Dark Room You are in dark room. There are a couple barrels in one corner. A quickly fading light fixture above provides what little illumination there is. There is a slobbering demon here.
>Shoot Demon with handgun.
The demon turns to face you, mildly annoyed by your pathetic attempts at exorcism.
>Equip Rocketlauncher
You heft the Rocklauncher to your shoulder. Something on the right side of your body makes a bone-cracking sound.
>Fire Rocketlauncher
Your random display of violence has caused the destruction of a pile of barrels in the corner. The resulting explosion has engulfed the demon, and the failing light fixture above.
In defense of PC, let me point out that he trying to compare machines with a specific purpose to those with a general purpose and is upset that the level of complexity is higher. With all due respect, No Shit Sherlock! Even something as "advanced" as a digital camera has, in essence, one goal in life: to take photos. Toasters, televisions, even cars are designed for very specific tasks -- any extra features are an added "complexity".
Computers and Operating Systems have no such luck. They must act as their own human-machine interpreters to an infinite number of possibile inputs and commands. Some of these commands are simple and can be optimized for -- eg, run program. Most, however, have their own set of additional complexities -- functions such as printing a document, manipulating data, and searching for files all have so many possible outcomes that more specific instructions than one-button "Do This" interfaces are required.
Not to mention that every user will have their own opinion about how their interface should optimized. The "complex" interface is a good thing because it gives the users complete freedom over their interactions with the system.
But what about users who don't want that freedom? They want machines with a big "Do this" button -- cameras have one, cars have one, toasters have one. Computers, by their very nature, can *not* have one -- the set of all correct answers to "Do this" is infinite. How? Where?
The bottom line is that the computer cannot read your mind. It cannot perfectly and accurately translate simplistic commands into complex functions. The best it can do is try to predict what you mean and give feeble human-to-machine translation function to the rest.
So that's where you went after being let go by Initrode. I guess it beats going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions like a recovering crack addict, but how are the benefits? Do they let you pick the color of your stapler? How many pieces of flair do they make you wear?
Just watch out--I hear they have some efficiency experts coming in next week. Brush up on your Michael Bolton trivia, and you might score bonus points!
Both fathers enter their kids in a golf tournament. Then the fathers make a bet: the father of the boy who does not win will face a humiliating task. On the final hole, they decide to call it a draw. Both Homer and Ned have to mow the lawn in their wives' Sunday dresses.
I haven't seen the movie, and I can't comment on it's exact content, but it's fairly obvious where the title came from. It's called an allusion, and it's alluding to a book by Ray Bradbury entitled "Farenheit 411"; the title of which referred to the temperature at which books burn.
And just what is Moore's point -- what is burning here? Not books, not buildings...Freedom. And what exactly is in the recipe for burning freedom? How about using the worst event of our generation as a catalyst to coerce the public to lower it's guard against attacks against constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy and due process?
Granted, Moore may be an excellent propagandist doing nothing more than taking potshots at very easy targets. But it is also valid argument to say that the current administration not only brought these issues on themselves, but deserve to have their own idiocies exploited back at them to the fullest extent possible. Remember that this isn't an fight over who's right or wrong -- it's a fight over who controls the country, and in this case, it's a very dangerous group of people who have done nothing to deserve our trust or respect.
In this case, we're not commenting on the developmental implications of swear words in rap music, but the fact that the RIAA is *giving* children material that they otherwise would be legally protected (ha!) from.
You, I, and Penn & Teller can debate about the social consequences of age-restricted material until we're blue in the face. The bottom line is, right now it's illegal to provide such material to a minor. We should exploit the opportunity to either highlight the fallacy of such a law or to punish an organization for trying to skirt around it's other legal obligations.
Actually, sounds more like Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor. I would imagine it would come with penalties similar to buying Cigarettes or Beer for a 16 year old, which can be considered "Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor".
I can't find Washington State's law, but using Colorado as an example, contributing to the delinquency of a minor is a class 4 felony with 2 to 6 years in jail and a fine of $2,000 to $500,000. (Colo. Rev. Stat. 12-47-901, 12-47-903, 18-1-106, 18-6-701)
My reply was in response to the insinuation that PvE wasn't nearly as satisfying as PvP and any MMO that didn't have PvP was just coddling it's stupid, timid users and thus was an inferior design.
relevant quote: For my purposes, PvE treadmilling is brain-dead. So are the people who want to bake bread or whatever. Unless it involves engaging in combat or negotiations or meaningful dialogue with other human beings, why is it worth checking out of reality?
It's bullshit like this that made me stop playing CS, cancel my Planetside subscription, and never try X-Box Live. Having to deal with the mindset that, if it isn't human it's not worth fighting, and if you're not fighting you should be getting ready to only goes so far. Sometimes, I *don't* want fighting. I'd rather be able to interact with a virtual world on a wide scale of levels rather than be shoehorned into one gamestyle due to lack of developer's imagination and their rabid teenage fanbase's raging hormones.
As a design philosophy, just because Deathmatch can be fun and exciting doesn't mean every 3D FPS needs to include it. And yet, any time we see a game come out without those extra Multiplayer options, some critics immediately regard it as inferior, even if the game was clearly not designed to be played as such.
PvP isn't for everyone. Hell, I'd go so far as to say it's not even for the majority. In Shadowbane it was obviously an important feature and thus developed and done well. But that doesn't make games such as FFXI any less legitimate of an alternative if it doesn't allow a level 60 uberninja to backstab the poor level 2 ranger just because he dared to leave the city gates. In FFXI's case, it's a better game because it *doesn't.*
But what happens is, as a side effect, you lose the majority of the "casual" gamers who want nothing more then to spend 1-3 hours relaxing, maybe accomplishing some minor goal but nothing too stressful.
What PvP does is reward the "hard-core" players who want to show-off their 'leet-skillz' in the most annoying and intrusive way possible -- ie, ruining someone else's day. It almost ruined UO, and it's the foremost barrier to anyone wanting to try Lineage II.
If you want a PvP experience, fine. Go play Counterstrike, or Planetside, or Tribes, or UT or Q3 or any of a hundred other games designed for that function. It's not like you're being cheated out of something because an MMO doesn't allow you to waylay your fellow players.
I am sick and tired of hearing every excuse imaginable for PKing. It's a pain in the ass to me, the guy down the street, and just about everyone else. The only people it rewards are the lowlifes who find pleasure in other people's misery, showing off their disgustingly wasted lives.
I, for one, have managed to find pleasure in teaming up with my fellow players and working towards a common goal. Something about achieveing something without ruining someone else's day just leaves me a warm and fuzzy. Then, if I decide I want to frag some kiddies, I'll go play CS.
The I would say that this is much more a social issue then a racial one. If the affluent neighboorhoods are able to sustain themselves without much police presence, but the lower class areas need to have near-constant patrols, it speaks more to the social instability of the lower class then it does the racial mixture in that area.
It's practically a fact that lower class neighboorhoods are more prone to crime. In the south, where many in the lower-class are white, crime is just as much an issue as it is in the poor urban areas in the north, mostly inhabited by "minorities". Haven't you ever watched the TV show Cops?
The unfortunate side effect of this is that, because of the stigma that the poor minorities cast on their races, affluent socities (in this case, whites) are more likely to associate those traits to any member of that race. It's Pavlovian Conditioning at it's worst, because it leads to discrimination, distrust, and hate. The only cure for this sort of behavior is education, both in the lower class areas (don't shoot people!) and upper class (just because a man is a member of a race that's associated with a bad part of town, doesn't mean he'll shoot you).
Dante Hicks: Hey, try not to [Play any Gameboy!] on the way through the parking lot!
Dante Hicks: My girlfriend's [Played 37 Gameboys]! Customer with Diapers: In a row?
Dante Hicks: I'm stuck in this pit, working for less than a slave wages. Working on my day off, the goddamn steel shutters are closed, I deal with every backward ass fuck on the planet. I smell like shoe polish. My ex-girlfriend is catatonic after fucking a dead guy. And my present girlfriend has [Played 36 Gameboys]. Randal Graves: 37
Slashdot Mirror
Dark Room
You are in dark room. There are a couple barrels in one corner. A quickly fading light fixture above provides what little illumination there is.
There is a slobbering demon here.
>Shoot Demon with handgun.
The demon turns to face you, mildly annoyed by your pathetic attempts at exorcism.
>Equip Rocketlauncher
You heft the Rocklauncher to your shoulder. Something on the right side of your body makes a bone-cracking sound.
>Fire Rocketlauncher
Your random display of violence has caused the destruction of a pile of barrels in the corner. The resulting explosion has engulfed the demon, and the failing light fixture above.
It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
In defense of PC, let me point out that he trying to compare machines with a specific purpose to those with a general purpose and is upset that the level of complexity is higher. With all due respect, No Shit Sherlock! Even something as "advanced" as a digital camera has, in essence, one goal in life: to take photos. Toasters, televisions, even cars are designed for very specific tasks -- any extra features are an added "complexity".
Computers and Operating Systems have no such luck. They must act as their own human-machine interpreters to an infinite number of possibile inputs and commands. Some of these commands are simple and can be optimized for -- eg, run program. Most, however, have their own set of additional complexities -- functions such as printing a document, manipulating data, and searching for files all have so many possible outcomes that more specific instructions than one-button "Do This" interfaces are required.
Not to mention that every user will have their own opinion about how their interface should optimized. The "complex" interface is a good thing because it gives the users complete freedom over their interactions with the system.
But what about users who don't want that freedom? They want machines with a big "Do this" button -- cameras have one, cars have one, toasters have one. Computers, by their very nature, can *not* have one -- the set of all correct answers to "Do this" is infinite. How? Where?
The bottom line is that the computer cannot read your mind. It cannot perfectly and accurately translate simplistic commands into complex functions. The best it can do is try to predict what you mean and give feeble human-to-machine translation function to the rest.
So that's where you went after being let go by Initrode. I guess it beats going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions like a recovering crack addict, but how are the benefits? Do they let you pick the color of your stapler? How many pieces of flair do they make you wear?
Just watch out--I hear they have some efficiency experts coming in next week. Brush up on your Michael Bolton trivia, and you might score bonus points!
If you're going to teach Trolling 101, at least remember to put the '$' in MICRO$OFT SUCKS!
You want to be an example for the young trolls everywhere? No wonder our schools are performing so badly!
Obligatory Simpsons Reference:
Both fathers enter their kids in a golf tournament. Then the fathers make a bet: the father of the boy who does not win will face a humiliating task. On the final hole, they decide to call it a draw. Both Homer and Ned have to mow the lawn in their wives' Sunday dresses.
I haven't seen the movie, and I can't comment on it's exact content, but it's fairly obvious where the title came from. It's called an allusion, and it's alluding to a book by Ray Bradbury entitled "Farenheit 411"; the title of which referred to the temperature at which books burn.
And just what is Moore's point -- what is burning here? Not books, not buildings...Freedom. And what exactly is in the recipe for burning freedom? How about using the worst event of our generation as a catalyst to coerce the public to lower it's guard against attacks against constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy and due process?
Granted, Moore may be an excellent propagandist doing nothing more than taking potshots at very easy targets. But it is also valid argument to say that the current administration not only brought these issues on themselves, but deserve to have their own idiocies exploited back at them to the fullest extent possible. Remember that this isn't an fight over who's right or wrong -- it's a fight over who controls the country, and in this case, it's a very dangerous group of people who have done nothing to deserve our trust or respect.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Tell that to Howard Stern.
Why don't you just make FIVE louder and make FIVE be the top number and make that a little louder?
In this case, we're not commenting on the developmental implications of swear words in rap music, but the fact that the RIAA is *giving* children material that they otherwise would be legally protected (ha!) from.
You, I, and Penn & Teller can debate about the social consequences of age-restricted material until we're blue in the face. The bottom line is, right now it's illegal to provide such material to a minor. We should exploit the opportunity to either highlight the fallacy of such a law or to punish an organization for trying to skirt around it's other legal obligations.
But how will this help the poor starving artists? You think they'll get any royalties out of this?
Think of poor Will Smith! He's had it so bad, he's had to restort to cameos to make ends meet!
Actually, sounds more like Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor. I would imagine it would come with penalties similar to buying Cigarettes or Beer for a 16 year old, which can be considered "Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor".
I can't find Washington State's law, but using Colorado as an example, contributing to the delinquency of a minor is a class 4 felony with 2 to 6 years in jail and a fine of $2,000 to $500,000. (Colo. Rev. Stat. 12-47-901, 12-47-903, 18-1-106, 18-6-701)
How many CDs was that again?
My reply was in response to the insinuation that PvE wasn't nearly as satisfying as PvP and any MMO that didn't have PvP was just coddling it's stupid, timid users and thus was an inferior design.
relevant quote: For my purposes, PvE treadmilling is brain-dead. So are the people who want to bake bread or whatever. Unless it involves engaging in combat or negotiations or meaningful dialogue with other human beings, why is it worth checking out of reality?
It's bullshit like this that made me stop playing CS, cancel my Planetside subscription, and never try X-Box Live. Having to deal with the mindset that, if it isn't human it's not worth fighting, and if you're not fighting you should be getting ready to only goes so far. Sometimes, I *don't* want fighting. I'd rather be able to interact with a virtual world on a wide scale of levels rather than be shoehorned into one gamestyle due to lack of developer's imagination and their rabid teenage fanbase's raging hormones.
As a design philosophy, just because Deathmatch can be fun and exciting doesn't mean every 3D FPS needs to include it. And yet, any time we see a game come out without those extra Multiplayer options, some critics immediately regard it as inferior, even if the game was clearly not designed to be played as such.
PvP isn't for everyone. Hell, I'd go so far as to say it's not even for the majority. In Shadowbane it was obviously an important feature and thus developed and done well. But that doesn't make games such as FFXI any less legitimate of an alternative if it doesn't allow a level 60 uberninja to backstab the poor level 2 ranger just because he dared to leave the city gates. In FFXI's case, it's a better game because it *doesn't.*
But what happens is, as a side effect, you lose the majority of the "casual" gamers who want nothing more then to spend 1-3 hours relaxing, maybe accomplishing some minor goal but nothing too stressful.
What PvP does is reward the "hard-core" players who want to show-off their 'leet-skillz' in the most annoying and intrusive way possible -- ie, ruining someone else's day. It almost ruined UO, and it's the foremost barrier to anyone wanting to try Lineage II.
If you want a PvP experience, fine. Go play Counterstrike, or Planetside, or Tribes, or UT or Q3 or any of a hundred other games designed for that function. It's not like you're being cheated out of something because an MMO doesn't allow you to waylay your fellow players.
I am sick and tired of hearing every excuse imaginable for PKing. It's a pain in the ass to me, the guy down the street, and just about everyone else. The only people it rewards are the lowlifes who find pleasure in other people's misery, showing off their disgustingly wasted lives.
I, for one, have managed to find pleasure in teaming up with my fellow players and working towards a common goal. Something about achieveing something without ruining someone else's day just leaves me a warm and fuzzy. Then, if I decide I want to frag some kiddies, I'll go play CS.
One of the first rules of living in New York City:
"Stay far away from people in funny hats who tell you they talk to God."
I was going to suggest "Liberated", but that's sometimes used as a synonym for un-free software that's aquired without the transfer of money.
How about "Liberating Software" -- which does exactly as it implies ie. it frees you.
(please refrain from the obvious Soviet Russia jokes at this time. Thank you --the management.)
And what, exactly, is the difference between "Unbearded" and "Beardless" ?
I dunno. Why would anyone want to remember that 2^16=65536? It's not like we use numbers that high on a normal day anyway.
But I remember it.
The I would say that this is much more a social issue then a racial one. If the affluent neighboorhoods are able to sustain themselves without much police presence, but the lower class areas need to have near-constant patrols, it speaks more to the social instability of the lower class then it does the racial mixture in that area.
It's practically a fact that lower class neighboorhoods are more prone to crime. In the south, where many in the lower-class are white, crime is just as much an issue as it is in the poor urban areas in the north, mostly inhabited by "minorities". Haven't you ever watched the TV show Cops?
The unfortunate side effect of this is that, because of the stigma that the poor minorities cast on their races, affluent socities (in this case, whites) are more likely to associate those traits to any member of that race. It's Pavlovian Conditioning at it's worst, because it leads to discrimination, distrust, and hate. The only cure for this sort of behavior is education, both in the lower class areas (don't shoot people!) and upper class (just because a man is a member of a race that's associated with a bad part of town, doesn't mean he'll shoot you).
Proving, once again, that the process of defining NP Hard problems is still -- NP Hard.
Not that I remember everything from number theory, but doesn't that definition of the distributive law imply:
ac/c + bc/c = (a+b)/(1/c)
which would be undefined at C = 0?
But which will kill you first -- the food, or the music?
Didn't you hear? About half the world's population suffers from below-average intelligence!
I'd be more interested in seeing them team up -- imagine a Pixar animated version of Starcraft!
Actually, sounds pretty recursive to me...
Dante Hicks: Hey, try not to [Play any Gameboy!] on the way through the parking lot!
Dante Hicks: My girlfriend's [Played 37 Gameboys]!
Customer with Diapers: In a row?
Dante Hicks: I'm stuck in this pit, working for less than a slave wages. Working on my day off, the goddamn steel shutters are closed, I deal with every backward ass fuck on the planet. I smell like shoe polish. My ex-girlfriend is catatonic after fucking a dead guy. And my present girlfriend has [Played 36 Gameboys].
Randal Graves: 37