lack of realism in tv shows
on
C.S.I.
·
· Score: 4
I like CSI. I enjoy watching the investigators follow the trail of evidence, letting it take them whereever it leads, regardless of their preconceived notions of the case. The show generally follows the rules of science, even if some of the details are unrealistic. That's pretty rare on TV.
Of course, CSI isn't all that realistic. They get lots of details wrong. But most shows are unrealistic -- for the sake of making the story comprehensible to the average viewer.
For example, in ER, radiologists rarely have any role; the ER docs usually read their own x-rays, CTs, etc. In the death of Lucy Carter, they had the surgeons doing interventional radiology procedures. In Elizabeth's paralyzation of the surfer, no one other than a neurosurgeon would have ever performed such a procedure. And those are just the particularly egregious, memorable errors.
But to introduce extra people into the plot and explain their presence would have slowed down the plot excessively. And I suspect that most people don't notice. (My husband Paul is a radiologist, so he tends to note such things.)
So CSI doesn't strike me as all that unusual in its oversights, omissions, and errors. Any TV show will have serious inaccuracies which go unnoticed by most people, but are glaring errors to professionals.
It's not the Discovery channel; it's entertainment!
It seems, then, that SimCity has a set of rules for how cities thrive that are (1) at odds with lots of people's political and economic beliefs about how cities thrive and (2) probably not very accurate.
These two issues are not the same, unless, of course, your political and economic views about how cities thrive are totally accurate.
I'm not saying that the game is Evil(tm) or Should Never Be Played By Moral People(tm). (I didn't even say that I agreed with the article that I linked to.)
I'm just saying that SimCity has some questionable underlying premises. That is, after all, what this thread was about, no? The underlying premises of games?
Although, being a not remotely ideologically pure Objectivist myself, I have to agree with you about the Ideologically Pure Objectivists. Many are Really Scary(tm).
But SimCity *is* all about statism. The user must manipulate and regulate the economy for "the public good." Leaving products and services to the free market simply isn't an option if you want to suceed.
Check out this review by the Ludwig von Mises Institute for more details:
I posted a satire today on Pornography Awareness Week (put on by Christian group that seems to want a Christian theocracy in the US) to GeekPress that does spend a paragraph or two on the effectiveness of filters.
I think that the folks at Slashdot missed the point of my article. And from what I have heard and read, the folks at Google don't quite get the problem. So I wrote up a response.
In particuar, it addresses two claims:
1. There are no good results to a search for Liv Tyler nude. (Google)
2. The scam doesn't yield good Google results on popular actresses. (Slashdot)
You can find the response, titled Still Scamming Google at GeekPress. For the sake of my Slashdotted server, I'm reprinting it below:
***
Still Scamming Google
The Case of Liv Tyler
My article on Scamming Google has some unexpected results. The most interesting is that the folks over at Google deny that the scam has any significant impact on the accuracy and usefulness of Google search results.
Slashdot, for example, quotes Google's CTO Craig Silverstein as saying that the Liv Tyler nude search doesn't, "as far as we can tell, have any good results -- in our spot check, for instance, we couldn't actually find any Web sites that show Liv Tyler in the nude. When there are no good results out there, Google's results can be somewhat arbitrary, so it's not particularly surprising this site was first."
As much as I love Google, I must disagree. I scoured through the first 30 results of the Liv Tyler Google to prove my point. Here are the results:
Index Pages: Most of the returned links were to the index page of a porn site, such as link #3 and link #6, both of which take you to the same JavaScript popup hell site. (I didn't bother checking the rest of these pages, because they obviously didn't have Liv Tyler nude on them.) These links are obviously not good Google results.
Scam Pages: Then there were the scam links, with fake discussions of Liv Tyler nude, such as link #1, link #2, link #4, and link #7. These links are also not good Google results.
Nude Liv: Google did, however, return some pages with Liv Tyler nude on them. The best page is probably link #5, which popped up after three scam pages and one index page. It has thumbnails of various movie shots of Liv Tyler in the buff. Link #25 and link #30 also has nude pictures of Liv. (I also noted two links somewhere between scam and the real thing, such as link #11 and link #21. These pages have non-nude pictures of Liv Tyler and a ton of links leading to various celebrity nude sites.
I also randomly checked a few of the low-ranked pages, with some unexpected results. For example, link #76 has a genuine discussion (!) of Liv Tyler's nude scene in Stealing Beauty. Link #116 has a nude picture along with a filmography. Link #174 is an Batman-ish erotic story with Liv Tyler playing "The Huntress." Link #192 and link #63 have fake nudes. Link #62 is a list of various Liv Tyler pages, some with a bundle of sexy images.
So, contrary to what the Google people say, there are good results for Liv Tyler nude. Google just isn't putting them at the top of the list.
Random Results?
But Google's problems do not end with the jumble of bad results for the Liv Tyler search. Google repeatedly puts the fake discussion pages of Nude Celebrity World News at the top of the search results in a huge number of searches for nude celebrities. But don't take my word for it. Google for yourself using the list of celebrities created by Nude Celebrity World News (modified to automatically search Google). You'll see the domains of www.jennifer-smith.com, www.news-in-review.com, www.find-thys.com, www.celebrity-locator.com, and www.celebrity-fans.com at the top of the list more often than "randomly."
Personally, I checked 50 of these searches, making sure to hit popular female celebrities like Meg Ryan and Heather Locklear. Here are my results:
3 searches yielded all top five search results (e.g. Kathy Bates).
9 searches yielded all top four search results (e.g. Bo Derrek).
16 searches yielded all top three search results (e.g. Linda Hamilton).
3 searches yielded both top two results (e.g. Lara Flynn Boyle).
1 search yielded the top result.
In all of the above searches, I just counted the set of top results, ignoring the matching results lower in the top ten.
These results are not random, as Google claims. Clearly, the sham discussion pages created by Nude Celebrity World News have worked their magic on Google. The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is in the search results.
So I stand behind my the point in my original article: Google has been fooled into repeatedly returning, as highly-placed results, pages which any human can identify as search engine spam.
***
About the Author
Diana Hsieh is the owner and co-editor of GeekPress, an irreverent filter for the most unique and interesting technical news of the day. She also sporadically writes and lectures on philosophy, Objectivism in particular. She can be reached via e-mail to diana@geekpress.com.
I'm sure that Applied Theory ruined them. Or -- at least -- it wasn't a good marriage.
print << EndRant
Here's my gripe: My husband had a shell+POP account with CRL for over six years. (Six years!) It was excellent service.
A few months ago, his brother (also a CRL account-holder) send him and a bunch of friends an e-mail saying that his CRL account is going down in a few days and that everyone will now be able to reach him at XYZ@atdial.net (an applied theory account). We asked him about it and were surprised to learn that all of the CRL accounts were being shut down.
My husband was *never notified* that his account was to be closed. Even his brother was only given 30 days notice; they weren't even planning to forward his e-mail to the new address after that 30 day period!
My husband called CRL. They told him there was nothing they could do. His e-mail address of 6 years was to be totally shut down in 5 days.
I decided to go on the warpath. I spent the next three days on the phone with both CRL and Applied Theory. It was insane. CRL said they couldn't do anything about the unix server being shut down. Applied Theory claimed that they "couldn't support" the Unix box, given that they were an MS shop. (Yeah, like it takes a lot to "support" a UNIX mail server that is forwarding mail for a bunch of customers.)
Anyway, apparently, my husband wasn't the only that no one notified about the change. They ended up getting so many angry calls that they did keep the machine up for a few more weeks and then forwarding mail for a while after that.
It was a total flog.
EndRant
My husband's account is now on my server. (I might have taken his last name, but he took my domain name!)
I've been thinking about how to make money from web sites lately, largely due to two fairly different sites I run.
First, there is olist.com, a site for people interested in Objectivism. I've been running some variant of this site since something like early 1995, without ever directly making a dime. But I did make money indirectly; I learned HTML in creating the site, which landed this poor philosophy major her first programming job.
In a month or so, I'm going to embark on a major project to create a new type of community-moderated "mailing list" through the olist.com site. I'm going to ask people for "donations" (non-tax-deductible) through PayPal, to compensate me somewhat for my time. I'm hoping that Objectivists, of all people, will be willing to pony up to have a high-quality discussion list again. (I might also be able to sell the software later, which would be great, as I'm sure donations won't even remotely cover the cost of creating the software.)
My other site is GeekPress, a tech news site. After creating the site, I realized that advertising and affiliate programs aren't going to cut it. Why? Banners suck. They suck up space and bandwidth. And their long-term viability as a source of revenue is doubtful. And affiliate programs just don't make enough revenue, unless the site is directly related to what's being sold (like my Nathaniel Branden site). So, I can ask for donations. Yeah, right.
But there is hope. Perhaps GeekPress can, as my Objectivism sites did, propel me into a related career. I have a strong background in analysis, writing, and public speaking from philosophy. I have, through maintaining GeekPress (or more precisely, by reading so much tech news that it makes my head spin), a pretty good grasp of where technology is headed, particularly given our legal and cultural climate. And I have noticed that people seem hungry, given the relentless speed of technology, to make sense of the changes happening as a result of new technology. So, if I can manage to spin out engaging and insightful analyses of tech news to be published elsewhere, I might be able to make some money. And that money will be, somewhat indirectly, the result of my work on GeekPress.
I'm sure that this "related career" model doesn't work for every free site out there. But it has surely made many a site developers a great deal of money, even if they don't quite realize it.
As my husband said on GeekPress: I hope this works better than MS's plug-n-pray.
One question: Will this get around the "where's the device driver?" problem that Linux faces? Or will every uPNP device still need a specifically developed Linux driver? (I suspect that later.)
Oh goody, now Costa Ricans can Make Money Fast, just like the rest of us!
The problems with this proposal is that it will suffer the same problems as any free good provided by the government.
It is not actually free. People will pay for it through taxes. People will also have to pay for all that lovely government bureaucracy that goes along with it. (That, according to David Friedman, makes government-provided services cost about twice as much as those provided by the private sector.)
If there's no pricing, there's no incentive for individuals to limit their own usage. The government will have to start rationing. So hardworking entrepreneurs trying to sell their wares on the net will get as much time as the slackers surfing for porn and wacking off. Perhaps even more time depending on how rational the rationing scheme is.
And let's not even talk about how wonderful tech support will be from a government agency!
Also, I wonder how much benefit raw internet access brings to people in a third world country. Anyone have any direct experience with this?
I was totally floored by the stupidity of the comments made by Madonna's and Warner Bros. They repeatedly talked about removing the single from "the site," as if the Napster web site is where the mp3 resides.
It's really too bad that Madonna has come out against Napster. Surely she, if anyone, should be able to find some way to use it to further her own fame.
Also, I wonder how much the single was really a work-in-progress, as the video was being shot in April, according to the Official Madonna Fan Club.
If only Microsoft would move to Canada, we'd finally get the the "Windows, eh?" edition.
GeekPress has a link to an inflamatory article on the horrible failures of the Slashdot moderation system. The criticisms are idiotic and off-base. Slashdot's method of moderation does far better than most. (It's not like these guys had an alternate, better method to propose.)
As for the postings of AC, it's a real pain to have to register before testing something out. But, the trolling is also a big nuisance. So who do you want to piss off more: new users and trolls or your regular posters and readers?
Actually, I'm on Win98 running Netscape 4. However, my display is at a high resolution (1280x1024) with small fonts. Nevertheless, it is quite rare for me to have any trouble reading text on the web. Perhaps it was due to the use of point sizes with Helvetica in the style sheet. (If I recall correctly, Helvetica doesn't come with Windows, although I happen to have it, so that might make me different from most Win98 configurations.)
Oh well, I just increased the font size instead of touching my nose to the monitor and squinting.
One reason, in my opinion, that politicians don't provide detailed content on their web sites about policy proposals is the concern that what they say will come back to bite them, a la "No New Taxes." Concrete policy proposals can be used against them once in office, for it is easier to measure someone's actions against written statements than soundbytes and speeches.
So, given this strong incentive to keep proposals vague, what other incentives can we offer politicians to pony up the details of their plans for us?
I'm just waiting for someone to make small computers that look like Campbell's soup cans, like the kind you can hide valuables in. You could have a whole network in your pantry cleverly hidden from anyone with a warrant.
Okay, so it's a bit absurd, but what isn't these days.
The./ summary hints at some potentially scary future as a result of the precedent set by this bill. Well, we already have worse incentive programs. Thanks to DARE, kids turn in their parents for smoking pot. Compared to that, the precedent set by hunting down spammers seems pretty benign.
Nevertheless, any program where people are rewarded for turning in other people for alleged misdeeds has a KGB aura to it, no doubt. But why should we be so suspicious if the misdeed is, in fact, A Bad Thing?
Well, we should be suspicious if it is only A Bad Thing and not An Evil Thing. SPAM is a pain, but it's just not on the same level as rape or murder. There is a real difference between giving someone an incentive to turn in their rapist neighbor vs their spamming neighbor. The law ought to see a difference between the magnitude of those two acts, rather than lumping them together as "lawbreakers."
Then again, if they'll let me hunt them spammers with my shotgun in hand, to hell with the precedents!:-)
Yikes, what is up with Slashdot?!? First, it's not accessible for days due to the DOS attack, and now I go to the main page and it's blank! Repeatedly! And the formatting is gone on other pages. (I must admit however, that my comment previews were loading a lot faster without all that extra crap.) What's the problem?
MS does indeed need some serious PR points these days. But it seems that the left hand of their legal department doesn't know what their right hand is doing. Or the left hand doesn't care. Or it is stupid. Or something.
Being a libertarian, I don't believe that anti-trust laws are a good thing at all. Most monopolies exist as a result of government mandate. In the case of other near-monopolies (such as Standard Oil), consumers didn't benefit at all by government intervention. (The price of oil rose, in fact.)
But really, MS has this absurd attitude of "I will do what I want, everyone but us be damned!" So really, waht Bill Gates needs is a good tuning up by Andy Sipowitz in some grungy interview room of the 15th squad.
The web site is pretty cool, perhaps better than what's-his-name, although those fonts are still too small. I was disappointed that the excerpts were so short. Why can't lengthier segments be published? Surely if the book is well-written and engaging, it will be an enticement, not a reason to forego buying the book!
Jeff, I programmed for a web design company in which design issues totally trumped more practical concerns like download time. (In one case, I was forced to create absurdly complex html tables just so that the designer could get his one-pixel rounded corners on his notecard design.) What do you see as the appropriate balance between aesthetics and practical usability?
P.S. That company is now out of business, thank goodness!
Given how terrible the site looks, I'm sure that it is not (a) backed by cable/tv networks nor (b) well-informed by a good legal department. More evidence that these people are clueless: I just left the site and got a popup exit window with more ads. All that's missing are the raunchy adult banners. Ick!
Neverthless, it is a kick-ass idea. Since I'm not into watching TV on my computer, I probably wouldn't be using it instead of my VCR, but it would come in handy often enough. What is preventing TV networks from rebroadcasting TV on the net right now? If you have to watch the commercials anyway, why not?
Before this is determined to be A Really Cool thing, more details are needed. If someone else modifies the code, will that source be released? And how enforcable is the non-commercial bit? In other words, if another company uses the code and doesn't release the source, how will anyone know that the B&w code was used commercially?
I do wonder about players in multi-player games tampering with the code to give them godly powers -- or at lest demi-godly powers. How will such tampering be prevented, if at all?
One philosophical question: At what point does a bad license make releasing source code for software A Bad Thing? (A Bad Thing for the original developers, users of the software, and the programmers making use of the source, that is.) Is the situation made worse by calling the software "open source"?
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, CSI isn't all that realistic. They get lots of details wrong. But most shows are unrealistic -- for the sake of making the story comprehensible to the average viewer.
For example, in ER, radiologists rarely have any role; the ER docs usually read their own x-rays, CTs, etc. In the death of Lucy Carter, they had the surgeons doing interventional radiology procedures. In Elizabeth's paralyzation of the surfer, no one other than a neurosurgeon would have ever performed such a procedure. And those are just the particularly egregious, memorable errors.
But to introduce extra people into the plot and explain their presence would have slowed down the plot excessively. And I suspect that most people don't notice. (My husband Paul is a radiologist, so he tends to note such things.)
So CSI doesn't strike me as all that unusual in its oversights, omissions, and errors. Any TV show will have serious inaccuracies which go unnoticed by most people, but are glaring errors to professionals.
It's not the Discovery channel; it's entertainment!
-- Diana Hsieh
It seems, then, that SimCity has a set of rules for how cities thrive that are (1) at odds with lots of people's political and economic beliefs about how cities thrive and (2) probably not very accurate.
These two issues are not the same, unless, of course, your political and economic views about how cities thrive are totally accurate.
-- Diana Hsieh
I'm just saying that SimCity has some questionable underlying premises. That is, after all, what this thread was about, no? The underlying premises of games?
Although, being a not remotely ideologically pure Objectivist myself, I have to agree with you about the Ideologically Pure Objectivists. Many are Really Scary(tm).
-- Diana Hsieh
Check out this review by the Ludwig von Mises Institute for more details:
http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control =280&sortorder=authorlast
Such statism does imply a zero-sum picture of the world. The pie, after all, is never increased by government tax-and-spend.
Personally, puzzle games are my favorite. The good ones are simple, easy-to-learn, and require a good grasp of logic. No hidden premises either!
-- Diana Hsieh
It's titled Celebrating Pornography Awareness Week.
One political example is worth mentioning here. Dan's Data did a test of Pornsweeper, which is supposed to filter images. This picture of George and Laura Bush was blocked. Filthy porno indeed!
-- Diana Hsieh
In particuar, it addresses two claims:
1. There are no good results to a search for Liv Tyler nude. (Google)
2. The scam doesn't yield good Google results on popular actresses. (Slashdot)
You can find the response, titled Still Scamming Google at GeekPress. For the sake of my Slashdotted server, I'm reprinting it below:
***
Still Scamming Google
The Case of Liv Tyler
My article on Scamming Google has some unexpected results. The most interesting is that the folks over at Google deny that the scam has any significant impact on the accuracy and usefulness of Google search results.
Slashdot, for example, quotes Google's CTO Craig Silverstein as saying that the Liv Tyler nude search doesn't, "as far as we can tell, have any good results -- in our spot check, for instance, we couldn't actually find any Web sites that show Liv Tyler in the nude. When there are no good results out there, Google's results can be somewhat arbitrary, so it's not particularly surprising this site was first."
As much as I love Google, I must disagree. I scoured through the first 30 results of the Liv Tyler Google to prove my point. Here are the results:
Index Pages: Most of the returned links were to the index page of a porn site, such as link #3 and link #6, both of which take you to the same JavaScript popup hell site. (I didn't bother checking the rest of these pages, because they obviously didn't have Liv Tyler nude on them.) These links are obviously not good Google results.
Scam Pages: Then there were the scam links, with fake discussions of Liv Tyler nude, such as link #1, link #2, link #4, and link #7. These links are also not good Google results.
Nude Liv: Google did, however, return some pages with Liv Tyler nude on them. The best page is probably link #5, which popped up after three scam pages and one index page. It has thumbnails of various movie shots of Liv Tyler in the buff. Link #25 and link #30 also has nude pictures of Liv. (I also noted two links somewhere between scam and the real thing, such as link #11 and link #21. These pages have non-nude pictures of Liv Tyler and a ton of links leading to various celebrity nude sites.
I also randomly checked a few of the low-ranked pages, with some unexpected results. For example, link #76 has a genuine discussion (!) of Liv Tyler's nude scene in Stealing Beauty. Link #116 has a nude picture along with a filmography. Link #174 is an Batman-ish erotic story with Liv Tyler playing "The Huntress." Link #192 and link #63 have fake nudes. Link #62 is a list of various Liv Tyler pages, some with a bundle of sexy images.
So, contrary to what the Google people say, there are good results for Liv Tyler nude. Google just isn't putting them at the top of the list.
Random Results?
But Google's problems do not end with the jumble of bad results for the Liv Tyler search. Google repeatedly puts the fake discussion pages of Nude Celebrity World News at the top of the search results in a huge number of searches for nude celebrities. But don't take my word for it. Google for yourself using the list of celebrities created by Nude Celebrity World News (modified to automatically search Google). You'll see the domains of www.jennifer-smith.com, www.news-in-review.com, www.find-thys.com, www.celebrity-locator.com, and www.celebrity-fans.com at the top of the list more often than "randomly."
Personally, I checked 50 of these searches, making sure to hit popular female celebrities like Meg Ryan and Heather Locklear. Here are my results:
3 searches yielded all top five search results (e.g. Kathy Bates).
9 searches yielded all top four search results (e.g. Bo Derrek).
16 searches yielded all top three search results (e.g. Linda Hamilton).
3 searches yielded both top two results (e.g. Lara Flynn Boyle).
1 search yielded the top result.
In all of the above searches, I just counted the set of top results, ignoring the matching results lower in the top ten.
Most importantly, however, is the fact that 16 searches for popular celebrities had at least one result in the top 10 (e.g. Toni Braxton, Janet Jackson, Nicole Kidman, Meg Ryan, Heather Locklear, Alicia Silverstone, and Sandra Bullock).
Only 2 searches did not yield any results in the top ten: Demi Moore and Jennifer Lopez.
These results are not random, as Google claims. Clearly, the sham discussion pages created by Nude Celebrity World News have worked their magic on Google. The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is in the search results.
So I stand behind my the point in my original article: Google has been fooled into repeatedly returning, as highly-placed results, pages which any human can identify as search engine spam.
***
About the Author
Diana Hsieh is the owner and co-editor of GeekPress, an irreverent filter for the most unique and interesting technical news of the day. She also sporadically writes and lectures on philosophy, Objectivism in particular. She can be reached via e-mail to diana@geekpress.com.
© 2000 Diana Hsieh. Permission to reprint will be granted upon request.
-- Diana Hsieh
print << EndRant
Here's my gripe: My husband had a shell+POP account with CRL for over six years. (Six years!) It was excellent service.
A few months ago, his brother (also a CRL account-holder) send him and a bunch of friends an e-mail saying that his CRL account is going down in a few days and that everyone will now be able to reach him at XYZ@atdial.net (an applied theory account). We asked him about it and were surprised to learn that all of the CRL accounts were being shut down.
My husband was *never notified* that his account was to be closed. Even his brother was only given 30 days notice; they weren't even planning to forward his e-mail to the new address after that 30 day period!
My husband called CRL. They told him there was nothing they could do. His e-mail address of 6 years was to be totally shut down in 5 days.
I decided to go on the warpath. I spent the next three days on the phone with both CRL and Applied Theory. It was insane. CRL said they couldn't do anything about the unix server being shut down. Applied Theory claimed that they "couldn't support" the Unix box, given that they were an MS shop. (Yeah, like it takes a lot to "support" a UNIX mail server that is forwarding mail for a bunch of customers.)
Anyway, apparently, my husband wasn't the only that no one notified about the change. They ended up getting so many angry calls that they did keep the machine up for a few more weeks and then forwarding mail for a while after that.
It was a total flog.
EndRant
My husband's account is now on my server. (I might have taken his last name, but he took my domain name!)
-- Diana Hsieh
I've been thinking about how to make money from web sites lately, largely due to two fairly different sites I run.
First, there is olist.com, a site for people interested in Objectivism. I've been running some variant of this site since something like early 1995, without ever directly making a dime. But I did make money indirectly; I learned HTML in creating the site, which landed this poor philosophy major her first programming job.
In a month or so, I'm going to embark on a major project to create a new type of community-moderated "mailing list" through the olist.com site. I'm going to ask people for "donations" (non-tax-deductible) through PayPal, to compensate me somewhat for my time. I'm hoping that Objectivists, of all people, will be willing to pony up to have a high-quality discussion list again. (I might also be able to sell the software later, which would be great, as I'm sure donations won't even remotely cover the cost of creating the software.)
My other site is GeekPress, a tech news site. After creating the site, I realized that advertising and affiliate programs aren't going to cut it. Why? Banners suck. They suck up space and bandwidth. And their long-term viability as a source of revenue is doubtful. And affiliate programs just don't make enough revenue, unless the site is directly related to what's being sold (like my Nathaniel Branden site). So, I can ask for donations. Yeah, right.
But there is hope. Perhaps GeekPress can, as my Objectivism sites did, propel me into a related career. I have a strong background in analysis, writing, and public speaking from philosophy. I have, through maintaining GeekPress (or more precisely, by reading so much tech news that it makes my head spin), a pretty good grasp of where technology is headed, particularly given our legal and cultural climate. And I have noticed that people seem hungry, given the relentless speed of technology, to make sense of the changes happening as a result of new technology. So, if I can manage to spin out engaging and insightful analyses of tech news to be published elsewhere, I might be able to make some money. And that money will be, somewhat indirectly, the result of my work on GeekPress.
I'm sure that this "related career" model doesn't work for every free site out there. But it has surely made many a site developers a great deal of money, even if they don't quite realize it.
-- Diana Hsieh
One question: Will this get around the "where's the device driver?" problem that Linux faces? Or will every uPNP device still need a specifically developed Linux driver? (I suspect that later.)
-- Diana Hsieh
I can think of a number of delightfully mean things to do with such software.
1. If you type your Smashing Pumpkins passphrase in too perkily, the program forces you to listen to Brittney Spears instead.
2. If you make a spelling error in your passphrase, you have to listen to Hason's "Mmm-bop" at least 4 times.
3. If you type too slowly, you have to listen to Leonard Nimoy's redition of Proud Mary -- but only once.
4. If your passphrase isn't politically correct, you have to listen to a Tracy Chapman song before your perferred choice.
5. All other errors require the playing of Motley Crue at the highest possible volume.
-- Diana Hsieh
This is old news! It was up on GeekPress yesterday afternoon! Still, it is pretty cool, even if horribly outdated by about 36 hours.
-- Diana Hsieh
The problems with this proposal is that it will suffer the same problems as any free good provided by the government.
Also, I wonder how much benefit raw internet access brings to people in a third world country. Anyone have any direct experience with this?
Why doesn't Costa Rica do something cool like a rebel outpost on the fringes of cyberspace?
-- Diana Hsieh
It's really too bad that Madonna has come out against Napster. Surely she, if anyone, should be able to find some way to use it to further her own fame.
Also, I wonder how much the single was really a work-in-progress, as the video was being shot in April, according to the Official Madonna Fan Club.
If only Microsoft would move to Canada, we'd finally get the the "Windows, eh?" edition.
-- Diana Hsieh
As for the postings of AC, it's a real pain to have to register before testing something out. But, the trolling is also a big nuisance. So who do you want to piss off more: new users and trolls or your regular posters and readers?
-- Diana Hsieh
Oh well, I just increased the font size instead of touching my nose to the monitor and squinting.
-- Diana Hsieh
So, given this strong incentive to keep proposals vague, what other incentives can we offer politicians to pony up the details of their plans for us?
And boy, was that ever a small font!
-- Diana Hsieh
Okay, so it's a bit absurd, but what isn't these days.
-- Diana Hsieh
Nevertheless, any program where people are rewarded for turning in other people for alleged misdeeds has a KGB aura to it, no doubt. But why should we be so suspicious if the misdeed is, in fact, A Bad Thing?
Well, we should be suspicious if it is only A Bad Thing and not An Evil Thing. SPAM is a pain, but it's just not on the same level as rape or murder. There is a real difference between giving someone an incentive to turn in their rapist neighbor vs their spamming neighbor. The law ought to see a difference between the magnitude of those two acts, rather than lumping them together as "lawbreakers."
Then again, if they'll let me hunt them spammers with my shotgun in hand, to hell with the precedents! :-)
-- Diana Hsieh
How are we supposed to waste time if Slashdot isn't up? All the more reason to go waste time at GeekPress, as was suggested during the DOS. After all, Slashdot doesn't have this rich story: Zero Gravity Sex Film Up For Award.
-- Diana Hsieh
Come out, come out, wherever you are!
-- Diana Hsieh
Being a libertarian, I don't believe that anti-trust laws are a good thing at all. Most monopolies exist as a result of government mandate. In the case of other near-monopolies (such as Standard Oil), consumers didn't benefit at all by government intervention. (The price of oil rose, in fact.)
But really, MS has this absurd attitude of "I will do what I want, everyone but us be damned!" So really, waht Bill Gates needs is a good tuning up by Andy Sipowitz in some grungy interview room of the 15th squad.
Cool stuff on GeekPress: Chinese engineer wins site's jackpot, but collecting is tricky / How to Hack a Bank / Helmet o'Death, Almost
-- Diana Hsieh
Cool stuff on GeekPress: How to Hack a Bank / Helmet o'Death, Almost
-- Diana Hsieh
Jeff, I programmed for a web design company in which design issues totally trumped more practical concerns like download time. (In one case, I was forced to create absurdly complex html tables just so that the designer could get his one-pixel rounded corners on his notecard design.) What do you see as the appropriate balance between aesthetics and practical usability?
P.S. That company is now out of business, thank goodness!
-- Diana Hsieh
Neverthless, it is a kick-ass idea. Since I'm not into watching TV on my computer, I probably wouldn't be using it instead of my VCR, but it would come in handy often enough. What is preventing TV networks from rebroadcasting TV on the net right now? If you have to watch the commercials anyway, why not?
On an unrelated note, GeekPress has a story on how the Air Force had secret plans to nuke the moon.
-- Diana Hsieh
I do wonder about players in multi-player games tampering with the code to give them godly powers -- or at lest demi-godly powers. How will such tampering be prevented, if at all?
One philosophical question: At what point does a bad license make releasing source code for software A Bad Thing? (A Bad Thing for the original developers, users of the software, and the programmers making use of the source, that is.) Is the situation made worse by calling the software "open source"?
-- Diana Hsieh