I'm living in the reality where women claim to like sex but don't you dare ask them out.
No, you're living in a world where you don't understand social cues and can't tell the difference between when it's appropriate to ask a woman out, when you need to lay more groundwork before asking a woman out, and when you just need to back the f**k off.
the link between an unsourced photo and the claims attached to it
The irony of the Slashdot article next to the ads screaming, "12 celebrities you didn't know were dead", with a photo of a celebrity who is most certainly not dead.
I spent a few years working for a Canadian municipality. Work COULD contact you after hours, but you were getting paid OT (with a minimum for hour much time you got to claim, even if the actual work was only 30 seconds). If you actually got called back into work you got to claim a minimum of 4 hours (at time and a half, so really 6 hours) even if it was only 15 minutes of work. This setup allowed our workplace to deal with emergencies, but the high cost to the employer made sure it was only used for mission-critical things.
Hard to get much further east than Montreal as train service is discontinued.
Funny, I could have sworn I saw a VIA train here in Halifax this week.
No, train service is NOT discontinued past Montreal. They did reduce the number of trains per week though. Apparently the new VIA boss is looking at reversing that.
And this is exactly what happened the first time Oprah gave away a car to everyone in the audience. All these poor people suddenly owed taxes on a $30,000 windfall, and many couldn't actually cover it. It future iterations of the giveaway Oprah learned her lesson and included payment of taxes as part of the prize. Of course, there's still the issue of insuring and doing repairs on a $30,000 car.
Thankfully, here in Canada we're not taxed on winnings.
All of our computers at work (six of them, small office) are optical media free. We do have a USB DVD drive for the once-every-few-months we need to read or burn optical media.
At home I have a DVD drive, but only because my computer is 5+ years old. If I was building a new computer for home use now I'd leave it out.
No surprise that it started off super popular. Who wouldn't want to relive their childhood Pokemon days, except in the real world? And it is indeed really fun at first. The thrill of catching new Pokemon is a great high.
But then reality sets in:
- Reliability issues. They were not prepared for the popularity and the game was a real bitch to play for a while. Overloaded servers + crappy bugs = frustrating gameplay. Sure, it's "free" but my time is not free and if the experience is subpar I'll go elsewhere.
- Shitty communications. Sure, they were scrambling to put out all sorts of fires, but the biggest fire they ignored was public relations. They'd remove features and probably had good technical reasons to do so, but did not communicate those reasons to their users. That pissed people off.
- No end-game content. Your levelling up goes by fast at first, and your first 50 Pokemon are a thrilling experience. Then you hit the mid-game: your levelling slows down and you have to work a little bit for the next 25 Pokemon. "Okay, that's cool. It's forcing me to get out of my bubble and see my city a bit." Then you hit the end game. Next 75 Pokemon are an absolute grind. Like spending days just to get enough "candy" to evolve one Pokemon. I'll probably never get a Golem. So you have to decide if you want to spend literally hundreds of hours completing your PokeDex. I know I don't. So what's the alternative end-game? Not much. Try to find a few good Pokemon so I can fight gyms? Great, I can spend my hours tapping the screen rapidly so that I can... what, get some coins to upgrade my bag I guess.
So yeah, I'm not surprised numbers are falling off. Once you hit around 75 Pokemon species the game just becomes a huge grind for almost no reward. I suspect that once they get their issues under control and start releasing new content they'll see a little bit of rebound, but it may already be too late to woo a lot of people back.
The slim version makes sense. As the platform matures, get out a barebones system at a lower price point. Console manufacturers have been doing this for a while now. I had the PS1 slim and the second gen PS3. If the PS4 slim hits the right price point I'll finally jump into PS4 land.
The 4k version is a little more iffy. Now developers have two configurations they have to consider.
As far as I know, it IS economic when compared to newly-built coal. The problem is that we have a bunch of 40 year old coal plants that have paid their capital costs off, so the power coming from them is currently quite cheap. Of course, these plants won't last forever, and we're going to have this whole wave of needing new plants at some point, which will be very expensive. Fuel will also get more expensive in the future. So while renewables might be slightly more expensive than the antique power we get now, that's not going to be the case for long. The problem is, short-sighted people only see the $0.02/kWh price increase on their bill now and scream bloody murder without understanding that the $0.02/kWh increase now is insulating them from a (pulling this number out of my ass) $0.10/kWh increase a few years from now.
My friend works for Achievers (www.achievers.com). Basically, their business is providing gamification to other businesses. You give points and stuff to coworkers for doing good things, which they can then turn in for prizes. It's all kinda creepy and false IMO.
I have to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the German approach to presenting the horrors of WWII. Last Christmas I visited the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich. All the material presented there went extremely over the top to paint the Nazis as inhuman monsters that were far distanced from any sane person. But what this totally missed is that the horror of the Holocaust was that it was completely human. The vast majority of the Nazis were everyday people like you an me, and that's what makes it mindbogglingly terrible.
In contrast you have the Holocaust exhibit at the British Imperial War Museum. The whole first section is very clearly focused on the on the economic and political conditions that led to the rise of the Nazis. Through the propoganda and information presented in that exhibit you come to understand how otherwise normal people came to participate in, sanction, or at least turn a blind eye to, one of the worst attrocities in modern history. I believe that only by dissecting this information and understanding this "flaw" of human nature can we really prevent such terrible things from happening again. Mein Kampf should have been repuplished years ago for exactly this reason.
Following up on the story about the app store simulated as artificial life, it'd be interesting to examine optimal strategies in other topics, such as news reporting. This man seems to be following the "innovate" strategy, while a lot of our news sources are "CopyCat" stratgey. Seems to work out better for the CopyCats... but I do wonder where the balance is before there's not enough original content.
Because of the US Patriot Act the province in which I live has made it illegal for me, a government employee, to store personal information (including email addresses, age, views about things, etc.) about citizens on US servers. If I do I could be fined $2,000 and my municipal office could be fined $500,000. Sooo Mr. US, repeal your Patriot Act and then come back to us about using your servers.
Sooooooo basically you're saying I can build myself a top-notch gaming computer for only $250 instead of $1500 if I simply switch out my Intel i7 for a celeron and my GeForce 680 for a Voodoo 2.
I liked Interac a lot until I stopped being a student and no longer get unlimited transactions. $0.65 for every transaction after 8 in a month!? And it's going up to $1 in June! I've shopped around a bit too and can't find anything that works out better than that. So now I just use my CC for everything and make sure I pay it off before getting interest.
...the world economy had just taken an swan dive off a huge cliff. I propose that this had a lot more to do with gas prices than Bush's executive order.
I'd argue that it WAS about religion, but that is what makes it even more okay that he was fired. If some guy in my office wants to drone on about how great the Patriots are and how I should convert my fandom to them it'd be annoying, yeah, but not necessarily offensive. But if some dude continuoisly tries to convert me to Christ, he's intruding on an area of my fundamental beliefs, and that is indeed offensive. When it comes to religion you can believe what you want, but you have no right to push that on me.
I suppose that's a little worse, but even if they had stopped him would that have solved that particular risk? I mean, if the risk is of a laptop walking off from an unattended booth, someone who WAS permitted to be there (say another booth operator) could just as easily take it.
I'm sure this has been asked on previous/. PayPal horror posts, but...
Does anyone know of a good alternative to PayPal? As far as function goes, PayPal works really well for me. It allows me to easily buy and sell things on bricklink.com (a LEGO marketplace), it has a worldwide acceptance that pretty much ensures compatibility with the user on the other of the transaction, and it handles currency conversions.
Of course, all the moral side of things, PayPal blows. So is there an alternative? Or am I to continue bending over, taking it in the ass, and then thanking them for the privilege afterwards?
You'd think that, of all events, security conferences would have tight security.
Why?
I suspect the cost/hassle of doing more than basic security outweighs the benefit of catching a few people who didn't want to pay the $100 conference fee. I doubt the information being presented is secret and needs protecting. And I imagine of all conference organizers, the organizers of a security conference would have best grasp on this security cost/benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm living in the reality where women claim to like sex but don't you dare ask them out.
No, you're living in a world where you don't understand social cues and can't tell the difference between when it's appropriate to ask a woman out, when you need to lay more groundwork before asking a woman out, and when you just need to back the f**k off.
the link between an unsourced photo and the claims attached to it
The irony of the Slashdot article next to the ads screaming, "12 celebrities you didn't know were dead", with a photo of a celebrity who is most certainly not dead.
...and he was 33 married with two children. Absolutely degenerate and disgusting.
Then we should be shaming him, not her.
I spent a few years working for a Canadian municipality. Work COULD contact you after hours, but you were getting paid OT (with a minimum for hour much time you got to claim, even if the actual work was only 30 seconds). If you actually got called back into work you got to claim a minimum of 4 hours (at time and a half, so really 6 hours) even if it was only 15 minutes of work. This setup allowed our workplace to deal with emergencies, but the high cost to the employer made sure it was only used for mission-critical things.
Hard to get much further east than Montreal as train service is discontinued.
Funny, I could have sworn I saw a VIA train here in Halifax this week.
No, train service is NOT discontinued past Montreal. They did reduce the number of trains per week though. Apparently the new VIA boss is looking at reversing that.
Nobody uses oil for grid connected power generation.
They absolutely do. The power plant in my East Coast town alternates between bunker C oil and natural gas, depending on price.
And this is exactly what happened the first time Oprah gave away a car to everyone in the audience. All these poor people suddenly owed taxes on a $30,000 windfall, and many couldn't actually cover it. It future iterations of the giveaway Oprah learned her lesson and included payment of taxes as part of the prize. Of course, there's still the issue of insuring and doing repairs on a $30,000 car. Thankfully, here in Canada we're not taxed on winnings.
All of our computers at work (six of them, small office) are optical media free. We do have a USB DVD drive for the once-every-few-months we need to read or burn optical media. At home I have a DVD drive, but only because my computer is 5+ years old. If I was building a new computer for home use now I'd leave it out.
Great idea, terrible execution.
No surprise that it started off super popular. Who wouldn't want to relive their childhood Pokemon days, except in the real world? And it is indeed really fun at first. The thrill of catching new Pokemon is a great high.
But then reality sets in:
So yeah, I'm not surprised numbers are falling off. Once you hit around 75 Pokemon species the game just becomes a huge grind for almost no reward. I suspect that once they get their issues under control and start releasing new content they'll see a little bit of rebound, but it may already be too late to woo a lot of people back.
The slim version makes sense. As the platform matures, get out a barebones system at a lower price point. Console manufacturers have been doing this for a while now. I had the PS1 slim and the second gen PS3. If the PS4 slim hits the right price point I'll finally jump into PS4 land. The 4k version is a little more iffy. Now developers have two configurations they have to consider.
As far as I know, it IS economic when compared to newly-built coal. The problem is that we have a bunch of 40 year old coal plants that have paid their capital costs off, so the power coming from them is currently quite cheap. Of course, these plants won't last forever, and we're going to have this whole wave of needing new plants at some point, which will be very expensive. Fuel will also get more expensive in the future. So while renewables might be slightly more expensive than the antique power we get now, that's not going to be the case for long. The problem is, short-sighted people only see the $0.02/kWh price increase on their bill now and scream bloody murder without understanding that the $0.02/kWh increase now is insulating them from a (pulling this number out of my ass) $0.10/kWh increase a few years from now.
My friend works for Achievers (www.achievers.com). Basically, their business is providing gamification to other businesses. You give points and stuff to coworkers for doing good things, which they can then turn in for prizes. It's all kinda creepy and false IMO.
I have to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the German approach to presenting the horrors of WWII. Last Christmas I visited the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich. All the material presented there went extremely over the top to paint the Nazis as inhuman monsters that were far distanced from any sane person. But what this totally missed is that the horror of the Holocaust was that it was completely human. The vast majority of the Nazis were everyday people like you an me, and that's what makes it mindbogglingly terrible.
In contrast you have the Holocaust exhibit at the British Imperial War Museum. The whole first section is very clearly focused on the on the economic and political conditions that led to the rise of the Nazis. Through the propoganda and information presented in that exhibit you come to understand how otherwise normal people came to participate in, sanction, or at least turn a blind eye to, one of the worst attrocities in modern history. I believe that only by dissecting this information and understanding this "flaw" of human nature can we really prevent such terrible things from happening again. Mein Kampf should have been repuplished years ago for exactly this reason.
Following up on the story about the app store simulated as artificial life, it'd be interesting to examine optimal strategies in other topics, such as news reporting. This man seems to be following the "innovate" strategy, while a lot of our news sources are "CopyCat" stratgey. Seems to work out better for the CopyCats... but I do wonder where the balance is before there's not enough original content.
Because of the US Patriot Act the province in which I live has made it illegal for me, a government employee, to store personal information (including email addresses, age, views about things, etc.) about citizens on US servers. If I do I could be fined $2,000 and my municipal office could be fined $500,000. Sooo Mr. US, repeal your Patriot Act and then come back to us about using your servers.
Sooooooo basically you're saying I can build myself a top-notch gaming computer for only $250 instead of $1500 if I simply switch out my Intel i7 for a celeron and my GeForce 680 for a Voodoo 2.
I suspect:
- No fees
- None of PayPal's douchebaggedness.
I liked Interac a lot until I stopped being a student and no longer get unlimited transactions. $0.65 for every transaction after 8 in a month!? And it's going up to $1 in June! I've shopped around a bit too and can't find anything that works out better than that. So now I just use my CC for everything and make sure I pay it off before getting interest.
I doubt you could do it out of maple wood for $500. Good hardwood is frickin' expensive.
Lest you forget, when Bush left office...
...the world economy had just taken an swan dive off a huge cliff. I propose that this had a lot more to do with gas prices than Bush's executive order.
I'd argue that it WAS about religion, but that is what makes it even more okay that he was fired. If some guy in my office wants to drone on about how great the Patriots are and how I should convert my fandom to them it'd be annoying, yeah, but not necessarily offensive. But if some dude continuoisly tries to convert me to Christ, he's intruding on an area of my fundamental beliefs, and that is indeed offensive. When it comes to religion you can believe what you want, but you have no right to push that on me.
I suppose that's a little worse, but even if they had stopped him would that have solved that particular risk? I mean, if the risk is of a laptop walking off from an unattended booth, someone who WAS permitted to be there (say another booth operator) could just as easily take it.
I'm sure this has been asked on previous /. PayPal horror posts, but...
Does anyone know of a good alternative to PayPal? As far as function goes, PayPal works really well for me. It allows me to easily buy and sell things on bricklink.com (a LEGO marketplace), it has a worldwide acceptance that pretty much ensures compatibility with the user on the other of the transaction, and it handles currency conversions.
Of course, all the moral side of things, PayPal blows. So is there an alternative? Or am I to continue bending over, taking it in the ass, and then thanking them for the privilege afterwards?
You'd think that, of all events, security conferences would have tight security.
Why?
I suspect the cost/hassle of doing more than basic security outweighs the benefit of catching a few people who didn't want to pay the $100 conference fee. I doubt the information being presented is secret and needs protecting. And I imagine of all conference organizers, the organizers of a security conference would have best grasp on this security cost/benefit.
Must. Not. Tear. Hair. Out. Over. Painful. Forced. Acronym.