In Tron, a video game programmer gets sucked into a virtual world by something called the MCP (forget what that stands for, after all these years), and is forced into gladiatorial games...
And because they both involve video games, this show about the Smashenburns is like Tron?
Is Beevis and Butthead like the Flintstones because they are both cartoons?
Why is this news? I know that Slashdot is news for nerds, but does that really translate into "news for people who are so fucking bored that they would find [insert any incredibly pathetic pastime here] amusing" ?
What's next, belly button-lint collecting as a hobby?
Erm, in my book, watching TV certainly doesn't count as a hobby, any more than sleeping, eating, or sitting silently in a darkened room.
A hobby requires that some activity occur, and watching television doesn't qualify. It is entirely passive, happening TO you, like breaking wind, without even the level of introspection of reading a book.
Yes, I watch TV for relaxation, but hobbies don't merely require, as a qualifying attribute, the quality of relaxation. A hobby is a PURSUIT of some kind, not being filled like a receptacle with occasional interaction with the remote control.
Of course, if your definition of hobby is "anything that I do for relaxation," than sitting on my porch with a beer qualifies, as does enjoying the aroma of coffee beans as I walk down the coffee aisle at the grocery store.
In 1893, the metric system was adopted as the standards for length and mass in the United States.
Somehow, in the intervening years, nobody remembered to tell the general populace.
Then, in 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act. The U.S. Metric Board was established that same year, and the metric system was finally adopted.
Or not.
The U.S. Metric Board was dissolved in 1982, and we are now the only industrialized nation which does not use the metric system.
Are we a nation of mental defectives? Will it really take another 110 years before we finally go metric?
Christians also hold the Old Testament (as only Christians call it) in high regard, so it is unusual that you would conclude that there were necessarily Jews in Hong Kong based on the name of a microprocessor.
It probably took you longer to type your sentence complaining about the oh-so-great inconvenience of cutting and pasting than it would have taken to perform the cut and paste.
First, if this thing is reduced to the size of a grain of rice, I'd be able to install it, as would everyone else from jealous husbands to soccer moms.
Second, what ethics? We live in a world where the medical profession will do ANYTHING for money, from penile thickening to unnecessary breast implants to ruining Michael Jackson's face. You think doctors who would gladly inflate a woman's tits to 40DD would balk at something as trivial as CONSENT if they could justify it with patriotism (gotta chip those terrorists) while simultaneously getting paid for something even easier than liposuction or laser surgery for tattoo removal?
I liked the original series, but hated Next Gen. I liked Deep Space 9, loved Voyager, and hate Enterprise.
Really, the whole franchise is tired, and I won't bother to go see another of the Trek motion pictures until the crew of the Next Gen is truly killed off or forgotten, and they finally release a film set during the clone wars, or something that isn't a retread.
As I understand it, the first episode broadcast on television WASN'T the first episode, but something quickly hashed together to please Fox. Otherwise, the series would not have aired, period.
Maybe if it had aired as Joss has originally intended, it would have been okay. As it was, well, I thought it was some of the worst tripe ever on television.
I sat down to watch Firefly with high expectations. I consider Buffy one of the best shows ever on television. Great writing, a superb ensemble cast, good music. As I am a follower of directors/writers rather than of 'stars,' I thought that Firefly was a guaranteed hit.
Nothing worked about the show. The acting was bad, the storyline wasn't interesting, the dialogue was terrible, and the music was mediocre. I can't think of a single redeeming quality.
I've been a Science Fiction fan for 34 years, and it is easy to list all of the good shows: Star Trek (for inspiration and impetus to the genre, if nothing else), Farscape, Lexx, Dr. Who (hammy acting, yes, but what a fantastic storyline), Babylon 5, Blake 7. Of course, it is just as easy to nominate the shite shows: Manimal, Automan, Battlestar Galactica, Quantum Leap, and Space: 1999.
Other shows - The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, and Land of the Giants - weren't really Science Fiction shows at all, but rather regurgitated Science Fiction tropes for an unsophisticated audience.
Here is my own example of sarchasm, which I recently had printed on a shirt (sarchasm because very few people "got it"):
I feel self-esteem because I emerged from the birth canal of a woman who owed allegiance to a country in North America bordering the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans. I also feel proud to be bipedal. Sometimes, I feel proud to be vertebrate.
Did my sarcasm fail because I was too obscure, or most everyone else was too obtuse?
I use IMDB almost daily, and, while there is now an enhanced pay version, all of the features that originally attracted me to it are still there, and still free.
I personally am not opposed to profit, especially when the user-contributed portion of the endeavor remains gratis. No hypocrisy or moral qualms here.
I'm going to be honest, I don't know what you don't think is a good idea: subscribers being able to post ahead of time, or the fact that those posts would be better prepared.
I like the idea of allowing subscribers to post early 'cuz we might eliminate a lot of those "frist post" losers (also flames and trolls). Perhaps impose a special levy so that these posts are still allowed, but the otherwise wasted bandwidth might actually makes/. money.
Considering the amount of diarrhea posted on/., this might generate substantial revenue.
Wait, before you implement this penalty levy, Taco, let me patent it...
1) Personal hygene. If you smell like feet, and your greasy hair doesn't look like it's been washed in days, people aren't going to like you.
Personal hygiene is over-rated. Doedorant. Antiperspirant. Mouthwash. Scented vaginal sprays and douches. I'd imagine that George Washington would have reeked by modern standards, but somehow he still managed to hold a pretty high office. Yes, cleanliness and tidiness are nice, but unless I can smell your ass, I don't judge you based on your cleanliness or lack thereof.
2) At least try to be social. People don't like people who don't talk or won't look them in the eyes. Smile, say hi to people you may not even know. When you talk to someone look at them.
I'm a social person. It is easy for me to be so, and always has been. I can make 20 friends before breakfast. However, for some people, every social interaction is hell, or at least awkward. Not all of are wired the same way.
3) Maybe try to have similar intrests...
I should pretend to be interested in football, when they show no interest in my manga collection? Why? I should have to live a manufactured life so that someone will like me? Erm, no thank you.
I think that the article gets it right on the head. Most nerds are nerds because they prefer it to pretending to be someone that they are not; I certainly know that's why I was always a proud, if socially miserable, member of nerd-dom.
As it happens, I was, and am, smarter than most people, and it has been a source of grief. If I dumbed down my conversation, I would be happier in some respects, but I wouldn't be as happy with myself.
And being happy with myself is more important than being important or popular with anyone else.
So contracting a debilitating illness while in combat in Kuwait,
What debilitating illness is that? Your not talking about the "illness" that a lot of hypochondriacs and those hoping for lifetime government subsidies (medical vacations) are claiming, right?
Invent an illness. Any illness. Publicize it widely. Someone will have matching symptoms, especially if there is a medical disability check involved. This is unfortunate for the minority who really are suffering from inexplicable illness, but that's human nature.
Before you sputter too much, I was there, thank you. It was less dangerous than a boisterous Xmas party. I'd wager that more people have choked to death on chewing gum than died during the entire conflict. I'm speaking of Americans, of course. Not because I'm discounting the deaths of the thousands of innocent Iraqis we murdered, but because those deaths seem to be invisible.
People get sick. Every day - soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines. Gosh, even civilians. We don't deserve handouts because of it.
Yes, I know. You have a brother who has a friend who has THE SYNDROME, so you know it is real. Or you are a sufferer. Or your brother is, or someone else who is near and dear. Well, I do feel for the real sufferers, for they undoubtedly exist, but for all of the rest I would like to introduce you to the friend of a friend who has a cousin who was abducted by an alien proctologist.
Well lets see. While in the military, you could not publicly make the statement you just did. I would be considered treason against your Commander-In-Chief, and could result in prison.
You would be amazed at the level of free speech you have in the military. I swas in the USAF for ten years, and said whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, including, on more the one occasion, "Fuck the President."
Ronald/Bush/Bill may have been my Commanders-In-Chief, but they weren't my buddies (although I did vote for Bill), so I didn't feel bad criticizing them, and it was my right to do so.
Treason, incidentally, is defined thusly: "treason...consist[s] only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort." The reference can be found here.
Now, when I wrote an anti-flag letter to the Stars and Stripes (an overseas US military rag), I did take shit for it, including bricks through my window. But the letter was published, and I received no censure or reprimand.
This isn't a troll or a flamebait, though some will probably perceive it as such.
Oh, well. Life goes on (and sometimes it doesn't).
I work for an ISP where we enforce a single-machine license clause,and we do it for a very good reason: we aren't a charity. If it costs us more, it costs you more.
We don't conceal this fact, and customers who are not happy with this clause are, almost uniformly, the customers who would cost us money instead of being a source of income.
We are a small mom-and-pop ISP, and we get charged by the telco per kilobyte of traffic. If we charged everyone more to compensate for the bandwidth hogs, it would certainly be unfair to the low or moderate users, so we instead assign static IP's and charge per IP/computer. In other words, every computer attached to the Internet via our services must have a unique IP. We do make exceptions, but we still charge for one-IP but five-PC's connected/downloading from the Internet at the same rate as one-IP/one-PC.
The telcos keep our costs so high that we can't afford to do otherwise.
The customer's cost for five IPs versus one IP is a difference of $12.50, which is quite reasonable.
We let you run servers on your static IP connection, and will host your DNS for free. We aren't money grubbers, in other words. But we are a business which intends to stay solvent.
We do kick people off periodically, usually because they lied when they signed up, indicating that they would have one machine connected and actually had three or four, using IP masquerading. It isn't THAT hard to determine who the dishonest are, using the simple question: you are using twice (or three times) the bandwidth that an average customer would use connected with one PC 24/7. Do you have more than one system connected? If they say yes, we give them opportunity to pay at the increased rate. If they decline, we kick them off. If they answer no, we start investigating where our system might be reporting eroneous data. We don't assume that they are being deceitful. More people than not are telling the truth.
This is also largely why we disallow P2P file sharing applications. After an audit, we discovered that fewer than 5% of our customers were consuming the majority of our bandwidth. It was either raise prices for everyone, or disallow P2P file-sharing. We _do_ allow P2P file-sharing for customers who are sharing their own files; their own songs, etc., as those customers actually consume very little, if any, extra bandwidth.
Whoops. I appear to have gone off-topic. I think it was relevant, as it helps explain the realities why an ISP would need to enforce a single-machine license clause.
Good riddance. Seriously. When I want to listen to the radio, I want to listen to music. Period. Yes, a voice announcing the name of the song is nice, but nothing else. Not some unfunny moron banally inserting his "humor" so that it overlaps the beginnings and endings of half of the songs. If I want mindless chatter, I'll wait till I'm standing in line at the supermarket.
If I want to listen to people talk, versus dribble, I'll tune in NPR.
Local radio would only be interesting to me if it consisted of local bands. It isn't suddenly of interest just because it is broadcast locally; the quality doesn't suddenly improve because the advertisements I hear are for used cars I can buy locally. The quality improves if the contents gets better, which, whether it is broadcast from Naples, Italy, or Augusta, Georgia, doesn't depend on anything other than eliminating blather from the stations which aren't specifically geared for TALK radio, and having some musical diversity.
Except, sadly, if you don't play a steady stream of tripe, your audience dwindles, and the station is replaced by one playing Celine Dion and Spears.
Slashdot Mirror
This show is like Tron? How?
In Tron, a video game programmer gets sucked into a virtual world by something called the MCP (forget what that stands for, after all these years), and is forced into gladiatorial games...
And because they both involve video games, this show about the Smashenburns is like Tron?
Is Beevis and Butthead like the Flintstones because they are both cartoons?
Why is this news? I know that Slashdot is news for nerds, but does that really translate into "news for people who are so fucking bored that they would find [insert any incredibly pathetic pastime here] amusing" ?
What's next, belly button-lint collecting as a hobby?
Erm, in my book, watching TV certainly doesn't count as a hobby, any more than sleeping, eating, or sitting silently in a darkened room.
A hobby requires that some activity occur, and watching television doesn't qualify. It is entirely passive, happening TO you, like breaking wind, without even the level of introspection of reading a book.
Yes, I watch TV for relaxation, but hobbies don't merely require, as a qualifying attribute, the quality of relaxation. A hobby is a PURSUIT of some kind, not being filled like a receptacle with occasional interaction with the remote control.
Of course, if your definition of hobby is "anything that I do for relaxation," than sitting on my porch with a beer qualifies, as does enjoying the aroma of coffee beans as I walk down the coffee aisle at the grocery store.
In 1893, the metric system was adopted as the standards for length and mass in the United States.
Somehow, in the intervening years, nobody remembered to tell the general populace.
Then, in 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act. The U.S. Metric Board was established that same year, and the metric system was finally adopted.
Or not.
The U.S. Metric Board was dissolved in 1982, and we are now the only industrialized nation which does not use the metric system.
Are we a nation of mental defectives? Will it really take another 110 years before we finally go metric?
Christians also hold the Old Testament (as only Christians call it) in high regard, so it is unusual that you would conclude that there were necessarily Jews in Hong Kong based on the name of a microprocessor.
aren't necessary pope
Pardon my ignorance, but what the fuck does that mean, when translated into English?
I genuinely don't get the argot.
Probaby. Sorry. :-)
It probably took you longer to type your sentence complaining about the oh-so-great inconvenience of cutting and pasting than it would have taken to perform the cut and paste.
Why did you bother?
First, if this thing is reduced to the size of a grain of rice, I'd be able to install it, as would everyone else from jealous husbands to soccer moms.
Second, what ethics? We live in a world where the medical profession will do ANYTHING for money, from penile thickening to unnecessary breast implants to ruining Michael Jackson's face. You think doctors who would gladly inflate a woman's tits to 40DD would balk at something as trivial as CONSENT if they could justify it with patriotism (gotta chip those terrorists) while simultaneously getting paid for something even easier than liposuction or laser surgery for tattoo removal?
I liked the original series, but hated Next Gen. I liked Deep Space 9, loved Voyager, and hate Enterprise.
Really, the whole franchise is tired, and I won't bother to go see another of the Trek motion pictures until the crew of the Next Gen is truly killed off or forgotten, and they finally release a film set during the clone wars, or something that isn't a retread.
Used to love it, but now it makes me yawn.
I believe ChaoticChaos was responding to this: ... the possible successors to OOP
;-)
This was contained in the body of the submission, which certainly would imply that the submitter hadn't read the article, either.
As I understand it, the first episode broadcast on television WASN'T the first episode, but something quickly hashed together to please Fox. Otherwise, the series would not have aired, period.
.02 cents. :-)
Maybe if it had aired as Joss has originally intended, it would have been okay. As it was, well, I thought it was some of the worst tripe ever on television.
I sat down to watch Firefly with high expectations. I consider Buffy one of the best shows ever on television. Great writing, a superb ensemble cast, good music. As I am a follower of directors/writers rather than of 'stars,' I thought that Firefly was a guaranteed hit.
Nothing worked about the show. The acting was bad, the storyline wasn't interesting, the dialogue was terrible, and the music was mediocre. I can't think of a single redeeming quality.
I've been a Science Fiction fan for 34 years, and it is easy to list all of the good shows: Star Trek (for inspiration and impetus to the genre, if nothing else), Farscape, Lexx, Dr. Who (hammy acting, yes, but what a fantastic storyline), Babylon 5, Blake 7. Of course, it is just as easy to nominate the shite shows: Manimal, Automan, Battlestar Galactica, Quantum Leap, and Space: 1999.
Other shows - The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, and Land of the Giants - weren't really Science Fiction shows at all, but rather regurgitated Science Fiction tropes for an unsophisticated audience.
Anyway, that is my
That will be the refrain of those sad porno geeks who now when they are masturbating in cyber-chat won't actually have to own a computer.
That's progress! Mutual masturbation for the masses!
"Can't afford a computer but want to jack-off with your friends and anonymous geeks? No problem! We have the answer!"
Sarchasm: great word!
:-(
/. readers decide!
Here is my own example of sarchasm, which I recently had printed on a shirt (sarchasm because very few people "got it"):
I feel self-esteem
because I emerged
from the birth canal
of a woman
who owed allegiance
to a country
in North America
bordering the
Atlantic, Pacific
and Arctic oceans.
I also feel proud to
be bipedal.
Sometimes, I feel
proud to be vertebrate.
Did my sarcasm fail because I was too obscure, or most everyone else was too obtuse?
I sadly suspect that it was the former.
Oh, well. _I_ thought it was funny.
Let
Your .sig, verbatim:
befriend me if you support free speach [slashdot.org]
I do support free speech, but I also support good communication skills, which includes good spelling.
This post from further down the page totally rebuts your juvenile comment:
Complete Rebuttal
Moderators: in what way was McDutchie's outburst "Insightful?" Please explain.
I use IMDB almost daily, and, while there is now an enhanced pay version, all of the features that originally attracted me to it are still there, and still free.
I personally am not opposed to profit, especially when the user-contributed portion of the endeavor remains gratis. No hypocrisy or moral qualms here.
I'm going to be honest, I don't know what you don't think is a good idea: subscribers being able to post ahead of time, or the fact that those posts would be better prepared.
/. money.
/., this might generate substantial revenue.
I like the idea of allowing subscribers to post early 'cuz we might eliminate a lot of those "frist post" losers (also flames and trolls). Perhaps impose a special levy so that these posts are still allowed, but the otherwise wasted bandwidth might actually makes
Considering the amount of diarrhea posted on
Wait, before you implement this penalty levy, Taco, let me patent it...
The Lindows laptop still appears to be avaialble at:
o du ct.id=787&Cate.id=2
http://idot.com/TheStore/Desktop/787Spec.asp?Pr
1) Personal hygene. If you smell like feet, and your greasy hair doesn't look like it's been washed in days, people aren't going to like you.
Personal hygiene is over-rated. Doedorant. Antiperspirant. Mouthwash. Scented vaginal sprays and douches. I'd imagine that George Washington would have reeked by modern standards, but somehow he still managed to hold a pretty high office. Yes, cleanliness and tidiness are nice, but unless I can smell your ass, I don't judge you based on your cleanliness or lack thereof.
2) At least try to be social. People don't like people who don't talk or won't look them in the eyes. Smile, say hi to people you may not even know. When you talk to someone look at them.
I'm a social person. It is easy for me to be so, and always has been. I can make 20 friends before breakfast. However, for some people, every social interaction is hell, or at least awkward. Not all of are wired the same way.
3) Maybe try to have similar intrests...
I should pretend to be interested in football, when they show no interest in my manga collection? Why? I should have to live a manufactured life so that someone will like me? Erm, no thank you.
I think that the article gets it right on the head. Most nerds are nerds because they prefer it to pretending to be someone that they are not; I certainly know that's why I was always a proud, if socially miserable, member of nerd-dom.
As it happens, I was, and am, smarter than most people, and it has been a source of grief. If I dumbed down my conversation, I would be happier in some respects, but I wouldn't be as happy with myself.
And being happy with myself is more important than being important or popular with anyone else.
So contracting a debilitating illness while in combat in Kuwait,
What debilitating illness is that? Your not talking about the "illness" that a lot of hypochondriacs and those hoping for lifetime government subsidies (medical vacations) are claiming, right?
Invent an illness. Any illness. Publicize it widely. Someone will have matching symptoms, especially if there is a medical disability check involved. This is unfortunate for the minority who really are suffering from inexplicable illness, but that's human nature.
Before you sputter too much, I was there, thank you. It was less dangerous than a boisterous Xmas party. I'd wager that more people have choked to death on chewing gum than died during the entire conflict. I'm speaking of Americans, of course. Not because I'm discounting the deaths of the thousands of innocent Iraqis we murdered, but because those deaths seem to be invisible.
People get sick. Every day - soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines. Gosh, even civilians. We don't deserve handouts because of it.
Yes, I know. You have a brother who has a friend who has THE SYNDROME, so you know it is real. Or you are a sufferer. Or your brother is, or someone else who is near and dear. Well, I do feel for the real sufferers, for they undoubtedly exist, but for all of the rest I would like to introduce you to the friend of a friend who has a cousin who was abducted by an alien proctologist.
Well lets see. While in the military, you could not publicly make the statement you just did. I would be considered treason against your Commander-In-Chief, and could result in prison.
You would be amazed at the level of free speech you have in the military. I swas in the USAF for ten years, and said whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, including, on more the one occasion, "Fuck the President."
Ronald/Bush/Bill may have been my Commanders-In-Chief, but they weren't my buddies (although I did vote for Bill), so I didn't feel bad criticizing them, and it was my right to do so.
Treason, incidentally, is defined thusly: "treason...consist[s] only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort." The reference can be found here.
Now, when I wrote an anti-flag letter to the Stars and Stripes (an overseas US military rag), I did take shit for it, including bricks through my window. But the letter was published, and I received no censure or reprimand.
This isn't a troll or a flamebait, though some will probably perceive it as such.
Oh, well. Life goes on (and sometimes it doesn't).
Read at -1. Find out what THEY don't want you to know!
.sig, and discovered only that there are more functional illiterates on /. than I had ever imagined.
For my own amusement, I took the suggestion of your
Is that what THEY didn't want me to discover?
I work for an ISP where we enforce a single-machine license clause,and we do it for a very good reason: we aren't a charity. If it costs us more, it costs you more.
We don't conceal this fact, and customers who are not happy with this clause are, almost uniformly, the customers who would cost us money instead of being a source of income.
We are a small mom-and-pop ISP, and we get charged by the telco per kilobyte of traffic. If we charged everyone more to compensate for the bandwidth hogs, it would certainly be unfair to the low or moderate users, so we instead assign static IP's and charge per IP/computer. In other words, every computer attached to the Internet via our services must have a unique IP. We do make exceptions, but we still charge for one-IP but five-PC's connected/downloading from the Internet at the same rate as one-IP/one-PC.
The telcos keep our costs so high that we can't afford to do otherwise.
The customer's cost for five IPs versus one IP is a difference of $12.50, which is quite reasonable.
We let you run servers on your static IP connection, and will host your DNS for free. We aren't money grubbers, in other words. But we are a business which intends to stay solvent.
We do kick people off periodically, usually because they lied when they signed up, indicating that they would have one machine connected and actually had three or four, using IP masquerading. It isn't THAT hard to determine who the dishonest are, using the simple question: you are using twice (or three times) the bandwidth that an average customer would use connected with one PC 24/7. Do you have more than one system connected? If they say yes, we give them opportunity to pay at the increased rate. If they decline, we kick them off. If they answer no, we start investigating where our system might be reporting eroneous data. We don't assume that they are being deceitful. More people than not are telling the truth.
This is also largely why we disallow P2P file sharing applications. After an audit, we discovered that fewer than 5% of our customers were consuming the majority of our bandwidth. It was either raise prices for everyone, or disallow P2P file-sharing. We _do_ allow P2P file-sharing for customers who are sharing their own files; their own songs, etc., as those customers actually consume very little, if any, extra bandwidth.
Whoops. I appear to have gone off-topic. I think it was relevant, as it helps explain the realities why an ISP would need to enforce a single-machine license clause.
Good riddance. Seriously. When I want to listen to the radio, I want to listen to music. Period. Yes, a voice announcing the name of the song is nice, but nothing else. Not some unfunny moron banally inserting his "humor" so that it overlaps the beginnings and endings of half of the songs. If I want mindless chatter, I'll wait till I'm standing in line at the supermarket.
If I want to listen to people talk, versus dribble, I'll tune in NPR.
Local radio would only be interesting to me if it consisted of local bands. It isn't suddenly of interest just because it is broadcast locally; the quality doesn't suddenly improve because the advertisements I hear are for used cars I can buy locally. The quality improves if the contents gets better, which, whether it is broadcast from Naples, Italy, or Augusta, Georgia, doesn't depend on anything other than eliminating blather from the stations which aren't specifically geared for TALK radio, and having some musical diversity.
Except, sadly, if you don't play a steady stream of tripe, your audience dwindles, and the station is replaced by one playing Celine Dion and Spears.
I guess we get what we deserve.
I wonder if Lou will have a cameo? That would be a nice touch. I hope Ang Lee is a sweetheart and gives Lou a minor role...