Ultimate Proof of his Greatness
on
An Ode To Al
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· Score: 5, Interesting
For me, the proof that Weird Al really impacted our culture and was relevant was walking into a store and seeing, between "Rock" and "Country" an entire "Weird Al" section. I guess you just can't pin that guy down:)
Thanks to the wonders of psuedo-capitalism we get so much planned obsolescence shoved down our throats (computers, lightbulbs, etc) and just plain shoddy manufacturing... I'd like to see products that work predictably, reliably, and without unnecessary complication. Sure, you can buy really expensive high-end stuff for that, but without economy of scale and competition, it's not really affordable to most people.
We put a man on the moon almost 40 years ago. We should be able to at least make this stuff simple and not suck.
I'm curious - in the US, what privacy do we have in public? I know there's unreasonable search and seizure - but considering that fingerprints are something you leave behind on everything you touch anyways (unless you wear gloves or use a sanding machine - ouch!) so are they not public? Is taking a picture of someone's finger prints any different than taking a picture of their face w/ a security camera?
I do work with eCoupons.com (big $avings, etc), and we're stuck using J2SE for all of our stuff, just because we need things like generics etc. No, don't worry it's not actually a server app, it's more number/text crunching (finding y'all good deals, etc), but still it's a real pain.
The major limitations are not how to deal with html, flash, IRC or whatever, but about how to deal with clashing egos, language & cultural barriers etc and how to arbitrate when experts disagree etc.
True those things must be dealt with (and are probably the majority of the problem), but the ability to index, search, and automatically extract collective knowledge is important - this is one of the reasons that text is so successful on the web. Besides open formats ensure our kids will have access to our goodies too.
Back in the late 90s when I was subjected to such things (before the writing section came around, thankfully) I took the test four times. This repeated exposure to the test upped my score by several hundred points, and I had no problem getting into an Ivy League school (Cornell), despite having gone to one of the worst (and very rural) public high schools in PA.
Learning vocabulary words can help, but the most important thing is to learn to get a good feel for the test. Go and take it several times, and do practice tests (in as similar of an environment as possible - encoding specificity causes memory to be context-sensitive).
Personally I think the SATs are a big game, but apparently there is some significant statistical correlation between SAT score and learning ability/intelligence, as low as it may be. Also I think the prep courses are a big waste of time, but that may be different with the new SATs, and it may be possible that some people need them more than others.
Say what you want about Clinton or Regan, they both inspired people, and both convinced the majority of voters (not tiny contestable majority either) to get the job.
I'm not here to Clinton bash, but if you will check out the percentages of the 1992 election you will find that Clinton got 43% of the popular vote. That's a plaurality, but certainly not a majority. In 1996, it was 49.2%. Neither is as large as the 50.7% (majority, if barely) obtained by Bush in the last election.
I'm not saying which was a better president (it's obvious that Clinton was, if nothing else, a much better Replublican), or even which was more inspiring (frankly I, and people I know who interacted with them on a professional basis, find neither inspiring). I'm just confused as to how your post got moderated up so highly when it is based on completely incorrect information. Yes, I know there were third party candidate factors, but I seem to remember Perot mostly stealing votes from Bush who would have easily beaten Clinton for a second term.
I think it'd be wonderful to see the Democrats put up a candidate like JFK, though I wonder if the rose-tinted glasses we view him through are mostly due to his assasination in the line of duty?
Sometimes it seems to me that the Neocons have taken the liberal concept of 'cultural relativism' and run with it, convincing themselves that 'factual relativism' is real and applicable to the world.
dpilot, you should know by now that this sacred concept is known as "truthiness". You are officially on notice.
Don't worry everyone - once Tusted Computing becomes standard, Microsoft should have no trouble locking its software away from precisely those it wishes. See, technology really can solve everything.
Eh, looks like I got moderated down by the Apple fanboys. Don't worry guys, I posted this from a mac, so I'm one too! I just think this is a total non-story to anyone who has even heard of Steve Jobs.
I doubt I can add anything useful to your comment. I agree with what you are saying, and thank you for taking the time to write it. I know people who survived the holocaust, and they seem to think all this talk of Bush == Hitler is... foolish at the very least, and incredibly disrespectful to those who actually had to deal with him.
I was born in '82, in very rural western PA, and lived on a retired farm. No cable, no municiple services (water/trash), we even burnt wood to heat our house/water. My first computers were a TI-94a and a TRS-80 I started using at the age of 5, though I couldn't do much with them for a few years except play video games and wonder why programming had "order of operations" (I wasn't yet to discover the joy of algebraic constructs for a few years). I had fun learning BASIC and making inane programs that let me type to my friend ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM by using a *VERY* long printer cable.
Two or three years after I got my Mac Classic in '91, I discovered the joys of using a modem to chat with that same friend, who lived two miles away. It's a shame he was in a pay phone code from my house (yes, things are that messed up here that you have to pay to call two miles, thanks regulations) otherwise I'd have experimented more - at least I found the control-G trick and used it to freak him out at will.
I'd been to a few BBSes, but they were all pay calls from where I was, and my parents didn't take too kindly to that. My friend's parents took even less kindly to his $500 phone bill one month. That was pretty much the end of that.
I used to watch C-NET and yearn for internet access... after watching that horrible Sandra Bullock movie, The Net, with my parents, I thought it'd be impossible to talk them into it, but I woke up on my 14th birthday to get what was, perhaps, the best birthday present I got since my 0th - a real, live, 2400kbps AOL connection. Two weeks of that convinced my parents to upgrade to a 14.4 modem, of course, but I digress.
I really missed out on the BBS culture, and on newsgroups (only occasionally posted for tech support, which I'm probably happy about now that anyone can go back and read my inane teenage programming discussions). I missed out on something that people on slashdot look back at with nostalgia, and I realize I'll never really understand those experiences. The "MMO" tradewars (or corewars if you had shell access), the novelty of the online discussion format itself, the sharing of interesting and new software (I had a mac though, probably couldn't run any of it). I guess my question is - am I missing that much? Ever since the day I started using the internet, I've been addicted to it and have really gotten a lot out of it - heck my girlfriend went to my high school but we were in different grades and never talked until facebook came along. It's a part of me and a part of my culture. Did I miss something in there, by not having been absorbed in BBS culture? There was nothing to do where I grew up anyways, and I actually spent most of my time engaged in self-educational activities rather than just playing video games.
Bottom line, this is a perfectly routine default password issue. Blame your bank.
The manufacturers should have the firmware require a password change after the initial set-up. If everyone did this, this wouldn't be a problem. Of course, I also blame my bank!
Here's what I don't understand - I write a two line comment on slashdot, and people suddenly make generalizations about the many and varied lines of reasoning, source materials, and life experiences that got me to the conclusion I've assert. Somehow, from two sentences, people can gaze into the millions of factors that affect my thinking. And the most amazing part of it is that these brilliant insights can be so utterly and amazingly off.
Given what I said - that it is possible to contribute to the wealth of the world, and that money *itself* has value, in the same way that a hammer or a toaster has value - it is *possible* that I think that capitalism is the end-all and be-all of social theory, and that everything else sucks and that socialists suck.
It's also equally possible that I'm a registered libertarian, but I value the many and varied government services that have made my life work. It's entirely possible that I realize that we must always strike a balance between individual freedom and the common good, and that there is more to life than money. Although it may seem that I have "forgotten" that different people value different things, and that some people with few material goods end up having fun, exciting lives. It is also possible - maybe just maybe - that I use the term utility in a very specific, mathematical and technical sense (implying notions of transitivity and relationships to rational decisionmaking). It's possible that, because of this, my comments implicitly take into account any and all things, including paychecks, dental-work, pulling off of the side of the road to smell freshly-watered roses - that is by definition of utility, whether or not it can be explicitly and exactly enumerated.
All of these things are possible but no one will ever know - they are not to be found in those two sentences, any more than I am to be found embedded in HTML. Make assumptions if that is your only option, but try some rational thinking first - you'll be surprised where it gets you!
Slashdot Mirror
For me, the proof that Weird Al really impacted our culture and was relevant was walking into a store and seeing, between "Rock" and "Country" an entire "Weird Al" section. I guess you just can't pin that guy down :)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Thanks to the wonders of psuedo-capitalism we get so much planned obsolescence shoved down our throats (computers, lightbulbs, etc) and just plain shoddy manufacturing... I'd like to see products that work predictably, reliably, and without unnecessary complication. Sure, you can buy really expensive high-end stuff for that, but without economy of scale and competition, it's not really affordable to most people.
We put a man on the moon almost 40 years ago. We should be able to at least make this stuff simple and not suck.
I'm curious - in the US, what privacy do we have in public? I know there's unreasonable search and seizure - but considering that fingerprints are something you leave behind on everything you touch anyways (unless you wear gloves or use a sanding machine - ouch!) so are they not public? Is taking a picture of someone's finger prints any different than taking a picture of their face w/ a security camera?
I can get my girlfriend (or wife or mom) to nag me about doing the laundry.
Make sure your girlfriend and your wife don't nag you at the same time, that could lead to some considerable akwardness...
I do work with eCoupons.com (big $avings, etc), and we're stuck using J2SE for all of our stuff, just because we need things like generics etc. No, don't worry it's not actually a server app, it's more number/text crunching (finding y'all good deals, etc), but still it's a real pain.
:)
Here's hoping the venders get EE 5 out RSN
The major limitations are not how to deal with html, flash, IRC or whatever, but about how to deal with clashing egos, language & cultural barriers etc and how to arbitrate when experts disagree etc.
True those things must be dealt with (and are probably the majority of the problem), but the ability to index, search, and automatically extract collective knowledge is important - this is one of the reasons that text is so successful on the web. Besides open formats ensure our kids will have access to our goodies too.
The survey was apparently completed so quickly because it simply consisted of the question "How much do you suck?"
Back in the late 90s when I was subjected to such things (before the writing section came around, thankfully) I took the test four times. This repeated exposure to the test upped my score by several hundred points, and I had no problem getting into an Ivy League school (Cornell), despite having gone to one of the worst (and very rural) public high schools in PA.
Learning vocabulary words can help, but the most important thing is to learn to get a good feel for the test. Go and take it several times, and do practice tests (in as similar of an environment as possible - encoding specificity causes memory to be context-sensitive).
Personally I think the SATs are a big game, but apparently there is some significant statistical correlation between SAT score and learning ability/intelligence, as low as it may be. Also I think the prep courses are a big waste of time, but that may be different with the new SATs, and it may be possible that some people need them more than others.
I'm not saying which was a better president (it's obvious that Clinton was, if nothing else, a much better Replublican), or even which was more inspiring (frankly I, and people I know who interacted with them on a professional basis, find neither inspiring). I'm just confused as to how your post got moderated up so highly when it is based on completely incorrect information. Yes, I know there were third party candidate factors, but I seem to remember Perot mostly stealing votes from Bush who would have easily beaten Clinton for a second term.
I think it'd be wonderful to see the Democrats put up a candidate like JFK, though I wonder if the rose-tinted glasses we view him through are mostly due to his assasination in the line of duty?
dpilot, you should know by now that this sacred concept is known as "truthiness". You are officially on notice.
Don't worry everyone - once Tusted Computing becomes standard, Microsoft should have no trouble locking its software away from precisely those it wishes. See, technology really can solve everything.
Now, 1 meter resolution might be twice as good as 2 meter resolution but my dumbass isn't going to know the difference.
Wait, you have a dumbass? How much do those cost - I have a management position open right now!
Unless you want the fact that you spoke to a certain person to be secret...
Eh, looks like I got moderated down by the Apple fanboys. Don't worry guys, I posted this from a mac, so I'm one too! I just think this is a total non-story to anyone who has even heard of Steve Jobs.
I doubt I can add anything useful to your comment. I agree with what you are saying, and thank you for taking the time to write it. I know people who survived the holocaust, and they seem to think all this talk of Bush == Hitler is... foolish at the very least, and incredibly disrespectful to those who actually had to deal with him.
My parents use AOL - have used it since 1996, IIRC. Can we attach to the lawsuit? If so, how does one go about doing that?
I was born in '82, in very rural western PA, and lived on a retired farm. No cable, no municiple services (water/trash), we even burnt wood to heat our house/water. My first computers were a TI-94a and a TRS-80 I started using at the age of 5, though I couldn't do much with them for a few years except play video games and wonder why programming had "order of operations" (I wasn't yet to discover the joy of algebraic constructs for a few years). I had fun learning BASIC and making inane programs that let me type to my friend ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM by using a *VERY* long printer cable.
Two or three years after I got my Mac Classic in '91, I discovered the joys of using a modem to chat with that same friend, who lived two miles away. It's a shame he was in a pay phone code from my house (yes, things are that messed up here that you have to pay to call two miles, thanks regulations) otherwise I'd have experimented more - at least I found the control-G trick and used it to freak him out at will.
I'd been to a few BBSes, but they were all pay calls from where I was, and my parents didn't take too kindly to that. My friend's parents took even less kindly to his $500 phone bill one month. That was pretty much the end of that.
I used to watch C-NET and yearn for internet access... after watching that horrible Sandra Bullock movie, The Net, with my parents, I thought it'd be impossible to talk them into it, but I woke up on my 14th birthday to get what was, perhaps, the best birthday present I got since my 0th - a real, live, 2400kbps AOL connection. Two weeks of that convinced my parents to upgrade to a 14.4 modem, of course, but I digress.
I really missed out on the BBS culture, and on newsgroups (only occasionally posted for tech support, which I'm probably happy about now that anyone can go back and read my inane teenage programming discussions). I missed out on something that people on slashdot look back at with nostalgia, and I realize I'll never really understand those experiences. The "MMO" tradewars (or corewars if you had shell access), the novelty of the online discussion format itself, the sharing of interesting and new software (I had a mac though, probably couldn't run any of it). I guess my question is - am I missing that much? Ever since the day I started using the internet, I've been addicted to it and have really gotten a lot out of it - heck my girlfriend went to my high school but we were in different grades and never talked until facebook came along. It's a part of me and a part of my culture. Did I miss something in there, by not having been absorbed in BBS culture? There was nothing to do where I grew up anyways, and I actually spent most of my time engaged in self-educational activities rather than just playing video games.
Bottom line, this is a perfectly routine default password issue. Blame your bank.
The manufacturers should have the firmware require a password change after the initial set-up. If everyone did this, this wouldn't be a problem. Of course, I also blame my bank!
This is shocking - simply shocking, I must say!
Here's what I don't understand - I write a two line comment on slashdot, and people suddenly make generalizations about the many and varied lines of reasoning, source materials, and life experiences that got me to the conclusion I've assert. Somehow, from two sentences, people can gaze into the millions of factors that affect my thinking. And the most amazing part of it is that these brilliant insights can be so utterly and amazingly off.
Given what I said - that it is possible to contribute to the wealth of the world, and that money *itself* has value, in the same way that a hammer or a toaster has value - it is *possible* that I think that capitalism is the end-all and be-all of social theory, and that everything else sucks and that socialists suck.
It's also equally possible that I'm a registered libertarian, but I value the many and varied government services that have made my life work. It's entirely possible that I realize that we must always strike a balance between individual freedom and the common good, and that there is more to life than money. Although it may seem that I have "forgotten" that different people value different things, and that some people with few material goods end up having fun, exciting lives. It is also possible - maybe just maybe - that I use the term utility in a very specific, mathematical and technical sense (implying notions of transitivity and relationships to rational decisionmaking). It's possible that, because of this, my comments implicitly take into account any and all things, including paychecks, dental-work, pulling off of the side of the road to smell freshly-watered roses - that is by definition of utility, whether or not it can be explicitly and exactly enumerated.
All of these things are possible but no one will ever know - they are not to be found in those two sentences, any more than I am to be found embedded in HTML. Make assumptions if that is your only option, but try some rational thinking first - you'll be surprised where it gets you!
Can someone clue me on in this funny mod? I must say I'm puzzled. Is it because it looks like astroturfing?
You can only get spayed or neutered animals from them.
And that, my friend, is why I release all of my pets under the GPL. What an outrage!
We know all about you QuantunFTL (the tinfoil, it does nothing)
:)
It's apparently blocked you from reading my nick properly...