"4) They don't know how to switch between ring-tone and vibrate."
It probably would have been helpful for all cellphones shipped from the very beginning to default to vibrate mode. It would have caused the culture around them to evolve differently and the more clueless people to become accustomed to not having a normal ring unless they learned how to set it up (and thus learned how to turn it back to vibrate as well.)
"Region Encoding is a joke. In fact, about the only place these days which still "enforces" Region Coding is....the USA! The rest of the world treats it like the joke it is."
More correctly... the only place that region codes are not a joke is in Region 1. I am in Canada and they are not a joke here. Of course if you know where to look, (usually the malls in Asian communities) you can get the region free players very easily, as well as plenty of imported japanese notebook computers and 31337 GSM cell phones with colour screens and bluetooth. (Technically illegal imports, of course.) And oh, the manga.../me drools
But seriously, I am ashambed to say that most people in Canada and the US don't know what DVD region encoding is because most movies appear here first.
"Turn your phone off or the entire class is going to laugh at you and call you a fag."
Well done... I think this stragey is good but there is a better one. This one prof I had really couldn't stand cell phones so at the start of every class (that is the first day of every course he taught, not at the start of every lecture in the year) he said something like "... and oh yeah, if cell phones ring in my class I tend to go berzerk." And interestingly, in over 80+ hours of class with him and plenty of lab time too, there was exactly one cell phone ring in the whole time.
"What makes mobile phones so different from digital watches that play tunes, or PDAs with loud alarms, or squeakers, or horns, or anything else that makes a noise? Why ban the phone, instead of the noise it causes? Ditto talking; if we ban the noise of one person talking on a phone during a performance, shouldn't we also ban two people talking to each other?"
The thing that sets cell phones apart from all those other items is that I can dial your mobile when you least expect it and make it ring. There is an unexpected element there, not totally controllable by the phone's owner unless they always remember when to change it to vibrate. You don't have to be manipulating or devoting any of your brain power to your cellphone and it can still ring.
With the other items, only you can cause it to beep (unless your PDA is internet connected and I send you an ICQ message or something.) There is more control here. This is unlikely when your attention is focused on the movie.
"Point is, the messages are there, people just do not give a damn."
I remember that in the past, Famous Players used to have a real live person come out in a spotlight before the movie and remind everyone to turn of all electronic things that beep (cellphone, pagers) etc. This real person gets real attention as opposed to a coke advertisement. In such a shows, I never ever heard a phone ring.
For some reason, Famous Players does not do this anymore.
"What we really need is some automatic protocol that phones and pagers recognized mean "this is a vibrate only zone"."
I'm sure that this would cause a new undergroud market to spring up for zone-unlocked cellphones that are not overridden by vibrate only zones. </joke>
Seriously, if such a thing was enacted, it would make sense to have all phones default to following these codes, and it could only be turned off if the user specifically goes in there and finds the setting. This would have a similar effect as changing the default browser in the next windows rev to mozilla -- a massive change except in the people who really want the other mode.
"Not really. If I go to a concert, I'm going -- and more importantly for this discussion, paying -- to hear a concert. Cell phones/pagers going off disrupt the experience. Your examples above would be better ones if you were paying to go somewhere to see people eat."
According to my sources, putting your elbows on the table is rude because, in some cultures, particularly in the past in the middle east and europe, the tables where people ate meals had very many people sitting at them in a small space.
If you put your elbows on the table, you'd be impinging (sp?) on the space of the next person because everyone was crammed in there so tightly. It was like saying, "I'm better than you so I can take up your space."
So not putting your elbows on the table was originally rude because, yes, it did reduce the next person's enjoyment of the meal. Now adays, it's considered rude because it was considered rude in the past. Just an inhereted tradition.
"...but NO ONE in their right mind has proposed a ban on children at public performances - at least not yet."
I haven't heard of this either, but keep in mind that at the Sydney Opera House (in.au of course) they specifically tell you before a performance no to cough. The acoustics in the building are designed such that you can hear everything.
"But does anybody find this to be exceptionally wrong? If you can't go a weekend without playing video games, I think you should have some priority adjustments. He's going to fencing tournaments so why not read books that enhance the mind? I'm speaking directly of combat philosophy books."
I suspect you have never played Shadow Warrior. Yes, that is a good passtime to keep up on swordsmanship skills;-) [j/k]
* 2002-08-17 00:51:38 Ogg Vorbis for Playstation2 Linux (articles,music) (rejected)
I'm not complaining... just wondering why it happenned. Also, please note that I did not call the PS2 by the wrong 'PS/2' name. You can blame timothy, hehe.
This is true. I've only been to 1 really good lan party, and it was one that I hosted at my place right after final exams one year.
I think it's fun to choose a variety of games so that in any given game, there are some experts and some non-experts. This changes from game to game to everyone has a chance to dominate or come in last place.
Back when I had time to play games (damn, has it been that long?) I always won a Jedi Knight and lost badly at Freespace. It kind of makes me sad I never went into university residence and instead lived at home (which happened to be very close to the university) because my buddies there played counterstrike or AvP all day with max 50 ping against the whole resnet, while I am still stuck on lame dialup because there's nothing else better when I am.
"First, you should NEVER trust an automated mechanism to delete e-mail before you open it (I'm not say you are, just saying it should never be done)."
I think that you are not entirely correct here.
About 1 year ago I was automatically subscribed to (one of many) listservs at my university along with everyone else in the engineering faculty.
Apparently, for most of the people it was their first time on a listserv. Furthermore, the way this one was (badly) set up, the default 'reply-to' address was listserv@myuniversity.ca. Yes, this is a recipe for trouble.
Of course some grad student innocently sent out a message with the subject "SUBJECTS NEEDED" because they needed test subjects for their grad work. Naturally, a whole whack of people replied and then replied to those replies, sending hundreds of messages called "re: SUBJECTS NEEDED" over the listserv.
I quickly set up an auto-delete for that subject and it never came back to haunt me. (My dialup was being saturated by all the responses.) Thus, I think it's safe auto-delete when you are protecting yourself from newbies who don't know how to handle an e-mail client.
(Still, it wasn't as bad when some idiots started signing up the list for hetero and homosexual pr0n-in-your-mailbox sites, but that's a different matter.)
"I use a program called Proxomitron...What they have done is made it do that to navigate the site, you have to enable javascript. For sites like that, a simple window killer works fine."
If you look more closely at the prox, you can disable JS (or disable the disabling) on a site per site basis.
"Then why are video rental and pay-per-view cable services thriving?"
Because for those things you don't own the media, silly! If you own the media but cannot play it, there is something that most people would find intrinsically wrong with that.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, I must allude to the fact that correct grammar has eluded you. :-o
It probably would have been helpful for all cellphones shipped from the very beginning to default to vibrate mode. It would have caused the culture around them to evolve differently and the more clueless people to become accustomed to not having a normal ring unless they learned how to set it up (and thus learned how to turn it back to vibrate as well.)
Watch it on your comupter! Get a nice Pioneer DVD-ROM for less than $100 and upload hacked firmware and you're good to go.
More correctly ... the only place that region codes are not a joke is in Region 1. I am in Canada and they are not a joke here. Of course if you know where to look, (usually the malls in Asian communities) you can get the region free players very easily, as well as plenty of imported japanese notebook computers and 31337 GSM cell phones with colour screens and bluetooth. (Technically illegal imports, of course.) And oh, the manga ... /me drools
But seriously, I am ashambed to say that most people in Canada and the US don't know what DVD region encoding is because most movies appear here first.
The head-butt was removed from Episode 2 because, according to the UK ratings board, was violence that was easily replicable by children.
They don't mind light sabers because kids can't replicate that and hurt each other. But a head butt could easily be imitated.
Really? I haven't been able to find anything for Panasonic RV30 DVD players through repeated googles.
Well done ... I think this stragey is good but there is a better one. This one prof I had really couldn't stand cell phones so at the start of every class (that is the first day of every course he taught, not at the start of every lecture in the year) he said something like "... and oh yeah, if cell phones ring in my class I tend to go berzerk." And interestingly, in over 80+ hours of class with him and plenty of lab time too, there was exactly one cell phone ring in the whole time.
Once again, Scott Adams has just released a relevant dilbert strip about this very issue: http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert- 20020818.html
The thing that sets cell phones apart from all those other items is that I can dial your mobile when you least expect it and make it ring. There is an unexpected element there, not totally controllable by the phone's owner unless they always remember when to change it to vibrate. You don't have to be manipulating or devoting any of your brain power to your cellphone and it can still ring.
With the other items, only you can cause it to beep (unless your PDA is internet connected and I send you an ICQ message or something.) There is more control here. This is unlikely when your attention is focused on the movie.
You should have sicked these guys on the jerk.
I remember that in the past, Famous Players used to have a real live person come out in a spotlight before the movie and remind everyone to turn of all electronic things that beep (cellphone, pagers) etc. This real person gets real attention as opposed to a coke advertisement. In such a shows, I never ever heard a phone ring.
For some reason, Famous Players does not do this anymore.
I'm sure that this would cause a new undergroud market to spring up for zone-unlocked cellphones that are not overridden by vibrate only zones. </joke>
Seriously, if such a thing was enacted, it would make sense to have all phones default to following these codes, and it could only be turned off if the user specifically goes in there and finds the setting. This would have a similar effect as changing the default browser in the next windows rev to mozilla -- a massive change except in the people who really want the other mode.
According to my sources, putting your elbows on the table is rude because, in some cultures, particularly in the past in the middle east and europe, the tables where people ate meals had very many people sitting at them in a small space.
If you put your elbows on the table, you'd be impinging (sp?) on the space of the next person because everyone was crammed in there so tightly. It was like saying, "I'm better than you so I can take up your space."
So not putting your elbows on the table was originally rude because, yes, it did reduce the next person's enjoyment of the meal. Now adays, it's considered rude because it was considered rude in the past. Just an inhereted tradition.
There are some guys in the UK who would beg to differ.
You wouldn't, by chance, be one of the guys shown in the videos on this site, would you?
I suggest you go to Phonebashing.com and have a good time. ;-)
I haven't heard of this either, but keep in mind that at the Sydney Opera House (in .au of course) they specifically tell you before a performance no to cough. The acoustics in the building are designed such that you can hear everything.
I suspect you have never played Shadow Warrior. Yes, that is a good passtime to keep up on swordsmanship skills ;-) [j/k]
* 2002-08-17 00:51:38 Ogg Vorbis for Playstation2 Linux (articles,music) (rejected)
I'm not complaining ... just wondering why it happenned. Also, please note that I did not call the PS2 by the wrong 'PS/2' name. You can blame timothy, hehe.
I think it's fun to choose a variety of games so that in any given game, there are some experts and some non-experts. This changes from game to game to everyone has a chance to dominate or come in last place.
Back when I had time to play games (damn, has it been that long?) I always won a Jedi Knight and lost badly at Freespace. It kind of makes me sad I never went into university residence and instead lived at home (which happened to be very close to the university) because my buddies there played counterstrike or AvP all day with max 50 ping against the whole resnet, while I am still stuck on lame dialup because there's nothing else better when I am.
I think that you are not entirely correct here.
About 1 year ago I was automatically subscribed to (one of many) listservs at my university along with everyone else in the engineering faculty.
Apparently, for most of the people it was their first time on a listserv. Furthermore, the way this one was (badly) set up, the default 'reply-to' address was listserv@myuniversity.ca. Yes, this is a recipe for trouble.
Of course some grad student innocently sent out a message with the subject "SUBJECTS NEEDED" because they needed test subjects for their grad work. Naturally, a whole whack of people replied and then replied to those replies, sending hundreds of messages called "re: SUBJECTS NEEDED" over the listserv.
I quickly set up an auto-delete for that subject and it never came back to haunt me. (My dialup was being saturated by all the responses.) Thus, I think it's safe auto-delete when you are protecting yourself from newbies who don't know how to handle an e-mail client.
(Still, it wasn't as bad when some idiots started signing up the list for hetero and homosexual pr0n-in-your-mailbox sites, but that's a different matter.)
I read about 'the base' back in ~1995 or possibly earlier in documents allegedly written by one 'Milton Cooper' , supposedly ex-USAF personnel.
They are using it for reaching the secret extra terrestrial base on the other side of the moon with great speed on short notice.
If you look more closely at the prox, you can disable JS (or disable the disabling) on a site per site basis.
Because for those things you don't own the media, silly! If you own the media but cannot play it, there is something that most people would find intrinsically wrong with that.