Not wanting to second-guess the gods here, but they should have called it Dragon or something...because, after all, what is a Dragon but a serpent with a pe(a)rl under his chin? (grin)
Oh, come on now... We all know that ESR ranks in the pantheon of hot Ubergeeks... Not as cute as Linus, granted, but...:) You must be (what else?) a heterosexual male...
But this is/.... Hmm... Then again, I'm not liable to go around fantasizing about hot Ubergeeks (or even peeking at Unixsex (bleah!)). I have other people to think about.:)
Interrobang, BGGIT
That's "Bodacious Geek Girl In Training"
Thanks for that link, friend. I've been looking for that again ever since I got my own computer and stopped using Bieeardo's.
Sterling's an ok fellow, too. There was about a year where I couldn't swing a dead cat, metaphorically speaking, without coming across a reference to him. Another book (an anthology, really) of his that's really good (although not really about computers) is _A Good Old-Fashioned Future_.
Oh, yeah. Startling. Funny this should come up on/. now. I just re-read this article last night.
When I did a paper on "hackers" in grad school, I used this article as one of my sources, among other things.
And for those of you who know what happened to Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), Kevin Poulsen (Dark Dante), and any of the rest of that "middle-school" crowd (they're not "old-school" enough to be "old-school" IMHO), it kind of makes one sad.
What ever did happen to the "hire the hacker" ethic? Did it get lost in paranoia? Even the venerable l0pht went into business for themselves, and they didn't exactly get greeted with waves of enthusiasm, IIRC.
Sorry, I have to say it. American tv finally gave a prestigious award to a satirical political/current events show, only years after the huge and possibly continent-wide fame of The Royal Canadian Air Farce. The Air Farce and its cast have won some pretty heavy awards (during one awards ceremony, the actual politicians the Air Farce skewers played the actors who usually played them and performed a sketch).
Now I will be really impressed when real US politicians go on the show. Now, we all know Governor Bush would never do such a thing (Billy Clintstone might have, though), but the Air Farce has had "one Prime Minister, one Leader of the Opposition, two PC Leaders, 1 NDP Leader, [and] 1 Premier" on so far.
In any case, I think this is a great step forward for a tiny segment of US tv, at least.
Now we'll know the US is catching up to Canada in this department when the NEA starts funding The Daily Show.
OTOH, The Infernal Machine and I have a very low MS-brand tolerance, even when I'm running Windows. Heck, I had to put Office on it for work, and the thing didn't want to speak to me for days.
Gee, I'm really glad I only sell to small markets that only buy limited rights (FNASR, etc.). I don't think I would be able to take it if I had to sign away all the rights to all my writing forever just on the basis of one lousy payment.
If someone wants to make a movie or something out of one of my stories, they should have to talk to me and my lawyer, not to the publisher. Fair's fair, after all.
Selling ALL rights, and being coerced to sell ALL rights (and don't tell me "Sell us all the rights or you don't get published" isn't coercion) is nothing more than artistic prostitution and pimpery.
I don't know about you, but if I had my druthers, I'd have copies of all my music on vinyl. This predigested digitized stuff simply doesn't sound as nice, especially for analog-original recordings, of which I have many. A little bit of the sound depth is shaved off, and some of the highs and lows are gone too.
As to artistic endeavours, I won't be releasing any music direct-to-MP3 either. If you want it that way badly enough, you can DIY. Yep, it's probably irrational, but there's just something to be said for things like liner notes, album design, cover art, lyrics sheets, and all that stuff that people put a lot of work into. Heck, if music recordings no longer had cover (or CD) art, my buddy Winston would be practically out of a job.
What we used to do was tune in the radio to listen to the good play-by-play, while simultaneously watching the tv with the sound turned off, so we didn't have to listen to the clueless tv guys (who were usually biased for the other side anyway).
Ok, so it's not "computerized," but does everything have to be? Uh, oh. I'm gonna get SO flamed for saying that...
BTW...Anyone know if Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth still announce the Blue Jays games on radio? If you know the answer, you know where to find me.
Basically, if I understand this argument correctly, the thesis is that people who read only "preference-filtered" (mmm, dark roast) content online (and elsewhere) will only be exposed to opinions with which they agree, issues in which they are already interested, and stuff like that. The problem is, if you don't read things with which you disagree, you don't learn anything. You especially don't learn how to examine your own beliefs and opinions for logical holes, flaws, and evidence of outside propagandizing. (In the circles I run in, we call that "critical thinking.") So, if I read correctly, "Me Media" is always "preaching to the choir." (As any evangelical knows, you'll never get new converts that way.:))
Case in point: If you only read articles saying, for instance, that everybody on Welfare cheats, drives a big car, and has 17 kids (to use a Reductio Ad Absurdum, but you see what I mean), and you've never talked to a Welfare recipient or read any real facts on the situation, how will you know "Welfare bashing" from reality?
Kafka's Dictum applies to the Net as well. Uncle Franz said, "I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?" I won't quite go that far, but I do always try to read the critics -- no matter how unsavoury they may be.
And I've been waiting a long time to use the words "picayune" and "setentious" in a post. Thank you for making my afternoon.
Also, to split some rhetorical hairs, I'm not entirely sure if "stentorian" is the right word to use on the largely silent internet. (And no, I didn't click the link above.) It's not as though the controllers are always SHOUTING, is it? That "priveledge" is usually reserved for people who have no power (@aol.com). Usually the people involved in trying to control the Internet are clever, quiet, and subtle, although no less powerful than "stentorian" implies. I might say "Machiavellian," but then again, I'm paranoid at best.
Humans do clone naturally but that happens to women only and in very rare circumstances.
Do you have some evidence for that, or are you just drugged, lying, or a devout Funny-mentalist Christian who is suffering from terminal cognitive dissonance?
Any cases of alleged "natural human cloning" I've ever heard of have inevitably been frauds.
Methinks someone reads the Weekly World News too much...and believes everything they read.
Actually, no. It would have been funnier that way, too, given all the dead cows we've been seeing lately. And in context, cDc makes more sense than CDC anyway. I mean, the Centres for Disease Control in satire on/.?! Come on!
The next thing you know, they'll be telling us the l0pht is just really a tony apartment.
I don't know, but if you find out what, let me know. I'd like to get in on it, too. (B'view & D'forth)
BTW, any of you Torontonians know if there are still 2600 Meetings in TO...or at least where all the geeks hang out? I'm tired of empty-headed yuppies and scenesters.
And just as a side note, does this "free wireless" thing sound at all like the net-borne equivalent of pirate radio to you? (Not that that's a bad thing, mind, I think we need more of it. Viva la revolucion, or whatever!)
Well, I do know that the BWP people were out in force at MediaWest*Con, which, if you missed it, is sort of like the Comdex of SF fans. That was before the movie was released.
Actually, that was a very smooth move. Anybody who's anybody and quite a few who aren't in the SF "media fen" (media here meaning movies/tv/games more so than "books" or "journalism") goes to that con, so they were sure to reach lots of interested people.
I even have an original MediaWest BWP swag logo pin on my jacket!;)
Yeah, but that was the point the writer wanted to make. Did anyone else notice the oversensationalized "Ooooh! The Internet is baaad! It's so scaaaarrryy!" tone creeping in all over the place in that article? I sure did.
I mean, apparently you can take the censor out of the censor's job, but you can't take the censoriousness out of the censor. Or something.
In tone, this article reminded me strongly of such previous "Net Hysteria" gems as the Time "Cyberporn" story, "Is Your Computer Posessed By A Demon?", and all those unsubstantiated reports of stalkers finding their victims online and subjecting them to Satanic Ritual Abuse, or something.
This writer really wants us to think that the Internet is a dangerous place, basically to justify her (former) job's existence. Fortunately, she's just a little too dumb to spot a scam when she sees it. Thank goodness. More of that kind of attitude we don't need.
[complaint mode] Ok, this subscription mode thing is great -- for those of you who live in the US. Go ahead, pay your $30 to Salon. I might do it, too, except for one thing. That $30 is $50 for me. And $50 is a piece of change to be reckoned with in my current circumstances.
It's the same reason why I'm not a card-carrying member of my social club, The Society for Creative Anachronism. Milpitas, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that there shall be no Canadian membership office (even though there's an Australian one), so we wind up paying $100 (at the current ROE) for what costs Statesians $45/year.
And considering, as I've said before, that when you're talking about in-country monetary transactions, buying power, and cost of living, that $100 is a month's worth of groceries to me, or a month's transit pass and dinner out for two people, or a whole $hxtload of used books, or...or...or...even if it only buys people in Milpitas (or anywhere else in the USA) $45 worth of stuff. In other words, thanks to the moneymongerers, we are getting scrod.
So I won't do it, at least not until it's fair to the consumer, regardless of exchange rate.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, except the thought expressed itself as
"Gee, we must really be getting close to the end of the oil if the oil companies are actually letting this one out of the bag."
Then again, a friend of mine once told me about meeting a shit-faced automotive engineer at a party who said he'd been on a team that helped build a car engine that could get 'mileage' on the order of hundreds of kms to the litre. She said that he said they eventually took the pieces out of the factory in envelopes, which tells you something. OTOH, he was drunk, but that story almost falls into the "I couldn't make up anything that weird" category.
Then again, the first "hybrid" cars are out...which either confirms my theory, or just implies that that particular cat is already out of the bag, or both.
How many times do I have to tell people (I'm actually used to this kind of arrogance from Statesians, who figure that meaningful comparisons can't be made unless everything is in terms of US$) that for in-country comparisons, exchange rate is meaningless?!
What you need to look at are in-Mexico prices of basic goods and services. Then you will know how much of a savings this conversion actually is, and how much their anti-poverty programmes will benefit. I mean, if it costs 10 000 pesos just to buy a loaf of bread, then a few hundred million pesos isn't really a whole lot. If, on the other hand, it costs 10 pesos to buy a loaf of bread, then a few hundred million pesos is a lot.
For a bunch of alleged math goobs, you programmer guys can be pretty out of it sometimes.:)
Yeah, I know what you mean. Oftentimes something like this is 99.999% being in the right place at the right time. I can't say I ever played around with geometry like that (I can't draw a figure with a pencil to save my life, but I could probably draw you a good portrait of my math teachers from memory), but I can think of equivalent cases which burned my toast just as badly. (The one that really pissed me off was some folks with a bad case of "Backstage Mother Syndrome" got media attention for their kid who read at the age of 3ish...She wound up with a full scholarship to Oxford. As near as I and my family can figure, I was reading before I was three, and the only way I -- or a lot of folks like me -- will ever get anywhere near school at Oxford is if we win the lottery or something. Gee, I wish I had attention seekers-by-proxy for parents, too.)
So, yep. I know where you're coming from there. I wonder how many other Slashdots and Slashdaughters out there have had similar experiences... I mean, this *is* a very "high side of normal" to "normal side of high" kind of place, intelligence-wise (usually), which is one of the reasons I hang out here.
If you're good at what you do, then you don't have to worry about getting fired. If you're good at doing what you do, then you don't have to worry about being rehired.
Oh, goodie. Does that dictum apply outside of programming as well, or is programming a special case? Right now, I wish I were a programmer; it would make finding work in my chosen field much easier. And I am good at what I do (which happens to be a lot of things -- I could be someone's indispensable employee if they'd just take the straightjacket off)...and I still can't find a bloody job.
No, I'm not on this thread to bitch, I'm here to see what other peoples' experiences are, job hunting and the lack thereof.
But in my personal opinion, getting a job is mostly a combination of being in the right place at the right time with the right credentials...and a hell of a lot of luck. Sometimes (as I found out when I got my last job) the luck comes first.
So...(pitch w/tongue in cheek)...anyone want to hire a good "utility outfielder" writer, editor, and design goob (tech writing gleefully accepted due to congenital insanity); researcher, trivia sorter and reporter, and general Geek-In-Training?
Slashdot Mirror
Not wanting to second-guess the gods here, but they should have called it Dragon or something...because, after all, what is a Dragon but a serpent with a pe(a)rl under his chin? (grin)
Poisson d'Avril, tout le monde!
Oh, come on now... We all know that ESR ranks in the pantheon of hot Ubergeeks... Not as cute as Linus, granted, but... :) You must be (what else?) a heterosexual male...
/.... Hmm... Then again, I'm not liable to go around fantasizing about hot Ubergeeks (or even peeking at Unixsex (bleah!)). I have other people to think about. :)
But this is
Interrobang, BGGIT
That's "Bodacious Geek Girl In Training"
All this reminds me of those stupid old Certs ads:
BSD is a breath mint!
BSD is a candy mint!
Ok, moderation totals -1 Stupid, sure, but I guess I didn't have enough caffeine yet today...
Thanks for that link, friend. I've been looking for that again ever since I got my own computer and stopped using Bieeardo's.
Sterling's an ok fellow, too. There was about a year where I couldn't swing a dead cat, metaphorically speaking, without coming across a reference to him. Another book (an anthology, really) of his that's really good (although not really about computers) is _A Good Old-Fashioned Future_.
Oh, yeah. Startling. Funny this should come up on /. now. I just re-read this article last night.
When I did a paper on "hackers" in grad school, I used this article as one of my sources, among other things.
And for those of you who know what happened to Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), Kevin Poulsen (Dark Dante), and any of the rest of that "middle-school" crowd (they're not "old-school" enough to be "old-school" IMHO), it kind of makes one sad.
What ever did happen to the "hire the hacker" ethic? Did it get lost in paranoia? Even the venerable l0pht went into business for themselves, and they didn't exactly get greeted with waves of enthusiasm, IIRC.
Sorry, I have to say it. American tv finally gave a prestigious award to a satirical political/current events show, only years after the huge and possibly continent-wide fame of The Royal Canadian Air Farce. The Air Farce and its cast have won some pretty heavy awards (during one awards ceremony, the actual politicians the Air Farce skewers played the actors who usually played them and performed a sketch).
Now I will be really impressed when real US politicians go on the show. Now, we all know Governor Bush would never do such a thing (Billy Clintstone might have, though), but the Air Farce has had "one Prime Minister, one Leader of the Opposition, two PC Leaders, 1 NDP Leader, [and] 1 Premier" on so far.
In any case, I think this is a great step forward for a tiny segment of US tv, at least.
Now we'll know the US is catching up to Canada in this department when the NEA starts funding The Daily Show.
Screwing Customers Turns Microsoft On.
:)
All Your Microsoft Are Belong to Us?
OTOH, The Infernal Machine and I have a very low MS-brand tolerance, even when I'm running Windows. Heck, I had to put Office on it for work, and the thing didn't want to speak to me for days.
All my Linux stuff is legal.
The medium is the message -- at least in 160 chars or less, thank you Uncle Marshall.
How about:
No1 on ths bus wnts 2 hEr yr fckng call. Trn yr dm phone off b4 we L Dcide 2 kill U.
Sorry. Hit the sore spot again. Grr... Cell phones -- how do I hate them, let me count the ways...
Ok, this is the funniest thing I've read since...well...yesterday, when I encountered this autobiography of Norman Spinrad.
Apparently, having a high fever can give you pretty 31337 phr33X0r p0w3rz too!
Gee, I'm really glad I only sell to small markets that only buy limited rights (FNASR, etc.). I don't think I would be able to take it if I had to sign away all the rights to all my writing forever just on the basis of one lousy payment.
If someone wants to make a movie or something out of one of my stories, they should have to talk to me and my lawyer, not to the publisher. Fair's fair, after all.
Selling ALL rights, and being coerced to sell ALL rights (and don't tell me "Sell us all the rights or you don't get published" isn't coercion) is nothing more than artistic prostitution and pimpery.
I don't know about you, but if I had my druthers, I'd have copies of all my music on vinyl. This predigested digitized stuff simply doesn't sound as nice, especially for analog-original recordings, of which I have many. A little bit of the sound depth is shaved off, and some of the highs and lows are gone too.
As to artistic endeavours, I won't be releasing any music direct-to-MP3 either. If you want it that way badly enough, you can DIY. Yep, it's probably irrational, but there's just something to be said for things like liner notes, album design, cover art, lyrics sheets, and all that stuff that people put a lot of work into. Heck, if music recordings no longer had cover (or CD) art, my buddy Winston would be practically out of a job.
Interrobang, the high-tech Luddite
What we used to do was tune in the radio to listen to the good play-by-play, while simultaneously watching the tv with the sound turned off, so we didn't have to listen to the clueless tv guys (who were usually biased for the other side anyway).
Ok, so it's not "computerized," but does everything have to be? Uh, oh. I'm gonna get SO flamed for saying that...
BTW...Anyone know if Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth still announce the Blue Jays games on radio? If you know the answer, you know where to find me.
?!
Basically, if I understand this argument correctly, the thesis is that people who read only "preference-filtered" (mmm, dark roast) content online (and elsewhere) will only be exposed to opinions with which they agree, issues in which they are already interested, and stuff like that. The problem is, if you don't read things with which you disagree, you don't learn anything. You especially don't learn how to examine your own beliefs and opinions for logical holes, flaws, and evidence of outside propagandizing. (In the circles I run in, we call that "critical thinking.") So, if I read correctly, "Me Media" is always "preaching to the choir." (As any evangelical knows, you'll never get new converts that way. :))
Case in point: If you only read articles saying, for instance, that everybody on Welfare cheats, drives a big car, and has 17 kids (to use a Reductio Ad Absurdum, but you see what I mean), and you've never talked to a Welfare recipient or read any real facts on the situation, how will you know "Welfare bashing" from reality?
Kafka's Dictum applies to the Net as well. Uncle Franz said, "I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?" I won't quite go that far, but I do always try to read the critics -- no matter how unsavoury they may be.
?!
And I've been waiting a long time to use the words "picayune" and "setentious" in a post. Thank you for making my afternoon.
Also, to split some rhetorical hairs, I'm not entirely sure if "stentorian" is the right word to use on the largely silent internet. (And no, I didn't click the link above.) It's not as though the controllers are always SHOUTING, is it? That "priveledge" is usually reserved for people who have no power (@aol.com). Usually the people involved in trying to control the Internet are clever, quiet, and subtle, although no less powerful than "stentorian" implies. I might say "Machiavellian," but then again, I'm paranoid at best.
Interrobang, MA, Applied Rhetoric (aka LPW)
Humans do clone naturally but that happens to women only and in very rare circumstances.
Do you have some evidence for that, or are you just drugged, lying, or a devout Funny-mentalist Christian who is suffering from terminal cognitive dissonance?
Any cases of alleged "natural human cloning" I've ever heard of have inevitably been frauds.
Methinks someone reads the Weekly World News too much...and believes everything they read.
?!
Actually, no. It would have been funnier that way, too, given all the dead cows we've been seeing lately. And in context, cDc makes more sense than CDC anyway. I mean, the Centres for Disease Control in satire on /.?! Come on!
The next thing you know, they'll be telling us the l0pht is just really a tony apartment.
I don't know, but if you find out what, let me know. I'd like to get in on it, too. (B'view & D'forth)
BTW, any of you Torontonians know if there are still 2600 Meetings in TO...or at least where all the geeks hang out? I'm tired of empty-headed yuppies and scenesters.
And just as a side note, does this "free wireless" thing sound at all like the net-borne equivalent of pirate radio to you? (Not that that's a bad thing, mind, I think we need more of it. Viva la revolucion, or whatever!)
Interro(r)bang
Well, I do know that the BWP people were out in force at MediaWest*Con, which, if you missed it, is sort of like the Comdex of SF fans. That was before the movie was released.
;)
Actually, that was a very smooth move. Anybody who's anybody and quite a few who aren't in the SF "media fen" (media here meaning movies/tv/games more so than "books" or "journalism") goes to that con, so they were sure to reach lots of interested people.
I even have an original MediaWest BWP swag logo pin on my jacket!
Yeah, but that was the point the writer wanted to make. Did anyone else notice the oversensationalized "Ooooh! The Internet is baaad! It's so scaaaarrryy!" tone creeping in all over the place in that article? I sure did.
I mean, apparently you can take the censor out of the censor's job, but you can't take the censoriousness out of the censor. Or something.
In tone, this article reminded me strongly of such previous "Net Hysteria" gems as the Time "Cyberporn" story, "Is Your Computer Posessed By A Demon?", and all those unsubstantiated reports of stalkers finding their victims online and subjecting them to Satanic Ritual Abuse, or something.
This writer really wants us to think that the Internet is a dangerous place, basically to justify her (former) job's existence. Fortunately, she's just a little too dumb to spot a scam when she sees it. Thank goodness. More of that kind of attitude we don't need.
[complaint mode] Ok, this subscription mode thing is great -- for those of you who live in the US. Go ahead, pay your $30 to Salon. I might do it, too, except for one thing. That $30 is $50 for me. And $50 is a piece of change to be reckoned with in my current circumstances.
It's the same reason why I'm not a card-carrying member of my social club, The Society for Creative Anachronism. Milpitas, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that there shall be no Canadian membership office (even though there's an Australian one), so we wind up paying $100 (at the current ROE) for what costs Statesians $45/year.
And considering, as I've said before, that when you're talking about in-country monetary transactions, buying power, and cost of living, that $100 is a month's worth of groceries to me, or a month's transit pass and dinner out for two people, or a whole $hxtload of used books, or...or...or...even if it only buys people in Milpitas (or anywhere else in the USA) $45 worth of stuff. In other words, thanks to the moneymongerers, we are getting scrod.
So I won't do it, at least not until it's fair to the consumer, regardless of exchange rate.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, except the thought expressed itself as
"Gee, we must really be getting close to the end of the oil if the oil companies are actually letting this one out of the bag."
Then again, a friend of mine once told me about meeting a shit-faced automotive engineer at a party who said he'd been on a team that helped build a car engine that could get 'mileage' on the order of hundreds of kms to the litre. She said that he said they eventually took the pieces out of the factory in envelopes, which tells you something. OTOH, he was drunk, but that story almost falls into the "I couldn't make up anything that weird" category.
Then again, the first "hybrid" cars are out...which either confirms my theory, or just implies that that particular cat is already out of the bag, or both.
Hmm...
How many times do I have to tell people (I'm actually used to this kind of arrogance from Statesians, who figure that meaningful comparisons can't be made unless everything is in terms of US$) that for in-country comparisons, exchange rate is meaningless?!
:)
What you need to look at are in-Mexico prices of basic goods and services. Then you will know how much of a savings this conversion actually is, and how much their anti-poverty programmes will benefit. I mean, if it costs 10 000 pesos just to buy a loaf of bread, then a few hundred million pesos isn't really a whole lot. If, on the other hand, it costs 10 pesos to buy a loaf of bread, then a few hundred million pesos is a lot.
For a bunch of alleged math goobs, you programmer guys can be pretty out of it sometimes.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Oftentimes something like this is 99.999% being in the right place at the right time. I can't say I ever played around with geometry like that (I can't draw a figure with a pencil to save my life, but I could probably draw you a good portrait of my math teachers from memory), but I can think of equivalent cases which burned my toast just as badly. (The one that really pissed me off was some folks with a bad case of "Backstage Mother Syndrome" got media attention for their kid who read at the age of 3ish...She wound up with a full scholarship to Oxford. As near as I and my family can figure, I was reading before I was three, and the only way I -- or a lot of folks like me -- will ever get anywhere near school at Oxford is if we win the lottery or something. Gee, I wish I had attention seekers-by-proxy for parents, too.)
:P
So, yep. I know where you're coming from there. I wonder how many other Slashdots and Slashdaughters out there have had similar experiences... I mean, this *is* a very "high side of normal" to "normal side of high" kind of place, intelligence-wise (usually), which is one of the reasons I hang out here.
Also, I just dig typing "break" tags.
?!
If you're good at what you do, then you don't have to worry about getting fired. If you're good at doing what you do, then you don't have to worry about being rehired.
...anyone want to hire a good "utility outfielder" writer, editor, and design goob (tech writing gleefully accepted due to congenital insanity); researcher, trivia sorter and reporter, and general Geek-In-Training?
Oh, goodie. Does that dictum apply outside of programming as well, or is programming a special case? Right now, I wish I were a programmer; it would make finding work in my chosen field much easier. And I am good at what I do (which happens to be a lot of things -- I could be someone's indispensable employee if they'd just take the straightjacket off)...and I still can't find a bloody job.
No, I'm not on this thread to bitch, I'm here to see what other peoples' experiences are, job hunting and the lack thereof.
But in my personal opinion, getting a job is mostly a combination of being in the right place at the right time with the right credentials...and a hell of a lot of luck. Sometimes (as I found out when I got my last job) the luck comes first.
So...(pitch w/tongue in cheek)
?!
$1 US buys you 4.055 Zlotys. What's 22 gajillion divided by 4.055? How many zeroes in a gajillion again?
Sorry, I couldn't find exchange information on the Quatloo. I don't have that kind of access to the Federation datanets.
Interrobang, civilian