Re:Or, if this doesn't interest you
on
Paranoia
·
· Score: 1
LOL . . . exactly. Anyone who survived with their original clone hadn't quite caught on yet.
And Paranoia had one of the great module names of all time: "The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues," written by John M. Ford, who is also a happy crazy citizen.
Referring to the grandparent of this post, I remember Cyberpunk too, and its mutant three-headed cousin Teenagers From Outer Space. I occasionally wonder what Mike Pondsmith is up to these days.
Re:Or, if this doesn't interest you
on
Paranoia
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Here's how West End Games promoted Paranoia:
SERVE THE COMPUTER. THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!
The Computer wants you to be happy. If you are not happy, you may be used as reactor shielding.
The Computer is crazy. The Computer is happy. The Computer will help you to become happy. This will drive you crazy.
Being a citizen of Alpha Complex is fun. The Computer says so, and The Computer is your friend.
Rooting out traitors will make you happy. The Computer tells you so. Can you doubt The Computer?
Being a Troubleshooter is fun. The Computer tells you so. Of course, The Computer is right.
Troubleshooters get shot at, stabbed, incinerated, stapled, mangled, poisoned, blown to bits, and occasionally accidentally executed. This is so much fun that many Troubleshooters go crazy. You will be working with many Troubleshooters. All of them carry lasers.
Aren't you glad you have a laser too? Won't this be fun?
There are many traitors in Alpha Complex. There are many happy citizens in Alpha Complex. Most of the happy citizens are crazy. It is hard to say which are more dangerous - traitors or happy citizens. Watch out for both of them.
The life of a Troubleshooter is full of surprises.
Stay alert! Trust no one! Keep your laser handy!
I knew a few of the people at West End, and they were all certifiable. The world is a slightly more normal place because Paranoia is out of print, and that is indeed a shame.
When I hear "smallest nation in the world," I think area, not population. By that measure Niue comes in at best fourth, and that's not even going outside of Europe for comparisons. Still, it's amazing that you can have an independent nation with fewer than 1000 people.
Much as we hate them, if some street vendor is hawking $3 knockoffs of Britney's latest sludge the RIAA has the right to offer the vendor the choice of turning over the goods or face an expensive copyright infringement suit. It's really no different from the guys who sell you counterfeit $20 Rolexes.
This might also be the basis for their "amnesty" program. Destroy your downloaded MP3s, promise never to download again and we'll let you off the hook.
That said, I think using the rentacops is pretty sleazy and just as bad as the security companies who dress their "officers" up in uniforms closely resembling the local cops' and have them drive around in cars painted to look like police vehicles with "Thugmeister Security" in place of "Metro Police." (The courts here ruled that particular dodge to be illegal, by the way, for reasons you can probably guess.)
Laws aren't free. We pay for them through our taxes.
Phone books aren't free. Their cost is hidden in your phone bill and subsidized by advertisers.
Math, though . . . math is a tool, just like computer programming, and just like any other craftsman who uses a tool, you might pay a mathematician or a programmer to do some work for you, or he might just create something because he enjoys what he does.
I think the grandparent post was trying to sell the virtues of customizability. The point I was trying to make was, choice and customizability are a Good Thing until you start supporting large numbers of users. Then you want conformity as it keeps your support costs down.
As far as hotkeys, why would you want to standardize them? I can define any key to do what I want currently with my distro (SUSE). Different people work in different ways. Why restrict them to what you think should be standard.
You've obviously never done support for non-technical users. A standardized interface and layout make it much easier to troubleshoot a problem.
Us geeks expect that we can customize our keyboards to do one-handed Dvorak layouts if we like. Joe User expects that if he's in an application and he hits F1, it brings up Help, not a new browser window or a machine shutdown.
This is one of the things that Apple and (to some extent) Microsoft has right, and Linux still has, um, room to grow in. A consistent user interface.
Thanks for the concern. I already do this, since I'm on a couple of medications that require me to have regular liver tests. I suspect the glyburide will affect my liver long before the soda will.
I'm curious about the other side of the coin. I do about a six-pack of Diet Coke a day, but I don't seem to show any signs of addiction if I don't get my caffeine. No headaches, no jitters, nothing. In addition, it doesn't seem to affect my ability to sleep. The only difference I can tell between the caffeinated and non-caffeinated versions is taste.
Granted that's my major source of caffeine (I don't do coffee or tea) so in any case I don't get a lot. I wondered whether other people have seen similar effects, and how widespread this might be.
If this was obvious I wouldn't have to spell it out. It can't be that obvious to most people, because the question "How can you make money from free stuff?" keeps getting asked, over and over again.
By the way, your analogies are flawed. The Linux business model is more like the first hunter who went up into the mountains, got himself a goat, killed it, roasted it and then traded the cooked meat for a couple of chickens. Free goat + effort (cooking) = thing of value.
And if you think time is free, you don't value yours very highly.
I don't think they're stupid. I think their brains are just wired in a way that neither of us understands the other. As I said in a different reply, they can't understand why someone would write code just so they can have a piece of software that doesn't suck, with no thought of what kind of money it would bring in.
Or perhaps it's that their world view is: Man exists to make money. Anything that keeps man from making money is bad. Free software means man no longer gets money from selling software. Therefore free software is bad.
It's not stupidity, but it's still so frustrating because to many of us it seems so simple and obvious that free software is a Good Thing(tm), we can't understand why it isn't simple and obvious to others as well.
Microsoft doesn't just demand read access to Windows machines. The latest EULAs state that you expressly allow them to go onto your system, make changes, and if you don't like the result, you have no recourse.
Sooner or later we can only hope that people will start to realize that apart from anything the software actually does, vendor lockin, repressive licensing, draconian EULAs, the threat of BSA audits and the like are a Bad Thing(tm), and that there are alternatives that have none of these features.
Air is free, yet people make money from scenting it, compressing it or incorporating it into other products like balloons or ice cream, and selling the result.
Water is free, yet people make money from purifying it, bottling it or flavoring it, and selling the result.
Linux is free, yet people make money from packaging it, enhancing it and supporting it and selling the result.
Linux, like air and water, is free for all, yet through effort and ingenuity one can still profit from it.
The end of "free," huh? So, the way I read this, just because someone failed to make money off of an untenable business model, the people who make and use Linux, who weren't doing it for money in the first place, are going to fold up their tents and head off into the desert?
The more I read pieces like this, the more I think that people like Lyons are just plain incapable of "getting it." Their world view just doesn't allow for people doing a large-scale project like Linux because they enjoy it, and doing such a good job of it while they're at it. So, they try to map what the FOSS community does onto their world view, and it's hardly surprising that the mapping looks pretty strange to us.
Ah well, the FOSS community will continue to do what it's been doing all along, irrespective of what people like Dan Lyons thinks of it. Happy New Year.
How about, you don't? Tell your mom that she should bookmark a page like
http://www.bstadil.org/letter_to_mom/
and when she gets a mail from you, it should read
From: bstadil
To: mom
Subject: New letter
Hey ma, I have a new letter for you!
and she will know to go to the bookmark, and there's the letter. You've just saved email bandwidth, your mom can read the letter anytime she wants, print it out in her browser if she likes, resize the print as necessary, and it won't get lost in her mailbox.
Point taken. However, in the grand scheme of things the worst digitization is better than the best memory, meaning that if you want these works to be available to future generations, better to preserve them in some form before they turn into goo (as many films from the early years of the previous century already have).
Mostly, my worry about this is the cost involved, in money but especially in time. That's why I like the idea of a distributed effort of trained volunteers, with trained archivists handling the really tricky stuff like silver nitrate film stock. The trick is answering the volunteers' implied question, "What's in it for me?" adequately.
"Easily" is a relative term. Someone is going to have to scan all that product, digitize it, store it and serve it up. Since most of us don't have the equipment to scan and digitize it, at the moment that's going to be an expensive proposition. And we're talking massive amounts of product here, even if we only cover the "quality" stuff that's in easily accessible formats. Some TV footage from the 50s is already in a form that modern equipment won't read, for example. (I don't remember the specifics, but I remember one of the networks making a big deal out of how they did such a conversion several years ago.)
Now if the equipment to convert this digital archive was cheap and easily available, I'll bet you would have no shortage of volunteers to do the conversion in exchange for archive access. But as things stand, this project will, like certain seams of minerals, have to wait until it's cost-effective for anyone to mine it before the contents see the light of day.
They don't have to prove a lot of damage, although they do have to prove some. I don't think it would take more than one or two fairly large IT shops, or maybe a Fortune 1000 company, to rack up an impressive amount for damages.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL . . . exactly. Anyone who survived with their original clone hadn't quite caught on yet.
And Paranoia had one of the great module names of all time: "The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues," written by John M. Ford, who is also a happy crazy citizen.
Referring to the grandparent of this post, I remember Cyberpunk too, and its mutant three-headed cousin Teenagers From Outer Space. I occasionally wonder what Mike Pondsmith is up to these days.
Here's how West End Games promoted Paranoia:
SERVE THE COMPUTER. THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!
The Computer wants you to be happy. If you are not happy, you may be used as reactor shielding.
The Computer is crazy. The Computer is happy. The Computer will help you to become happy. This will drive you crazy.
Being a citizen of Alpha Complex is fun. The Computer says so, and The Computer is your friend.
Rooting out traitors will make you happy. The Computer tells you so. Can you doubt The Computer?
Being a Troubleshooter is fun. The Computer tells you so. Of course, The Computer is right.
Troubleshooters get shot at, stabbed, incinerated, stapled, mangled, poisoned, blown to bits, and occasionally accidentally executed. This is so much fun that many Troubleshooters go crazy. You will be working with many Troubleshooters. All of them carry lasers.
Aren't you glad you have a laser too? Won't this be fun?
There are many traitors in Alpha Complex. There are many happy citizens in Alpha Complex. Most of the happy citizens are crazy. It is hard to say which are more dangerous - traitors or happy citizens. Watch out for both of them.
The life of a Troubleshooter is full of surprises.
Stay alert! Trust no one! Keep your laser handy!
I knew a few of the people at West End, and they were all certifiable. The world is a slightly more normal place because Paranoia is out of print, and that is indeed a shame.
The multiplane camera was first used in the Silly Symphony "The Old Mill" (1937). And yes, at the time it was an amazing jump in animation technology.
The court order didn't compel them to respond to interrogatories 10 or 11, only 1-9, 12 and 13. So, that's what IBM got.
When I hear "smallest nation in the world," I think area, not population. By that measure Niue comes in at best fourth, and that's not even going outside of Europe for comparisons. Still, it's amazing that you can have an independent nation with fewer than 1000 people.
Thanks for the clarification.
So we're talking about the smallest "independent" country in the world
Sorry, not even close.
Much as we hate them, if some street vendor is hawking $3 knockoffs of Britney's latest sludge the RIAA has the right to offer the vendor the choice of turning over the goods or face an expensive copyright infringement suit. It's really no different from the guys who sell you counterfeit $20 Rolexes.
This might also be the basis for their "amnesty" program. Destroy your downloaded MP3s, promise never to download again and we'll let you off the hook.
That said, I think using the rentacops is pretty sleazy and just as bad as the security companies who dress their "officers" up in uniforms closely resembling the local cops' and have them drive around in cars painted to look like police vehicles with "Thugmeister Security" in place of "Metro Police." (The courts here ruled that particular dodge to be illegal, by the way, for reasons you can probably guess.)
Laws aren't free. We pay for them through our taxes.
Phone books aren't free. Their cost is hidden in your phone bill and subsidized by advertisers.
Math, though . . . math is a tool, just like computer programming, and just like any other craftsman who uses a tool, you might pay a mathematician or a programmer to do some work for you, or he might just create something because he enjoys what he does.
I think the grandparent post was trying to sell the virtues of customizability. The point I was trying to make was, choice and customizability are a Good Thing until you start supporting large numbers of users. Then you want conformity as it keeps your support costs down.
As far as hotkeys, why would you want to standardize them? I can define any key to do what I want currently with my distro (SUSE). Different people work in different ways. Why restrict them to what you think should be standard.
You've obviously never done support for non-technical users. A standardized interface and layout make it much easier to troubleshoot a problem.
Us geeks expect that we can customize our keyboards to do one-handed Dvorak layouts if we like. Joe User expects that if he's in an application and he hits F1, it brings up Help, not a new browser window or a machine shutdown.
This is one of the things that Apple and (to some extent) Microsoft has right, and Linux still has, um, room to grow in. A consistent user interface.
Thanks for the concern. I already do this, since I'm on a couple of medications that require me to have regular liver tests. I suspect the glyburide will affect my liver long before the soda will.
Um, i'm pushing fifty . . . how much older do I have to get?
I'm curious about the other side of the coin. I do about a six-pack of Diet Coke a day, but I don't seem to show any signs of addiction if I don't get my caffeine. No headaches, no jitters, nothing. In addition, it doesn't seem to affect my ability to sleep. The only difference I can tell between the caffeinated and non-caffeinated versions is taste.
Granted that's my major source of caffeine (I don't do coffee or tea) so in any case I don't get a lot. I wondered whether other people have seen similar effects, and how widespread this might be.
If this was obvious I wouldn't have to spell it out. It can't be that obvious to most people, because the question "How can you make money from free stuff?" keeps getting asked, over and over again.
By the way, your analogies are flawed. The Linux business model is more like the first hunter who went up into the mountains, got himself a goat, killed it, roasted it and then traded the cooked meat for a couple of chickens. Free goat + effort (cooking) = thing of value.
And if you think time is free, you don't value yours very highly.
I don't think they're stupid. I think their brains are just wired in a way that neither of us understands the other. As I said in a different reply, they can't understand why someone would write code just so they can have a piece of software that doesn't suck, with no thought of what kind of money it would bring in.
Or perhaps it's that their world view is: Man exists to make money. Anything that keeps man from making money is bad. Free software means man no longer gets money from selling software. Therefore free software is bad.
It's not stupidity, but it's still so frustrating because to many of us it seems so simple and obvious that free software is a Good Thing(tm), we can't understand why it isn't simple and obvious to others as well.
Microsoft doesn't just demand read access to Windows machines. The latest EULAs state that you expressly allow them to go onto your system, make changes, and if you don't like the result, you have no recourse.
Sooner or later we can only hope that people will start to realize that apart from anything the software actually does, vendor lockin, repressive licensing, draconian EULAs, the threat of BSA audits and the like are a Bad Thing(tm), and that there are alternatives that have none of these features.
Air is free, yet people make money from scenting it, compressing it or incorporating it into other products like balloons or ice cream, and selling the result.
Water is free, yet people make money from purifying it, bottling it or flavoring it, and selling the result.
Linux is free, yet people make money from packaging it, enhancing it and supporting it and selling the result.
Linux, like air and water, is free for all, yet through effort and ingenuity one can still profit from it.
The end of "free," huh? So, the way I read this, just because someone failed to make money off of an untenable business model, the people who make and use Linux, who weren't doing it for money in the first place, are going to fold up their tents and head off into the desert?
The more I read pieces like this, the more I think that people like Lyons are just plain incapable of "getting it." Their world view just doesn't allow for people doing a large-scale project like Linux because they enjoy it, and doing such a good job of it while they're at it. So, they try to map what the FOSS community does onto their world view, and it's hardly surprising that the mapping looks pretty strange to us.
Ah well, the FOSS community will continue to do what it's been doing all along, irrespective of what people like Dan Lyons thinks of it. Happy New Year.
How about, you don't? Tell your mom that she should bookmark a page like
http://www.bstadil.org/letter_to_mom/
and when she gets a mail from you, it should read
From: bstadil
To: mom
Subject: New letter
Hey ma, I have a new letter for you!
and she will know to go to the bookmark, and there's the letter. You've just saved email bandwidth, your mom can read the letter anytime she wants, print it out in her browser if she likes, resize the print as necessary, and it won't get lost in her mailbox.
The RIAA is evil and all, but I don't think they can reanimate De Kelley, who died about 4 1/2 years ago, God rest his soul.
Now the MPAA . . . that's another matter entirely.
let this be one last, desparate effort to capture the Least Tasteful Slashdot Story of 2003 award.
Point taken. However, in the grand scheme of things the worst digitization is better than the best memory, meaning that if you want these works to be available to future generations, better to preserve them in some form before they turn into goo (as many films from the early years of the previous century already have).
Mostly, my worry about this is the cost involved, in money but especially in time. That's why I like the idea of a distributed effort of trained volunteers, with trained archivists handling the really tricky stuff like silver nitrate film stock. The trick is answering the volunteers' implied question, "What's in it for me?" adequately.
"Easily" is a relative term. Someone is going to have to scan all that product, digitize it, store it and serve it up. Since most of us don't have the equipment to scan and digitize it, at the moment that's going to be an expensive proposition. And we're talking massive amounts of product here, even if we only cover the "quality" stuff that's in easily accessible formats. Some TV footage from the 50s is already in a form that modern equipment won't read, for example. (I don't remember the specifics, but I remember one of the networks making a big deal out of how they did such a conversion several years ago.)
Now if the equipment to convert this digital archive was cheap and easily available, I'll bet you would have no shortage of volunteers to do the conversion in exchange for archive access. But as things stand, this project will, like certain seams of minerals, have to wait until it's cost-effective for anyone to mine it before the contents see the light of day.
Oddly enough, the two presents I opened first were a G scale railroad engine and an hat made out of ersatz raccoon fur, complete with ringed tail.
Hmmmm . . . a model train set and a Davy Crockett-style coonskin cap. I felt like it was 1955 again.
Merry Christmas.
#include
They don't have to prove a lot of damage, although they do have to prove some. I don't think it would take more than one or two fairly large IT shops, or maybe a Fortune 1000 company, to rack up an impressive amount for damages.