How you present yourself to the world says a lot about what sort of person you are.
At least we can agree on this.
The reason to get tattoos and body piercings is to fit in with a crowd, plain and simple.
That's funny. I thought I got tattoos because I liked the way they looked, and the things that they remind me of when I see them.
I'm glad I have people like you around to reveal the truth about my wanting to fit in with the terribly popular "science dorks who like Legacy of Kain and grew up reading William Gibson" crew.
Do you want to fit in with the crowd that looks like it is going somewhere, or do you want to fit in with the crowd that looks like it is strung out on dope. Sure, it's possible, even probable in your case, that you simply *dress* like a dope fiend without being one.
Have you ever met an actual "dope fiend"? They look like all kinds of people, including the ones who wear suits and ties*.
On the other hand, most of the people I know who dress nicely all the time aren't going anywhere at all. They're stuck in essentially the same position they've either been in or will be in for twenty years.
*I wear a suit and a tie half of the time too. I like the contrast with my bright green hair, and it's fun to outdress everyone except the CIO. But I think you know what I mean.
And while it's possible that the guy who dresses like a Bible Salesman is really some sort of a hideous menace to society chances are in your favor that he is not.
Uh huh. Have you ever looked at pictures of serial killers? They don't generally have purple hair and piercings....anyway, back to this:
How you present yourself to the world says a lot about what sort of person you are.
You've said this, but you don't understand its full implications. You assume that when someone gets tattooed, or pierced, or dyes their hair, they are trying to "look like an individual," or something equally superficial and useless for gauging who they are. You are throwing away potentially valuable information that's sitting right in front of your eyes.
But whatever, I'm tired of arguing with people about why this line of thinking is stupid. If someone has such a problem with my vaguely odd appearance that they can't deal with it, I can easily find someone else to benefit from my skills.
You don't meet people in clubs. They're too loud to talk. And the girls are drenched in make-up and it's pitch black so you can't see what they look like anyway. They're places for vulgar shallow women and violent braindead men. Not to mention over-priced shitty drinks.
Try going to a good club sometime =P.
There are certainly people like you describe at the ones I go to, but the ones who I've met that aren't like that make all the difference.
Clubs really are important, because they provide a venue for people with similar interests to socialize (in person! TEH HORROR!!!).
I have met at my favourite club, the following who I would never have run into otherwise:
- A bioengineering major whose career goal is to make cyborg body parts to "trick people out."
- A microbiologist who is going for a PhD in nanotech.
- A really badass computer engineer who makes tasty absinthe.
- A game developer with a physics degree who worked on ICBM arming systems for Sandia.
- Two awesome industrial musicians, one of whom helped introduce me to paintball.
Note: 50% of these are also really hot girls.
Through them I've met other intelligent, interesting people.
Being around them is what got me interested in science again, particularly physics. And all because those people liked drinking and dancing to the same music as me.
His last name is spelled differently, but this appears to be the one. I was an Amiga user in 1990, but this sounds like basic database/spreadsheet usage to me.
The wording of the second one is very buzzword-laden and overblown ("artificial intelligence"? whatever). I'm still looking over both of them.
The news articles seem to have a number of other things wrong. First, no one with the last name Amado applied for a patent in 1990. The patent which appears to be being discussed was filed for in 1993 (After Access was released).
Probably the same thing as what happened when he didn't - a few people really liked his music, but most hated it.
The problem with music like Cage, Schoenberg, et al wrote is that it doesn't tie into the associations we're either born with or develop over time.
I can listen to music from just about anywhere in the world and at least get a basic idea of how it's supposed to make the listener feel: sorrowful, angry, joyous, triumphant, like dancing, etc.
"20th century music" (and I use that term in the academic sense) isn't like that. Certainly a lot of it is interesting, and it paved the way for things like modern electronic music, but that doesn't mean it makes a good soundtrack.
The best example I've seen of the utter failure that can result in situations like this is the soundtrack to the Babylon 5 TV movie "A Call to Arms," and the short-lived followup series "Crusade." The music is well-made, but has essentially nothing to do with what's happening on-screen. Screechy metal sounds and dissonant strings make me feel uneasy as I see the main ship cruise across space, but there's nothing to be uneasy about.
32 bits per pixel, certainly, but eight of those would most likely have been ignored
Right, but I'm not aware of any 32bpp system that doesn't use 8 of the bits for alpha. What would you do, give two of the channels 11 bits and the other one gets ten?
Which graphics card are you using which outputs 32-bit colour? The best I can think of in terms of colour depth, the Matrox Parhelia [matrox.com], only does 30-bit. And nobody seems to be buying that...
I think you must be referring to something else.
My 4MB STB SVGA card back in 1996 could do 32 bit per pixel colour.
Too bad the chances of anyone speaking English who lived in another galaxy, prior to the existence of the human race (presumably) are so remote as to be nonexistent.
Look at the computer displays. They're only speaking English because a movie in a synthetic, fictional language wouldn't do very well in theaters.
Lucas was very good about not using human-specific terminology in almost every other way. I figure he just didn't realize at the time that a "parsec" is so specifically tied to the Babylonians and their base-60 numerical system.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that's utter crap. It's Lucas Revisionism at its worst. The original Star Wars was a stand alone movie. Period. It didn't even have the "Episode IV" subtitle in the original theatrical release. The plot wasn't one sixth of a story, but a near-direct reuse of the plot from "The Hidden Fortress".
This is actually not entirely accurate.
You can read the vast majority of early drafts of the Star Wars (and its earlier incarnation, the subtly-titled "Adventures of Starkiller,") at the Jedi Bendu site.
Lucas really did have the basic outline for the story we see in Episodes I-VI created before the original Star Wars film.
Ya know, Episode II or III does have definitely correct usage of parsecs in one of the lines. Maybe they're trying to prove they definitely do know what it measures. Now anyway.
Too bad the chances of anyone using "parsec" as a unit of distance who isn't Earth-descended is so remote as to be nonexistent.
In your wet dreams, man. You're so full of shit. I've known several strippers at several different establishments and at least in this town, that's just not the case.
Mod parent up. I'm sure there are sleazy strip clubs out there, but that does not mean most of them are covert brothels.
Strippers don't appeal to me, but if I were female it would be at least a little tempting to *work* at a place like that. They make a TON of money. A friend of mine was showing me her photo album, and one of the pictures was of a blonde girl with a brand-new silver European sports car. That girl was a stripper, and got that car as a tip.
The problem with the misuse of the term "hacker" is that it imposes cultural violence.
Yeah, I remember the last time my coworkers found out I was a hacker*, and executed me on the spot after an hour or two of being beaten with blunt instruments! Damn, that was kind of a shitty day.
I agree that in a very rare circumstance it may be necessary to hide the identity of the source.
It's not rare at all. Most people who have something interesting to say about the internal workings of an important issue have a lot to lose, potentially. If it's made known who revealed that a defective product was intentionally released, or that a politician fabricated evidence to support their position, that person *will* suffer unless they have equal or greater power to the person or people they are exposing.
Fine. Use a double blind method, and use various obscfication techniques to hide the sources identity: scramble the voice on tapes, remove e-mail headers, etc.
And now we're back to the current way things are handled, other than that you want access to that information.
Personally, I still think that's revealing too much. I know the writing and speaking style of my friends and coworkers very well. If one of their phone calls or emails appeared in an article about something related to me, I wouldn't need to hear the timbre of their voice or see their return address to know it was them.
A good source is: telling the truth, able to prove it, and willing to be accountable.
I'll buy the first two. The third? Maybe in a perfect world. Please see the other, anonymous reply to my original post.
I am not going to speak to the media if I have to deal with people contacting me about it personally for years afterwards. The newspaper I worked at got angry letters at least once every few months for YEARS just about one negative review of a Hootie and the Blowfish album that was available on our website. I can only imagine what it would be like if I were quoted in the method you describe about something controversial that actually mattered.
Do you really think that, to use my previous example, people are so idealistic that they'll accept losing their job or even their life in order to get the truth out? Especially when it may not even sway people's opinion on the subject?
SO many stories quote "top officals", "well placed sources", "offical knowledgeable of the details", etc. And I am supposed to believe these people?
The alternative is to not get that information at all. The "top officials" one of our reporters told me about speaking to made that very clear. Their position was "if you reveal who I am, or even write about the things I tell you not to write about, I will deny everything and never speak to you again."
Obviously it would have been preferable to be able to name names and reveal all the nasty stuff that the reporter was actually witness to (not just told), but it would have meant that in the future we would never have known about anything there that could have been even more important.
You do realize that their target audience isn't the 14-28 year old demographic anymore, don't you? They put out games for kids - damn fine games, I may add. They focus on pick-up-and-play fun factor more than they do graphics. And what's so wrong with that? Just because it doesn't satisfy YOU doesn't mean that it satisfies no one.
?
I'm 27, and I still like a lot of Gamecube games - F-Zero GX, Metroid, etc. F-Zero GX because it is pretty much the paragon of high-speed sci-fi racing games. Like Spock, the next science officer can only succeed it, not surpass it. Um, or something.
I also appreciate that Nintendo hasn't focused so much on online gaming, because I hate playing online. I have an XBox and a PS2 too, but not for that. I would much rather developers put their time into the single-player experience as opposed to tacking on a multiplayer mode.
I am personally very pessimistic about the Revolution. I suspect that it's going to incorporate some sort of Yaroze-style thing (the "revolution" factor), but I don't think it will be enough. Nintendo has been having trouble in the console market ever since the N64, even if they do make a huge profit on handhelds, and without the technological awesomeness of the PS3 or even the XBox 2 (2! not the other number!) this one will be no different.
All I want in a news source is a complete biolography of every piece. It's the year 2005. I want MP3's of phone calls, I want everything on the record. I want copies of e-mails with headers. I want notes from meetings, high-quality scans of primary/original documents, I want it all.
This is really not possible for most interesting news.
Too many sources would refuse to provide information if they knew it would be on the record like that, completely traceable back to them.
I already generally refuse to speak to the media after some bad experiences. If in addition I knew that all their readers would have my email address ("I want copies of e-mails with headers"), that would become an inflexible rule.
Having the reporters' notes is also not really that valuable, because they are so subjective.
I used to work for a newspaper. They handle things the way they do for some very good reasons.
A good start. I was about to suggest a good de-dorktype-inator, but then realized that I've never seen anything that used it that I ever wanted to read . ..
I actually did make one of those about 2-3 years ago using Privoxy, but I realized that I was getting a very imprecise picture of what I was reading. I like to know if someone is too lazy to spell out "you are" or whatever.
I don't see how this could be... The new Battlestar Galactica is terrible, absolutely terrible. Now if they were showing reruns of the old series, maybe, but I want my 40 minutes back from even watching the torrent of the new one.
Did you just watch the pilot, or the actual episodes?
I *hated* the pilot, but after seeing the first season I went back and watched it again, and I can totally see why they made all the changes they did, other than the stupid glowing spine thing.
I'm a big fan of the original series (fond memories of when I was = 5), I own the DVDs, etc etc, but the new one is great too in its own way. They even gave Richard Hatch a recurring guest role.
Even the dorkiest of dorky gamer dorks has never put together something that convincing.
I buy the grandparent's hypothesis, although I would qualify it by saying that it may not actually exist even in prototype form, this might have been a test to gauge reactions of industry people.
It all depends on your frame of reference, I guess; but I'd say someone who claims to have gotten physically ill at the sight of other people having sex is a bit on the prudish side.
Somehow I suspect that her feeling ill had less to do with seeing other people having sex than having been deceived into going into that club by a man who promised he would never ask her to go to one again.
The legal document also doesn't specify what kind of sex club it was. I've been to a few fetish nights, and I get queasy when I see some of the stuff that goes on there, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Slashdot Mirror
How you present yourself to the world says a lot about what sort of person you are.
...anyway, back to this:
At least we can agree on this.
The reason to get tattoos and body piercings is to fit in with a crowd, plain and simple.
That's funny. I thought I got tattoos because I liked the way they looked, and the things that they remind me of when I see them.
I'm glad I have people like you around to reveal the truth about my wanting to fit in with the terribly popular "science dorks who like Legacy of Kain and grew up reading William Gibson" crew.
Do you want to fit in with the crowd that looks like it is going somewhere, or do you want to fit in with the crowd that looks like it is strung out on dope. Sure, it's possible, even probable in your case, that you simply *dress* like a dope fiend without being one.
Have you ever met an actual "dope fiend"? They look like all kinds of people, including the ones who wear suits and ties*.
On the other hand, most of the people I know who dress nicely all the time aren't going anywhere at all. They're stuck in essentially the same position they've either been in or will be in for twenty years.
*I wear a suit and a tie half of the time too. I like the contrast with my bright green hair, and it's fun to outdress everyone except the CIO. But I think you know what I mean.
And while it's possible that the guy who dresses like a Bible Salesman is really some sort of a hideous menace to society chances are in your favor that he is not.
Uh huh. Have you ever looked at pictures of serial killers? They don't generally have purple hair and piercings.
How you present yourself to the world says a lot about what sort of person you are.
You've said this, but you don't understand its full implications. You assume that when someone gets tattooed, or pierced, or dyes their hair, they are trying to "look like an individual," or something equally superficial and useless for gauging who they are. You are throwing away potentially valuable information that's sitting right in front of your eyes.
But whatever, I'm tired of arguing with people about why this line of thinking is stupid. If someone has such a problem with my vaguely odd appearance that they can't deal with it, I can easily find someone else to benefit from my skills.
You don't meet people in clubs. They're too loud to talk. And the girls are drenched in make-up and it's pitch black so you can't see what they look like anyway. They're places for vulgar shallow women and violent braindead men. Not to mention over-priced shitty drinks.
Try going to a good club sometime =P.
There are certainly people like you describe at the ones I go to, but the ones who I've met that aren't like that make all the difference.
I haven't pooped in two days, film at 11.
If I FedEx you some prune juice and psyllium fiber, can the film NOT be shown?
A good club vital to a city.
Clubs really are important, because they provide a venue for people with similar interests to socialize (in person! TEH HORROR!!!).
I have met at my favourite club, the following who I would never have run into otherwise:
- A bioengineering major whose career goal is to make cyborg body parts to "trick people out."
- A microbiologist who is going for a PhD in nanotech.
- A really badass computer engineer who makes tasty absinthe.
- A game developer with a physics degree who worked on ICBM arming systems for Sandia.
- Two awesome industrial musicians, one of whom helped introduce me to paintball.
Note: 50% of these are also really hot girls.
Through them I've met other intelligent, interesting people.
Being around them is what got me interested in science again, particularly physics. And all because those people liked drinking and dancing to the same music as me.
5,293,615, 8 March 1994
His last name is spelled differently, but this appears to be the one. I was an Amiga user in 1990, but this sounds like basic database/spreadsheet usage to me.
5,537,590, 16 July, 1996
The same guy appears to have been granted a more recent patent for a related process:
5,701,400, 23 December, 1997
The wording of the second one is very buzzword-laden and overblown ("artificial intelligence"? whatever). I'm still looking over both of them.
The news articles seem to have a number of other things wrong. First, no one with the last name Amado applied for a patent in 1990. The patent which appears to be being discussed was filed for in 1993 (After Access was released).
What if John Cage had owned an XBox?
Probably the same thing as what happened when he didn't - a few people really liked his music, but most hated it.
The problem with music like Cage, Schoenberg, et al wrote is that it doesn't tie into the associations we're either born with or develop over time.
I can listen to music from just about anywhere in the world and at least get a basic idea of how it's supposed to make the listener feel: sorrowful, angry, joyous, triumphant, like dancing, etc.
"20th century music" (and I use that term in the academic sense) isn't like that. Certainly a lot of it is interesting, and it paved the way for things like modern electronic music, but that doesn't mean it makes a good soundtrack.
The best example I've seen of the utter failure that can result in situations like this is the soundtrack to the Babylon 5 TV movie "A Call to Arms," and the short-lived followup series "Crusade." The music is well-made, but has essentially nothing to do with what's happening on-screen. Screechy metal sounds and dissonant strings make me feel uneasy as I see the main ship cruise across space, but there's nothing to be uneasy about.
Isn't that what service packs were pre-XP?
Service Packs generally introduce new functionality, not just fixes.
consoles not only cost much more than the graphics card in my PC, but they go through a planned obsolescence cycle faster
You buy graphics cards less than once every 5+ years?
The last time I bought a "gaming" card, it stopped working after 2 years, and by then it couldn't even play current titles at a decent resolution.
many of the interesting games for a casual user are never going to hit the console market
Maybe a decade or two ago, in the Amiga era.
Every really interesting and/or unusual game I've bought in the last five years has been a console game.
32 bits per pixel, certainly, but eight of those would most likely have been ignored
Right, but I'm not aware of any 32bpp system that doesn't use 8 of the bits for alpha. What would you do, give two of the channels 11 bits and the other one gets ten?
Which graphics card are you using which outputs 32-bit colour? The best I can think of in terms of colour depth, the Matrox Parhelia [matrox.com], only does 30-bit. And nobody seems to be buying that...
I think you must be referring to something else.
My 4MB STB SVGA card back in 1996 could do 32 bit per pixel colour.
Too bad the chances of anyone speaking English who lived in another galaxy, prior to the existence of the human race (presumably) are so remote as to be nonexistent.
Look at the computer displays. They're only speaking English because a movie in a synthetic, fictional language wouldn't do very well in theaters.
Lucas was very good about not using human-specific terminology in almost every other way. I figure he just didn't realize at the time that a "parsec" is so specifically tied to the Babylonians and their base-60 numerical system.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that's utter crap. It's Lucas Revisionism at its worst. The original Star Wars was a stand alone movie. Period. It didn't even have the "Episode IV" subtitle in the original theatrical release. The plot wasn't one sixth of a story, but a near-direct reuse of the plot from "The Hidden Fortress".
This is actually not entirely accurate.
You can read the vast majority of early drafts of the Star Wars (and its earlier incarnation, the subtly-titled "Adventures of Starkiller,") at the Jedi Bendu site.
Lucas really did have the basic outline for the story we see in Episodes I-VI created before the original Star Wars film.
Ya know, Episode II or III does have definitely correct usage of parsecs in one of the lines. Maybe they're trying to prove they definitely do know what it measures. Now anyway.
Too bad the chances of anyone using "parsec" as a unit of distance who isn't Earth-descended is so remote as to be nonexistent.
That said, the girls make next to nothing dancing.
Hmm. I guess some places are different. The one where a friend of mine works now pays something like $15/hour just for the dancing.
In your wet dreams, man. You're so full of shit. I've known several strippers at several different establishments and at least in this town, that's just not the case.
Mod parent up. I'm sure there are sleazy strip clubs out there, but that does not mean most of them are covert brothels.
Strippers don't appeal to me, but if I were female it would be at least a little tempting to *work* at a place like that. They make a TON of money. A friend of mine was showing me her photo album, and one of the pictures was of a blonde girl with a brand-new silver European sports car. That girl was a stripper, and got that car as a tip.
The problem with the misuse of the term "hacker" is that it imposes cultural violence.
Yeah, I remember the last time my coworkers found out I was a hacker*, and executed me on the spot after an hour or two of being beaten with blunt instruments! Damn, that was kind of a shitty day.
* In both senses.
I agree that in a very rare circumstance it may be necessary to hide the identity of the source.
It's not rare at all. Most people who have something interesting to say about the internal workings of an important issue have a lot to lose, potentially. If it's made known who revealed that a defective product was intentionally released, or that a politician fabricated evidence to support their position, that person *will* suffer unless they have equal or greater power to the person or people they are exposing.
Fine. Use a double blind method, and use various obscfication techniques to hide the sources identity: scramble the voice on tapes, remove e-mail headers, etc.
And now we're back to the current way things are handled, other than that you want access to that information.
Personally, I still think that's revealing too much. I know the writing and speaking style of my friends and coworkers very well. If one of their phone calls or emails appeared in an article about something related to me, I wouldn't need to hear the timbre of their voice or see their return address to know it was them.
A good source is: telling the truth, able to prove it, and willing to be accountable.
I'll buy the first two. The third? Maybe in a perfect world. Please see the other, anonymous reply to my original post.
I am not going to speak to the media if I have to deal with people contacting me about it personally for years afterwards. The newspaper I worked at got angry letters at least once every few months for YEARS just about one negative review of a Hootie and the Blowfish album that was available on our website. I can only imagine what it would be like if I were quoted in the method you describe about something controversial that actually mattered.
Do you really think that, to use my previous example, people are so idealistic that they'll accept losing their job or even their life in order to get the truth out? Especially when it may not even sway people's opinion on the subject?
SO many stories quote "top officals", "well placed sources", "offical knowledgeable of the details", etc. And I am supposed to believe these people?
The alternative is to not get that information at all. The "top officials" one of our reporters told me about speaking to made that very clear. Their position was "if you reveal who I am, or even write about the things I tell you not to write about, I will deny everything and never speak to you again."
Obviously it would have been preferable to be able to name names and reveal all the nasty stuff that the reporter was actually witness to (not just told), but it would have meant that in the future we would never have known about anything there that could have been even more important.
You do realize that their target audience isn't the 14-28 year old demographic anymore, don't you? They put out games for kids - damn fine games, I may add. They focus on pick-up-and-play fun factor more than they do graphics. And what's so wrong with that? Just because it doesn't satisfy YOU doesn't mean that it satisfies no one.
?
I'm 27, and I still like a lot of Gamecube games - F-Zero GX, Metroid, etc. F-Zero GX because it is pretty much the paragon of high-speed sci-fi racing games. Like Spock, the next science officer can only succeed it, not surpass it. Um, or something.
I also appreciate that Nintendo hasn't focused so much on online gaming, because I hate playing online. I have an XBox and a PS2 too, but not for that. I would much rather developers put their time into the single-player experience as opposed to tacking on a multiplayer mode.
I am personally very pessimistic about the Revolution. I suspect that it's going to incorporate some sort of Yaroze-style thing (the "revolution" factor), but I don't think it will be enough. Nintendo has been having trouble in the console market ever since the N64, even if they do make a huge profit on handhelds, and without the technological awesomeness of the PS3 or even the XBox 2 (2! not the other number!) this one will be no different.
All I want in a news source is a complete biolography of every piece. It's the year 2005. I want MP3's of phone calls, I want everything on the record. I want copies of e-mails with headers. I want notes from meetings, high-quality scans of primary/original documents, I want it all.
This is really not possible for most interesting news.
Too many sources would refuse to provide information if they knew it would be on the record like that, completely traceable back to them.
I already generally refuse to speak to the media after some bad experiences. If in addition I knew that all their readers would have my email address ("I want copies of e-mails with headers"), that would become an inflexible rule.
Having the reporters' notes is also not really that valuable, because they are so subjective.
I used to work for a newspaper. They handle things the way they do for some very good reasons.
A good start. I was about to suggest a good de-dorktype-inator, but then realized that I've never seen anything that used it that I ever wanted to read . . .
I actually did make one of those about 2-3 years ago using Privoxy, but I realized that I was getting a very imprecise picture of what I was reading. I like to know if someone is too lazy to spell out "you are" or whatever.
I don't see how this could be... The new Battlestar Galactica is terrible, absolutely terrible. Now if they were showing reruns of the old series, maybe, but I want my 40 minutes back from even watching the torrent of the new one.
Did you just watch the pilot, or the actual episodes?
I *hated* the pilot, but after seeing the first season I went back and watched it again, and I can totally see why they made all the changes they did, other than the stupid glowing spine thing.
I'm a big fan of the original series (fond memories of when I was = 5), I own the DVDs, etc etc, but the new one is great too in its own way. They even gave Richard Hatch a recurring guest role.
How on earth could you even think it was real?
Even the dorkiest of dorky gamer dorks has never put together something that convincing.
I buy the grandparent's hypothesis, although I would qualify it by saying that it may not actually exist even in prototype form, this might have been a test to gauge reactions of industry people.
It all depends on your frame of reference, I guess; but I'd say someone who claims to have gotten physically ill at the sight of other people having sex is a bit on the prudish side.
Somehow I suspect that her feeling ill had less to do with seeing other people having sex than having been deceived into going into that club by a man who promised he would never ask her to go to one again.
The legal document also doesn't specify what kind of sex club it was. I've been to a few fetish nights, and I get queasy when I see some of the stuff that goes on there, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
First of all, they are defined entirely in terms of their symptoms, not in terms of some malfunction of the body.
This is a load of horse shit, and you lost me right there (assuming you actually wrote this and didn't copy + paste from somewhere else).
Do some googling about ADHD, norepinephrine, stimulants, and SNRIs, and then tell me it's not a physical malfunction of the body.