being ganked by some 12 year old punk with too much time on his hands.
Post your stories here: http://www.techcomedy.com/ I never get tired of reading new tech support horror stories.
You answer those? Wow.
Prior to my current girlfriend, I went out with a different stripper and her home phone number had CID-block on by default so any time I got a call with no CID information I knew it was her.
So, by not answering CID-blocked calls, you're passing up receiving a booty call from an attractive, young stripper.
Flaws in your 'surefire' business plan
1) get your cell phone number on all the marketing lists you can
By applying to the lists you are granting people permission to call you and thus you can't sue them when they do.
2) turn off phone and let your mailbox fill up
Turning off your phone causes calls to roll to voice mail. Unless you have a funky cell provider you do not get charged for calls that roll to voice mail or for voice mail messages. No charge = no sue.
3) Sue everyone for a bazillion bucks
Won't work, but I like the way you think...
4) ?????
!!!!! 5) Profit
See #1 - 4
You: You know, condescending; which means to talk down to.
Me: You mean like you're doing right now?
You: No, right now I'm patronizing...
You know, like pictures of sailboats
Obligatory Mallrats quote:
"When do I get to see the sailboat?" -- William Black
Ok so the ushers might get upset... haven't figured that out yet, but soon
You could always run them through with your sword.
Are you referring to the ability to use chips at a different casino? It's no fallacy, I've done it numerous times, but it really only works if you stay within the corporation (as I said in my previous post), i.e., all Circus Circus properties will allow usage of their chips at other Circus Circus properties.
The standing joke at the tables is when someone asks if it's OK to use so-and-so chips here, the dealers will call the boxman over and he'll ask "Is that place still open?". They seem to think that's really funny.