I've already patented ass wiping thresholds, as well as asses and assholes. In fact, since Steve "Rotting Corpse" Jobs finally bit the big one, I'm even closer to cornering the asshole patent market.
You can't patent asses and assholes. They're human interfaces with rounded corners. Apple would sue your ass off!
Take headshots of your significant other looking very impatient, occasionally slightly moving to create the appearance of a live image. Glue a black plastic sequin to the middle of the top frame so it looks like a built in camera. Set the frame in portrait orientation and have it display the images in quick succession on your desk. Then whenever someone you don't want to talk to approaches, start apologizing to the frame, then turn it around for them to see, and whisper this: "I've got my wife on the telescreen... I have to take this call..." Bonus points if it is your wife who you avoid talking to in this way.
The outbursts began in 1984 and lasted about four years, until NOC hit sexual maturity.
If only people were like that: all talk until they hit sexual maturity and suddenly realize they don't know anything. People just keep on talking, as evidenced by the slashdot crowd, who... Oh... wait. This explains so much...
...while...your natural gas company...have far more in-depth information on you and far more experience at mining that data - and far, far more interest in seeing Mitt Romney elected...
Do you suppose they even make Romney and the Republicans pay for that data, or just give it to 'em gratis?
Sometimes it seems like they have lots of in-depth information, and sometimes it seems like they're couldn't tell whether I'm warming a cup of milk or cooking dinner for 8 people.
PG&E bills me by the kilowatt hour for my electricity, but they can't seem to get more granular data than a therm (100 cubic feet) when it comes to how much gas I've used. Whether I have my stove on for 5 minutes or 45 minutes, I get charged for 1.02 therms of gas that day. I've methodically tested it. It's only a couple dollars per therm, but if you use your stove every day and they're charging you $2 every time you turn it on versus the 50 cents of gas you're using, they're squeezing an extra $45 a month out of you for gas they still have in the pipeline.
Unless... wait... <SARCASM>are you saying they do know how much of their product they deliver to us? I think you're giving them too much credit.</SARCASM>
It is our Prime Directive to completely restore the STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION D Bridge Set to make it a Fully Interactive, Simulator available for Display, Parties, Movie Showings, Fundraising, Charities, Fan Films, as well as newly created interactive Education Missions, so entire classrooms of students can steer the Enterprise to other planets, galaxies and more!
Poor choice of words. I know the marketing speak is meant to energize the fans with catch phrases, but if they actually thought about it the Prime Directive is an unchanging axiom:
As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.
In other words, "don't provide advanced technology to civilizations that don't have it yet." Contaminating an old bridge set (that was built before the technology to give it real, functional touch screens) by outfitting it with modern, working touch screens would seem to be a violation of the Prime Directive... even if it is for the purpose of saving the ship.
"One hundred... BILLION... dollars." Well, now we know what Dr. Evil is doing in his retirement. He's building a high speed rail network in China, with frickin laser beams attached.
The Washington Post was absolutely livid about the Drudge Report "deep linking" to stories on its Web site in the late 90s. It tried blocking him at first, but he'd find ways around it. Eventually they realized he was driving a huge amount of traffic to the site, which resulted in advertising dollars for them. But they were so used to being "the only game in town" in Washington DC (The Washington Times doesn't count; it's a church-funded instrument that has never operated in the black founded in 1982 by a guy who claimed to be the messiah) that they had this mentality that they drove traffic places, not the other way around. Eventually they recognized that they had no choice but to look the other way while Drudge continued deep linking, but a few people on staff still grumbled about him being a parasite profiting off of their work.
France and the U.S. have very different ideas about the media and intellectual property (for example, publishers in France set book prices and the bookstores can't discount them). There's a reason bookstores aren't dying there like they are in the states -- in fact, physical book sales are up. TFA in this case doesn't specify whether the complaint is about Google scraping entire pages from the site (for previews) or just displaying the brief summary, but that would seem to be where a line might need to be drawn. If a Google user can read an entire news story by squinting at the preview on Google's site without ever visiting the publisher that paid for the content to be written, I could see the French having an issue with that. But if their complaint is that you can search the text of their articles, see a brief summary of the article that directs you to the publisher's site, they're going to need to wake up and realize that Google (and similar search engines) are driving visitors and euros to them without having to make payments directly.
Would a restaurant complain about trademark infringement if the city put up signs with their logo directing people to the restaurant? Well, maybe in France.
On purpose. Apparently the company was founded in 2004 and named after the fictional company from the Terminator franchise. Since they're going after the publicity, they should open a satellite office at 47131 Bayside Parkway, Fremont CA, the real-life location of the company's offices. And keep an out-of-service SWAT van in the parking lot.
Evolution says the reason for sleep is that it improves a creature's ability to adapt... but what does sleep adapt us for?
Most creatures don't live long enough to have a need to adapt as an individual, but they adapt as a species over generations.
Humans probably have the greatest need to adapt as individuals. Every day:
laws are changing.Today: Gay Marriage Legal! Tomorrow: Gay Marriage Illegal and Unconstitutional because the 40.46% of the electorate said so! Next Friday: Bingo at the Supreme Court!)
religions are changing.Today: Earth is the Center of the Universe and Stoning Pregnant Women for Sex Out of Wedlock is Good! Tomorrow: Earth Not the Center of the Universe and Abortion is Evil. Next Friday: Earth is the center of the Universe every third Thursday during certain seasons, check local listings or pastors for details.
food sources and taboos are changing.Today: steel cans lined with BPA keep your family's food fresh! Tomorrow: BPA in bottles bad, but we're OK with BPA in cans! Next Friday: FDA outlaws all estrogen-mimicking substances including Richard Simmons.
business and personal relationships are changing.Today: Great work, Invaluable Employee/Loving Wife! Tomorrow: You've been replaced by someone cheaper/someone cheaper! Next Friday: Special Rates at the Chapel of Love for Couples Marrying Each Other for the 3rd Time!
even the side of the street you may park on is changing on a regular basis.
You have to be able to adapt because society ensures that someone is constantly moving your cheese, and in return for this, you as an individual get to live longer than wild animals do.
One theory about why we need to sleep is that we need to filter out all the crap from the stuff we need to save. During REM sleep the neurons are subjected to spontaneous, chaotic activity, strengthening memories whose neuronal substrate is already sufficiently established, and disintegrating those that are weaker. Ever built a sandcastle by the water line at the beach? The walls that are not tightly packed get washed away when the water hits them, but the ones that are tightly packed survive and seem to actually be strengthened by the encounter. In a way, that's what REM sleep may do for our memories. Without that, it's all just an unstable jumble, and you can't adapt to all the crap in your life without the clarity to know what day it is or where the heck you're supposed to be.
For a moment there I thought you were talking about General Motors, and I was intrigued by the prospect that after decades of being half asleep at the wheel they might have produced something people are interested in acquiring. False alarm.
Most people don't know that they're half asleep, but they are. All the time. At least the dolphins seem to turn both cores on every now and then.
Perhaps we could have the dolphins vote on our behalf next month. And if they elect a dolphin, it might not be such a bad thing, so long as their choice is 35 or older and born within U.S. territorial waters. We won't care what color dolphin they choose. Think of all the money we'd save collectively by not donating to campaigns that are just going to scream garbage and lies at us. Think of all the extra things we could do if we didn't have the distraction of being bombarded with that stuff and having to sort it out. Republicans will go for this because a dolphin won't be able to raise taxes. Democrats will go for this because a dolphin won't be able to cut services. The only ones who would lose out would be the networks that depend on expensive campaign ads... Fox news might go out of business. This is starting to sound like a very good idea.
Apple has deliberately buried the opt out option as a cop out for a feature that adds no value whatsoever to the customer's device or experience but allows third parties to make money by exploiting their privacy where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. This should be an "opt in" feature by default if there are truly people who "want to support the poor advertisers." Beyond that I think there needs to be a push for access to the hosts file on phones so the user can take control of what connections are using their data plan.
Wait... We all know that tech companies will beat you up and take your privacy away.
But if the fat kids at your school valued your veggies the way tech companies value your privacy, you must have had some pretty smart fat kids who aren't fat anymore. Did you go to school with Tim Cook?
Get as few people as possible to buy this, and keep the price up. I'm serious. Look at how they introduced it: we're going to hype it, show a few people, not let them use it, and not tell them what the price is. This created buzz. Even now, if you pre-order, you're paying for something you've never used, for which there are no real reviews. If hardly anyone is using it, hardly anyone will complain about the issues that it's first gen will have, but lots of people will think of it as this elusive, premium product. This buys them buzz and time to work out the bugs for the second gen.
Yet another useless stupid option to turn off before playing a game.
Yes, but how else are they supposed to justify charging $89.99 for a second PS4 controller? The margins have to come from somewhere. There has to be some way to wring more blood from the consumer stone. Microscopic spikes that prick your hands?
OK, on a more serious note, this part of TFA really gets me:
When you force my son to take subjects which which he doesn’t connect, you are not allowing them that same time to take a public speaking course, which he could be really good at, or music, or political science, or creative writing, or HTML coding for websites.
Point for point (in bold):
I learned public speaking through my decision to be involved in Key Club (extracurricular community service) and took that to the state level without any classes on it.
I was in concert band, marching band (assistant drum major), and orchestra for four years of high school, and I took AP Chemistry in 10th grade. Music and Science are not an either-or proposition. If your school is making kids choose between the two (which I doubt), they're doing it wrong.
I was terrible at AP Chem. I used to get back tests with "you should drop this class" noted at the top. But the AP Chem teacher was also very interested in politics, which I learned outside of the class periods. I'd spent my lunch periods when he was on hall-monitor duty talking about politics articles we'd both read in The New York Times that morning, and he planted the seed that got me interested in political journalism. For two years after that class, I still met up with him between classes and after school, bouncing ideas off of him and effectively sharpening my tools.
I developed creative writing on my own, largely by reading The New York Times seven days a week and writing parodies of events in the newspaper and at my school, getting people to look at situations from a different perspective. I failed at it sometimes, but I didn't need a grade or a class to know when I failed at it.
I taught myself HTML by taking apart other people's code on real Web sites and making small changes to see what happened. Within a couple years I had knowledge of HTML you wouldn't find in any book that gave me a huge advantage over people who took a class on it. In my sophomore year of college, I was teaching a 300 level class on online journalism because my 30,000-student university didn't have anyone more qualified to teach it.
All of the above, taken as a whole, resulted in an internship and a salaried job working at the very publication that is hosting TFA (ironically, I was reading Slashdot back then, but hadn't set up an account, and now Taco's working where I was). I used to run the business and technology sections, and later developed HTML for the site that loaded faster than code by the "certified experts" they hired to "improve" my code. Then I left for a job in Silicon Valley, making HTML do things the engineering staff said weren't possible because they hadn't read them in a book.
The point is that kids need a variety of experiences... especially the ones they will fail at. The failures open you up to other things which you pursue in your spare time. And if this guy's kid actually does have ADHD as TFA claims, the biggest problem he has is figuring out how to fill all his spare time. People I've known who have ADHD are constantly trying to squeeze as many activities as they can into every waking moment of their day... and at least one of them taught herself to develop Web sites and sits up late at night coding when her ADHD won't let her sleep.
If you let your kids eat whatever they want three meals a day before they, they'd probably die of scurvy before they were able to figure out what they really liked and what they really need. If you let them throw out whatever classes they "don't connect with," you're doing the same thing to their brains.
Chemistry class: 39 minutes per day
Teaching a kid a variety of subjects so he will have something to talk about when he does take public speaking in college: 18 years
Cleaning up chemicals spilled by your ADD kid who wasn't paying attention: 6 minutes
Getting acquainted with the flow rate of the emergency eyewash station: 5 minutes
Teaching a kid that ignoring science can be hazardous to your health: Priceless
There are some things you will never find time for. For everything else, there are pretentious self-important jerks like David Bernstein.
If Sony really wants an immersive, realistic "Sony Experience," it should develop a controller that installs a root kit on the other player's system that allows you to temporarily read his messages, see what music he has and make his controller punch him in the face.
Wait. I think I was picturing the Soviet version. Reverse that. It installs the root kit on your system and you're the one who gets punched in the face.
Slashdot Mirror
I've already patented ass wiping thresholds, as well as asses and assholes. In fact, since Steve "Rotting Corpse" Jobs finally bit the big one, I'm even closer to cornering the asshole patent market.
You can't patent asses and assholes. They're human interfaces with rounded corners. Apple would sue your ass off!
Take headshots of your significant other looking very impatient, occasionally slightly moving to create the appearance of a live image. Glue a black plastic sequin to the middle of the top frame so it looks like a built in camera. Set the frame in portrait orientation and have it display the images in quick succession on your desk. Then whenever someone you don't want to talk to approaches, start apologizing to the frame, then turn it around for them to see, and whisper this: "I've got my wife on the telescreen... I have to take this call..." Bonus points if it is your wife who you avoid talking to in this way.
(of course, load said images onto your compact flash card and set it to play through each one)
The outbursts began in 1984 and lasted about four years, until NOC hit sexual maturity.
If only people were like that: all talk until they hit sexual maturity and suddenly realize they don't know anything. People just keep on talking, as evidenced by the slashdot crowd, who... Oh... wait. This explains so much...
Where the hell is Span?
Google says it's between a rock (Gibraltar) and a hard place to publish Web search results (France).
...while...your natural gas company...have far more in-depth information on you and far more experience at mining that data - and far, far more interest in seeing Mitt Romney elected...
Do you suppose they even make Romney and the Republicans pay for that data, or just give it to 'em gratis?
Sometimes it seems like they have lots of in-depth information, and sometimes it seems like they're couldn't tell whether I'm warming a cup of milk or cooking dinner for 8 people.
PG&E bills me by the kilowatt hour for my electricity, but they can't seem to get more granular data than a therm (100 cubic feet) when it comes to how much gas I've used. Whether I have my stove on for 5 minutes or 45 minutes, I get charged for 1.02 therms of gas that day. I've methodically tested it. It's only a couple dollars per therm, but if you use your stove every day and they're charging you $2 every time you turn it on versus the 50 cents of gas you're using, they're squeezing an extra $45 a month out of you for gas they still have in the pipeline.
Unless... wait... <SARCASM>are you saying they do know how much of their product they deliver to us? I think you're giving them too much credit.</SARCASM>
It is our Prime Directive to completely restore the STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION D Bridge Set to make it a Fully Interactive, Simulator available for Display, Parties, Movie Showings, Fundraising, Charities, Fan Films, as well as newly created interactive Education Missions, so entire classrooms of students can steer the Enterprise to other planets, galaxies and more!
Poor choice of words. I know the marketing speak is meant to energize the fans with catch phrases, but if they actually thought about it the Prime Directive is an unchanging axiom:
As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation.
In other words, "don't provide advanced technology to civilizations that don't have it yet." Contaminating an old bridge set (that was built before the technology to give it real, functional touch screens) by outfitting it with modern, working touch screens would seem to be a violation of the Prime Directive... even if it is for the purpose of saving the ship.
"One hundred... BILLION... dollars." Well, now we know what Dr. Evil is doing in his retirement. He's building a high speed rail network in China, with frickin laser beams attached.
"This line of crazy thinking is full of holes, Monsieur De Gaulle. It's so simple, it's Emmental!"
-- Swiss Cheese Makers
The Washington Post was absolutely livid about the Drudge Report "deep linking" to stories on its Web site in the late 90s. It tried blocking him at first, but he'd find ways around it. Eventually they realized he was driving a huge amount of traffic to the site, which resulted in advertising dollars for them. But they were so used to being "the only game in town" in Washington DC (The Washington Times doesn't count; it's a church-funded instrument that has never operated in the black founded in 1982 by a guy who claimed to be the messiah) that they had this mentality that they drove traffic places, not the other way around. Eventually they recognized that they had no choice but to look the other way while Drudge continued deep linking, but a few people on staff still grumbled about him being a parasite profiting off of their work.
France and the U.S. have very different ideas about the media and intellectual property (for example, publishers in France set book prices and the bookstores can't discount them). There's a reason bookstores aren't dying there like they are in the states -- in fact, physical book sales are up. TFA in this case doesn't specify whether the complaint is about Google scraping entire pages from the site (for previews) or just displaying the brief summary, but that would seem to be where a line might need to be drawn. If a Google user can read an entire news story by squinting at the preview on Google's site without ever visiting the publisher that paid for the content to be written, I could see the French having an issue with that. But if their complaint is that you can search the text of their articles, see a brief summary of the article that directs you to the publisher's site, they're going to need to wake up and realize that Google (and similar search engines) are driving visitors and euros to them without having to make payments directly.
Would a restaurant complain about trademark infringement if the city put up signs with their logo directing people to the restaurant? Well, maybe in France.
On purpose. Apparently the company was founded in 2004 and named after the fictional company from the Terminator franchise. Since they're going after the publicity, they should open a satellite office at 47131 Bayside Parkway, Fremont CA, the real-life location of the company's offices. And keep an out-of-service SWAT van in the parking lot.
Include Cybermen and/or Daleks, and we're one brain-snatching away from three different sci-fi universes colliding with reality.
It hasn't started raining Daleks yet, but does Betelgeuse throwing fireballs at us this weekend count?
Evolution says the reason for sleep is that it improves a creature's ability to adapt... but what does sleep adapt us for?
Most creatures don't live long enough to have a need to adapt as an individual, but they adapt as a species over generations.
Humans probably have the greatest need to adapt as individuals. Every day:
You have to be able to adapt because society ensures that someone is constantly moving your cheese, and in return for this, you as an individual get to live longer than wild animals do.
One theory about why we need to sleep is that we need to filter out all the crap from the stuff we need to save. During REM sleep the neurons are subjected to spontaneous, chaotic activity, strengthening memories whose neuronal substrate is already sufficiently established, and disintegrating those that are weaker. Ever built a sandcastle by the water line at the beach? The walls that are not tightly packed get washed away when the water hits them, but the ones that are tightly packed survive and seem to actually be strengthened by the encounter. In a way, that's what REM sleep may do for our memories. Without that, it's all just an unstable jumble, and you can't adapt to all the crap in your life without the clarity to know what day it is or where the heck you're supposed to be.
A GM trait I'd be interested in acquiring.
For a moment there I thought you were talking about General Motors, and I was intrigued by the prospect that after decades of being half asleep at the wheel they might have produced something people are interested in acquiring. False alarm.
Most people don't know that they're half asleep, but they are. All the time. At least the dolphins seem to turn both cores on every now and then.
Perhaps we could have the dolphins vote on our behalf next month. And if they elect a dolphin, it might not be such a bad thing, so long as their choice is 35 or older and born within U.S. territorial waters. We won't care what color dolphin they choose. Think of all the money we'd save collectively by not donating to campaigns that are just going to scream garbage and lies at us. Think of all the extra things we could do if we didn't have the distraction of being bombarded with that stuff and having to sort it out. Republicans will go for this because a dolphin won't be able to raise taxes. Democrats will go for this because a dolphin won't be able to cut services. The only ones who would lose out would be the networks that depend on expensive campaign ads... Fox news might go out of business. This is starting to sound like a very good idea.
David Temkin, AOL's senior VP of mail said, 'We need another email address like we need another hole in the head.'
There. Fixed it for him.
It's not FUD.
Apple has deliberately buried the opt out option as a cop out for a feature that adds no value whatsoever to the customer's device or experience but allows third parties to make money by exploiting their privacy where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. This should be an "opt in" feature by default if there are truly people who "want to support the poor advertisers." Beyond that I think there needs to be a push for access to the hosts file on phones so the user can take control of what connections are using their data plan.
Wait... We all know that tech companies will beat you up and take your privacy away.
But if the fat kids at your school valued your veggies the way tech companies value your privacy, you must have had some pretty smart fat kids who aren't fat anymore. Did you go to school with Tim Cook?
Get as few people as possible to buy this, and keep the price up. I'm serious. Look at how they introduced it: we're going to hype it, show a few people, not let them use it, and not tell them what the price is. This created buzz. Even now, if you pre-order, you're paying for something you've never used, for which there are no real reviews. If hardly anyone is using it, hardly anyone will complain about the issues that it's first gen will have, but lots of people will think of it as this elusive, premium product. This buys them buzz and time to work out the bugs for the second gen.
Yet another useless stupid option to turn off before playing a game.
Yes, but how else are they supposed to justify charging $89.99 for a second PS4 controller? The margins have to come from somewhere. There has to be some way to wring more blood from the consumer stone. Microscopic spikes that prick your hands?
When you force my son to take subjects which which he doesn’t connect, you are not allowing them that same time to take a public speaking course, which he could be really good at, or music, or political science, or creative writing, or HTML coding for websites.
Point for point (in bold):
All of the above, taken as a whole, resulted in an internship and a salaried job working at the very publication that is hosting TFA (ironically, I was reading Slashdot back then, but hadn't set up an account, and now Taco's working where I was). I used to run the business and technology sections, and later developed HTML for the site that loaded faster than code by the "certified experts" they hired to "improve" my code. Then I left for a job in Silicon Valley, making HTML do things the engineering staff said weren't possible because they hadn't read them in a book.
The point is that kids need a variety of experiences... especially the ones they will fail at. The failures open you up to other things which you pursue in your spare time. And if this guy's kid actually does have ADHD as TFA claims, the biggest problem he has is figuring out how to fill all his spare time. People I've known who have ADHD are constantly trying to squeeze as many activities as they can into every waking moment of their day... and at least one of them taught herself to develop Web sites and sits up late at night coding when her ADHD won't let her sleep.
If you let your kids eat whatever they want three meals a day before they, they'd probably die of scurvy before they were able to figure out what they really liked and what they really need. If you let them throw out whatever classes they "don't connect with," you're doing the same thing to their brains.
Chemistry class: 39 minutes per day
Teaching a kid a variety of subjects so he will have something to talk about when he does take public speaking in college: 18 years
Cleaning up chemicals spilled by your ADD kid who wasn't paying attention: 6 minutes
Getting acquainted with the flow rate of the emergency eyewash station: 5 minutes
Teaching a kid that ignoring science can be hazardous to your health: Priceless
There are some things you will never find time for. For everything else, there are pretentious self-important jerks like David Bernstein.
If Sony really wants an immersive, realistic "Sony Experience," it should develop a controller that installs a root kit on the other player's system that allows you to temporarily read his messages, see what music he has and make his controller punch him in the face.
Wait. I think I was picturing the Soviet version. Reverse that. It installs the root kit on your system and you're the one who gets punched in the face.
"If you haven't got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
There, Alice Roosevelt (1884-1980, Theodore Roosevelt's daughter) finished it for you.