I've long been of the opinion that the blanket ban on pot smoking is not only dumb, but hypocritical given how many people smoke tobacco, which is much worse for you. This is dumb too, but at least it's consistent. Kinda reminds me of:
"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone." -Bjarne Stroustrup
Never. Presumably eventually they'll start stealing major landmarks, then they'll graduate from that and start stealing entire planets. Then at some point they'll invent a time machine and start stealing bits of the past, too. Better catch her quick!
In XP? Really? I had no major issues with XP that couldn't be solved with registry tweaks. Wasn't until 7 (being I, like everyone else, skipped over Vista, i.e. 7 pre-beta) that I had to start tracking down alternate UIs. And you *can* rip out the majority of the UI and replace it with your own in 7 (and from what I can tell from all the 3rd party UI elements I use saying they support 8 now, also in 8). Yes, explorer is still running, and yes, it does still manage a few things (the notification area, the desktop, save/load dialogs, probably a few other things), but I've got a replacement start menu, a replacement search interface, a replacement move/copy dialog, and a replacement file manager. Windows 7 doesn't throw any fits about any of them (though every once in a while the original UI leaks through accidentally, but oh well.)
If I ever get 8 (presumably because I got a new computer and they stopped giving us 7), I'm assuming all my tweaks because the 7 UI wasn't that hot either will still work, and nothing that much will change, except that it'll eat up more of my hard drive pointlessly, but oh well, he said again.
I'm sure GIFT has been posted at least a dozen times - I checked, it was referenced a couple times on the current page, but I feel the need to reiterate. GIFT was posted in 2004. Everyone's heard of it. Legitimate studies have been done about it. (I hear some even reference it by name, which must have been fun for the academics publishing it, getting to use "Fuckwad" completely legitimately in a paper (and one that has nothing to do directly with studying the linguistics of cussing.))
No, I just totally forgot about it. I never post AC, mostly because I forget about it every time there's a reason I might want to, which is rarely enough that I am going to keep forgetting about it.:p
Note: please do not mod this post up. Yes, it is completely relevant, and funny, but I can't take credit for it.:p (On the other hand, I request it not get modded down just because you don't like xkcd, either. Relatedly, why the frell don't you?)
who saw the thread title, and clicked on it thinking it was going to be an extremely neat proof of concept that people would want to have running on their phones, to upload maps of places they've been to some central location, creating a crowdsourced repository of floorplans of every building on the planet? Cause that would actually be kinda cool. (Obviously you wouldn't post the actual -images-, preferably the phone would do the datacrunching itself, and just send processed data to be converted into floorplans.)
I feel like you're responding to a statement that is remarkably different from the one I made.
Does having a credit card "entitle" me to the ability to use it? I suppose not. One would merely assume that if I were a company in the business of providing a particular service, I would attempt to avoid putting up roadblocks in the way of my customers using that service, or be worried that they would go elsewhere. But that was before everyone realized that they could have shitty customer service as long as so did everyone else.
In any case, the fact that I would have the money the next day was entirely irrelevant, except that I didn't want to give people reading it the feeling that I was being fiscally irresponsible by charging things I couldn't pay back immediately (in fact, I didn't tell the credit card people that, being their main business strategy depends on people making large charges and -not- paying them back the next day...)
I assure you, I definitely did have the credit limit, which is all they would care about (as evidenced by the fact that after calling them back later and getting them to really-for-sure-this-time tell their computer I was about to make a large purchase, the same charge went through without issue.)
It really isn't just about auto-copywrite-infringement bots. It's really about non-overrideable bots with no human oversight in general. This problem reminds me very much of a problem I had a week ago, in which I wanted to put a large purchase on a credit card (then pay it back like the next day, with money I'd just been paypal'd, but that hadn't made it to my bank yet). I told the bank a week in advance: I am making a large purchase on this date, please don't flag it as suspicious. The response back was that they would make a note, but it would probably be marked suspicious anyway, and there was nothing they could do about it.
So I get there, I try to make the purchase, and sure enough: the charge is canceled and my card is suspended. So I call up the bank, tell them what happened, ask whether they can fix it. Answer: nope, it was all automatic, you'll have to call back later and hope someone with more privilege than a first-level phone support operator has is around. Thanks a lot, every-bank-on-the-planet (cause really, it's not just that one bank, they're all like this now.)
Yes, computers are getting more powerful. Yes, you can cut costs by hiring fewer humans to do superfluous things. You can cut costs even more by hiring fewer humans to do things they're really required to do, and just do a frelling terrible job of it as a result. But at least keep one person around at all times to clean up after the resulting mess, please, every company ever? Thanks a lot.
Amusing juxtaposition with the person who posted immediately after you. I'm aware that, given they posted -after- you, you couldn't see it when you posted that, but yes, someone has said that (or at least said that it happened to an immediate friend), and they're right above you.:)
Not quite. Jailbait describes the girl, not the person looking to sleep with her. Also, jailbait specifically describes a girl who incorrectly looks like she -is- over the legal age - if you were explicitly attracted to pubescent females, you would probably be rather less attracted to someone who was 14 but totally looked 21. (I've met a couple people like that, it's a little bit scary that they exist:p.)
Or... maybe someone else should come up with a new better OS and get people to try it? KDE is a joke. Pretty much every Linux GUI is a joke. MacOS is actually pretty nice these days (though pre-10 it was a joke too), but the whole trying to be a walled garden thing is a bit of a turnoff. Ok, yes, the more of a joke Windows becomes (and Win8 is a pretty big joke too), the more people might feel like trying some flavor of Linux, as it could hardly be -less- useable... but still. Anti-trust commissions of various places can't exactly regulate into existence a new non-sucky OS if none actually exist, or regulate that people have to use it. They have merely to regulate that if someone -did- create a new OS that was better than Windows, Microsoft isn't allowed to smash them to bits with frivolous lawsuits until they died or anything. Which I wouldn't put past them to try.
Too bad OSes are kind of a monolithic undertaking to design... I think we're kinda stuck with the ones we have.
Nobody? -Plenty- of people believe Catholicism is "batsh**t crazy". Plenty of people believe -all- organized religion is. Obviously there are gradations of just how crazy they are, and Mormonism is one of the crazier ones (though it still pales in comparison to Scientology, crazy-wise), but still.
If I were to sell a house for 500k in San Francisco, it might be called cheap, where if were to try to sell the same house in BFN, California, it would be laughably overpriced... but they're still both 500k. You can't say one is "cheaper" than the other. This might be an interesting fact about the US that was determined, but the fact is definitely -not-, "beer is cheaper in the US than anywhere else in the world".
Also that first sentence was interesting, as it turns out, it is as a great example of something we call a "runon sentence", a remarkably unreadable one.
WordPerfect is "just a word processor" too. So is Microsoft (occasionally) Works. So are innumerable crappy freeware products strewn about the net.
Yes, sometimes people pay for software when equivalent freeware exists just because they don't know about it, or don't trust free software like they should, but... sometimes people pay for software because the supposedly-equivalent freeware just isn't actually equivalent. Libreoffice sucks balls. Granted, MS Office isn't perfect, and keeps getting suckier, but it's still probably better than Open^HLibreoffice. (Though I wouldn't know for sure; the last version of Office I used regularly was 2003. 2003 had a free annoying bugs, and I wished its equation editor was better (yes, I know, use LaTex, blurgh), but for the most part, it was pretty nice to use.)
Google is still the only search engine I've tried that actually gives useful results. Microsoft can say all they like about Google, some of it might even be true (not that I'd necessarily trust Microsoft any more than Google, which I don't completely trust either), but they can't claim to have actually decent search results on things, which Google can. (Which means, sadly, neither can duckduckgo, which has a fantastic UI and which I trust far more to not be evil... but which uses bing's search results, which as previously mentioned, suck.)
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to switch to Windows 7 is "because you bought a new computer and they won't let you not have it, probably because some of its hardware isn't supported".
Even more than that - I've found that I can read just as quickly while listening to music as while not, but if the music has -singing-, my reading speed is much slower. Unless the singing is in a language I don't understand, in which case it's just as fast again.
Oh, I'm not saying you can't find all manner of people on OKC (it seems to be the spot for eccentrics of all variety, the nerdy shy computery type only being one subset. A subset I was looking for (I'm sitting here next to her right now; she's playing an internet game:p)), but certainly not the only type.
I like that we're not obsessed with *all* the same things, so we can learn from each other in that manner, but I wouldn't want only minor overlap, either.
Unless your perfect girl is the sort of person who sits at home alone (or with you:p), reading slashdot (or equivalent sites). In which case I recommend okcupid. (Because that's where most of the people like that hang out, assuming they're looking for a partner to be antisocial and shun the world with.)
Well, she does joke that she likes me because she must be a huge narcissist:p. (I knew I was looking for someone basically like her for as long as I had any desire to be with anyone, while she didn't know she was looking for someone like me (read: herself) until we met;)).
I'd argue, though, that if you didn't get along with someone you thought was like you because it turned out you didn't know yourself very well, that's hardly an argument against finding love with someone who's like you - much the opposite, in fact. (Then again, if I was the sort of person who started fights with people, I wouldn't want to be with a girl like me either...)
Slashdot Mirror
I've long been of the opinion that the blanket ban on pot smoking is not only dumb, but hypocritical given how many people smoke tobacco, which is much worse for you. This is dumb too, but at least it's consistent. Kinda reminds me of:
"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone." -Bjarne Stroustrup
Never. Presumably eventually they'll start stealing major landmarks, then they'll graduate from that and start stealing entire planets. Then at some point they'll invent a time machine and start stealing bits of the past, too. Better catch her quick!
Because you've watched too much Arrested Development? (Great show, though. New season coming out early next year! Everyone watch it!)
alienating all her Alliance followers. "Death to the Horde" and all, right? ;)
In XP? Really? I had no major issues with XP that couldn't be solved with registry tweaks. Wasn't until 7 (being I, like everyone else, skipped over Vista, i.e. 7 pre-beta) that I had to start tracking down alternate UIs. And you *can* rip out the majority of the UI and replace it with your own in 7 (and from what I can tell from all the 3rd party UI elements I use saying they support 8 now, also in 8). Yes, explorer is still running, and yes, it does still manage a few things (the notification area, the desktop, save/load dialogs, probably a few other things), but I've got a replacement start menu, a replacement search interface, a replacement move/copy dialog, and a replacement file manager. Windows 7 doesn't throw any fits about any of them (though every once in a while the original UI leaks through accidentally, but oh well.)
If I ever get 8 (presumably because I got a new computer and they stopped giving us 7), I'm assuming all my tweaks because the 7 UI wasn't that hot either will still work, and nothing that much will change, except that it'll eat up more of my hard drive pointlessly, but oh well, he said again.
I'm sure GIFT has been posted at least a dozen times - I checked, it was referenced a couple times on the current page, but I feel the need to reiterate. GIFT was posted in 2004. Everyone's heard of it. Legitimate studies have been done about it. (I hear some even reference it by name, which must have been fun for the academics publishing it, getting to use "Fuckwad" completely legitimately in a paper (and one that has nothing to do directly with studying the linguistics of cussing.))
Yeah, well, you sound like a... person who... isn't very good at comebacks.
Also, your mom.
No, I just totally forgot about it. I never post AC, mostly because I forget about it every time there's a reason I might want to, which is rarely enough that I am going to keep forgetting about it. :p
Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/927/
Note: please do not mod this post up. Yes, it is completely relevant, and funny, but I can't take credit for it. :p (On the other hand, I request it not get modded down just because you don't like xkcd, either. Relatedly, why the frell don't you?)
who saw the thread title, and clicked on it thinking it was going to be an extremely neat proof of concept that people would want to have running on their phones, to upload maps of places they've been to some central location, creating a crowdsourced repository of floorplans of every building on the planet? Cause that would actually be kinda cool. (Obviously you wouldn't post the actual -images-, preferably the phone would do the datacrunching itself, and just send processed data to be converted into floorplans.)
I feel like you're responding to a statement that is remarkably different from the one I made.
Does having a credit card "entitle" me to the ability to use it? I suppose not. One would merely assume that if I were a company in the business of providing a particular service, I would attempt to avoid putting up roadblocks in the way of my customers using that service, or be worried that they would go elsewhere. But that was before everyone realized that they could have shitty customer service as long as so did everyone else.
In any case, the fact that I would have the money the next day was entirely irrelevant, except that I didn't want to give people reading it the feeling that I was being fiscally irresponsible by charging things I couldn't pay back immediately (in fact, I didn't tell the credit card people that, being their main business strategy depends on people making large charges and -not- paying them back the next day...)
I assure you, I definitely did have the credit limit, which is all they would care about (as evidenced by the fact that after calling them back later and getting them to really-for-sure-this-time tell their computer I was about to make a large purchase, the same charge went through without issue.)
In conclusion... nice troll?
It really isn't just about auto-copywrite-infringement bots. It's really about non-overrideable bots with no human oversight in general. This problem reminds me very much of a problem I had a week ago, in which I wanted to put a large purchase on a credit card (then pay it back like the next day, with money I'd just been paypal'd, but that hadn't made it to my bank yet). I told the bank a week in advance: I am making a large purchase on this date, please don't flag it as suspicious. The response back was that they would make a note, but it would probably be marked suspicious anyway, and there was nothing they could do about it.
So I get there, I try to make the purchase, and sure enough: the charge is canceled and my card is suspended. So I call up the bank, tell them what happened, ask whether they can fix it. Answer: nope, it was all automatic, you'll have to call back later and hope someone with more privilege than a first-level phone support operator has is around. Thanks a lot, every-bank-on-the-planet (cause really, it's not just that one bank, they're all like this now.)
Yes, computers are getting more powerful. Yes, you can cut costs by hiring fewer humans to do superfluous things. You can cut costs even more by hiring fewer humans to do things they're really required to do, and just do a frelling terrible job of it as a result. But at least keep one person around at all times to clean up after the resulting mess, please, every company ever? Thanks a lot.
Amusing juxtaposition with the person who posted immediately after you. I'm aware that, given they posted -after- you, you couldn't see it when you posted that, but yes, someone has said that (or at least said that it happened to an immediate friend), and they're right above you. :)
Not quite. Jailbait describes the girl, not the person looking to sleep with her. Also, jailbait specifically describes a girl who incorrectly looks like she -is- over the legal age - if you were explicitly attracted to pubescent females, you would probably be rather less attracted to someone who was 14 but totally looked 21. (I've met a couple people like that, it's a little bit scary that they exist :p.)
Or... maybe someone else should come up with a new better OS and get people to try it? KDE is a joke. Pretty much every Linux GUI is a joke. MacOS is actually pretty nice these days (though pre-10 it was a joke too), but the whole trying to be a walled garden thing is a bit of a turnoff. Ok, yes, the more of a joke Windows becomes (and Win8 is a pretty big joke too), the more people might feel like trying some flavor of Linux, as it could hardly be -less- useable... but still. Anti-trust commissions of various places can't exactly regulate into existence a new non-sucky OS if none actually exist, or regulate that people have to use it. They have merely to regulate that if someone -did- create a new OS that was better than Windows, Microsoft isn't allowed to smash them to bits with frivolous lawsuits until they died or anything. Which I wouldn't put past them to try.
Too bad OSes are kind of a monolithic undertaking to design... I think we're kinda stuck with the ones we have.
Nobody? -Plenty- of people believe Catholicism is "batsh**t crazy". Plenty of people believe -all- organized religion is. Obviously there are gradations of just how crazy they are, and Mormonism is one of the crazier ones (though it still pales in comparison to Scientology, crazy-wise), but still.
If I were to sell a house for 500k in San Francisco, it might be called cheap, where if were to try to sell the same house in BFN, California, it would be laughably overpriced... but they're still both 500k. You can't say one is "cheaper" than the other. This might be an interesting fact about the US that was determined, but the fact is definitely -not-, "beer is cheaper in the US than anywhere else in the world".
Also that first sentence was interesting, as it turns out, it is as a great example of something we call a "runon sentence", a remarkably unreadable one.
In other news, "The Happy Homosexuals" would be a great name for a glamrock band.
WordPerfect is "just a word processor" too. So is Microsoft (occasionally) Works. So are innumerable crappy freeware products strewn about the net.
Yes, sometimes people pay for software when equivalent freeware exists just because they don't know about it, or don't trust free software like they should, but... sometimes people pay for software because the supposedly-equivalent freeware just isn't actually equivalent. Libreoffice sucks balls. Granted, MS Office isn't perfect, and keeps getting suckier, but it's still probably better than Open^HLibreoffice. (Though I wouldn't know for sure; the last version of Office I used regularly was 2003. 2003 had a free annoying bugs, and I wished its equation editor was better (yes, I know, use LaTex, blurgh), but for the most part, it was pretty nice to use.)
Google is still the only search engine I've tried that actually gives useful results. Microsoft can say all they like about Google, some of it might even be true (not that I'd necessarily trust Microsoft any more than Google, which I don't completely trust either), but they can't claim to have actually decent search results on things, which Google can. (Which means, sadly, neither can duckduckgo, which has a fantastic UI and which I trust far more to not be evil... but which uses bing's search results, which as previously mentioned, suck.)
Mod this post the frack up, please.
As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to switch to Windows 7 is "because you bought a new computer and they won't let you not have it, probably because some of its hardware isn't supported".
Even more than that - I've found that I can read just as quickly while listening to music as while not, but if the music has -singing-, my reading speed is much slower. Unless the singing is in a language I don't understand, in which case it's just as fast again.
Oh, I'm not saying you can't find all manner of people on OKC (it seems to be the spot for eccentrics of all variety, the nerdy shy computery type only being one subset. A subset I was looking for (I'm sitting here next to her right now; she's playing an internet game :p)), but certainly not the only type.
I like that we're not obsessed with *all* the same things, so we can learn from each other in that manner, but I wouldn't want only minor overlap, either.
Unless your perfect girl is the sort of person who sits at home alone (or with you :p), reading slashdot (or equivalent sites). In which case I recommend okcupid. (Because that's where most of the people like that hang out, assuming they're looking for a partner to be antisocial and shun the world with.)
Well, she does joke that she likes me because she must be a huge narcissist :p. (I knew I was looking for someone basically like her for as long as I had any desire to be with anyone, while she didn't know she was looking for someone like me (read: herself) until we met ;)).
I'd argue, though, that if you didn't get along with someone you thought was like you because it turned out you didn't know yourself very well, that's hardly an argument against finding love with someone who's like you - much the opposite, in fact. (Then again, if I was the sort of person who started fights with people, I wouldn't want to be with a girl like me either...)