I think everyone noticed the gm vans - it was damned annoying.
Now, if we're going to talk advertising impressions, and really amazing numbers, we have to go with the pros - pro sports, that is.
Take hockey. You know all those ads on the sideboards in in the ice? Advertisers have people who count the number of times each ad shows on-screen. The more, the better. It means it was a fast-paced game, and had people looking. It also meant that the camera-work was good. We're talking about generating hundreds of ad views in under a minute. And this is what the advertisers who buy those spots want. They would rather you got 20 quick glimpses of their ad in the space of 30 seconds of hot action that you're really in to, than a 30-second spot that you'll either click away from, or fast forward through. And there's the bonus exposure on the news shows. A good hockey game can generate 10,000 - 50,000 or more "ad views".
But hockey and football are small potatos compared to Formula 1. Spotters count every time each sticker on a car is on-camera. If only some of the stickers are visible, only those stickers count. The car passes someone on the outside, the stickers are hidden temporarily, - well, that's 2 impressions. Bonus! Now, if you've seen an F1 car, the're covered with ads. So don't be surprised when you find out you're getting over 100,000 ad views per hour. Heck, a really good race should generate a million ampressions or more, if the camerawork is done properly. That's what the advertisers pay for - good camerawork. Not for your benefit - for theirs. And someone has counted each ad view. And someone else has audited the counts. And a third someone else writes a check for them.
They account for them that way, and pay for them that way, because that's what works for them. Follow the $$$.
Kind of makes the 5,000 ad impressions your kid got watching the monster trucks featured on The Learning Channel's Big Machines pale in comparison.
Most people don't realize how important product placement ads are. The same product may be "placed" a dozen times in the space of a few minutes. You have to count those ads - they're being paid for by the industry, because they're the most effective ads around. Now, get multiple products, multiple placements. You can easily get 500 ads per hour right there.
Now add in the conventional ads, the back-to-back frenetic 10-second spots (18 in a 3-minute interval), the incrustations, the framed ads over the intros and credits, the voice-voers, etc. An ad every 5 seconds is not only doable, its now pretty much what you're seeing without even being aware of it - which is the true mark of success.
Car companies want THEIR car being seen on the show. Food companies want kids to see other kids on TV nuking a frozen "pizza-dough product", or drinking a "sports beverage". Friends get their friends a brewski from the fridge, and, while you can't read the label, you don't have to, to recognize the can or bottle. They sit down to have breakfast, and there's a frozen waffle (gee - guess who makes that), and a bottle of ketchup (hello Mr Heinz) for the bacon and eggs, and cereal (the brand is hidden, but the box's coloring gives it away as Rice Krispies). And the right brand of running shoes for junior. It never stops.
Hell, a family meal is good for a couple dozen product placements in the space of 30 seconds. If you think about it, I'm sure you can come up with a few you've seen, but hadn't cottoned to.
Clued-in moderators rate funny stuff as insightful, b/c funny mods don't increase karma, whereas a corresponding downmod will decrease it. Its the weird slashmath. For example, say you get 5 +1 funny mods. You get no karma points for Funny mods. Then someone else bitch-slaps you with 5 -1 troll mods. You get a -5 karma hit.
Besides, you have to have a bit of insight to be funny... otherwise it wouldn't be funny, so its karmic (ok, moan and groan, that pun was pretty bad)
And even more amazing is that if the ad is actually interesting, a little part of my subconscious mind will let me know and I can choose to pay attention
So it doesn't bother you that your subconscious is actually "tuned into" all these ads without any conscious intervention or filtering on your part? This is the type of response advertisers love! You're taking it all in at the subconscious level, without any interference by the "supervisor program". And don't think it doesn't register - analyse what you wrote, and you'll realize that it in fact does register, as your subconscious will alert you to certain key events. Its all being processed. And most of it is bypassing your consciousness, with its built-in filtering and cynicism. 10 ads for ju food go by - you don't notice any of them - but you head for the fridge looking for some munchies. Why do you think there's a correlation between tv and obesity?
FYI, I haven't watched commercials in a few years so I most certainly didn't notice the format changes they have made to ads in the last few years. TIVO keeps me well insulated from the shit on TV I don't want to watch. For those of you without TIVO, I hear the mute button also works pretty well.
You've still watched half of all the advertising on TV, even if you skipped the commercials. Product placement is BIG. Its also designed to be subtle, so that you DON'T spot it, because if you do spot it on casual viewing, it has failed totally.
Its where the advertisers are spending their money. As the saying goes, follow the money. When money talks, intelligent people listen.
Oh, there's still a few things worth watching (but not very many):
My (very short) list from the last year:
The new Dr. Who series (for its mindless brain "junk food" value - watched 3 episodes of it in all)
Les Bougon (a french series that quickly became the #1 show on the french networks up here in Canuckistan - friggin hilarious. Its being made into a movie for US audiences. If you want to see sacred cows get made into hamburgers, this show is THE one.)
The new Battlestar Galactica series - which I was really surprised - because the original series sucked, and I'm not a fan of any of the star treks aside from the original series, but the new BSG, once you get past the cheesy references to the original, is really quite good)
Actually, I don't usually go around telling people to stop watching TV, because most of the time the subject doesn't come up. But I do have friends who have "taken the pledge", in the sense that they hardly ever watch the tube either. And I have others who are hooked on it. Its pretty lame when they have to interrupt a phone conversation because they're going to miss part of a rerun of that craptacious Star Trek/TNG or Babylon 5. (I could understand if it was Red Dwarf or the new Dr. Who or Les Bougon:-)
News flash: everything on TV is there because lots of people watch it.
If only that wer the full truth. I've seen people using the remote for half an hour, channel surfing all their satellite channels trying to find SOMETHING worth watching, either on the regular satellite, or ppv. And when they come up empty, they go through the whole rotation again. Its like a mouse that, once its been trained to get a food pellet for pressing a lever, keeps pressing the lever over and over, because its "learned" that behaviour, and can't stop.
In other words, the same pattern of addiction we see with video lottery terminals. They're not really enjoying it - they've learned a certain behaviour, and can't break the cycle. "There's gotta be SOMETHING on"... and when there's not, they'll settle for crap. They don't say "fuck this", get up, and go for a walk or grab a book or go out.
If every other channel is running crap, you too can run crap and make a profit, because there are people out there who have no control over themselves - they have to watch SOMETHING, they need their "hit", their "fix." And if they don't get it, they show all the symptoms of an addict in withdrawal.
Hell, just look at how frantic some people get when they can't find the remote.
Its not a pull medium when all you can pull is the crap they want you to pull.
Ads include product placements, 12 10-second commercials back-to-back in a 2-minute spot, framing the credits and opening scenes so they can run ads, running multiple ads in those framed screens, encrustations, crawlers, voice-overs "coming up next - the simpsons"... its un-fucking-real.
Sit down and count the ads in one show. Then watch it again, and see which ones you missed the first time. Then watch AGAIN, and see which ones you missed the second time.
Its scary. Just the product placements - the best of which are very subtle, so that you DON'T catch them - are huge. They're considered to be the most effective form of advertising, and that's where the big bucks are going. Not the ads between scenes. Even if you skip through all the commercials, you've only cut out, at best, a quarter to half of all the ads.
And the funny part - most people are so used to it, they don't even notice what's being fed to them.
So you have no problem that by the time kids finish high school, they've spent more time in front of a TV than with a teacher?
Or that the tube is the baby-sitter of choice for most of the country's pre-schoolers? Or that it's the #1 thing kids do as soon as they get home from school?
Here are the facts, courtesy of PBS (ironic, ain't it:-)
The average American watches 3,000 ads per day on TV
Kids watch 28 hours of TV each week
The #1 after-school activity for kids 6-17 is... watching TV
The AMA says that the average teenager will have seen 18,000 murders and 200,000 violent acts on TV by the time they turn 18. (but no responsible sex - showing kids that people should use a condom to help prevent the spread of diseases and unwanted pregnancies is harmful to their little minds)
The more TV your kids watch, the more likely they are to be obese, into drugs, and sexually active.
Planned Parenthood - these same kids get to see over 14,000 references to sex every year, but less than 175 where the people are behaving responsibly. The message kids are getting - it's okay to have sex, as long as it wasn't "planned" - and you don't need to protect yourself, because adults don't.
If you think all this isn't having a negative effect on people, you're the one who's fucked up. Or brainwashed. Probably from watching too much TV. Bet you didn't even notice they've gone to 10-second commercials, cramming 12 of them into a 2-minute break, and that they've "sped up" the shows by dropping frames, so as to grab another 3 minutes of commercial time to sell. You can now sit through up to 100 full-screen ads per hour, plus hundreds more "product placements", and "encrustations", "split-screens" while the credits are rolling, voice-over ads, crawlers, etc. 500 ads per fucking hour! And I'll bet you didn't even notice it was anywhere near that high. Why? Because you've grown used to it, and accept it as "normal." You're a good little consumer. So when the next version of DRM'd TV comes out, and you can't skip the commercials, and they run for 2 minutes, then 2 minutes of TV (framed by ads), then another 2 minutes of commercials, you'll happily bend over and take it like a man, because that's what you've been trained to do. You welcome your commercial-sponsoring overlords.
Really? I thought we, as a human race, needed to stop killing other humans, stop killing the other intelligent life on this planet (dolphins, etc.) and start exploring the universe in peace and harmony. Silly me. Guess I'm not gay, huh?
No, it just means you're not a Bush supporter. Which, means, as frar as the Bushies are concerned, you might as well be gay. Or Canadian. Same diff.
Today ICANN announced that they will free up single-digit domains. They expect to make millions off the sale of the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. <p>When asked for comment about ICANN's new single-digit policy, one slashdotter said "Let them sit on THIS single digit and rotate!"
Of course, 1 is going to go for big bucks - "We're #1".
7 also - "Lucky us".
Avis will buy #2 - "We're #2 - we try harder"
3 will be bought out as a business portal - "3's company"
4 will be some scam - "trust us - we work 4 u" - or some golf site - "fore!"
9 will be sold to some kraut anti-drug campaign - "just say 9/nein"
8 will go to weight-watchers or slimfast - "8 too much?"
5 will go to whoever looses the bid for 1 - they''ll then say "5 - we're the quintiscential site" or some other loser shit
6 will go to an online redneck pharmacy - "when you'se feeling six as a dawg, order your meds from 6.com"
0, of course, will be the big one. The BIGGEST sex portal - "come to 0.com - because you can't get any lower than us"
Well, its not really off-topic, because PVRs are supposed to help you "cherry-pcik", but in reality people use them to consume even more junk. Just like the original VCR - people tape stuff "becasue they can", and nver get around to watching half of it.
So, how much TV have you watched the last year, including the time spent doing the "cherry-picking"? Mine stays off for weeks at a time. Actually, its pretty much only been on this year when friends come over to watch a dvd.
At least with a computer, you're not a passive receiver, you ARE interacting. And a lot of the debates actually require you to think. To be a bit original. Look at any of the flamefests:-) I mean, if you haven't gotten a few freaks, you're not "interacting" hard enough (I've only got 75 - I want MORE!!!)
Seriously, the last smackdown of Sony, world-wide, means that DRM stands for "Damaged Retail Media". DRM your product today, get sued tomorrow.
What Sony did was the best thing for advancing consumer awareness.
Now the REAL question is, wtf would anyone buy this when there's absolutely nothing worth watching in the first place? Come on people, we bitch about slashdot posting dupes - why aren't you bitching about your TV providing 500 channels of dupes - the same crap on 20 channels, just "time-shifted for your viewing pleasure". Yeah, right. Unplug the fucking idiot box. Lose the remote. Gain 5 hours a day back into your life
Oops - I forgot - TV viewers don't have a life - that's why they live vicariously through TV. Why don't they have a life? Because they haven't got TIME for one - they'll miss their favourite TV show.
Tv Tv Tv [TT]V
Just turn the fucking thing off, okay? For ONE FUCKING DAY?
Unfortunately, in the end they both spend the evening with "Mrs. Palmer and her 4 sisters."
Now if Gallant were to dump perl for python, he wouldn't have to "spend another solid four hours" working on a perl script - it would have been finished before he grabbed his 15-minute lunch, and he could spend some quality [tt]ime schmoozing:-)
You had me up until Gallant--the Linux user--scores.
Well, its certainly more believable than "Gallant -- the Apple user -- scores".
Umm... on second thought, you're right.
I knew one mac head who, on a bet at work, went and stood on the street corner and started propositioning girls. He bet he could get laid just by asking. Sure enough, one of them said "Why are you bothering me?" and he said "... well, I have this bet..." and she said, "Oh, what the hell, ok".
Which just goes to show that Mac users can spread viruses just as well as Windows users. Proof that Linux is the safe alternative.
You're right. What I'd like to see is web sites implement keyboard shortcuts properly.
Its a bit of a pita, but its doable - javascript traps all the keypresses - even F10 (at least under linux), and I've written the code to trap it and route the hotkeys to the appropriate onclick event (maybe I'll post it some day when I've had a chance to clean it up - code is like underwear - you really don't want people to see it if its dirty).
It's worse than that - its some stupid nuge who is trying to create a name for themselves by pointing out "potential risks."
We've seen this behaviour before with the whole y2k problem, people using it as an avenue for self-promotion. There were some risks, but they were being addressed; at the same time, people were going ape-shit. Supposedly, planes would fall out of the sky, elevators, water systems, and electrical plants would all stop, etc, and we were told that no amount of work would find enough of the problems to prevent a global catastrophe.
In actual fact, the biggest problem turned out to be all these people who had stocked up with a years' supply of stuff, and who then didn't need to buy shit for the next 6 months, causing a dip in consumer spending.
Hello, my name is Zaphod and I am the vice-regal advisor to His Imperial Majesty, XnthE 439, Supreme Ruler of the Galazy. I have access to the royal galactic accounts, and have found that the sum of 34 bazillion galactic credits lying dormant in one such account. If youy could send me your banking details, I am sure we could work out a most generous arrangement to our mutual benefit.
Never mind that, after 50 millenia of inflation, even at 1%, 34 bazillion galactic credits is about $0.93.
I'm sure aliens have better things to do than infect our computers. Bill Gates does a good enough job of that by himself. (Hey, maybe Gates is a pod person).
Strange as it may seem, there are a lot of trollish postings that generate interesting side discussions, to the point that they take on a life of their own.
I'm not talking gnaa or penisbird or the swastika ascii-art crapfloods. But take out all the posts that have gotten a -1 troll mod, and you're going to be left with a very bland, very dull, and very monocultered board.
Fess up - there's nothing quite like the smell of burning karma when an astroturfer gets outed.
People have complained about the trolls on usenet for years, but one thing you have to give to people who adamantly take the other side, no holds barred, out-and-out flamefests - they make you get all your ducks in a row, and sharpen your debating skills. Go through a few of those, and you can make minced meat out of a lyin' politician without working up a sweat.
Slashdot Mirror
I think everyone noticed the gm vans - it was damned annoying.
Now, if we're going to talk advertising impressions, and really amazing numbers, we have to go with the pros - pro sports, that is.
Take hockey. You know all those ads on the sideboards in in the ice? Advertisers have people who count the number of times each ad shows on-screen. The more, the better. It means it was a fast-paced game, and had people looking. It also meant that the camera-work was good. We're talking about generating hundreds of ad views in under a minute. And this is what the advertisers who buy those spots want. They would rather you got 20 quick glimpses of their ad in the space of 30 seconds of hot action that you're really in to, than a 30-second spot that you'll either click away from, or fast forward through. And there's the bonus exposure on the news shows. A good hockey game can generate 10,000 - 50,000 or more "ad views".
But hockey and football are small potatos compared to Formula 1. Spotters count every time each sticker on a car is on-camera. If only some of the stickers are visible, only those stickers count. The car passes someone on the outside, the stickers are hidden temporarily, - well, that's 2 impressions. Bonus! Now, if you've seen an F1 car, the're covered with ads. So don't be surprised when you find out you're getting over 100,000 ad views per hour. Heck, a really good race should generate a million ampressions or more, if the camerawork is done properly. That's what the advertisers pay for - good camerawork. Not for your benefit - for theirs. And someone has counted each ad view. And someone else has audited the counts. And a third someone else writes a check for them.
They account for them that way, and pay for them that way, because that's what works for them. Follow the $$$.
Kind of makes the 5,000 ad impressions your kid got watching the monster trucks featured on The Learning Channel's Big Machines pale in comparison.
See my other posts.
Most people don't realize how important product placement ads are. The same product may be "placed" a dozen times in the space of a few minutes. You have to count those ads - they're being paid for by the industry, because they're the most effective ads around. Now, get multiple products, multiple placements. You can easily get 500 ads per hour right there.
Now add in the conventional ads, the back-to-back frenetic 10-second spots (18 in a 3-minute interval), the incrustations, the framed ads over the intros and credits, the voice-voers, etc. An ad every 5 seconds is not only doable, its now pretty much what you're seeing without even being aware of it - which is the true mark of success.
Car companies want THEIR car being seen on the show. Food companies want kids to see other kids on TV nuking a frozen "pizza-dough product", or drinking a "sports beverage". Friends get their friends a brewski from the fridge, and, while you can't read the label, you don't have to, to recognize the can or bottle. They sit down to have breakfast, and there's a frozen waffle (gee - guess who makes that), and a bottle of ketchup (hello Mr Heinz) for the bacon and eggs, and cereal (the brand is hidden, but the box's coloring gives it away as Rice Krispies). And the right brand of running shoes for junior. It never stops.
Hell, a family meal is good for a couple dozen product placements in the space of 30 seconds. If you think about it, I'm sure you can come up with a few you've seen, but hadn't cottoned to.
Besides, you have to have a bit of insight to be funny ... otherwise it wouldn't be funny, so its karmic (ok, moan and groan, that pun was pretty bad)
So it doesn't bother you that your subconscious is actually "tuned into" all these ads without any conscious intervention or filtering on your part? This is the type of response advertisers love! You're taking it all in at the subconscious level, without any interference by the "supervisor program". And don't think it doesn't register - analyse what you wrote, and you'll realize that it in fact does register, as your subconscious will alert you to certain key events. Its all being processed. And most of it is bypassing your consciousness, with its built-in filtering and cynicism. 10 ads for ju food go by - you don't notice any of them - but you head for the fridge looking for some munchies. Why do you think there's a correlation between tv and obesity?
Now do you see the problem a bit better?
You've still watched half of all the advertising on TV, even if you skipped the commercials. Product placement is BIG. Its also designed to be subtle, so that you DON'T spot it, because if you do spot it on casual viewing, it has failed totally.
Its where the advertisers are spending their money. As the saying goes, follow the money. When money talks, intelligent people listen.
My (very short) list from the last year:
Actually, I don't usually go around telling people to stop watching TV, because most of the time the subject doesn't come up. But I do have friends who have "taken the pledge", in the sense that they hardly ever watch the tube either. And I have others who are hooked on it. Its pretty lame when they have to interrupt a phone conversation because they're going to miss part of a rerun of that craptacious Star Trek/TNG or Babylon 5. (I could understand if it was Red Dwarf or the new Dr. Who or Les Bougon :-)
If only that wer the full truth. I've seen people using the remote for half an hour, channel surfing all their satellite channels trying to find SOMETHING worth watching, either on the regular satellite, or ppv. And when they come up empty, they go through the whole rotation again. Its like a mouse that, once its been trained to get a food pellet for pressing a lever, keeps pressing the lever over and over, because its "learned" that behaviour, and can't stop.
In other words, the same pattern of addiction we see with video lottery terminals. They're not really enjoying it - they've learned a certain behaviour, and can't break the cycle. "There's gotta be SOMETHING on" ... and when there's not, they'll settle for crap. They don't say "fuck this", get up, and go for a walk or grab a book or go out.
If every other channel is running crap, you too can run crap and make a profit, because there are people out there who have no control over themselves - they have to watch SOMETHING, they need their "hit", their "fix." And if they don't get it, they show all the symptoms of an addict in withdrawal.
Hell, just look at how frantic some people get when they can't find the remote.
Its not a pull medium when all you can pull is the crap they want you to pull.
psst - just a little hint - I'm one of those "commie liberal-socialist pinko canucks" I was poking fun at :-)
Ads include product placements, 12 10-second commercials back-to-back in a 2-minute spot, framing the credits and opening scenes so they can run ads, running multiple ads in those framed screens, encrustations, crawlers, voice-overs "coming up next - the simpsons" ... its un-fucking-real.
Sit down and count the ads in one show. Then watch it again, and see which ones you missed the first time. Then watch AGAIN, and see which ones you missed the second time.
Its scary. Just the product placements - the best of which are very subtle, so that you DON'T catch them - are huge. They're considered to be the most effective form of advertising, and that's where the big bucks are going. Not the ads between scenes. Even if you skip through all the commercials, you've only cut out, at best, a quarter to half of all the ads.
And the funny part - most people are so used to it, they don't even notice what's being fed to them.
That's okay, as long as you take the appropriate precautions:
Safe TV Viewing: You can watch all the TV you want - just don't plug the damn thing in!
Because if you're going to go blind, you should at least go blind because you're doing something that gives you pleasure.
How TV is like a bad girlfriend:
Or that the tube is the baby-sitter of choice for most of the country's pre-schoolers? Or that it's the #1 thing kids do as soon as they get home from school?
Here are the facts, courtesy of PBS (ironic, ain't it :-)
If you think all this isn't having a negative effect on people, you're the one who's fucked up. Or brainwashed. Probably from watching too much TV. Bet you didn't even notice they've gone to 10-second commercials, cramming 12 of them into a 2-minute break, and that they've "sped up" the shows by dropping frames, so as to grab another 3 minutes of commercial time to sell. You can now sit through up to 100 full-screen ads per hour, plus hundreds more "product placements", and "encrustations", "split-screens" while the credits are rolling, voice-over ads, crawlers, etc. 500 ads per fucking hour! And I'll bet you didn't even notice it was anywhere near that high. Why? Because you've grown used to it, and accept it as "normal." You're a good little consumer. So when the next version of DRM'd TV comes out, and you can't skip the commercials, and they run for 2 minutes, then 2 minutes of TV (framed by ads), then another 2 minutes of commercials, you'll happily bend over and take it like a man, because that's what you've been trained to do. You welcome your commercial-sponsoring overlords.
Here, take the test (now that you've gotten some of the answers) http://www.pbs.org/kcet/senioryear/reachout/quiz.h tml
TV - the big open cesspool. As they said - you'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
First dupe post fromt he future -
Of course, 1 is going to go for big bucks - "We're #1".7 also - "Lucky us".
Avis will buy #2 - "We're #2 - we try harder"
3 will be bought out as a business portal - "3's company"
4 will be some scam - "trust us - we work 4 u" - or some golf site - "fore!"
9 will be sold to some kraut anti-drug campaign - "just say 9/nein"
8 will go to weight-watchers or slimfast - "8 too much?"
5 will go to whoever looses the bid for 1 - they''ll then say "5 - we're the quintiscential site" or some other loser shit
6 will go to an online redneck pharmacy - "when you'se feeling six as a dawg, order your meds from 6.com"
0, of course, will be the big one. The BIGGEST sex portal - "come to 0.com - because you can't get any lower than us"
Remember - watch for it next year
tt
Hey, ICANN - This post brought to you by the web sites "f" and "u"
Sheesh, anything for a buck. If I had known that to make it big on the net, all you had to do was act like a cheap hooker ...
tt
Wanna bet that someone at the NSA isn't thinking along those lines right about now?
[tt]
Well, its not really off-topic, because PVRs are supposed to help you "cherry-pcik", but in reality people use them to consume even more junk. Just like the original VCR - people tape stuff "becasue they can", and nver get around to watching half of it.
So, how much TV have you watched the last year, including the time spent doing the "cherry-picking"? Mine stays off for weeks at a time. Actually, its pretty much only been on this year when friends come over to watch a dvd.
At least with a computer, you're not a passive receiver, you ARE interacting. And a lot of the debates actually require you to think. To be a bit original. Look at any of the flamefests :-) I mean, if you haven't gotten a few freaks, you're not "interacting" hard enough (I've only got 75 - I want MORE!!!)
Seriously, the last smackdown of Sony, world-wide, means that DRM stands for "Damaged Retail Media". DRM your product today, get sued tomorrow.
What Sony did was the best thing for advancing consumer awareness.
Now the REAL question is, wtf would anyone buy this when there's absolutely nothing worth watching in the first place? Come on people, we bitch about slashdot posting dupes - why aren't you bitching about your TV providing 500 channels of dupes - the same crap on 20 channels, just "time-shifted for your viewing pleasure". Yeah, right. Unplug the fucking idiot box. Lose the remote. Gain 5 hours a day back into your life
Oops - I forgot - TV viewers don't have a life - that's why they live vicariously through TV. Why don't they have a life? Because they haven't got TIME for one - they'll miss their favourite TV show.
Tv Tv Tv [TT]V
Just turn the fucking thing off, okay? For ONE FUCKING DAY?
Unfortunately, in the end they both spend the evening with "Mrs. Palmer and her 4 sisters."
Now if Gallant were to dump perl for python, he wouldn't have to "spend another solid four hours" working on a perl script - it would have been finished before he grabbed his 15-minute lunch, and he could spend some quality [tt]ime schmoozing :-)
Umm ... on second thought, you're right.
I knew one mac head who, on a bet at work, went and stood on the street corner and started propositioning girls. He bet he could get laid just by asking. Sure enough, one of them said "Why are you bothering me?" and he said "... well, I have this bet ..." and she said, "Oh, what the hell, ok".
Which just goes to show that Mac users can spread viruses just as well as Windows users. Proof that Linux is the safe alternative.
Makes me wonder how many dupes I didn't notice ... because I know I've missed a shitload of them.
Its a bit of a pita, but its doable - javascript traps all the keypresses - even F10 (at least under linux), and I've written the code to trap it and route the hotkeys to the appropriate onclick event (maybe I'll post it some day when I've had a chance to clean it up - code is like underwear - you really don't want people to see it if its dirty).
It's worse than that - its some stupid nuge who is trying to create a name for themselves by pointing out "potential risks."
We've seen this behaviour before with the whole y2k problem, people using it as an avenue for self-promotion. There were some risks, but they were being addressed; at the same time, people were going ape-shit. Supposedly, planes would fall out of the sky, elevators, water systems, and electrical plants would all stop, etc, and we were told that no amount of work would find enough of the problems to prevent a global catastrophe.
In actual fact, the biggest problem turned out to be all these people who had stocked up with a years' supply of stuff, and who then didn't need to buy shit for the next 6 months, causing a dip in consumer spending.
Hello, my name is Zaphod and I am the vice-regal advisor to His Imperial Majesty, XnthE 439, Supreme Ruler of the Galazy. I have access to the royal galactic accounts, and have found that the sum of 34 bazillion galactic credits lying dormant in one such account. If youy could send me your banking details, I am sure we could work out a most generous arrangement to our mutual benefit.
Never mind that, after 50 millenia of inflation, even at 1%, 34 bazillion galactic credits is about $0.93.
I'm sure aliens have better things to do than infect our computers. Bill Gates does a good enough job of that by himself. (Hey, maybe Gates is a pod person).
Strange as it may seem, there are a lot of trollish postings that generate interesting side discussions, to the point that they take on a life of their own.
I'm not talking gnaa or penisbird or the swastika ascii-art crapfloods. But take out all the posts that have gotten a -1 troll mod, and you're going to be left with a very bland, very dull, and very monocultered board.
Fess up - there's nothing quite like the smell of burning karma when an astroturfer gets outed.
People have complained about the trolls on usenet for years, but one thing you have to give to people who adamantly take the other side, no holds barred, out-and-out flamefests - they make you get all your ducks in a row, and sharpen your debating skills. Go through a few of those, and you can make minced meat out of a lyin' politician without working up a sweat.