Adverts work by either appeal or by being annoying.
Proof of working by being annoying?
One way that ads are meant to appeal is to portray a lifestyle (as this Apple ad does) which viewers (or at least some of them) wish to be a part of, or consider themselves a part of already. And they are kidded that just buying this stuff will be the entry ticket to that lifestyle and its image.
However, many ads display a lifestyle (like the one Apple ad does) that many do not wish to be part of. I (or anyone else not living in the Amazon jungle) don't need any more Apple ads to make me aware of Apple's existence, and every ad I see for them only makes me want to distance myself further from their lifestyle - and many find likewise. After seeing ads like this I would be ashamed to be seen with any Apple stuff. So it does not work on people who find it annoying, even if it does work on those other people who find it cute.
Remember the majority of guys here are from the USA, where most railways technically are far behind the rest of the world. You can tell from some of their comments that many of them have very little idea about the working of modern railways.
True, but they're generally on a closed line with a central point of control and don't share rails with driver-operated trains who rely on signals
Automated trains will also have a central point of control and obey signals. You cannot have SD car type radar or visual scanning ahead because trains need to begin braking long before a previous train ahead becomes visible.
So it makes no difference, since train drivers normally act as automatons anyway. They obey signals (which come up inside the cabs of many modern trains on modern lines - even if lineside ones are still there for older trains), and if they don't the brakes will apply automatically anyway if the situation requires. Drivers only need to make significant decisions in emergencies like supervising train evacuation. Incidentally, I have driven trains as a test engineer.
London Underground's Victoria line has been operating automatically for the last 50 years, although an operator is present, really only for passenger re-assurance and to keep the union happy.
Hence train driving is crying out for automation; almost all the infrastructure electronics is there already on modern lines.
You're talking about an industry that was (in some places) still using coal-fired steam engines until the 1980's. You have to adjust your perspective to match the train system's general antiquity.
LoL, what country are you posting from? Sounds like either Mozambique or the USA - am I right?
In my first test of Amazon Go this past week, my elapsed time in the store was exactly 23 seconds
WTF did he buy? Sometimes it takes me 5 minutes to find just one particular item in my supermarket. Even though I use the same place every week, they are always moving stuff around according to season, or it seems at the whim of the manager.
In what universe is this even arguably News for Nerds?" Is there any "nerd" anywhere who takes flat-eartherism seriously?
You don't have to take flat-earthism seriously in order to take an interest in this. For one thing it offers a demonstration of a type of psychology, and that's science in itself. It also promises to be an entertaining show, even for nerds, and possibly a recorded coverage of a Dawin Award being won, as most of them do not get coverage at the time.
This attention whore [is] suddenly a passionate proponent of an idea so fundamentally idiotic, so stubbornly anti-scientific, so willfully blind to all the scientific evidence since at least as early as the 13th century
LoL, you protest too much; so much it sounds like you are the one taking the threat to the established view of a round earth seriously - by appealing to evidence for it. Since the 13th century eh? So did you find that by Googling for evidence that it was indeed round because you needed the re-assurance yourself?
That would be great except this dipshit has been making the same bullshit claims for months.
The reason he has been making the claims "for months" is that he was going to do it months ago (last November) but was banned from doing it. I've no doubt he would have done it because he has made rocket flights before, and will do this one too if he is not banned again.
I've never understood why some distros are based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian, rather than directly on Debian. Why not cut out the middleman, especially when that middleman has some wierd ideas?
Sounds like the only difference between these and a cruise missile is the speed, and maybe the height. I should think they are easy to down if you prepare for them with radar controlled Gatling guns.
In WW2 Germany used V1 "cruise missiles" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... against Allied territory, particularly London. While they were an initial shock, they became easy targets to AA guns equiped with a mechanical computer called a "Predictor" - the gunner optically tracked their path for a few seconds than fired. The only problem was the Predictor operator seeing the V1 in the dark, but not a problem with radar.
I mean, I hope they got paid. If they didn't get paid to run this blatant advertisement for snake oil, they got ripped off.
Don't be so stupid. To me this is the most interesting story of today - it was entertaining to read about someone digging up a corpse of a discredited psycopath and trying to make a walking zombie out of it.
You really found the article to read like an advertisement? Almost every word put me off.
It's simply another way of meeting someone. It is no better or worse than going to a social or a bar or even a connect through a friend.
I never had any friends who were so overloaded with girls that they wanted to hand any out to other guys:-( I'mnot sure what you mean by a "social" either - did you mean family funerals which were the only "socials" I was ever invited to.
I have never tried eHarmony. But I did meet my girlfriend of the past 6 years on OK cupid. But I would hardly call online dating websites scientific. I would say it comes down more to luck
Of couse it comes down to luck. It is luck if you find someone you hit it off with whether you meet them through a dating agency or elsewhere. The point is whether there is a better chance of good luck with the agency. But luck can be analysed scientifically - for example science tells us that the chance of getting a six on a dice throw is 1 in 6, whether by analysis of the cube or by statistical counting. eHarmony could bring science into it by doing statistical analysis, but maybe the problem here is that they have not.
While it may be difficult to analyse, to me it seems bleedin' obvious that you are more likely to hit off with someone you meet through an agency than in a singles bar or public dance, say. At least you are more likely to know some basic facts about the agency date, for example the city where they live, interests, education etc, and you have already seen enough about each other that in agreeing to meet both of you already "agree" that things have potential. They can tell lies of course, but so can someone you meet in a singles bar.
In my case statistically I was infinitely more likely to meet someone through an agency, because I "met" (if you call it that) zero girls outside it, or rather any circumsatnces in which girls were present they were outnumbered by guys in a ratio of at leat 5:1, so there were always guys present who were more charming and entertaining than I am. Girls I tried approaching at dances told me to get lost, I've no idea why, I'm not bad looking. OTOH I met several dozen girls through agencies of which there were about six I could have settled with (and did with one), including an ex-Playboy Club Bunny Girl believe it or not (but not as sexy as you might be thinking).
Does it account for all the nice cars being in a garage and invisible to street view?
Well I suppose they could combine it with Satellite View and assume there are nice cars in the garages they see. But then they could just forget about the cars and assess people's votes on what their houses look like in Satellite View. Or they could even (gasp!) just count the ballot papers to see how people voted.
Not sure I'm seeing the point of this. Is the idea to replace voting with scanning the cars in the streets? I suppose the results would be just as meaningful.
I think [monorails] are a great idea (cheap mass transit removed from the danger of collision with individual and freight transport)
I don't know why on earth you think that monorails as a type should be removed from the danger of collision. As soon as you have more than one vehicle on a system there is a collision possibility, whether it is a monorail, conventional rail, light rail, road, sea or air. Maybe the Las Vegas system (being short) has only one train running on it at any time (I don't know), but that will not be viable for a longer system.
In fact the one-vehicle-on-a-system approach was used a lot in conventional rail systems in the past, and still to some extent today, particularly on single-line branch and freight lines where there might be only a one train per hour service anyway. In steam days it was called "One engine in steam", and while the branch was connected to the main line with points (= US "swiches"), those points used to be literally padlocked by the signalman against running through except for occasions like when the branch loco needed to go off to the main works for overhauls. Today the locking will be done electronically from the line control centre.
Years ago I saw a video of a track switch operating on the Tokyo Haneda Line.... Monorail track is incredibly simple - either a single iron rail or else in the case of, say, Disneyland, just an extruded block of concrete. Still, you can make movable blocks of concrete, with curved cuts in them to make a smooth switch surface.
Nothing is quite as simple as it looks. Of course monorail switches ("points" in English) can be made, and are, but in the case of straddling monorails at least, they are larger and more expensive than conventional two-rail track switches. Generally, a massive section of the beam must be rolled aside and replaced with the alternative one that routes in the other direction.
No you work with intelligent hardworking people who are starved for human physical contact and affection. So badly that they have to pay someone to pretend.... Some like me are able to overcome this and retain their dignity but it takes years of mental discipline.... Meanwhile, violent, stupid and abusive people seem to have no problem attracting people to love them and have sex with them..... Welcome to the human condition.
The situation is aggravated by modern Western society, in which many women have turned their backs on men, possibly to pursue a career, and/or possibly after a brief romantic fling and a child. A Jock (one of your "violent, stupid and abusive people") can get a girl pregnant and thereafter she drops out of the dating game, maybe for good, but the Jock is back in the game the very next day. Add to that the the lop-sided sex ratio in immigrants (there was a discussion of the ratio in Indian H-1B here a while ago).
It leaves a significant shortfall in the number of women for the number of men in what, for the sake of a term, I shall call the dating game. Yet the sex drive in men is generally far more compelling than that in women. It is no wonder that Western men go on sex tours to Thailand etc, visit brothels at home, and buy Thai brides to a greater extent than ever before.
I think if I had my time again I would try to get to know some of those trafficked girls, pick a nice one, and invite her to do a flit with me. Would that lack compassion?. I sure would not bother with Western women again, they have become spoiled.
Slashdot Mirror
So if I see a guy with Google glasses I'll know it's Jason Levine. Who else would be wearing them?
People live in... England..... Bad teeth to boot.
I believe you are confusing it with Japan,
I expect it was the girl herself. They always do that to me too, or else a handbag in the teeth.
Adverts work by either appeal or by being annoying.
Proof of working by being annoying?
One way that ads are meant to appeal is to portray a lifestyle (as this Apple ad does) which viewers (or at least some of them) wish to be a part of, or consider themselves a part of already. And they are kidded that just buying this stuff will be the entry ticket to that lifestyle and its image.
However, many ads display a lifestyle (like the one Apple ad does) that many do not wish to be part of. I (or anyone else not living in the Amazon jungle) don't need any more Apple ads to make me aware of Apple's existence, and every ad I see for them only makes me want to distance myself further from their lifestyle - and many find likewise. After seeing ads like this I would be ashamed to be seen with any Apple stuff. So it does not work on people who find it annoying, even if it does work on those other people who find it cute.
H G Wells predicted this in "The Time Machine" :-
Eloi : Apple users
Morlocks : Nerd and geeks
Remember the majority of guys here are from the USA, where most railways technically are far behind the rest of the world. You can tell from some of their comments that many of them have very little idea about the working of modern railways.
True, but they're generally on a closed line with a central point of control and don't share rails with driver-operated trains who rely on signals
Automated trains will also have a central point of control and obey signals. You cannot have SD car type radar or visual scanning ahead because trains need to begin braking long before a previous train ahead becomes visible.
So it makes no difference, since train drivers normally act as automatons anyway. They obey signals (which come up inside the cabs of many modern trains on modern lines - even if lineside ones are still there for older trains), and if they don't the brakes will apply automatically anyway if the situation requires. Drivers only need to make significant decisions in emergencies like supervising train evacuation. Incidentally, I have driven trains as a test engineer.
London Underground's Victoria line has been operating automatically for the last 50 years, although an operator is present, really only for passenger re-assurance and to keep the union happy.
Hence train driving is crying out for automation; almost all the infrastructure electronics is there already on modern lines.
You're talking about an industry that was (in some places) still using coal-fired steam engines until the 1980's. You have to adjust your perspective to match the train system's general antiquity.
LoL, what country are you posting from? Sounds like either Mozambique or the USA - am I right?
Who identified themselves withthe gorillas?
FTFA :-
In my first test of Amazon Go this past week, my elapsed time in the store was exactly 23 seconds
WTF did he buy? Sometimes it takes me 5 minutes to find just one particular item in my supermarket. Even though I use the same place every week, they are always moving stuff around according to season, or it seems at the whim of the manager.
OK: "Alexa, how many bags of dried beans weigh precisely the same as a 750ml bottle of Courvoisier?"
Buy one first, go home, weigh it, prepare bean bag, return for another. BOGOF.
In what universe is this even arguably News for Nerds?" Is there any "nerd" anywhere who takes flat-eartherism seriously?
You don't have to take flat-earthism seriously in order to take an interest in this. For one thing it offers a demonstration of a type of psychology, and that's science in itself. It also promises to be an entertaining show, even for nerds, and possibly a recorded coverage of a Dawin Award being won, as most of them do not get coverage at the time.
This attention whore [is] suddenly a passionate proponent of an idea so fundamentally idiotic, so stubbornly anti-scientific, so willfully blind to all the scientific evidence since at least as early as the 13th century
LoL, you protest too much; so much it sounds like you are the one taking the threat to the established view of a round earth seriously - by appealing to evidence for it. Since the 13th century eh? So did you find that by Googling for evidence that it was indeed round because you needed the re-assurance yourself?
That would be great except this dipshit has been making the same bullshit claims for months.
The reason he has been making the claims "for months" is that he was going to do it months ago (last November) but was banned from doing it. I've no doubt he would have done it because he has made rocket flights before, and will do this one too if he is not banned again.
Seriously, can we stop covering this asshole?
Yes, when he has killed himself.
I've never understood why some distros are based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian, rather than directly on Debian. Why not cut out the middleman, especially when that middleman has some wierd ideas?
Sounds like the only difference between these and a cruise missile is the speed, and maybe the height. I should think they are easy to down if you prepare for them with radar controlled Gatling guns.
In WW2 Germany used V1 "cruise missiles" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... against Allied territory, particularly London. While they were an initial shock, they became easy targets to AA guns equiped with a mechanical computer called a "Predictor" - the gunner optically tracked their path for a few seconds than fired. The only problem was the Predictor operator seeing the V1 in the dark, but not a problem with radar.
I mean, I hope they got paid. If they didn't get paid to run this blatant advertisement for snake oil, they got ripped off.
Don't be so stupid. To me this is the most interesting story of today - it was entertaining to read about someone digging up a corpse of a discredited psycopath and trying to make a walking zombie out of it.
You really found the article to read like an advertisement? Almost every word put me off.
I'm trying to understand the price/value issue in play here.
You read it right : a billion Indians are worth $8
It's simply another way of meeting someone. It is no better or worse than going to a social or a bar or even a connect through a friend.
I never had any friends who were so overloaded with girls that they wanted to hand any out to other guys :-( I'mnot sure what you mean by a "social" either - did you mean family funerals which were the only "socials" I was ever invited to.
I have never tried eHarmony. But I did meet my girlfriend of the past 6 years on OK cupid. But I would hardly call online dating websites scientific. I would say it comes down more to luck
Of couse it comes down to luck. It is luck if you find someone you hit it off with whether you meet them through a dating agency or elsewhere. The point is whether there is a better chance of good luck with the agency. But luck can be analysed scientifically - for example science tells us that the chance of getting a six on a dice throw is 1 in 6, whether by analysis of the cube or by statistical counting. eHarmony could bring science into it by doing statistical analysis, but maybe the problem here is that they have not.
While it may be difficult to analyse, to me it seems bleedin' obvious that you are more likely to hit off with someone you meet through an agency than in a singles bar or public dance, say. At least you are more likely to know some basic facts about the agency date, for example the city where they live, interests, education etc, and you have already seen enough about each other that in agreeing to meet both of you already "agree" that things have potential. They can tell lies of course, but so can someone you meet in a singles bar.
In my case statistically I was infinitely more likely to meet someone through an agency, because I "met" (if you call it that) zero girls outside it, or rather any circumsatnces in which girls were present they were outnumbered by guys in a ratio of at leat 5:1, so there were always guys present who were more charming and entertaining than I am. Girls I tried approaching at dances told me to get lost, I've no idea why, I'm not bad looking. OTOH I met several dozen girls through agencies of which there were about six I could have settled with (and did with one), including an ex-Playboy Club Bunny Girl believe it or not (but not as sexy as you might be thinking).
Is there a survey form I could fill in?
You're forgetting this is the UK we're talking about.... .... red tape, lots and lots of red tape.
It's not red tape anymore. It's green tape.
Does it account for all the nice cars being in a garage and invisible to street view?
Well I suppose they could combine it with Satellite View and assume there are nice cars in the garages they see. But then they could just forget about the cars and assess people's votes on what their houses look like in Satellite View. Or they could even (gasp!) just count the ballot papers to see how people voted.
Not sure I'm seeing the point of this. Is the idea to replace voting with scanning the cars in the streets? I suppose the results would be just as meaningful.
I think [monorails] are a great idea (cheap mass transit removed from the danger of collision with individual and freight transport)
I don't know why on earth you think that monorails as a type should be removed from the danger of collision. As soon as you have more than one vehicle on a system there is a collision possibility, whether it is a monorail, conventional rail, light rail, road, sea or air. Maybe the Las Vegas system (being short) has only one train running on it at any time (I don't know), but that will not be viable for a longer system.
In fact the one-vehicle-on-a-system approach was used a lot in conventional rail systems in the past, and still to some extent today, particularly on single-line branch and freight lines where there might be only a one train per hour service anyway. In steam days it was called "One engine in steam", and while the branch was connected to the main line with points (= US "swiches"), those points used to be literally padlocked by the signalman against running through except for occasions like when the branch loco needed to go off to the main works for overhauls. Today the locking will be done electronically from the line control centre.
Years ago I saw a video of a track switch operating on the Tokyo Haneda Line.... Monorail track is incredibly simple - either a single iron rail or else in the case of, say, Disneyland, just an extruded block of concrete. Still, you can make movable blocks of concrete, with curved cuts in them to make a smooth switch surface.
Nothing is quite as simple as it looks. Of course monorail switches ("points" in English) can be made, and are, but in the case of straddling monorails at least, they are larger and more expensive than conventional two-rail track switches. Generally, a massive section of the beam must be rolled aside and replaced with the alternative one that routes in the other direction.
No you work with intelligent hardworking people who are starved for human physical contact and affection. So badly that they have to pay someone to pretend.... Some like me are able to overcome this and retain their dignity but it takes years of mental discipline .... Meanwhile, violent, stupid and abusive people seem to have no problem attracting people to love them and have sex with them..... Welcome to the human condition.
The situation is aggravated by modern Western society, in which many women have turned their backs on men, possibly to pursue a career, and/or possibly after a brief romantic fling and a child. A Jock (one of your "violent, stupid and abusive people") can get a girl pregnant and thereafter she drops out of the dating game, maybe for good, but the Jock is back in the game the very next day. Add to that the the lop-sided sex ratio in immigrants (there was a discussion of the ratio in Indian H-1B here a while ago).
It leaves a significant shortfall in the number of women for the number of men in what, for the sake of a term, I shall call the dating game. Yet the sex drive in men is generally far more compelling than that in women. It is no wonder that Western men go on sex tours to Thailand etc, visit brothels at home, and buy Thai brides to a greater extent than ever before.
I think if I had my time again I would try to get to know some of those trafficked girls, pick a nice one, and invite her to do a flit with me. Would that lack compassion?. I sure would not bother with Western women again, they have become spoiled.