"Scientists theorise that the most pleasing stimuli prompts the smallest of startle reflexes. They found that excessive game players could not be easily startled, unlike the controls."
It would appear that the Slashdot trolls that post Goatse guy, are actually trying to reduce our startle relfex, and get us addicted to Slashdot! Insidious!
I think the EFF should dream up a contest, and the most crazily ironic story involving DRM, copyright, and the law would win a prize.
Oh, too late! Sony already wrote the best story, and it's actually happening before our eyes! Truth is stranger than fiction. And Sony wins many massive lawsuits. Err, I mean they lose them, the prize is they get sued.
"would recommend that you pirate MS Word instead."
Nearly all students have access to broadband now, and could download and take a copy of OpenOffice.org 2 home to their computers. No more piracy, and you can read the prof's power point shows, and send him Word files if they demand an assignment be emailed. No more MS piracy monkey on your back to worry about. Open Office 2 has improved a lot over Star Office from 4 years ago.
The ones who recommend piracy when a 99% compatible and legal alternative exists, probably don't realize that OpenOffice is free and almost the same as MS Office.
The point is, in 5 years, instead of the result you got by accident, more often than not a.odt will work either because everything will save to.odt by default, or the program will at least understand it.
As it is, even Word isn't compatible with Word. If you try to open a Word 97 file on Word 95, it won't work. If you save to.rtf in Word, it might not look the same when you open it and save it again in Open Office.
We need one standard, and it's going to be open. It's too bad that Microsoft will have to be burned over the same barrel their closed system has burned people on for over a decade now.
Sorry, I messed up the joke [I was recreating it since the setup isn't as important as the punch line, but I missed a key part].
A panda walks into a bar.He grabs a few peanuts from the bar and pops them in his mouth, then he pulls out a gun, and kills the bartender with it before he walks out of the bar. A man sitting at the bar is stunned until a woman comes up to him with a laptop with Wikipedia open to "panda". The definition of a panda is an animal that eats shoots and leaves.
That is correct, thank you. That's ironic, because just yesterday I remembered that joke, and couldn't remember where I'd heard it before.
Eats, Shoots, & Leaves is a book about punctuation. Sounds boring? It isn't.
A panda walks into a bar. He has a gun, and he kills the bartender with it. Then he walks out of the bar right away. The man sitting at a bar is stunned until a woman comes up to him with a laptop with Wikipedia open to "panda". The definition is an animal that eats shoots and leaves.
" wat r u stupid or something wat do u want to be doing standing up straight and running with da ball u idiot dast real animation he is going low and attacking the basket dumb a** watch basketball and u will c him do da same exact thing
Stick a few commas and periods and capitals in there and it's essentially a machine-generated transcript of the following spoken English:
"What are you, stupid or something? What do you want to be doing? Standing up straight and running with the ball? You idiot! That's real animation: he's going low and attacking the basket. Dumbass, watch basketball and you'll see him do the same exact thing.""
Schools have to start making excercises for students, that show them how to fix those kind of Leet sentences using punctuation, and show them why it benefits their writing. Misunderstandings are to be had through poor punctuation, and there's got to be hundreds of examples in everyday writing where a meaning can be twisted by moving some commas and periods.
There's a thin book from the UK or Canada, that deals with punctuation in a humourous way. I read the first chapter or so at a relative's place, and I don't remember the author or title, but there were funny examples of a girl writing a letter to a guy that was a love letter, and with only punctuation modification it became a letter that broke up with him. Very eye opening I'd think to a hormone crazed teen talking to their gf (girlfriend) online. BE CAREFUL.
"Not to mention, it would make self-propagation of the meme rather difficult, if no one can decode the message."
Difficulty propagating is the point. If the non-target group doesn't "get it", then the language acts as a kind of encrypted language for the "in crowd" who does understand, or at least think they understand because it's so ambiguous that it means just what they want it to mean. Fox News of course excells at this kind of language, and so does Bush's speech writers. "We do not torture!" A sound bite that pleases the non-thinking, and placates because the President doesn't lie and he says America doesn't do a bad things. Only the thinking realize that if you look at recent history in Iraq or Cuba, or follow from his next line "we write the law, so anything we do to extract needed information is not torture by definition [or something to that effect]", realize that the words mean nothing. It's just a sound bite to win over support by appealing to what people want to hear. It doesn't have to be based in truth, or even make sense. It's better if it doesn't make sense, because people who "don't get it" might double guess why they don't get it and think they are being outsmarted when they are being "under-smarted".
To some extent is is just an alarmist attack on progress. It's more efficient to write "How R U?" into a cell phone if the other person is familiar with the language. But previous generations have been right about culture loss from progress. How many people speak or read Latin today? 50 years ago there were thousands if not millions more who knew at least a little. Instead we knoew computer languages and "L337 Speak". http://1337hax0r.com/ the URL there wouldn't have made sense 10 years ago, now it does to some people.
With every little bit lost, we gain in another area. Old people don't want change because we have to leave behind stuff that works already, and learn on top of it too. Such is life though, so embrace your leet speaking underlords when possible so you don't get left too far behind;-) When you're part of them, you can teach them the old ways of english, and dazzle them with complete sentences.
There's a type of home game where you can spell things out in "leet" speak, or you get cards with strange letter and number cominations and you have to decipher the meaning. Anyone remember what it's called? That's what I think of when I see someone writing "R U Their".
I can't understand the vast numbers of kids and people my age even that write with such sheer illiteracy that it makes me think twice about talking to them. Should I really expect someone who asks "How RU", to understand me when I talk about solar flares, or which car gets the best milage? Sure there are bright people that have given in to pretending they're typing on a cell phone, but why would someone try to initiate communication with other english reading person, with a line like "Hey Jou wat u doin?
I think the Internet will breed a new dialect of english, and I'm not talking about leet speak, or "how r u" abbreviations. I think it will permit english to be used in new ways where the reader isn't sure what the writer is getting at. Sound bytes will be more important in winning someone over to the writer's view, not a coherent argument.
It may be free, but it's not a gift. People have no right to complain about a gift, but a "Free" program is designed to make money, and if it isn't ethical but has been provided in the past under different terms and provides people with a service they rely on it's unethhical to take it away without warning or reason.
No one I know has an AIM name. Everyone I know has an MSN name if they have something for IM, a few with only Yahoo, and some on Gmail Talk too. ICQ died out, but before MSN it was that one.
I have over 25 people on my MSN messenger, although of course some of them hardly use it.
I know not having an AIM account limits the people I can talk with or bump into online, but given what I see coming from AOL and the AOL community at large, that's not really a drawback. Every hear of the AOL.exe virus hoax? Look it up at http://www.jokeaday.com/
I for one welcome our AOL robot overlords. And I'd like to remind them that as a writer, I can be used in their underground TIME magazine caves, or on CNN as a robot correspondent.
Before joining or voting for the NDP, consider supporting your local Green Party candidate. They are more moderate on some issues than the NDP, and have between 4 and 7% of the polls. It would be higher if pollsters offered Greens as a party choice when they do their "If there was an election today who would you vote for" question.
HP doesn't make quality software anymore if they ever did. Routinely when I activate Windows protection software called Steadfast, the HP software flips out and throws insane errors to dialogs, such as "File '.' not found".
Their scanning software for an older all in one printer, would not display on the screen maximized if you had a resolution smaller than 1024x768, and there were no scroll bars even to see the rest.
Their programmers have messed up, and I'm going to try to avoid HP now.
The Copyright Act ammendments in C-60 include wiretap rules for ISPs I thought? Maybe Heritage Canada is getting antsy that they can't slip it through, and want to shove it in with a quicky bill before parliament collapses in a couple weeks? It seems unlikely that they could do it what with 3 readings being required, but the real danger is that when the Liberals or Conservatives get back into power after the election, it will just go through then. I've seen nothing from the Conservatives that they'd work against these bad bills, and they are the only realistic governing alternative if the Greens or NDP don't get swing seats.
Re:How to boycott? Website
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I've been including information I think is important about the Sony case on my blog too since the story broke, but other sites have much more detail. I just try to break it down so the average joe knows what's going on if their brain turns off at acronyms like DRM.
"However, the patent game is one of mutually assured destruction, like in the Cold War. If NATO hadn't had a single nuclear weapon, and the Soviet Union had promised not to use something like 5% of its nuclear arsenal, then we probably wouldn't live in freedom now."
The topic title taught us terminology.
Patent MAD seems like the only way to get to be a big company these days. With the dot com boom over, what else could possibly take a small company and make it competitive with a giant like ebay.com? Skype got bought out by who else? Ebay.com
A giant like eBay with their mountains of patented software stands to make a fortune every time someone else tries to write some of their own software to sell something on the Internet.
You know what's going to happen? The authors are going to start with an emoticon for a smiling face, and the ASCII Art will go downhill from there and before you know it there will be screens full of . / \ . and everything but the ASCII Goatse guy will make appearances in the game.
Or you can listen to only free or shareware music like the latest Harvey Danger album. It's pretty catchy too, I don't know if it's hitting radio yet, but it should.
Slashdot Mirror
"Scientists theorise that the most pleasing stimuli prompts the smallest of startle reflexes. They found that excessive game players could not be easily startled, unlike the controls."
It would appear that the Slashdot trolls that post Goatse guy, are actually trying to reduce our startle relfex, and get us addicted to Slashdot! Insidious!
I think the EFF should dream up a contest, and the most crazily ironic story involving DRM, copyright, and the law would win a prize.
Oh, too late! Sony already wrote the best story, and it's actually happening before our eyes! Truth is stranger than fiction. And Sony wins many massive lawsuits. Err, I mean they lose them, the prize is they get sued.
"would recommend that you pirate MS Word instead."
Nearly all students have access to broadband now, and could download and take a copy of OpenOffice.org 2 home to their computers. No more piracy, and you can read the prof's power point shows, and send him Word files if they demand an assignment be emailed. No more MS piracy monkey on your back to worry about. Open Office 2 has improved a lot over Star Office from 4 years ago.
The ones who recommend piracy when a 99% compatible and legal alternative exists, probably don't realize that OpenOffice is free and almost the same as MS Office.
The point is, in 5 years, instead of the result you got by accident, more often than not a .odt will work either because everything will save to .odt by default, or the program will at least understand it.
.rtf in Word, it might not look the same when you open it and save it again in Open Office.
As it is, even Word isn't compatible with Word. If you try to open a Word 97 file on Word 95, it won't work. If you save to
We need one standard, and it's going to be open. It's too bad that Microsoft will have to be burned over the same barrel their closed system has burned people on for over a decade now.
Just tell them:
"Remember how when you tried to move your assignment from my computer to your computer and it didn't work because I don't have Word?"
-"Yeah?"
"Well, OpenDocument means it would have worked."
-"Oh. Cool."
Sorry, I messed up the joke [I was recreating it since the setup isn't as important as the punch line, but I missed a key part].
A panda walks into a bar.He grabs a few peanuts from the bar and pops them in his mouth, then he pulls out a gun, and kills the bartender with it before he walks out of the bar. A man sitting at the bar is stunned until a woman comes up to him with a laptop with Wikipedia open to "panda". The definition of a panda is an animal that eats shoots and leaves.
That is correct, thank you. That's ironic, because just yesterday I remembered that joke, and couldn't remember where I'd heard it before.
Eats, Shoots, & Leaves is a book about punctuation. Sounds boring? It isn't.
A panda walks into a bar. He has a gun, and he kills the bartender with it. Then he walks out of the bar right away. The man sitting at a bar is stunned until a woman comes up to him with a laptop with Wikipedia open to "panda". The definition is an animal that eats shoots and leaves.
" wat r u stupid or something wat do u want to be doing standing up straight and running with da ball u idiot dast real animation he is going low and attacking the basket dumb a** watch basketball and u will c him do da same exact thing
Stick a few commas and periods and capitals in there and it's essentially a machine-generated transcript of the following spoken English:
"What are you, stupid or something? What do you want to be doing? Standing up straight and running with the ball? You idiot! That's real animation: he's going low and attacking the basket. Dumbass, watch basketball and you'll see him do the same exact thing.""
Schools have to start making excercises for students, that show them how to fix those kind of Leet sentences using punctuation, and show them why it benefits their writing. Misunderstandings are to be had through poor punctuation, and there's got to be hundreds of examples in everyday writing where a meaning can be twisted by moving some commas and periods.
There's a thin book from the UK or Canada, that deals with punctuation in a humourous way. I read the first chapter or so at a relative's place, and I don't remember the author or title, but there were funny examples of a girl writing a letter to a guy that was a love letter, and with only punctuation modification it became a letter that broke up with him. Very eye opening I'd think to a hormone crazed teen talking to their gf (girlfriend) online. BE CAREFUL.
"Not to mention, it would make self-propagation of the meme rather difficult, if no one can decode the message."
Difficulty propagating is the point. If the non-target group doesn't "get it", then the language acts as a kind of encrypted language for the "in crowd" who does understand, or at least think they understand because it's so ambiguous that it means just what they want it to mean. Fox News of course excells at this kind of language, and so does Bush's speech writers. "We do not torture!" A sound bite that pleases the non-thinking, and placates because the President doesn't lie and he says America doesn't do a bad things. Only the thinking realize that if you look at recent history in Iraq or Cuba, or follow from his next line "we write the law, so anything we do to extract needed information is not torture by definition [or something to that effect]", realize that the words mean nothing. It's just a sound bite to win over support by appealing to what people want to hear. It doesn't have to be based in truth, or even make sense. It's better if it doesn't make sense, because people who "don't get it" might double guess why they don't get it and think they are being outsmarted when they are being "under-smarted".
To some extent is is just an alarmist attack on progress. It's more efficient to write "How R U?" into a cell phone if the other person is familiar with the language. But previous generations have been right about culture loss from progress. How many people speak or read Latin today? 50 years ago there were thousands if not millions more who knew at least a little. Instead we knoew computer languages and "L337 Speak".
;-) When you're part of them, you can teach them the old ways of english, and dazzle them with complete sentences.
http://1337hax0r.com/ the URL there wouldn't have made sense 10 years ago, now it does to some people.
With every little bit lost, we gain in another area. Old people don't want change because we have to leave behind stuff that works already, and learn on top of it too. Such is life though, so embrace your leet speaking underlords when possible so you don't get left too far behind
Don't U mean:
Were 4 art th0w r0m30?
waz it r0m30 or jool337 that drank the p0|50N?
There's a type of home game where you can spell things out in "leet" speak, or you get cards with strange letter and number cominations and you have to decipher the meaning. Anyone remember what it's called? That's what I think of when I see someone writing "R U Their".
I can't understand the vast numbers of kids and people my age even that write with such sheer illiteracy that it makes me think twice about talking to them. Should I really expect someone who asks "How RU", to understand me when I talk about solar flares, or which car gets the best milage? Sure there are bright people that have given in to pretending they're typing on a cell phone, but why would someone try to initiate communication with other english reading person, with a line like "Hey Jou wat u doin?
I think the Internet will breed a new dialect of english, and I'm not talking about leet speak, or "how r u" abbreviations. I think it will permit english to be used in new ways where the reader isn't sure what the writer is getting at. Sound bytes will be more important in winning someone over to the writer's view, not a coherent argument.
New English Rulez! (for instance).
It may be free, but it's not a gift. People have no right to complain about a gift, but a "Free" program is designed to make money, and if it isn't ethical but has been provided in the past under different terms and provides people with a service they rely on it's unethhical to take it away without warning or reason.
No one I know has an AIM name. Everyone I know has an MSN name if they have something for IM, a few with only Yahoo, and some on Gmail Talk too. ICQ died out, but before MSN it was that one.
I have over 25 people on my MSN messenger, although of course some of them hardly use it.
I know not having an AIM account limits the people I can talk with or bump into online, but given what I see coming from AOL and the AOL community at large, that's not really a drawback. Every hear of the AOL.exe virus hoax? Look it up at http://www.jokeaday.com/
I for one welcome our AOL robot overlords. And I'd like to remind them that as a writer, I can be used in their underground TIME magazine caves, or on CNN as a robot correspondent.
Before joining or voting for the NDP, consider supporting your local Green Party candidate. They are more moderate on some issues than the NDP, and have between 4 and 7% of the polls. It would be higher if pollsters offered Greens as a party choice when they do their "If there was an election today who would you vote for" question.
HP doesn't make quality software anymore if they ever did. Routinely when I activate Windows protection software called Steadfast, the HP software flips out and throws insane errors to dialogs, such as "File '.' not found".
Their scanning software for an older all in one printer, would not display on the screen maximized if you had a resolution smaller than 1024x768, and there were no scroll bars even to see the rest.
Their programmers have messed up, and I'm going to try to avoid HP now.
The Copyright Act ammendments in C-60 include wiretap rules for ISPs I thought? Maybe Heritage Canada is getting antsy that they can't slip it through, and want to shove it in with a quicky bill before parliament collapses in a couple weeks? It seems unlikely that they could do it what with 3 readings being required, but the real danger is that when the Liberals or Conservatives get back into power after the election, it will just go through then. I've seen nothing from the Conservatives that they'd work against these bad bills, and they are the only realistic governing alternative if the Greens or NDP don't get swing seats.
I just found the website claiming to lead the charge http://www.boycottsony.us/ in the boycott.
I've been including information I think is important about the Sony case on my blog too since the story broke, but other sites have much more detail. I just try to break it down so the average joe knows what's going on if their brain turns off at acronyms like DRM.
"However, the patent game is one of mutually assured destruction, like in the Cold War. If NATO hadn't had a single nuclear weapon, and the Soviet Union had promised not to use something like 5% of its nuclear arsenal, then we probably wouldn't live in freedom now."
The topic title taught us terminology.
Patent MAD seems like the only way to get to be a big company these days. With the dot com boom over, what else could possibly take a small company and make it competitive with a giant like ebay.com? Skype got bought out by who else? Ebay.com
A giant like eBay with their mountains of patented software stands to make a fortune every time someone else tries to write some of their own software to sell something on the Internet.
The Last Person to find LGPL code in Microsoft 360 spyware, is a rotten egg! We already know that Sony is the rotten egg in the last race.
You know what's going to happen? The authors are going to start with an emoticon for a smiling face, and the ASCII Art will go downhill from there and before you know it there will be screens full of . / \ . and everything but the ASCII Goatse guy will make appearances in the game.
This is +5 Ironic or Insightful.
Why hasn't anyone issued a takedown notice to Sony, so they have to pull these viral CDs from the stores and issue a recall?
http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/
Or you can listen to only free or shareware music like the latest Harvey Danger album. It's pretty catchy too, I don't know if it's hitting radio yet, but it should.