You can turn them into art. I was at a local monthly thing that has booths where various types of hippies sell art or make you sign petitions to legalize marijuana, and someone was selling disc drives that had been shot, warped, or half-melted. He had turned them into clocks and other forms of useful art. It was really cool, and it allowed me to see the kind of damage some of the things on this list would do.
And when it all comes down, when it all falls down about us, all that will be left in the wreckage of our civilization is a single tiny little black oblong going 'diddle-dee-dee-diddle-dee-dee-deeeee'. And there'll be nobody to answer it. "
Wait, hang on... then who is CALLING the phone? Ghosts? Man, that's freaky.
Seriously though, that's a pretty over-exagerrated scenario. I don't think we have have to go so far as to predict the end of civilization with only a single phone surviving.
There'll be at least four or five.
Really, while it's true that we lose something in terms of body language and face-to-face contact we're also gaining things all the time - look at the article in question. Sooner or later, unpopular as video phones have been, we'll still find ways to interact in more ways than just voice.
The MTA told the Stamford Advocate that without a license, the iPhone application might provide inaccurate information. [...] Ironically, the MTA's proposed agreement refuses to provide reliable data updates.
I never get tired of listening to the silly reasons people come up with when the *actual* reason is "We hear you're making money off of something. We aren't sure how, but we'd like to be making money off of it instead."
To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money. They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money. Things like failure to get an education (or worse reject the value of knowledge entirely), become a single parent, waste money on substance abuse or Xbox... but I repeat myself.
I'm not going to disagree across the board, but some of the rural areas mentioned in the summary are a whole different world. There are places in this country where even basic things like clean water can't be taken for granted and in those specific areas people are poor because they were born poor and live somewhere poor.
Could they move, and take advantage of various student loan programs to go to school and better themselves? Yes, but they're in such an alien environment that that's not seen as an option. Ask someone why they live in a dead and rotting mining town (often with no mine any longer) and they'll tell you it's because they're taking care of some family member. That family member stayed for the same reason.
This extends into the cities somewhat as well, but at some point I have to admit total ignorance since I'm not an expert in any of this.
Plus, you know, bad choices and drugs and whatever too.
The Endor holocaust would make the Rebels just as evil as the Empire, since the rebels effectively destroyed a whole planet (just like the Empire) and committed genocide against the Ewoks.
It's okay. First of all, I'm pretty sure that muppets - like robots or [lawyers|Microsoft executives|politicians] - don't have souls. Secondly, the debris wouldn't arrive right away and the Ewoks only need a few minutes to slap together a working deflector out of logs, vines, and mud. They're like little furry MacGuyvers.
"you will be offered complete control of your actions"
Man, that sounds familiar. What other game was promising me that? Wait - it was ALSO called Fable, and it instead offered only token control over the world. Whee, a minor change in my physical appearance! I feel so powerful and in control of my destiny!
The closest I've come to this was a digital clock that would reset whenever the lights were turned off even though it was battery-powered only and not plugged into the wall. In that case, however, it was one of those clocks that gets a signal to keep the time accurate and it was mounted on the wall exactly where the wires from the switch went up. So I can imagine that it was getting some sort of false signal from the sudden change in elecrical flow nearby.
In this case, however, unless I'm misunderstanding the oven has no reason to be looking for any kind of wireless signal. How sensitive does a device have to be for a cell phone to trigger it when it would normally be getting a command from an actual internal wire? I mean... unless they decided it was cheaper to go internally wireless somehow. Nobody does something that absurd, do they?
Well, the mistake part, anyway.
I used to work for a company that loaded hotel information to pretty much everywhere from a central source (so they could change something once and have it active on all the old airline reservation systems, all the expedia/hotwire/etc sites, and their own) and it was pretty easy to slip up and type the wrong thing - or to enter a rate, but forget to hit the button that copies it to the rest of the week.
Sometimes the hotel honors the rate (and in those cases I'm sure they passed the loss back to us when it was one of our agents) but quite often they would just tell the person that booked that it was an error and they couldn't honor it. I'm not sure how that went but I suspect that the people who argued enough eventually got to stay at the absurdly redcued rate.
Of course IANAL, so I don't know if there's any legal equivalent of "Dude, come on, you KNEW that wasn't the correct rate."
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.eyecandycan.com/
Not actually for sale yet so who knows, but I'd love to give it a try.
I can confirm that this works.
...
Even if destroying the drive wasn't intentional. Sigh.
You can turn them into art. I was at a local monthly thing that has booths where various types of hippies sell art or make you sign petitions to legalize marijuana, and someone was selling disc drives that had been shot, warped, or half-melted. He had turned them into clocks and other forms of useful art. It was really cool, and it allowed me to see the kind of damage some of the things on this list would do.
No, no! I wasn't taking money OUT of your purse - I was putting more in! Yeah, that's the ticket!
And when it all comes down, when it all falls down about us, all that will be left in the wreckage of our civilization is a single tiny little black oblong going 'diddle-dee-dee-diddle-dee-dee-deeeee'. And there'll be nobody to answer it. "
Wait, hang on... then who is CALLING the phone? Ghosts? Man, that's freaky.
Seriously though, that's a pretty over-exagerrated scenario. I don't think we have have to go so far as to predict the end of civilization with only a single phone surviving.
There'll be at least four or five.
Really, while it's true that we lose something in terms of body language and face-to-face contact we're also gaining things all the time - look at the article in question. Sooner or later, unpopular as video phones have been, we'll still find ways to interact in more ways than just voice.
The MTA told the Stamford Advocate that without a license, the iPhone application might provide inaccurate information. [...] Ironically, the MTA's proposed agreement refuses to provide reliable data updates.
I never get tired of listening to the silly reasons people come up with when the *actual* reason is "We hear you're making money off of something. We aren't sure how, but we'd like to be making money off of it instead."
To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money. They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money. Things like failure to get an education (or worse reject the value of knowledge entirely), become a single parent, waste money on substance abuse or Xbox... but I repeat myself.
I'm not going to disagree across the board, but some of the rural areas mentioned in the summary are a whole different world. There are places in this country where even basic things like clean water can't be taken for granted and in those specific areas people are poor because they were born poor and live somewhere poor.
Could they move, and take advantage of various student loan programs to go to school and better themselves? Yes, but they're in such an alien environment that that's not seen as an option. Ask someone why they live in a dead and rotting mining town (often with no mine any longer) and they'll tell you it's because they're taking care of some family member. That family member stayed for the same reason.
This extends into the cities somewhat as well, but at some point I have to admit total ignorance since I'm not an expert in any of this.
Plus, you know, bad choices and drugs and whatever too.
The Endor holocaust would make the Rebels just as evil as the Empire, since the rebels effectively destroyed a whole planet (just like the Empire) and committed genocide against the Ewoks.
It's okay. First of all, I'm pretty sure that muppets - like robots or [lawyers|Microsoft executives|politicians] - don't have souls. Secondly, the debris wouldn't arrive right away and the Ewoks only need a few minutes to slap together a working deflector out of logs, vines, and mud. They're like little furry MacGuyvers.
Are you bettering society?
Are you? Relax, it's just a funny article pointing out some absurd stuff from a popular series. That's it. It doesn't need to solve world hunger.
He should have stuck to the physical aspects of the universe like noise in space and being able to see laser shots from the side
Because that would TOTALLY better society. Good call.
"you will be offered complete control of your actions"
Man, that sounds familiar. What other game was promising me that? Wait - it was ALSO called Fable, and it instead offered only token control over the world. Whee, a minor change in my physical appearance! I feel so powerful and in control of my destiny!
The closest I've come to this was a digital clock that would reset whenever the lights were turned off even though it was battery-powered only and not plugged into the wall. In that case, however, it was one of those clocks that gets a signal to keep the time accurate and it was mounted on the wall exactly where the wires from the switch went up. So I can imagine that it was getting some sort of false signal from the sudden change in elecrical flow nearby.
In this case, however, unless I'm misunderstanding the oven has no reason to be looking for any kind of wireless signal. How sensitive does a device have to be for a cell phone to trigger it when it would normally be getting a command from an actual internal wire? I mean... unless they decided it was cheaper to go internally wireless somehow. Nobody does something that absurd, do they?
Well, the mistake part, anyway. I used to work for a company that loaded hotel information to pretty much everywhere from a central source (so they could change something once and have it active on all the old airline reservation systems, all the expedia/hotwire/etc sites, and their own) and it was pretty easy to slip up and type the wrong thing - or to enter a rate, but forget to hit the button that copies it to the rest of the week. Sometimes the hotel honors the rate (and in those cases I'm sure they passed the loss back to us when it was one of our agents) but quite often they would just tell the person that booked that it was an error and they couldn't honor it. I'm not sure how that went but I suspect that the people who argued enough eventually got to stay at the absurdly redcued rate. Of course IANAL, so I don't know if there's any legal equivalent of "Dude, come on, you KNEW that wasn't the correct rate."