Bad analogy. The purpose of a dance club is dancing- picking up women is a side effect. The sole purpose of a dating service is to meet people for dating.
A different way of looking at the dance club idea might be to realize, after paying your $30 entry fee, that you couldn't actually dance there because they lied about being a dance club.
The person in question paid money to the service, having been lured in by a profile which turned out to be fake. It's not about the fake phone number or getting scammed by the other person. The issue is that the dating service profited from a fake profile. That goes against the very idea of the service they supposedly provide.
There was another service (don't remember which one) which made headlines when it started hiring people to flirt with and talk up members of the opposite sex on their service. The intention was to keep members subscribed.
'Whatever it was set to' is not an acceptable answer because it's not justified. it may be an intelligent answer but the person being interviewed needs to back it up somehow by explaining their understanding of the question being asked. My impression was this person didn't do that.
I think there are situations where saying 'I don't know' is acceptable in an interview. I think that questions should stay relevant to the job being interviewed for, but it can be argued that knowing how someone will handle something they don't know is relevant to certain positions. Will they lie to you, try to talk over your head, evade the question, get mad at you, make something up or be honest and tell you they don't know? How they deal with this will reflect, to some degree, how they will deal with clients when the client asks them something they don't know.
First, I think you are assuming that companies want to hire good, qualified people.
Also, depending on the context, asking someone where things are installed or about runlevels can be pretty stupid things to ask, and may be irrelevant. It's also possible, however, that they aren't looking for the obvious answer; maybe they think you are really smart and are trying to see how you handle something you don't know?
If I was interviewing and felt the need to ask about default runlevels for some reason, someone who told me 'whatever I set to be' probably wouldn't be hired.
Without knowing any details surrounding your interview, it seems to me both of your examples seem to indicate an inability to say 'I don't know'. That's a very important skill to have, and rarer than one might think.
I agree, however, that there is an issue with unqualified people conducting interviews. I think that, at minimum, the interviewer should be able to understand the answer to the question being asked.
The whole thing is really a tradeoff - lower prices for targeted, sponsored content. It's like TV - you can pay for commercial-free content, or be cheap about it and be forced to watch commercials.
You're still getting gouged.
Public memory is short. You may not remember this, but when cable TV was first introduced, the whole idea was that you were essentially paying for the privilege of not watching commercials. After all, cable was supported by you, the viewer, and not advertisers. They've since introduced premium channels. Now you pay to watch commercials on cable and pay for premium channels. Advertising is starting to slip in there as well.
I see this as no different than the introduction of cable. Eventually, they will split it into an n-tier internet, with the highest level being the web equivalent of a premium channel. When they want to extort more money they will just add another tier.
I mixed up the italics at one point- sorry about that...
It should read:
And if he is a special model like Rachel, why the hell does Tyrell not know this?
I'm fuzzy on this one- but Tyrell may have known and chosen not too say anything. He did, after all, work with Rachel and not say anything to her about it. IIRC, he alludes to Deckards skill at finding replicants as being above average. I"m not sure on this last, though.
I think you're being overly simplistic in your assumptions. Deckard being a replicant doesn't open up any plot holes that I can see. Anyway, Ridley Scott himself claims that Deckard is a replicant.
For Blade runner, seeing Deckard as human is critical because it explores the question more deeply of what it is to be human.
Deckard doesn't need to be human in order to explore the nature of being human. In fact, Deckard being a replicant creates an even more intriguing examination. The concept of Deckard not being human forces you to look at the uniqueness of being human and the characteristics that separate us from the machines we create in a very stark, uncompromising way.
The weaknesses you perceive as part of Deckards character are things that would make a human a human. If you are engineering a machine to be human, though, why would you engineer it to be a superman?
To take a stab at a couple of your observations...
Like if he was a replicate, how come he sucks so much in a fight?
See above comment about a superman.
All the other models kick the shit out of him--including the so called pleasure models.
True, but did you notice how strong they were? Being able to take a beating would be much more important than being able to give one. He's got a gun for that. A normal human would have died early into some of the punishment Deckard took- especially from Roy. Pure speculation: it may be intended that Deckard does not realize his own strength. Anything that sets him apart as a human or clues him into his own identity may cause him to identify with and possibly side with the replicants. Complete aside: I've often sort of wondered if Roy knew Deckard was a replicant.
And does not explain if he escaped with the other models on the spaceship, why don't they know him?
There was never any mention of him escaping with the other replicants. There is no reason for them to know him. The book differs from the movie in huge ways, but the concept of Earth being basically a cesspool of poor people, replicants and pollution is consistent. In other words, the replicants weren't necessarily created in space, but rather on Earth.
And if he is a special model like Rachel, why the hell does Tyrell not know this?
I'm fuzzy on this one- but Tyrell may have known and chosen not too say anything. He did, after all, work with Rachel and not say anything to her about it. IIRC, he alludes to Deckards skill at finding replicants as being above average. I"m not sure on this last, though.
As an observation... Doesn't it make sense to engineer a replicant to hunt other replicants? In the immediate sense, you no longer have to put humans in immediate danger. In a deeper sense, you remove yourself, as a human, from any moral ambiguities. Creating a machine to 'kill' a machine means you can distance yourself from the moral aspects of the question. At what point does a machine killing a machine become murder?
You could probably write a book on that one alone.
The gov't cuts funding for NASA and it's satellite programs, then redirects that money into military spending. The military, in turn, uses that money to put up what? Oh yeah, satellites. In the end, the military ends up owning and controlling the skies.
Interesting. Never thought about it- but you're right.
It's an issue of force. Hitting or snap-kicking a door, with a lock placed in the usual spot right over the handle, allows the person trying to enter to put nearly all of the applied force directly onto the lock. That's very difficult to do when the lock is close to the floor.
Don't drag independent thinking into this. That has absolutely nothing to do with the point being discussed. Neither does one's 'true nature'. Using that sort of thing as an argument against proper grammar and spelling makes you look like an idiot. In fact, any argument against proper grammar and spelling makes you look like an idiot.
To be honest, I read your post and my first thoughts were that you were young, immature and not very bright. maybe not a big deal in a/. forum, but what if you were looking for a job?
Sure, you can say that you run your important stuff through a spelling checker; but what about the grammar? Now what? Grammar checkers are notoriously bad, and spelling checkers won't pick up mistakes like misspelling 'lose' as 'loose'.
Marketers have known this for years. Marketing departments spend huge amounts of money exploring ways to nudge people into making the 'impulse buy' and trick them into unwise decisions. Grocery stores line their queues with trinkets and small items. Best buy is even worse- forcing people to wind their way through a twisty aisle made of boxes of small, inexpensive items to get to the checkout counter. Once, when shopping for a car, the salesman asked me 'What would it take for you to buy this car today?'. The list goes on... and, it seems to me, we are making worse and less informed decisions as time goes on.
Trying to find real information on a product is sometimes very difficult. Instead of making better products, companies make a cheaper product and spend a little more on marketing to promote it.
blah blah blah... im getting offtopic...
I think it's an issue of context. I don't think it's that you're sleeping on it, but rather you are thinking about the issue outside the context of marketing and environmental pressures. Removing something from context generally allows you to see that thing more clearly.
People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it. When you're on WoW you have only one worry: scoring. When you're off it you are suddenly obliged to worry about all sorts of other shite. Got no money: can't get pished. Got money: drinking too much. Can't get a bird: no chance of a ride. Got a bird: too much hassle. You have to worry about bills, about food, about some football team that never fucking wins, about human relationships and all the things that really don't matter when you've got a sincere and truthful WoW habit.
I have a computer sitting inside my closet which IS the keyboard. It's a Commodore 64.
Then you're an idiot. You want to 'wax semantic' and split hairs about controllers and chipsets? That keyboard isn't the computer, the computer is underneath the keyboard. Don't believe me? Rip the keyboard off the top and try to use it. Let me know how that works out for you.
To say that KVM has nothing to do with the computer is insane.
I'm going to assume you're drunk, high or confusing me with another post. I never said anything about KVMs in my post.
They ARE NOT the computer but they are clearly plugged into it.
You're right. Hence the term 'peripheral'.
Saying something as crazy as "The keyboard has NOTHING to do with the computer" is exactly the sort of thing that has these people so discombobulated in the first place. They're trying to get practical information and you're waxing semantic.
The emphasis is yours, not mine. Why is that crazy? The OP said that people tend to think of the term 'computer' as an inclusive term- including the keyboard, monitor, mouse and the software that runs on it. My point was simply that referring to those devices together as the computer was misleading.
By all means, explain what a peripheral is. Perhaps mention that inside many peripherals is a little tiny computer! Imagine that, computers plugging into computers. Soon they'll understand the freaking Internet.
You take one sentence, out of context, from a comment and act like I've ripped a hole in the fabric of the universe. Most users don't care about all the little pieces parts floating around inside their keyboards, KVM switches, monitors and printers. Not only that, they don't want to hear about that crap because it's not relevant to them. They do, however, (hopefully) want and need to be able to articulate themselves without feeling stupid when they have a problem. Having the vocabulary to explain your problem helps everyone involved.
I think "Central Unit" is pretty descriptive, and CPU is the way to say that.
It may be convenient, but calling it a CPU is incorrect. How are they going to know what you are talking about when you refer to the actual CPU?
Maybe defining important terms as you progress through the book is the way to go. That way, you eliminate ambiguity and you build a vocabulary.
"The Computer" seems to be the global term for kb/mouse/monitor/apps/cpu
Keyboards, mice and monitors have nothing to do with the computer. Define what a peripheral is and use these as examples. That also helps clarify which part does the computing.
The idea is to move forward one term/component/concept at a time. By the end, the user will (hopefully) not only be able to do basic things, but, if they find themselves in a spot of trouble, also be able to effectively communicate their problem to someone technical when needed.
I don't know about everyone else, but I really don't see most of these great works of literature as something to put on a pedelstal.
pedelstal => pedestal
I mean there were developed as entertainment and phillosophical points of view, but they don't really have much to teach us other than the authors point of view and perhaps a perspective of the world they lived in.
there => they phillosophical => philosophical authors => author's
Take Shakespear from example... I mean his works were specifically devolped to entertain an live audience of his era with comeday and tragedy and frankly the only reason we study him because he was most likely the only one to do it at his time.
Shakespear => Shakespeare from => for devolped => developed an => a comeday => comedy him because => him is because
Unless of course there were other play writers that just wrote heaping mounds of dog poo and English Parliment locked them up in the tower and burned their plays that we don't know about...
Parliment => Parliament
As far as works that people should read as something they should get value of... I'd recommend Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Dante, Friedrich Nietzsche, or some other off the wall phillosopher rather than these people who wrote for entertainment value.
You, my friend, are a shining example of exactly what's wrong with the gaming industry. There's more to life than instant gratification.
Good graphics don't make a good game. Think of it as a microcosm of America. Glittery and shiny on the outside, no substance on the inside. Some of us like to actually be INVOLVED in our games beyond mastering a set of key combinations and cheat codes. Some of us like to solve puzzles more difficult than hopping from place to place without falling of a ledge.
You say the old games don't hold up, I call bullshit. The new games, in terms of story, are simply rehashes of rehashes of rehashes. How boring is that? Zork and Cutthroats may be built on the same 'engine', but they are as different as night and day. Go to best buy or eb games and look around- a FPS is always just a FPS.
Your mind can create far more vivid imagery than any FPS. It's a shame you're wasting it on the crap that's out there. Having said all this, I do play games outside of text adventures: I think Half Life was one of the best games ever made. I also enjoy AOE, KOTOR and Dungeon Siege.
I'm going to assume you're either stupid or full of shit about the xbox 360 because it hasn't even been released yet.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right- this is a much better analogy.
Thanks!
Bad analogy. The purpose of a dance club is dancing- picking up women is a side effect. The sole purpose of a dating service is to meet people for dating.
A different way of looking at the dance club idea might be to realize, after paying your $30 entry fee, that you couldn't actually dance there because they lied about being a dance club.
I don't think you understand.
The person in question paid money to the service, having been lured in by a profile which turned out to be fake. It's not about the fake phone number or getting scammed by the other person. The issue is that the dating service profited from a fake profile. That goes against the very idea of the service they supposedly provide.
There was another service (don't remember which one) which made headlines when it started hiring people to flirt with and talk up members of the opposite sex on their service. The intention was to keep members subscribed.
There was no context given for the questions.
'Whatever it was set to' is not an acceptable answer because it's not justified. it may be an intelligent answer but the person being interviewed needs to back it up somehow by explaining their understanding of the question being asked. My impression was this person didn't do that.
I think there are situations where saying 'I don't know' is acceptable in an interview. I think that questions should stay relevant to the job being interviewed for, but it can be argued that knowing how someone will handle something they don't know is relevant to certain positions. Will they lie to you, try to talk over your head, evade the question, get mad at you, make something up or be honest and tell you they don't know? How they deal with this will reflect, to some degree, how they will deal with clients when the client asks them something they don't know.
First, I think you are assuming that companies want to hire good, qualified people.
Also, depending on the context, asking someone where things are installed or about runlevels can be pretty stupid things to ask, and may be irrelevant. It's also possible, however, that they aren't looking for the obvious answer; maybe they think you are really smart and are trying to see how you handle something you don't know?
If I was interviewing and felt the need to ask about default runlevels for some reason, someone who told me 'whatever I set to be' probably wouldn't be hired.
Without knowing any details surrounding your interview, it seems to me both of your examples seem to indicate an inability to say 'I don't know'. That's a very important skill to have, and rarer than one might think.
I agree, however, that there is an issue with unqualified people conducting interviews. I think that, at minimum, the interviewer should be able to understand the answer to the question being asked.
The whole thing is really a tradeoff - lower prices for targeted, sponsored content. It's like TV - you can pay for commercial-free content, or be cheap about it and be forced to watch commercials.
You're still getting gouged.
Public memory is short. You may not remember this, but when cable TV was first introduced, the whole idea was that you were essentially paying for the privilege of not watching commercials. After all, cable was supported by you, the viewer, and not advertisers. They've since introduced premium channels. Now you pay to watch commercials on cable and pay for premium channels. Advertising is starting to slip in there as well.
I see this as no different than the introduction of cable. Eventually, they will split it into an n-tier internet, with the highest level being the web equivalent of a premium channel. When they want to extort more money they will just add another tier.
pig fuckers.
Aaahhhh-
I'd forgotten about the captured replicant. I hadn't heard the theory that it was Deckard.
Thanks!
I mixed up the italics at one point- sorry about that...
It should read:
And if he is a special model like Rachel, why the hell does Tyrell not know this?
I'm fuzzy on this one- but Tyrell may have known and chosen not too say anything. He did, after all, work with Rachel and not say anything to her about it. IIRC, he alludes to Deckards skill at finding replicants as being above average. I"m not sure on this last, though.
I think you're being overly simplistic in your assumptions. Deckard being a replicant doesn't open up any plot holes that I can see. Anyway, Ridley Scott himself claims that Deckard is a replicant.
For Blade runner, seeing Deckard as human is critical because it explores the question more deeply of what it is to be human.
Deckard doesn't need to be human in order to explore the nature of being human. In fact, Deckard being a replicant creates an even more intriguing examination. The concept of Deckard not being human forces you to look at the uniqueness of being human and the characteristics that separate us from the machines we create in a very stark, uncompromising way.
The weaknesses you perceive as part of Deckards character are things that would make a human a human. If you are engineering a machine to be human, though, why would you engineer it to be a superman?
To take a stab at a couple of your observations...
Like if he was a replicate, how come he sucks so much in a fight?
See above comment about a superman.
All the other models kick the shit out of him--including the so called pleasure models.
True, but did you notice how strong they were? Being able to take a beating would be much more important than being able to give one. He's got a gun for that. A normal human would have died early into some of the punishment Deckard took- especially from Roy. Pure speculation: it may be intended that Deckard does not realize his own strength. Anything that sets him apart as a human or clues him into his own identity may cause him to identify with and possibly side with the replicants. Complete aside: I've often sort of wondered if Roy knew Deckard was a replicant.
And does not explain if he escaped with the other models on the spaceship, why don't they know him?
There was never any mention of him escaping with the other replicants. There is no reason for them to know him. The book differs from the movie in huge ways, but the concept of Earth being basically a cesspool of poor people, replicants and pollution is consistent. In other words, the replicants weren't necessarily created in space, but rather on Earth.
And if he is a special model like Rachel, why the hell does Tyrell not know this?
I'm fuzzy on this one- but Tyrell may have known and chosen not too say anything. He did, after all, work with Rachel and not say anything to her about it. IIRC, he alludes to Deckards skill at finding replicants as being above average. I"m not sure on this last, though.
As an observation...
Doesn't it make sense to engineer a replicant to hunt other replicants? In the immediate sense, you no longer have to put humans in immediate danger. In a deeper sense, you remove yourself, as a human, from any moral ambiguities. Creating a machine to 'kill' a machine means you can distance yourself from the moral aspects of the question. At what point does a machine killing a machine become murder?
You could probably write a book on that one alone.
Maybe it's a large-scale shell game.
The gov't cuts funding for NASA and it's satellite programs, then redirects that money into military spending. The military, in turn, uses that money to put up what? Oh yeah, satellites. In the end, the military ends up owning and controlling the skies.
Ok, enough paranoia for one day.
Interesting. Never thought about it- but you're right.
It's an issue of force. Hitting or snap-kicking a door, with a lock placed in the usual spot right over the handle, allows the person trying to enter to put nearly all of the applied force directly onto the lock. That's very difficult to do when the lock is close to the floor.
Thank god it's not just me.
Don't drag independent thinking into this. That has absolutely nothing to do with the point being discussed. Neither does one's 'true nature'. Using that sort of thing as an argument against proper grammar and spelling makes you look like an idiot. In fact, any argument against proper grammar and spelling makes you look like an idiot.
/. forum, but what if you were looking for a job?
To be honest, I read your post and my first thoughts were that you were young, immature and not very bright. maybe not a big deal in a
Sure, you can say that you run your important stuff through a spelling checker; but what about the grammar? Now what? Grammar checkers are notoriously bad, and spelling checkers won't pick up mistakes like misspelling 'lose' as 'loose'.
You still need to know the rules.
Marketers have known this for years. Marketing departments spend huge amounts of money exploring ways to nudge people into making the 'impulse buy' and trick them into unwise decisions. Grocery stores line their queues with trinkets and small items. Best buy is even worse- forcing people to wind their way through a twisty aisle made of boxes of small, inexpensive items to get to the checkout counter. Once, when shopping for a car, the salesman asked me 'What would it take for you to buy this car today?'. The list goes on... and, it seems to me, we are making worse and less informed decisions as time goes on.
Trying to find real information on a product is sometimes very difficult. Instead of making better products, companies make a cheaper product and spend a little more on marketing to promote it.
blah blah blah... im getting offtopic...
I think it's an issue of context. I don't think it's that you're sleeping on it, but rather you are thinking about the issue outside the context of marketing and environmental pressures. Removing something from context generally allows you to see that thing more clearly.
People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it. When you're on WoW you have only one worry: scoring. When you're off it you are suddenly obliged to worry about all sorts of other shite. Got no money: can't get pished. Got money: drinking too much. Can't get a bird: no chance of a ride. Got a bird: too much hassle. You have to worry about bills, about food, about some football team that never fucking wins, about human relationships and all the things that really don't matter when you've got a sincere and truthful WoW habit.
I have a computer sitting inside my closet which IS the keyboard. It's a Commodore 64.
Then you're an idiot. You want to 'wax semantic' and split hairs about controllers and chipsets? That keyboard isn't the computer, the computer is underneath the keyboard. Don't believe me? Rip the keyboard off the top and try to use it. Let me know how that works out for you.
To say that KVM has nothing to do with the computer is insane.
I'm going to assume you're drunk, high or confusing me with another post. I never said anything about KVMs in my post.
They ARE NOT the computer but they are clearly plugged into it.
You're right. Hence the term 'peripheral'.
Saying something as crazy as "The keyboard has NOTHING to do with the computer" is exactly the sort of thing that has these people so discombobulated in the first place. They're trying to get practical information and you're waxing semantic.
The emphasis is yours, not mine. Why is that crazy? The OP said that people tend to think of the term 'computer' as an inclusive term- including the keyboard, monitor, mouse and the software that runs on it. My point was simply that referring to those devices together as the computer was misleading.
By all means, explain what a peripheral is. Perhaps mention that inside many peripherals is a little tiny computer! Imagine that, computers plugging into computers. Soon they'll understand the freaking Internet.
You take one sentence, out of context, from a comment and act like I've ripped a hole in the fabric of the universe. Most users don't care about all the little pieces parts floating around inside their keyboards, KVM switches, monitors and printers. Not only that, they don't want to hear about that crap because it's not relevant to them. They do, however, (hopefully) want and need to be able to articulate themselves without feeling stupid when they have a problem. Having the vocabulary to explain your problem helps everyone involved.
I think "Central Unit" is pretty descriptive, and CPU is the way to say that.
It may be convenient, but calling it a CPU is incorrect. How are they going to know what you are talking about when you refer to the actual CPU?
Maybe defining important terms as you progress through the book is the way to go. That way, you eliminate ambiguity and you build a vocabulary.
"The Computer" seems to be the global term for kb/mouse/monitor/apps/cpu
Keyboards, mice and monitors have nothing to do with the computer. Define what a peripheral is and use these as examples. That also helps clarify which part does the computing.
The idea is to move forward one term/component/concept at a time. By the end, the user will (hopefully) not only be able to do basic things, but, if they find themselves in a spot of trouble, also be able to effectively communicate their problem to someone technical when needed.
I don't know about everyone else, but I really don't see most of these great works of literature as something to put on a pedelstal.
pedelstal => pedestal
I mean there were developed as entertainment and phillosophical points of view, but they don't really have much to teach us other than the authors point of view and perhaps a perspective of the world they lived in.
there => they
phillosophical => philosophical
authors => author's
Take Shakespear from example... I mean his works were specifically devolped to entertain an live audience of his era with comeday and tragedy and frankly the only reason we study him because he was most likely the only one to do it at his time.
Shakespear => Shakespeare
from => for
devolped => developed
an => a
comeday => comedy
him because => him is because
Unless of course there were other play writers that just wrote heaping mounds of dog poo and English Parliment locked them up in the tower and burned their plays that we don't know about...
Parliment => Parliament
As far as works that people should read as something they should get value of... I'd recommend Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Dante, Friedrich Nietzsche, or some other off the wall phillosopher rather than these people who wrote for entertainment value.
phillosopher => philosopher
And those are only the spelling errors.
Literature has nothing to teach us? Yeah, right.
You, my friend, are a shining example of exactly what's wrong with the gaming industry. There's more to life than instant gratification.
Good graphics don't make a good game. Think of it as a microcosm of America. Glittery and shiny on the outside, no substance on the inside. Some of us like to actually be INVOLVED in our games beyond mastering a set of key combinations and cheat codes. Some of us like to solve puzzles more difficult than hopping from place to place without falling of a ledge.
You say the old games don't hold up, I call bullshit. The new games, in terms of story, are simply rehashes of rehashes of rehashes. How boring is that? Zork and Cutthroats may be built on the same 'engine', but they are as different as night and day. Go to best buy or eb games and look around- a FPS is always just a FPS.
Your mind can create far more vivid imagery than any FPS. It's a shame you're wasting it on the crap that's out there. Having said all this, I do play games outside of text adventures: I think Half Life was one of the best games ever made. I also enjoy AOE, KOTOR and Dungeon Siege.
I'm going to assume you're either stupid or full of shit about the xbox 360 because it hasn't even been released yet.
Oh yeah, and auto-mappers are for pussies.
wow- and no one got it.
The poster is not asking what a grue is. They are imitating the text parser in the game.
Don't blame me- I voted for Kodos.
Look at the OP again, paying careful attention to the capitalized letters...
I didn't know Phil Collins had a son.
Eeeexcellent.
heh- maybe you should read the statement more closely.
He said each employee would receive 48 seconds per week. To finish your math...
1440 seconds / 30 employees = 48 seconds.