I'd rather have a rectal exam by a grey alien proctologist then visit Vegas, by this monorail sounds cool enough that I might have to lower my standards.
ET, snap on those rubber gloves, I'm coming to visit... in a few years, anyway, when it is finished!
I really hope that Valerie the Domestic Android is a droll joke. If not, I am truly saddened by the human race. Let's further marginalize and objectify one half of our own species by producing sexualized machinery designed for manual labor and other, less edifying prospects.
Too many geeks already have a hard time relating to real women - let's eliminate the need for them to ever learn. With lubrication and ingeniously designed orifices (and articulated appendages), geeks won't have to jerk themselves off as they surf the web... Valerie the Domestic Android will do it between laundry and dusting, with fellatio as a bonus, perhaps programmed as an "incentive" for those who remember to take baths or brush their teeth.
We are entered the orbit of a terrifying, strange planet, and that planet is named Earth.
Thank you, chrisd, for revealing how many pathetic dweebs read Slashdot. I haven't seen so many losers whining since Lucas gifted us with Jar Jar.
X-Files was polished, but it was still shite. Any show which has to invoke Roswell (a complete fraudulent crapfest) to keep viewers interested should be ashamed, regardless of how clever that show might be otherwise. X-Files gave respectability to paranoia, and probably reduced the IQ's of millions who are/will be the children of these tinfoil party-hat wearing subhumans.
I personally think that it was plot by the Venusians to subjegate us earthlings without every having to drop a bomb.
Anyway, chrisd, fuck the crybaby geeks who don't seem willing to accept your apology, and keep posting whatever articles you feel like. I'll keep reading Slashdot, and so will most of the moaning bitches.
Even the most die-hard Microsoft supporters will admit that Linux is viable on the desktop right now.
I suppose you could call me a die-hard Microsoft supporter, though I tend to consider myself agnostic regarding OS's. However, as I use Microsoft OS's to the virtual exclusion of all others, the die-hard Linux supporters will probably consider me a die-hard Microsoft supporter. The point of this wordy preamble? I am [or might be considered] a die-hard Microsoft supporter, and I take exception to the quote italicized above.
Linux ISN'T viable on the Desktop right now.
Linux will be ready for the Desktop when the majority of *neophyte computer users* don't need tech support and hand-holding to use it, or when the tech support which is available is as freely and ubiquitously available as it is for the Windows platform.
The words *neophyte computer users* were emphasized for a reason. Don't respond unless you have digested them.
I work in telephone tech support, and I have done so for years. Further, I am the guy who is called by in-laws, friends, acquaintances, and other assorted and otherwise not-even-on-their-xmas-card-list family members when their PC stops co-operating.
During the day, EVERY day, I get phone calls like this one:
Customer: "Hello, I use you for my e-mails, and now I can't get them."
Me: "We are your Internet Service Provider, and you are having trouble receiving your e-mail through us?"
Customer: "Uh-huh."
I collect the customer's name, I look their account up, and after I have ensured that their service has not been disconnected due to a deliquent bill, we proceed.
Me: "Are you connected to the Internet when you try to check your e-mail?"
Customer: "What?"
Me: "When you try to check your e-mail, are you sure that you are actually connected to the Internet?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
After several false starts we do solve the problem, but the conversation almost always includes moments similar to this:
Me: "What version of Windows are you using?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Or:
Me: "What browser do you use?"
Customer: "I don't know. What's a browser?"
Me: "The program that you use to browse the web. Do you use Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, Opera, or something else?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Or:
Customer: "I can't read what my friend sent me."
Me: "What did you send you?"
Customer: "I don't know, I can't open it to find out."
Me: "No, I mean did he send you a text file, a sound file, an image, what?"
Customer: "I don't know, I can't open it to find out."
Me: "What is the name of the file that he sent you?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Me: "Did he send it to you as an e-mail attachment, or was it sent on a zip disk, a floppy, or a CD?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Or:
Customer: "How can I get rid of my cookies?"
I spend several minutes trying to explain one of several different processes, during which time it becomes obvious that the customer has no fucking idea what a cookie even is, but a helpful computer "expert" told him they were bad.
I spend hours a month trying to explain to people how to install, and remove, various computer applications. In Windows, it is a relatively painless procedure, though it is far from standard or perfect. The customer might have to download a program to help him extract the file he has downloaded, which is always confusing to a neophyte, but they eventually manage. Usually it is double-click and go, for both installation and removal. I say usually: Windows is especially sloppy in leaving fragments of removed programs all over the HD, and in leaving shit in the registry. And DLL hell sucks, but both problems are getting better.
In Linux, the customer has to understand debs, and rpms, and tarballs, minimum. He has to understand the compile process, and what a dependency is, and that the kernel may be rock solid, but that the Windows Manager or the application he is using isn't. In other words, he has to understand that the stable OS he is using, as a Desktop solution, is just as prone to crashes as Windows, but that if he were running a server it wouldn't crash nearly as often as a server crashes in Windows. That is exceedingly useful to a Desktop user.
Imagine a conversation with a neophyte Linux Desktop user.
Me: "What distribution of Linux are you using?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Or:
Me: "What Window Manager are you using?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
I would then spend several minutes trying to ascertain whether the customer was using Gnome, or KDE (all arguments over what a Windows Manager is put aside), or Enlightenment, or...
You get the idea.
Now, today, right now, the average Linux user is several times more computer literate than the average Windows user. They are members of the geek-elite. They wouldn't ask questions as dumb as the examples I've given.
But for Linux to be viable on the Desktop, it would have to embrace the masses of *neophyte computer users* who are already petrified by MS Windows. And MS Windows is pretty bloody simple, in most regards, to Linux, regardless of which distribution or Windows Manager you are using.
I've been installing Linux since 1995, with Slackware as my first install, and it has improved leaps and bounds, but it is still not ready for the Desktop, the Desktop being that user space inhabited by the non computer-geeks, the computer neophytes.
Katz didn't actually criticize this movie. The purpose of the review was for Katz to show us all that he was just like us: that he, too, can watch an admittedly crap movie and still like it.
Evidence:
Sorry, but I really love this trash,
I have to say I had fun watching this silliness.
and it's so undemanding a movie, that you leave the theater smiling and relaxed.
Katz has been criticized in the past for being out of touch with the rest of us, for being elitist. This was his way of showing us that he is really a regular dude who can watch a cheesy movie and enjoy it.
Didn't anybody else see that?
I must admit that I am probably in the minority. I genuinely like Katz. Part of the pleasure is reading all of the predictable Katz lambasting, and part of it is seeing my own opinions expressed by someone else (that person being Katz). I do disagree with Katz about this movie: if a movie is crap, it's crap, no matter how big the quota of special effects. I go to the movies to have my brain turned ON, not turned OFF. Daily life is already so numbing and anti-use-of-intellect that I prefer foreign and art films to mass-culture movies. But that's just my own form of escapism, an embracing of the pretentious so that I can forget how dumb reality actually is, how shallow my existance feels.
Okay, I do have a short list of dumb movies I adore:
Army of Darkness The Rocky Horror Picture Show The Fifth Element
The Mummy pictures (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King) are too dumb to be enjoyed, at least by this viewer. I did see them, out of a sense of social obligation (I can't criticize them without seeing them, after all), but they all sucked beyond the point of amusement.
Except:
The scene where Rachel Weisz and Patricia Velazquez kick each others ass. I have a weakness for movies where women kick ass. Oh, that exposes a whole genre that I adore, fully realizing that the genre is cheesy - the Hong Kong action films where evil or strong or vengeful women do lots of butt-kicking. Yes, I even own Charlie's Angels, and it is a very bad movie indeed.
...are falling over themselves to give away their power to think for themselves and jump on the popular opinion bandwagon.
I would think that the opposite is true. The popular opinion bandwagon believes in anything that the tabloids publish. How do you think that James Van Praagh and John Edward earn their livelihood? Why do you think that discrediting and debunking meets with such hostility? The list of frauds and fakery and charlatanry which has been clearly and concisely demolished is quite long, yet popular opinion isn't fazed. This is because the mundane doesn't sell advertising. Uri Geller, Nostradamus, the Bermuda Triangle, the aforementioned psychics, all indisputable crap, but it still sells, so it is still spoon-fed to the general public.
The general public, especially in America, is so anti-intellectual and eager to be deceived that anyone with even minimal intelligence is accused of being narrow-minded, as if being wide-minded (no filters, just accept all shit as equally probable and valid because it MIGHT be true) were a virtue.
Skepticism is healthy. Logic and reason aren't dirty words. Yes, many skeptics come across as their own worst enemy (James Randi). They seem arrogant at the very least. However, maybe this is because the tedium of debunking the same shit is exhausting after you have done it for a lifetime and no one notices except for your self-congratulatory peers and their gullible opposites, the "they laughed at Galileo" crowd.
Anyway, that's the end of my rant, now I'm going to go watch something on PBS.:-)
To say that alternative medicine is placebo flies in the face of every single person who believes in an afterlife and a soul.
Erm, no. That statement is so ludicrous as to be stunning. There is absolutely no connection between on'e belief in afterlife and a soul and one's belief in the claims of alternative medicine. I repeat: no connection.
Of course, if you see a connection, please provide it, because my current level of mystification is really tiring.:-)
Here is where we differ. To me, arrogance is more than merely listing what I perceive as the benefits of surviving without an automobile. I acknowledge that car ownership also has many benefits, but those benefits are too obvious, and well-understood, to bother enumerating them.
I believe that most people COULD do without a car, but that they choose not to do without. I made a different decision, and it is unusual enough for an adult American male to be without a car by CHOICE that it merited enumerating my reasons. No arrogance, just a different life choice.
Most of my friends and family, if they need a loaf of bread half a mile away at the grocery store, will drive instead of walk, because they don't value the pleasures to be had from walking. I enjoy walking, the fresh air, the solitude, the invigorated limbs. I walk not because it allows me to feel superior - which it most certainly does not - but because I enjoy it.
Anyway, it is okay that we have different viewpoints, that is what makes the world interesting. I am just puzzled that you or anyone else would equate a simple list of perceived benefits as arrogance.
Oh, well. If that is how you see it, I suppose I'll have to live with it.;-)
The story is awful. Noah's Ark? Come on! At least they didn't trot out Roswell like Lain did (which qualifies as the biggest missed opportunity in anime, IMHO).
Erich von Däniken could have come up with a better story. Hell, Joseph Smith or Shirley MacLaine could have come up with better stories (for that matter, they _did_ come up with better stories).
Ron L. Hubbard (another "great" storyteller) and Hirotsugu Kawasaki should get together for their next effort, and they might improve the story. Granted, Ron would have to be communicating from beyond the grave, but Xenu might be able to arrange that!
Can you provide an example of my supposed arrogance? You can't, because the example doesn't exist.
I am obviously superior to you, at least insofar as your demonstrated literacy. Now, if you continue this dialogue, you will be able to quote the former sentence as an example of my arrogance, because that is exactly what it is, and well-earned arrogance, at that.
Happily, your ignorance _is_ cureable. Translation: you needn't feel intimidated forever.
Just for your information, the transportation methods of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries include bipedal locomotion, and probably will do so for many centuries to come. Translation: walking isn't obsolete quite yet.
No, but I do have a passport, and that is adequate most of the time. I also have credit cards, and a checking account, and (now) make most of my purchases on-line, where ID isn't a problem.
Living in a rural area, most shopkeepers know me, so I haven't had to present any ID at all for ages, actually. I lived outside of London at one time, and it wasn't a problem there, either, once shopkeepers knew my face.
It really isn't the hassle that most assume that it is, I assure you.:-)
I assume you are accusing me of arrogance. Did you even read my post? If so, can you provide an example of my supposed arrogance? I don't think so: I wasn't on a high horse, moral or otherwise.
Regardless, you are utterly wrong about where I reside or might have resided. I've lived in the suburbs and rural areas most of my life, and there is nothing self-important or overbearing in that statement, either. I live in a rural area now, and I walk to work every day, 6 days a week, rain or shine, sleet or snow. Is that an arrogant statement? Am I astride a high horse?
I stated merely that the original poster's assertion was grossly exaggerated, after having provided counter-examples.
You might have misinterpreted the phrase needlessly polluting the atmosphere, but a re-reading should correct that mistake. Cars pollute the atmosphere, I arrange my life to avoid requiring the use of cars, so I do not needlessly pollute the artmosphere. Is there something arrogant about that statement of fact?
Get your head out of the horses ass and read what was actually said, not what you felt compelled to read into it: there was no connotation present or intended.
...not haveing [sic] a drivers license bars you from participating in a wide variety of activities in this country.
I got my first driver's license when I was 26. I used it so infrequently that I didn't renew it when it expired. I am now 41, and I still very seldom have need for a driver's license.
I have travelled the world, gone to myriad concerts, the theatre, gone camping, skiing, to the cinema, shopping, and I have never once been impeded by my lack of driver's license.
On the other hand, I have never had to look for parking, pay for parking, pay parking fines, pay a speeding ticket, pay for gasoline/petrol, pay for automotive maintenance, been in a car accident, pay for automotive insurance, or make a car payment. I have also never been trapped in a traffic jam, been the victim of, or experienced, "road rage," changed a tire, or paid for an MOT Inspection or for Road Tax.
Yes, I have had to walk home in the rain, waited too long for taxis, and been inconvenienced by unreliable public transportation, but to me the benefits of being without a car far outweigh the cons: needlessly polluting the atmosphere, depriving myself of many reasons for bicycling or walking, and smelling someone else's exhaust fumes or being tailgated.
Battlestar Galactica was perhaps one of the worst things ever to happen to science fiction, or to television. It completed the "cutification" of science fiction as a genre (can anyone say "daggit," Noah "Boxey" Hathaway, and mock swearing?), a process begun by Star Wars, and also elevated non-actors to dubious stardom (Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict). It took a B-grade actor from a fondly remembered Western series and tried to invest him with somber grace (Lorne Greene), all the while borrowing its storyline from Mormon mythology.
Complete, utter crap, unless filtered through the non-discerning lens of a 6 - 12 year old's mind.
The academic version of Visual Studio.Net Pro is $89, which is pretty bloody cheap, even for someone as skint as me.
The well-documented SDK is available as a free download.
Still, I do agree that MS should probably distribute "lite" versions of their language products, gratis, with their OS's, which would certainly increase their user base.
Yes, I've seen Princess Mononoke, and yes, the dubbed version is not as enjoyable as the subtitled version, but it was hardly "butchered." The two versions are almost identical, and I recommned watching them both, as the dubbed version doesn't provide a little extra meaning to non-Japanese viewers. In other words, the subtitled version, while providing the superior viewing experience, was a literal translation, and didn't convey some of the ambiguities that Neil Gaiman's "dubbing script" managed.
The article wasn't referring to worldwide gross, but to the gross in Japan. No, this wasn't made crystal clear, but I think that most otaku (the hardcore anime fans/nerds to whom the article was directed) probably surmised it.
Otaku would find this statistic significant without requiring further elaboration because they already know that Princess Mononoke, also a Miyazaki creation, was the biggest grossing film in Japanese history until being supplanted by the inferior Titanic. That Miyazaki is champion again is gratifying.:-)
This is insightful? It is vacuous bullshit. "Intended market" does not refer to individual intentions, but rather to a targeted market segment. Butter knives are manufactured because there is a large known market consisting of people who wish to spread butter (okay, usually margarine) on toast, and not for the unprofitable minority of persons who might use them as screwdriver replacements.
Your post sounded insightful to careless readers because it was not phrased "You have no idea what the actual use of any product may be," which is too fucking obvious for anyone to mistake for profundity. Too bad that the obvious was true, and your statement was utter bullshit.
If I sold a product called the "Kill a Cop Special" and it was used by the majority of purchasers for exactly that purpose then there wouldn't be any "intended market" carping. The Morpheous and Napster folks didn't name their P2P products "Tools for Intellectual Property Theft Pro" so some of the more dim or disingenuous Slashdot readers might be fooled by your "intended market" prevaricating, but not if they engage their brain cells first.
I don't mean to be harsh, but Christ, this argument is fucking asinine, and it had been replayed too many times to have any entertainment value, even of the Beavis and Butthead variety.
What does "things are a lot tighter these days" even mean? The vast majority of USians make exactly the same amount now as they made pre-911 (cue portentous sound F/X), or maybe even a bit more, and yet I hear shit like this all of the time.
It seems to me, perhaps naively, that the market is controlled by a couple of people who make pronouncements on the economy, and then en masse the population swings to fulfill these predictions, muttering sagely about "bull markets" or "things are a lot tighter these days" without having any fucking clue what these slogans mean.
Would someone with a real understanding of economic theory please elucidate?
I work for an ISP, and we most assuredly do not sell the e-mail addresses of our customers. However, about once a week I answer the telephone and find a disgruntled customer on the other end, complaining that their email address has been compromised. They vehemently insist that they haven't used their e-mail address for anything that might make them spam-bait, and almost always they are lying.
They don't understand how simple it is for me to check their in-box. Usually, these particular customers have subscribed to something called "SuziesPinkPussyPics," "ScatDigest," or similar, and they aren't going to confess this to me.
I don't blame them.:)
Occasionally, our customers do get spammed within a week or so of subscribing to our service, they aren't using obvious e-mail addresses, and they do appear to be entirely innocent victims. No, I don't know how this happens, and I tell them so. Sometimes they cancel, sometimes they change they their e-mail address and persevere.
Now, imagine the situation at Microsoft. They have a privacy policy in place, they don't sell your e-mail addresses, yet they till get complaints, possibly thousands of them weekly, similar to yours and other unlucky customers. They know that 99% of the spam has been received due to actions on the part of the recipient, or due to carelessness on the part of the recipient, and that in perhaps 1% of the cases is there anything worthy of being investigated.
Do you spend tens of thousands of dollars placating a few customers (few percentage-wise) who have anomalous complaints about a free service?
The answer is no, and this is neither deceptive or "useless." Every company knows that not all of their customers will be happy 100% of the time, and it is not even reasonable or prudent to try to please them all, always.
Revise that; try to please them all, but know that, realistically, their will be some failures. Try to prevent those failures, but when any one customer costs you more than his or her business will ever possibly be worth (through actual sales, hits to your reputation, or otherwise), apologize and cut your losses.
We have been selling computers for 19 years, and there are a few customers who it would have been better, in hindsight, to have refused a sale. These are the cusomers who cost of hundreds of hours over the years because they believe that a $1000 - $1500 purchase entitles them to a lifetime of handholding and mothering, of fixing their fuckups for free, again and again, and listening to them bitch and complain that their keyboard stopped working after they have spilled Pepsi on it for the 14th time (which they deny even if presented with the evidence).
Yes, it is obvious that you are not one of those customers, but you and I both know that they exist, and it almost impossible to weed them out or refuse them service before they show their true colors.
This has turned into a rant, sorry. I guess I'm just saying that MS, nor anyone else, should be expected to spend enormous amounts of time trying to solve problems that are essentially insoluble, or prohibitivley expensive to solve.
Maybe there are renegade MS employee[s] at the heart of the problem. If this is the case, then maybe MS can fix it without too great an expense.
If you buy a product from me on the condition that you only use it while wearing your grandmother's dress and masturbating into a jar of peanut butter, and you can't abide by those conditions, then don't buy the product.
Now, if Blizzard doesn't have any legalese in their purchase agreement restricting services such as bnetd, then Blizzard can fuck themselves and you can do whatever you want with your game.
Note that I care not one iota for the legal aspects of anything. The moral and the ethical aspects are my only concerns, and those are sometimes at odds with the legal framework. I won't live long enough even if I reach extreme old age to change unjust laws in the courts, but i do honor any and all contracts that I have assented to, and if Blizzard wants me in grannie's nightdress with peanut butter on my cock and I want to play Warcraft III bad enough, move over granny and hello, Jif.
You can't get any simpler than that.
Yes, I know that Blizzard are trying to prevent ther use/programming of a server product, but the same idea applies. Presuumably the programmers of bnetd had to obtain a legal copy in order to program their server. Therefore, if such a restriction exists in the Blizzard EULA, then I feel that the bnetd people are morally obligated to honor it. If not, well, as I said before, Blizzard can fuck thmselves.
You are such a loser that I really shouldn't bother to respond, but I'll lower myself to your level for a moment and explain a few things.
I know that ICQ is not a P2P program, nor did I ever claim that it was. I was performing a logical exercise called "extrapolation," which is a concept that people without their heads lost in their ass understand. If you don't know what extrapolate means, then you might want to look it up, as it is a useful tool.
My evidence, extrapolated, anecdotal, or otherwise, has far more relevance than your non-evidence. As for my evidence being anecdotal, it was collected with a fair amount of scientific rigor, and collated with something called "statistics" and "methodology." That doesn't make it strictly anecdotal, does it?
Incidentally, "anecdotal" and "empirical" are not exclusive terms. Look them up, if you don't mind being bitch-slapped by the obvious.
Goodbye, Mr. Troll, and don't expect that I will take your bait again.
Note that I am not such an intellectual coward that I conceal my e-mail address, so you may continue this dialogue privately if you wish, but I doubt that you are up to it.
The original poster didn't have cites for his assertions, either, and I didn't see you accusing him of blowing anything out of his ass.
A little even-handedness might have been appropriate here, unless you want to make a complete fool of yourself in front of a quarter-million strangers.
Incidentally, it is doubtful that a quarter-miillion strangers actually bothered to read his post, so are you just pulling cites out of your ass?
Actually, a little deduction will demonstrate that the majority of the previous posters assertions were probably true.
ICQ claims, as I type this, 126,281,501 users. My cite:
http://web.icq.com/
The figure is posted prominantly on the page.
Of course, no one ever has duplicate ICQ accounts, so that figure is probably entirely accurate. Right? Wrong. I'll be generous and assume that 3/4 of those accounts include no duplicates, which means that ICQ can still claim 94,711,125 users.
Of course, of those 94,711,125 registered users, every one of them still use ICQ. None of them have stopped using it, right? Wrong. I'll pull a number out of my ass and guess that 1/8 of those registered users are no longer active, and I think I'm being pretty generous with those numbers. This leaves 82,872,234 registered, active users, which is still a hell of a lot, even if not as many as 126,281,501. Exactly 43,409,267 fewer, in fact, and I'll bet my figures are conservative.
Napster probably doesn't suffer from similar inflation. Companies never do naughty things like that. Certainly not.
I work at a fairly large ISP in a college town. A large percentage of our customers are students with DSL access. Approximately 5% of our customers used (past tense deliberate) Napster, and, no, I'm not pulling those numbers out of my ass. We now block all P2P file-sharing programs, but before we made that decision, we carefully monitored the situation and realized that 5% of our customers were using 55% of our bandwidth (but that is another story).
The point is, of those 5%, whom I talked to at length in many heated discussions about our decision, the overwhelming majority (95% or greater) were 17 - 20 years old, which does fit smoothly within the numbers suggested by our previous poster. The remainder were from 21 - 25.
We did have a few dial-up customers who used Napster, but not many. Too few to skew the numbers that you accused our previous poster of pulling out of his ass.
I used Napster, and I never lost sleep over it, because I did buy more albums after listening to the mp3's than I had ever purchased previously.
The rest of your argument was a crock of shit, though, and I've provided at least a few cites in an attempt to prove it.
I don't imagine you'll care, however, as I doubt you are interested in anything but hearing yourself talk.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd rather have a rectal exam by a grey alien proctologist then visit Vegas, by this monorail sounds cool enough that I might have to lower my standards.
ET, snap on those rubber gloves, I'm coming to visit... in a few years, anyway, when it is finished!
The Gates Testimony - Why Microsoft Will Win
I really hope that Valerie the Domestic Android is a droll joke. If not, I am truly saddened by the human race. Let's further marginalize and objectify one half of our own species by producing sexualized machinery designed for manual labor and other, less edifying prospects.
Too many geeks already have a hard time relating to real women - let's eliminate the need for them to ever learn. With lubrication and ingeniously designed orifices (and articulated appendages), geeks won't have to jerk themselves off as they surf the web... Valerie the Domestic Android will do it between laundry and dusting, with fellatio as a bonus, perhaps programmed as an "incentive" for those who remember to take baths or brush their teeth.
We are entered the orbit of a terrifying, strange planet, and that planet is named Earth.
The Gates Testimony - Why Microsoft Will Win
Thank you, chrisd, for revealing how many pathetic dweebs read Slashdot. I haven't seen so many losers whining since Lucas gifted us with Jar Jar.
X-Files was polished, but it was still shite. Any show which has to invoke Roswell (a complete fraudulent crapfest) to keep viewers interested should be ashamed, regardless of how clever that show might be otherwise. X-Files gave respectability to paranoia, and probably reduced the IQ's of millions who are/will be the children of these tinfoil party-hat wearing subhumans.
I personally think that it was plot by the Venusians to subjegate us earthlings without every having to drop a bomb.
Anyway, chrisd, fuck the crybaby geeks who don't seem willing to accept your apology, and keep posting whatever articles you feel like. I'll keep reading Slashdot, and so will most of the moaning bitches.
Even the most die-hard Microsoft supporters will admit that Linux is viable on the desktop right now.
I suppose you could call me a die-hard Microsoft supporter, though I tend to consider myself agnostic regarding OS's. However, as I use Microsoft OS's to the virtual exclusion of all others, the die-hard Linux supporters will probably consider me a die-hard Microsoft supporter. The point of this wordy preamble? I am [or might be considered] a die-hard Microsoft supporter, and I take exception to the quote italicized above.
Linux ISN'T viable on the Desktop right now.
Linux will be ready for the Desktop when the majority of *neophyte computer users* don't need tech support and hand-holding to use it, or when the tech support which is available is as freely and ubiquitously available as it is for the Windows platform.
The words *neophyte computer users* were emphasized for a reason. Don't respond unless you have digested them.
I work in telephone tech support, and I have done so for years. Further, I am the guy who is called by in-laws, friends, acquaintances, and other assorted and otherwise not-even-on-their-xmas-card-list family members when their PC stops co-operating.
During the day, EVERY day, I get phone calls like this one:
Customer: "Hello, I use you for my e-mails, and now I can't get them."
Me: "We are your Internet Service Provider, and you are having trouble receiving your e-mail through us?"
Customer: "Uh-huh."
I collect the customer's name, I look their account up, and after I have ensured that their service has not been disconnected due to a deliquent bill, we proceed.
Me: "Are you connected to the Internet when you try to check your e-mail?"
Customer: "What?"
Me: "When you try to check your e-mail, are you sure that you are actually connected to the Internet?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
After several false starts we do solve the problem, but the conversation almost always includes moments similar to this:
Me: "What version of Windows are you using?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Or:
Me: "What browser do you use?"
Customer: "I don't know. What's a browser?"
Me: "The program that you use to browse the web. Do you use Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, Opera, or something else?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Or:
Customer: "I can't read what my friend sent me."
Me: "What did you send you?"
Customer: "I don't know, I can't open it to find out."
Me: "No, I mean did he send you a text file, a sound file, an image, what?"
Customer: "I don't know, I can't open it to find out."
Me: "What is the name of the file that he sent you?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Me: "Did he send it to you as an e-mail attachment, or was it sent on a zip disk, a floppy, or a CD?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Or:
Customer: "How can I get rid of my cookies?"
I spend several minutes trying to explain one of several different processes, during which time it becomes obvious that the customer has no fucking idea what a cookie even is, but a helpful computer "expert" told him they were bad.
I spend hours a month trying to explain to people how to install, and remove, various computer applications. In Windows, it is a relatively painless procedure, though it is far from standard or perfect. The customer might have to download a program to help him extract the file he has downloaded, which is always confusing to a neophyte, but they eventually manage. Usually it is double-click and go, for both installation and removal. I say usually: Windows is especially sloppy in leaving fragments of removed programs all over the HD, and in leaving shit in the registry. And DLL hell sucks, but both problems are getting better.
In Linux, the customer has to understand debs, and rpms, and tarballs, minimum. He has to understand the compile process, and what a dependency is, and that the kernel may be rock solid, but that the Windows Manager or the application he is using isn't. In other words, he has to understand that the stable OS he is using, as a Desktop solution, is just as prone to crashes as Windows, but that if he were running a server it wouldn't crash nearly as often as a server crashes in Windows. That is exceedingly useful to a Desktop user.
Imagine a conversation with a neophyte Linux Desktop user.
Me: "What distribution of Linux are you using?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
Or:
Me: "What Window Manager are you using?"
Customer: "I don't know. How do I tell?"
I would then spend several minutes trying to ascertain whether the customer was using Gnome, or KDE (all arguments over what a Windows Manager is put aside), or Enlightenment, or...
You get the idea.
Now, today, right now, the average Linux user is several times more computer literate than the average Windows user. They are members of the geek-elite. They wouldn't ask questions as dumb as the examples I've given.
But for Linux to be viable on the Desktop, it would have to embrace the masses of *neophyte computer users* who are already petrified by MS Windows. And MS Windows is pretty bloody simple, in most regards, to Linux, regardless of which distribution or Windows Manager you are using.
I've been installing Linux since 1995, with Slackware as my first install, and it has improved leaps and bounds, but it is still not ready for the Desktop, the Desktop being that user space inhabited by the non computer-geeks, the computer neophytes.
I wish you hadn't posted that anonymously, as now I can't add you to my "Friends" list.
:-)
I thought that my point was too obvious to require belaboring, but I guess not.
Thanks again!
Katz didn't actually criticize this movie. The purpose of the review was for Katz to show us all that he was just like us: that he, too, can watch an admittedly crap movie and still like it.
Evidence:
Sorry, but I really love this trash,
I have to say I had fun watching this silliness.
and it's so undemanding a movie, that you leave the theater smiling and relaxed.
Katz has been criticized in the past for being out of touch with the rest of us, for being elitist. This was his way of showing us that he is really a regular dude who can watch a cheesy movie and enjoy it.
Didn't anybody else see that?
I must admit that I am probably in the minority. I genuinely like Katz. Part of the pleasure is reading all of the predictable Katz lambasting, and part of it is seeing my own opinions expressed by someone else (that person being Katz). I do disagree with Katz about this movie: if a movie is crap, it's crap, no matter how big the quota of special effects. I go to the movies to have my brain turned ON, not turned OFF. Daily life is already so numbing and anti-use-of-intellect that I prefer foreign and art films to mass-culture movies. But that's just my own form of escapism, an embracing of the pretentious so that I can forget how dumb reality actually is, how shallow my existance feels.
Okay, I do have a short list of dumb movies I adore:
Army of Darkness
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Fifth Element
The Mummy pictures (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, The Scorpion King) are too dumb to be enjoyed, at least by this viewer. I did see them, out of a sense of social obligation (I can't criticize them without seeing them, after all), but they all sucked beyond the point of amusement.
Except:
The scene where Rachel Weisz and Patricia Velazquez kick each others ass. I have a weakness for movies where women kick ass. Oh, that exposes a whole genre that I adore, fully realizing that the genre is cheesy - the Hong Kong action films where evil or strong or vengeful women do lots of butt-kicking. Yes, I even own Charlie's Angels, and it is a very bad movie indeed.
I would think that the opposite is true. The popular opinion bandwagon believes in anything that the tabloids publish. How do you think that James Van Praagh and John Edward earn their livelihood? Why do you think that discrediting and debunking meets with such hostility? The list of frauds and fakery and charlatanry which has been clearly and concisely demolished is quite long, yet popular opinion isn't fazed. This is because the mundane doesn't sell advertising. Uri Geller, Nostradamus, the Bermuda Triangle, the aforementioned psychics, all indisputable crap, but it still sells, so it is still spoon-fed to the general public.
The general public, especially in America, is so anti-intellectual and eager to be deceived that anyone with even minimal intelligence is accused of being narrow-minded, as if being wide-minded (no filters, just accept all shit as equally probable and valid because it MIGHT be true) were a virtue.
Skepticism is healthy. Logic and reason aren't dirty words. Yes, many skeptics come across as their own worst enemy (James Randi). They seem arrogant at the very least. However, maybe this is because the tedium of debunking the same shit is exhausting after you have done it for a lifetime and no one notices except for your self-congratulatory peers and their gullible opposites, the "they laughed at Galileo" crowd.
Anyway, that's the end of my rant, now I'm going to go watch something on PBS.
To say that alternative medicine is placebo flies in the face of every single person who believes in an afterlife and a soul.
:-)
Erm, no. That statement is so ludicrous as to be stunning. There is absolutely no connection between on'e belief in afterlife and a soul and one's belief in the claims of alternative medicine. I repeat: no connection.
Of course, if you see a connection, please provide it, because my current level of mystification is really tiring.
Here is where we differ. To me, arrogance is more than merely listing what I perceive as the benefits of surviving without an automobile. I acknowledge that car ownership also has many benefits, but those benefits are too obvious, and well-understood, to bother enumerating them.
;-)
I believe that most people COULD do without a car, but that they choose not to do without. I made a different decision, and it is unusual enough for an adult American male to be without a car by CHOICE that it merited enumerating my reasons. No arrogance, just a different life choice.
Most of my friends and family, if they need a loaf of bread half a mile away at the grocery store, will drive instead of walk, because they don't value the pleasures to be had from walking. I enjoy walking, the fresh air, the solitude, the invigorated limbs. I walk not because it allows me to feel superior - which it most certainly does not - but because I enjoy it.
Anyway, it is okay that we have different viewpoints, that is what makes the world interesting. I am just puzzled that you or anyone else would equate a simple list of perceived benefits as arrogance.
Oh, well. If that is how you see it, I suppose I'll have to live with it.
The story is awful. Noah's Ark? Come on! At least they didn't trot out Roswell like Lain did (which qualifies as the biggest missed opportunity in anime, IMHO).
Erich von Däniken could have come up with a better story. Hell, Joseph Smith or Shirley MacLaine could have come up with better stories (for that matter, they _did_ come up with better stories).
Ron L. Hubbard (another "great" storyteller) and Hirotsugu Kawasaki should get together for their next effort, and they might improve the story. Granted, Ron would have to be communicating from beyond the grave, but Xenu might be able to arrange that!
I repeat:
Can you provide an example of my supposed arrogance? You can't, because the example doesn't exist.
I am obviously superior to you, at least insofar as your demonstrated literacy. Now, if you continue this dialogue, you will be able to quote the former sentence as an example of my arrogance, because that is exactly what it is, and well-earned arrogance, at that.
Happily, your ignorance _is_ cureable. Translation: you needn't feel intimidated forever.
Just for your information, the transportation methods of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries include bipedal locomotion, and probably will do so for many centuries to come. Translation: walking isn't obsolete quite yet.
No, but I do have a passport, and that is adequate most of the time. I also have credit cards, and a checking account, and (now) make most of my purchases on-line, where ID isn't a problem.
:-)
Living in a rural area, most shopkeepers know me, so I haven't had to present any ID at all for ages, actually. I lived outside of London at one time, and it wasn't a problem there, either, once shopkeepers knew my face.
It really isn't the hassle that most assume that it is, I assure you.
I assume you are accusing me of arrogance. Did you even read my post? If so, can you provide an example of my supposed arrogance? I don't think so: I wasn't on a high horse, moral or otherwise.
Regardless, you are utterly wrong about where I reside or might have resided. I've lived in the suburbs and rural areas most of my life, and there is nothing self-important or overbearing in that statement, either. I live in a rural area now, and I walk to work every day, 6 days a week, rain or shine, sleet or snow. Is that an arrogant statement? Am I astride a high horse?
I stated merely that the original poster's assertion was grossly exaggerated, after having provided counter-examples.
You might have misinterpreted the phrase needlessly polluting the atmosphere, but a re-reading should correct that mistake. Cars pollute the atmosphere, I arrange my life to avoid requiring the use of cars, so I do not needlessly pollute the artmosphere. Is there something arrogant about that statement of fact?
Get your head out of the horses ass and read what was actually said, not what you felt compelled to read into it: there was no connotation present or intended.
If you still feel threatened, get over it.
...not haveing [sic] a drivers license bars you from participating in a wide variety of activities in this country.
I got my first driver's license when I was 26. I used it so infrequently that I didn't renew it when it expired. I am now 41, and I still very seldom have need for a driver's license.
I have travelled the world, gone to myriad concerts, the theatre, gone camping, skiing, to the cinema, shopping, and I have never once been impeded by my lack of driver's license.
On the other hand, I have never had to look for parking, pay for parking, pay parking fines, pay a speeding ticket, pay for gasoline/petrol, pay for automotive maintenance, been in a car accident, pay for automotive insurance, or make a car payment. I have also never been trapped in a traffic jam, been the victim of, or experienced, "road rage," changed a tire, or paid for an MOT Inspection or for Road Tax.
Yes, I have had to walk home in the rain, waited too long for taxis, and been inconvenienced by unreliable public transportation, but to me the benefits of being without a car far outweigh the cons: needlessly polluting the atmosphere, depriving myself of many reasons for bicycling or walking, and smelling someone else's exhaust fumes or being tailgated.
Your assertion seems rather grossly exaggerated.
Battlestar Galactica was perhaps one of the worst things ever to happen to science fiction, or to television. It completed the "cutification" of science fiction as a genre (can anyone say "daggit," Noah "Boxey" Hathaway, and mock swearing?), a process begun by Star Wars, and also elevated non-actors to dubious stardom (Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict). It took a B-grade actor from a fondly remembered Western series and tried to invest him with somber grace (Lorne Greene), all the while borrowing its storyline from Mormon mythology.
Complete, utter crap, unless filtered through the non-discerning lens of a 6 - 12 year old's mind.
This isn't a flame or a troll, really. But:
Isn't this an abuse of the moderation system? I mean, this might be moderated funny (and it was, for about the first nanosecond), but insightful?
I have the Slashdot "Funny" modifier set to -5, so I'm supposed to miss such clever jollity.
Can the moderators think a little bit before they moderate, please?
The academic version of Visual Studio .Net Pro is $89, which is pretty bloody cheap, even for someone as skint as me.
The well-documented SDK is available as a free download.
Still, I do agree that MS should probably distribute "lite" versions of their language products, gratis, with their OS's, which would certainly increase their user base.
Yes, I've seen Princess Mononoke, and yes, the dubbed version is not as enjoyable as the subtitled version, but it was hardly "butchered." The two versions are almost identical, and I recommned watching them both, as the dubbed version doesn't provide a little extra meaning to non-Japanese viewers. In other words, the subtitled version, while providing the superior viewing experience, was a literal translation, and didn't convey some of the ambiguities that Neil Gaiman's "dubbing script" managed.
The article wasn't referring to worldwide gross, but to the gross in Japan. No, this wasn't made crystal clear, but I think that most otaku (the hardcore anime fans/nerds to whom the article was directed) probably surmised it.
:-)
Otaku would find this statistic significant without requiring further elaboration because they already know that Princess Mononoke, also a Miyazaki creation, was the biggest grossing film in Japanese history until being supplanted by the inferior Titanic. That Miyazaki is champion again is gratifying.
This is insightful? It is vacuous bullshit. "Intended market" does not refer to individual intentions, but rather to a targeted market segment. Butter knives are manufactured because there is a large known market consisting of people who wish to spread butter (okay, usually margarine) on toast, and not for the unprofitable minority of persons who might use them as screwdriver replacements.
Your post sounded insightful to careless readers because it was not phrased "You have no idea what the actual use of any product may be," which is too fucking obvious for anyone to mistake for profundity. Too bad that the obvious was true, and your statement was utter bullshit.
If I sold a product called the "Kill a Cop Special" and it was used by the majority of purchasers for exactly that purpose then there wouldn't be any "intended market" carping. The Morpheous and Napster folks didn't name their P2P products "Tools for Intellectual Property Theft Pro" so some of the more dim or disingenuous Slashdot readers might be fooled by your "intended market" prevaricating, but not if they engage their brain cells first.
I don't mean to be harsh, but Christ, this argument is fucking asinine, and it had been replayed too many times to have any entertainment value, even of the Beavis and Butthead variety.
What does "things are a lot tighter these days" even mean? The vast majority of USians make exactly the same amount now as they made pre-911 (cue portentous sound F/X), or maybe even a bit more, and yet I hear shit like this all of the time.
It seems to me, perhaps naively, that the market is controlled by a couple of people who make pronouncements on the economy, and then en masse the population swings to fulfill these predictions, muttering sagely about "bull markets" or "things are a lot tighter these days" without having any fucking clue what these slogans mean.
Would someone with a real understanding of economic theory please elucidate?
I work for an ISP, and we most assuredly do not sell the e-mail addresses of our customers. However, about once a week I answer the telephone and find a disgruntled customer on the other end, complaining that their email address has been compromised. They vehemently insist that they haven't used their e-mail address for anything that might make them spam-bait, and almost always they are lying.
:)
They don't understand how simple it is for me to check their in-box. Usually, these particular customers have subscribed to something called "SuziesPinkPussyPics," "ScatDigest," or similar, and they aren't going to confess this to me.
I don't blame them.
Occasionally, our customers do get spammed within a week or so of subscribing to our service, they aren't using obvious e-mail addresses, and they do appear to be entirely innocent victims. No, I don't know how this happens, and I tell them so. Sometimes they cancel, sometimes they change they their e-mail address and persevere.
Now, imagine the situation at Microsoft. They have a privacy policy in place, they don't sell your e-mail addresses, yet they till get complaints, possibly thousands of them weekly, similar to yours and other unlucky customers. They know that 99% of the spam has been received due to actions on the part of the recipient, or due to carelessness on the part of the recipient, and that in perhaps 1% of the cases is there anything worthy of being investigated.
Do you spend tens of thousands of dollars placating a few customers (few percentage-wise) who have anomalous complaints about a free service?
The answer is no, and this is neither deceptive or "useless." Every company knows that not all of their customers will be happy 100% of the time, and it is not even reasonable or prudent to try to please them all, always.
Revise that; try to please them all, but know that, realistically, their will be some failures. Try to prevent those failures, but when any one customer costs you more than his or her business will ever possibly be worth (through actual sales, hits to your reputation, or otherwise), apologize and cut your losses.
We have been selling computers for 19 years, and there are a few customers who it would have been better, in hindsight, to have refused a sale. These are the cusomers who cost of hundreds of hours over the years because they believe that a $1000 - $1500 purchase entitles them to a lifetime of handholding and mothering, of fixing their fuckups for free, again and again, and listening to them bitch and complain that their keyboard stopped working after they have spilled Pepsi on it for the 14th time (which they deny even if presented with the evidence).
Yes, it is obvious that you are not one of those customers, but you and I both know that they exist, and it almost impossible to weed them out or refuse them service before they show their true colors.
This has turned into a rant, sorry. I guess I'm just saying that MS, nor anyone else, should be expected to spend enormous amounts of time trying to solve problems that are essentially insoluble, or prohibitivley expensive to solve.
Maybe there are renegade MS employee[s] at the heart of the problem. If this is the case, then maybe MS can fix it without too great an expense.
If not, that is the cost of using a free service.
This all ignores one simple fact:
If you buy a product from me on the condition that you only use it while wearing your grandmother's dress and masturbating into a jar of peanut butter, and you can't abide by those conditions, then don't buy the product.
Now, if Blizzard doesn't have any legalese in their purchase agreement restricting services such as bnetd, then Blizzard can fuck themselves and you can do whatever you want with your game.
Note that I care not one iota for the legal aspects of anything. The moral and the ethical aspects are my only concerns, and those are sometimes at odds with the legal framework. I won't live long enough even if I reach extreme old age to change unjust laws in the courts, but i do honor any and all contracts that I have assented to, and if Blizzard wants me in grannie's nightdress with peanut butter on my cock and I want to play Warcraft III bad enough, move over granny and hello, Jif.
You can't get any simpler than that.
Yes, I know that Blizzard are trying to prevent ther use/programming of a server product, but the same idea applies. Presuumably the programmers of bnetd had to obtain a legal copy in order to program their server. Therefore, if such a restriction exists in the Blizzard EULA, then I feel that the bnetd people are morally obligated to honor it. If not, well, as I said before, Blizzard can fuck thmselves.
Does the restriction exist or not?
You are such a loser that I really shouldn't bother to respond, but I'll lower myself to your level for a moment and explain a few things.
I know that ICQ is not a P2P program, nor did I ever claim that it was. I was performing a logical exercise called "extrapolation," which is a concept that people without their heads lost in their ass understand. If you don't know what extrapolate means, then you might want to look it up, as it is a useful tool.
My evidence, extrapolated, anecdotal, or otherwise, has far more relevance than your non-evidence. As for my evidence being anecdotal, it was collected with a fair amount of scientific rigor, and collated with something called "statistics" and "methodology." That doesn't make it strictly anecdotal, does it?
Incidentally, "anecdotal" and "empirical" are not exclusive terms. Look them up, if you don't mind being bitch-slapped by the obvious.
Goodbye, Mr. Troll, and don't expect that I will take your bait again.
Note that I am not such an intellectual coward that I conceal my e-mail address, so you may continue this dialogue privately if you wish, but I doubt that you are up to it.
Have a nice day.
The original poster didn't have cites for his assertions, either, and I didn't see you accusing him of blowing anything out of his ass.
A little even-handedness might have been appropriate here, unless you want to make a complete fool of yourself in front of a quarter-million strangers.
Incidentally, it is doubtful that a quarter-miillion strangers actually bothered to read his post, so are you just pulling cites out of your ass?
Actually, a little deduction will demonstrate that the majority of the previous posters assertions were probably true.
ICQ claims, as I type this, 126,281,501 users. My cite:
http://web.icq.com/
The figure is posted prominantly on the page.
Of course, no one ever has duplicate ICQ accounts, so that figure is probably entirely accurate. Right? Wrong. I'll be generous and assume that 3/4 of those accounts include no duplicates, which means that ICQ can still claim 94,711,125 users.
Of course, of those 94,711,125 registered users, every one of them still use ICQ. None of them have stopped using it, right? Wrong. I'll pull a number out of my ass and guess that 1/8 of those registered users are no longer active, and I think I'm being pretty generous with those numbers. This leaves 82,872,234 registered, active users, which is still a hell of a lot, even if not as many as 126,281,501. Exactly 43,409,267 fewer, in fact, and I'll bet my figures are conservative.
Napster probably doesn't suffer from similar inflation. Companies never do naughty things like that. Certainly not.
I work at a fairly large ISP in a college town. A large percentage of our customers are students with DSL access. Approximately 5% of our customers used (past tense deliberate) Napster, and, no, I'm not pulling those numbers out of my ass. We now block all P2P file-sharing programs, but before we made that decision, we carefully monitored the situation and realized that 5% of our customers were using 55% of our bandwidth (but that is another story).
The point is, of those 5%, whom I talked to at length in many heated discussions about our decision, the overwhelming majority (95% or greater) were 17 - 20 years old, which does fit smoothly within the numbers suggested by our previous poster. The remainder were from 21 - 25.
We did have a few dial-up customers who used Napster, but not many. Too few to skew the numbers that you accused our previous poster of pulling out of his ass.
I used Napster, and I never lost sleep over it, because I did buy more albums after listening to the mp3's than I had ever purchased previously.
The rest of your argument was a crock of shit, though, and I've provided at least a few cites in an attempt to prove it.
I don't imagine you'll care, however, as I doubt you are interested in anything but hearing yourself talk.