A real world cash card that allows gamers to spend money earned in a virtual universe has been launched. Gamers can use the card at cash machines around the world to convert virtual dollars into real currency.
Er, forgive my leap to conclusions here, but isn't this basically gambling?
"Yeah, I converted my cash into this 'virtual money' they call 'chips'. It's fabulous, this place called a 'casino' has its own virtual economy! I can go to different parts and perform 'business transactions' that can make me virtual money (or lose virtual money, of course). Then, I can convert my virtual money back into real money! It's amazing!"
Re:Extranets, vertical markets, gov't sites
on
Explorer Destroyer
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For the life of me I can't figure out why as a site manager you would want to make users think they have fewer options than you're actually providing them.
Simple. An "IE preferred" message simply means "tested in IE". It might work in Firefox, but not too many people are willing to go out of their way to test in every browser in existence. Heck, I test in Firefox because I use it (and it's gained some popularity), but I never test on a Mac. It's simply too small of a segment, and I'm not about to buy a Mac just to test with it.
Re:Annoyance as a marketing technique?
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Why not? You'll put it in your mouth and eat it, you sick fat fucks.
Mmmm... meeeaaat. I prefer cooked rather than bloody, to be honest, but I do like it medium rare. I suppose I'd eat it bloody in a pinch, though. Of course, eating bloody meat is much more of gratifying sensual experience than wearing a bloody skin.
Re:Annoyance as a marketing technique?
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feel comfortable wearing a bunny fir coat that still drips with their blood?
I just find it really amusing that you think that normal meat-eating people WOULD feel comfortable wearing a piece of fur dripping with blood.
Re:Annoyance as a marketing technique?
on
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How many times have you come across a website which, in stead of giving you content, advised you to update your IE to 5.0 or higher?
Um, never? Can you point me to a few of these? I use Firefox all the time and have NEVER encountered one. Yes, not once.
(And yes, I'm sure there's at least one out there, but I think this is a huge urban legend that it's some pervasive problem)
Yeah, that's the Steve we know -- thinking small as usual.
Yep. He's certainly content to make those tiny little "boutique" movies, and let big ol' Disney have the lion's share of the family movie market. That's our Steve -- I'm sure he would find it insulting if his movies made a lot of money.
PVRs already provide all the benefits you mention, without shipping discs around. I record the program when it is aired, then I can play it whenever I want, however many times. I copy it to my laptop for long flights. What does disc vs network delivery have to do with it?
So let me get this straight. You'd rather:
1) Have someone have to have a PVR, a $1000 computer, software, and go to all the trouble to burn a DVD...
...rather than...
Buy a $50 DVD player or $120 Portable DVD player, and a professionally burned DVD that comes with a nice case?
Yeah, the people who hate dealing with technology (the other 98% of the population) are really going to go for that plan.
I think I made the joke too subtle or something. *sigh* I was alluding to the fact that our muscle neurons already control video games, just with a mechanical interface instead of electrical.
Your brain stimulates the muscle nerves to move the muscles. So would you propose disconnecting them from the muscles to use them to control a video game?
What you can measure from an EEG is the sum of all the neurons in your cortex firing all the time.
If only there were some way of connecting the video game controller directly into certain neural pathways. Simply by thinking about, we could stimulate those pathways and control the game. Maybe there's some way we could piggy back onto existing neural connections... in fact, given that much of our neurology is connected to our masculature system, I wonder if there was some way we could tap into that. Like, when our brain stimulated these "muscle nerves", we could have that activate the controller in some direct way.
Nah, sorry. I'm getting waaaaaaay too blue sky here.
I'd understand it if you were a boss ('how dare those workers get 6 weeks off') - but you're not - you're a working dude too. So why do you do it?
I don't know about anyone else, but I mock it because it's so obviously unsustainable in the long run. "Free" health care that means waiting endless amounts of time for routine surgeries. A work force that gets so spoiled that they riot in France because they're not given a job for life!
French, German and British workers' productivity per hour worked is way higher than American workers' productivity per hour worked. We earn more money too, for less work.
Uh, no. Sorry, but the US has the most productive people in the world, along with highest per-capita income among comparable countries (certain middle eastern countries have a higher per-capita for obvious reasons). I don't feel like looking up the stats.
What gives? Why so down on lots of time off and 35 hour working week?
It really comes down to freedom. Most people in the US don't believe in the government coming in and telling everyone how to run their business. A lot of people dream here of owning their own business, and when we imagine that day, we certainly don't want to imagine not being able to fire some slacker anytime we want to.
Sure, there are people who desire the government to establish the "right to slack", but most reasonable people see that it's a bad long-term policy (though that wisdom is getting diluted all the time, sadly).
Your economy is totally fucked and you're about to be overtaken by China (who you're already in hock to for 400 trillion USD)
Yeah, yeah. Every decade it's another country that's going to "overtake" us, whatever that means. Last time it was Japan, with their Government/Business "partnerships". Somehow, the US always manages to come out ahead. You know why? Because we let things fail. We believe in shedding the blood of capitalism and coming out stronger afterward.
But it wasn't invented [wikipedia.org], it's a wildebeest.
I didn't mean "invented" as in created the word from nothing, I just meant the name they picked. And yes, it would've been a stupid name even without the stupid pronunciation, but the added syllable just proves how brainless they are about P.R.
And let's not forget there are plenty of stupid names for succesful, commercial software. [snip bad examples]
You seem to be confusing "literal names" with "good names". What makes a good name isn't that it literally means what it does, it's that it 1) sounds good, and 2) doesn't have negative connotations, and 3) isn't hard to say. It's a bonus if it even vaguely resembles what it does. Lotus Notes, Oracle and Excel all have vague connotations of what they do, but more importantly, there is nothing offensive about them, and they're easy to say and remember.
Compare to some of the popular names in Open Source. GIMP. Gnu (Gah-nu, the absolutely STUPIDEST name and pronounciation ever invented, and that goes for all their programs with the 'g' prefix). Ultra Monkey is right in line with traditional stupid naming.
An alternative explanation is that you're just not funny. But you're the Reality Master. What do I know?
Actually, no. That alternative explanation doesn't work in this case. There's recognizing a joke, and then there's evaluating the joke. My joke may or may not have been funny (it was, actually, but that's tangential to the point), but you failed to even recognize that an attempt at humor was involved.
The distinction is subtle, I admit, but that's what the Reality Master does. He tries to lift and educate the masses. No need to thank me.
Isn't part of OSX's appeal that it runs flawlessly?
Well, let's not get crazy. But anyway...
And isn't that because OSX is specifically tuned for its hardware?
No. Apple people believe this for some reason, but Apple hardware was mostly identical to everyone else's hardware in this past, and that's even more true now that it's Intel. The difference is really the Unix core.
How well would it run on generic hardware?
Identical.
Sure, if you go out and buy a crappy hardware card, it could potentially cause some problems, the same as the Windows world. But if you stuck to mainstream hardware, you'd have exactly the same experience.
Yeah, I tried that with you before, and didn't get anywhere. [...] So, I'll just leave it at, "You're full of crap", and let the reader fill in the details.
Hmmm, sounds like I won the argument last time, too.:D
You're getting awful good at this proof by assertion thing.
Well, it's hard to make an exhaustive proof complete with supporting evidence in 120 characters. The point of a "proof by sig" is to give the essence of the argument, and trust the readership to fill in the details. In other words, it's the start of a discussion, not the end of it.
Then again, perhaps it would be better to dump the human out of the loop altogether and rely on AI to determine if an item of luggage warrants further attention...
We need a science of AI first before we can do that.
but these days it's still cheaper to use people to do it and pay them peanuts at the same time.
A machine is (almost) always cheaper than a human. It can work 24 hours a day, doesn't need health insurance, doesn't need days off, etc, etc. The problem is that some jobs can only be done by humans.
And since the answers are usualy so vague. Its just a matter of me picking the answers you want to hear.
A well designed test doesn't have answers so obvious that you can't tell "what they want to hear". The options are all reasonable options that reasonable people could choose. In fact, the "obvious" questions are sometimes test questions to see if you're trying to gum up the works. A question that to answer honestly is negative (e.g., "have you ever left early"), but that everyone whose honest would have to answer in the negative way.
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Er, forgive my leap to conclusions here, but isn't this basically gambling?
"Yeah, I converted my cash into this 'virtual money' they call 'chips'. It's fabulous, this place called a 'casino' has its own virtual economy! I can go to different parts and perform 'business transactions' that can make me virtual money (or lose virtual money, of course). Then, I can convert my virtual money back into real money! It's amazing!"
Simple. An "IE preferred" message simply means "tested in IE". It might work in Firefox, but not too many people are willing to go out of their way to test in every browser in existence. Heck, I test in Firefox because I use it (and it's gained some popularity), but I never test on a Mac. It's simply too small of a segment, and I'm not about to buy a Mac just to test with it.
Mmmm ... meeeaaat. I prefer cooked rather than bloody, to be honest, but I do like it medium rare. I suppose I'd eat it bloody in a pinch, though. Of course, eating bloody meat is much more of gratifying sensual experience than wearing a bloody skin.
I just find it really amusing that you think that normal meat-eating people WOULD feel comfortable wearing a piece of fur dripping with blood.
Um, never? Can you point me to a few of these? I use Firefox all the time and have NEVER encountered one. Yes, not once.
(And yes, I'm sure there's at least one out there, but I think this is a huge urban legend that it's some pervasive problem)
Yep. He's certainly content to make those tiny little "boutique" movies, and let big ol' Disney have the lion's share of the family movie market. That's our Steve -- I'm sure he would find it insulting if his movies made a lot of money.
Well, I'm not sure "desirable" is the right word when only 3% of the market wants them (the Mac, certainly the iPod is more popular).
So let me get this straight. You'd rather:
1) Have someone have to have a PVR, a $1000 computer, software, and go to all the trouble to burn a DVD...
...rather than...
Buy a $50 DVD player or $120 Portable DVD player, and a professionally burned DVD that comes with a nice case?
Yeah, the people who hate dealing with technology (the other 98% of the population) are really going to go for that plan.
Apparently you've never used a portable DVD player.
Nor have you ever had kids who watch the same movie a LOT of times (and I'd rather not pay for each view).
Ah well.
No, I was making a joke. :)
If only there were some way of connecting the video game controller directly into certain neural pathways. Simply by thinking about, we could stimulate those pathways and control the game. Maybe there's some way we could piggy back onto existing neural connections... in fact, given that much of our neurology is connected to our masculature system, I wonder if there was some way we could tap into that. Like, when our brain stimulated these "muscle nerves", we could have that activate the controller in some direct way.
Nah, sorry. I'm getting waaaaaaay too blue sky here.
The Special Theory of Relativity got a 91.9% chance of being authentic. I'm sure if Einstein were alive, he'd be relieved.
You damned dirty ape!
I don't know about anyone else, but I mock it because it's so obviously unsustainable in the long run. "Free" health care that means waiting endless amounts of time for routine surgeries. A work force that gets so spoiled that they riot in France because they're not given a job for life!
French, German and British workers' productivity per hour worked is way higher than American workers' productivity per hour worked. We earn more money too, for less work.
Uh, no. Sorry, but the US has the most productive people in the world, along with highest per-capita income among comparable countries (certain middle eastern countries have a higher per-capita for obvious reasons). I don't feel like looking up the stats.
What gives? Why so down on lots of time off and 35 hour working week?
It really comes down to freedom. Most people in the US don't believe in the government coming in and telling everyone how to run their business. A lot of people dream here of owning their own business, and when we imagine that day, we certainly don't want to imagine not being able to fire some slacker anytime we want to.
Sure, there are people who desire the government to establish the "right to slack", but most reasonable people see that it's a bad long-term policy (though that wisdom is getting diluted all the time, sadly).
Your economy is totally fucked and you're about to be overtaken by China (who you're already in hock to for 400 trillion USD)
Yeah, yeah. Every decade it's another country that's going to "overtake" us, whatever that means. Last time it was Japan, with their Government/Business "partnerships". Somehow, the US always manages to come out ahead. You know why? Because we let things fail. We believe in shedding the blood of capitalism and coming out stronger afterward.
I didn't mean "invented" as in created the word from nothing, I just meant the name they picked. And yes, it would've been a stupid name even without the stupid pronunciation, but the added syllable just proves how brainless they are about P.R.
You seem to be confusing "literal names" with "good names". What makes a good name isn't that it literally means what it does, it's that it 1) sounds good, and 2) doesn't have negative connotations, and 3) isn't hard to say. It's a bonus if it even vaguely resembles what it does. Lotus Notes, Oracle and Excel all have vague connotations of what they do, but more importantly, there is nothing offensive about them, and they're easy to say and remember.
Compare to some of the popular names in Open Source. GIMP. Gnu (Gah-nu, the absolutely STUPIDEST name and pronounciation ever invented, and that goes for all their programs with the 'g' prefix). Ultra Monkey is right in line with traditional stupid naming.
Actually, no. That alternative explanation doesn't work in this case. There's recognizing a joke, and then there's evaluating the joke. My joke may or may not have been funny (it was, actually, but that's tangential to the point), but you failed to even recognize that an attempt at humor was involved.
The distinction is subtle, I admit, but that's what the Reality Master does. He tries to lift and educate the masses. No need to thank me.
Here's another "proof by assertion": you have zero sense of humor. -rolls eyes-
Well, let's not get crazy. But anyway...
And isn't that because OSX is specifically tuned for its hardware?
No. Apple people believe this for some reason, but Apple hardware was mostly identical to everyone else's hardware in this past, and that's even more true now that it's Intel. The difference is really the Unix core.
How well would it run on generic hardware?
Identical.
Sure, if you go out and buy a crappy hardware card, it could potentially cause some problems, the same as the Windows world. But if you stuck to mainstream hardware, you'd have exactly the same experience.
Hmmm, sounds like I won the argument last time, too. :D
Of course not. But the number of people who buy Apple hardware just for the hardware is very, very small.
Well, it's hard to make an exhaustive proof complete with supporting evidence in 120 characters. The point of a "proof by sig" is to give the essence of the argument, and trust the readership to fill in the details. In other words, it's the start of a discussion, not the end of it.
We need a science of AI first before we can do that.
but these days it's still cheaper to use people to do it and pay them peanuts at the same time.
A machine is (almost) always cheaper than a human. It can work 24 hours a day, doesn't need health insurance, doesn't need days off, etc, etc. The problem is that some jobs can only be done by humans.
A well designed test doesn't have answers so obvious that you can't tell "what they want to hear". The options are all reasonable options that reasonable people could choose. In fact, the "obvious" questions are sometimes test questions to see if you're trying to gum up the works. A question that to answer honestly is negative (e.g., "have you ever left early"), but that everyone whose honest would have to answer in the negative way.