I think the aspect of this that broke a lot of them too easily is that they weren't keeping their minds on something else. They were focusing on what it was like and having to talk about how they were feeling and such. That just intensifies things like that and makes them worse. I'll bet the best ways to stand stuff like that is to put your mind in a totally different place and daydream really hard to make yourself as unaware of it as possible.
My users don't really have a problem with this - they just click the "'X' thingy at the top" to make the questions go away.
That is definitely something that bugs me about trying to help people with computers is that they don't even try to figure out what's happening. I don't know how many times I've seen this happen:
A dialog box comes up, and the user quickly clicks one of the choices and it disappears. Me: "Wait, what was that?" User: "I don't know." Me: "Well, what was it asking?" User: "I don't know."
There is such a strong fear of unexpected dialog boxes in many users, that it overrides their reason, and they will instinctively click anything at random to make the box go away so they don't have to see it. These episodes are followed by me encouraging them to try what they wanted to do again, and this time we'll read what the question says and decide what answer to click.
I can't believe the number of useless comments I'm seeing here from people who are giving suggestions that don't apply to this guy's computer situation.
To the person who suggested using JACK on OS X: He isn't using OS X! He's using Windows, so let's get some Windows utilities suggested, eh?
To the parent, who suggested plugging an audio cable from the server's audio-out to the media center's audio-in: His server doesn't have a sound card! That's the entire problem he's trying to solve. He wants something that handles the sound data in software because there is no sound card to work with.
I know that most Ask Slashdot questions are incredibly stupid,(i.e. "I need help doing my job" or "I need legal advice") but I think this one is kind of interesting and something I would like to find out about. Please read the description of his scenario though, so you can give intelligent suggestions.
when you're talking about ANYTHING regarding submissions, you have to multiply it by hundreds. Anything regarding comments, by thousands. And anything regarding page views, multiply by millions.
And anything regarding dupes, and you have ONE daddypants email account to check, which has been gathering cobwebs for a long time.
It's hilarious that these showed up in the same installment of Slashback. These two stories show an incredible contrast. Most of the discussion so far here has focused on the Wikipedia story, and how the "news" sites are criticising it for its innaccuracy. As someone pointed out, they are strongly implying that they don't have those kinds of problems.
So, for our next trick, lets contrast the "professional media"'s attitude with what just happened with the Google PC story. Someone at the CES expo thought up the idea that Google might be coming up with a cheap PC because the CEO was coming to speak at a consumer electronics show. That rumor got picked up by an overly-excited and speculative media community and was reported by every major newspaper and magazine in the world (without checking it with Google) because no one wanted to look like they were missing out on the biggest news of the month. So yesterday, Google had to issue a press release that it was nothing but a false rumor, and they have no plans or desire to get into the low margin PC business.
It's cool that you like that Sonic game and want another one, but it just doesn't fit the description of what your list is about. Here is your intro:
As just about every gamer has noticed, the gaming market has been flooded with sequel upon sequel (Tony Hawk, anyone?) -- many of which aren't a great improvement over the last increment.
Yup, that's the large series of Sonic games.
But wouldn't it be nice if publishers would release sequels of games that have had one lone installment, but are both treasured by fans and could greatly utilize newer hardware?
That's definitely not Sonic. I'm glad you mentioned Grim Fandango, and I will second someone's vote for Sam and Max.
I can't quite tell if you really don't get it, or if you're just pretending not to to be annoying.
You state it yourself -- a shop is a place.
So you think no one is capable of mentally making the transition from a place where you do something to a program where you do something?
The reason why people get confused about 'photo-shop' is simple: the term was already defined as something else long before Adobe came around. Back in the day, 'photo shop' can meant an office/store where graphics professionals produce/modify/create images.
Right, so a program called 'photo shop' would do...what? Anyone? Beuler? That's right--produce/modify/create images! So if I were to create a program called Greeting Card Studio, people would be absolutely dumbfounded by it because it's cemented in their mind as a physical building where people design greeting cards? I don't think so.
Why is everyone so confused about PhotoShop, proposing that it implies buying photos?
Didn't the concept of workshop or woodshop or metalshop come to anyone's mind? When I hear of any kind of object-shop, that implies a place of manipulating/working on that object. At least that is the convention in the US culture. object-store would mean a place that sells it, vs. object-shop would mean a place that works on it. I think that the word "shop" does have more of a buying/selling connotation in British English, though.
Yeah, the size of vehicles they used was the first thing that jumped out at me as making their conclusions totally bogus. People don't talk about the drag of an A/C compressor on a huge SUV with a V8, like they used. It's just a couple of percent of the power on something like that. The real issue is with small cars, where it feels like you just hit an animal when you turn on the air conditioner. Also, driving 50mph around a circular, enclosed track doesn't exactly imitate the wind drag you would experience on a highway.
The key aspect about Rosetta Stone is the method of learning that it uses. It tries to imitate the learning environment of growing up in the culture so that you can learn it more naturally than from a "class teaching" type of system.
Whoa, I was kinda tracking with ya until you said this one.
I am a firm believer that houses should depreciate over time, not appreciate. As long as houses continue to go up in price, it is a sign to me of inflation and manipulation of the marketplace, and I'll continue to live in a VERY nice trailer. When (and if?) the bubble bursts, I'll take my gold and my properties that I've held on to, sell them and hopefully buy a decent new home at a significant savings.
If that's your opinion of the long-term value of real estate, then you are not familiar with the reality of it for over a century. Now what you said is true in the case of trailers, but not for traditionally built houses. The real estate bubble discussion is only related to the rate of growth in some areas, but it sure is not going to go down.
I am very much with you on the get out of debt idea though. We got our attitude turned around in the Spring to turn away from the standard credit card and debt procedure that keeps most Americans' lives very broke but flashy looking. We'll be debt free except for the house next month, and we're on track to have the mortgage paid off in about another 3 years. After that, we will have truly freed up our greatest wealth-building tool--our income. No payments owed to anyone changes your life. And to think that we're figuring this out before we're 30 years old, that's going to make a huge difference in our financial picture long term. If you're interested in the type of plan we're using for it(basic budgeting and saving), check out Dave Ramsey's website. He has a radio show that you can listen to on his site to get an idea of where he's coming from.
Kuxman: "[unsubstantiated opinion about the cause for high drug prices]"
PigHogger: "Er, no. [contrary unsubstantiated opinion about the cause for high drug prices]"
Um, yeah, I can see that you are so much more righter-er than that other guy. You think universities develop those drugs for the drug companies? And I suppose in their spare time they're also the ones who are making the cutting edge advancements in semiconductor technology year after year.
Oh, wait a second, I see we're confusing research projects to earn tenure at a college with the work people do as a career to create products that will earn substantial sums of money for their employers.
Sorry for the harsh tone(kinda), but your comment struck me as "Drug companies don't develop the drugs; the elves do!"
Let's you and me take on the AT&T death star - how about it, dada21? Sell the ma-and-pa store and let's start talking to banks and VC's about how we're going to beat AT&T or Verizon or SBC in, you know, one or two big, high-margin metropolitan markets. We can do it, right? Just like you competed with Wal-Mart. It'll be easy, like shooting womp rats in your T-16 back home.
Dang, that was some sharp sarcasm--very cruel...but very funny.
The main thing that bothers me about the de-regulating thing is how the "unbundling" is working out. I live in Boise Idaho, and our local phone monopoly is Qworst. They are the only guys who can supply the DSL connection. I was excited when I heard about them unbundling DSL from their local service, so I could get DSL hopefully cheaper than the $49 a month I pay for cable internet right now. The unbundling didn't do squat because they made no requirement about the price at all. What Qwest is doing is that their price for DSL by itself, if you don't do local service, has a jacked-up price that basically amounts to paying the extra price for the local service without getting it. Whoo! Some great deal they're offering us, eh? It's good that the government "helped us out" by requiring them to "unbundle".
With their screwed up price structure, DSL ends up costing within a few dollars of my $49 cable internet. Thanks a lot, Qworst.
Larry Craig is mentioned prominently in the BoingBoing article of this story. I have never been more proud to be an Idahoan. Idaho is strongly characterized by individual freedom and privacy interests. It's one of those "leave me alone" type of states, and I am not surprised to see that he was on the leading edge of opposing it. I hope he will also take this position with respect to some of the other crap in congress like the broadcast flag and other **AA-written legislation.
Do you think the Prius is a diesel or something? Why do you list it in this section?
Next you've got a bunch of diesels (Citroen C2 1.4HDi at 68.9mpg & 108g/km), the Prius is quite a way down the list at 13th (65.7mpg but with lower co2 emissions).
The most efficient petrol engine available (Peugot 107) is only 61.3mpg... I'd like to see the figures for this BMW to see if it can beat that.
The Prius can beat that, and it is a petrol(gasoline) engine. Do you mean gas cars that are not hybrid? Because if you're going to compare it to this steam hybrid technology BMW, you might as well compare it to electric hybrids.
Indeed. I know if I walk around my office, I'm forced to conclude that probably 10-20% of all of our corporate communications are happening over MSN and Yahoo IM networks.
It seems everyone uses these wonderfully convenient things without ever stopping to realize that all of their data is travelling over someone else's network and that they have no control over it. I wouldn't be at all surprised that you could probably violate insider laws at dozens of companies just by being able to intercept MSN's traffic.
I'll bet you just don't understand your company's IT setup with respect to those messaging clients. They can use the client program without necessarily running on messenger servers on the open internet. We have the MSN messenger client set up on most people's Windows machines here, but they only connect to internal messenger servers. We can't connect to anyone outside the company network, and we do use GAIM with Jabber servers for the people with UNIX or Linux machines. We are a company with many thousands of people though, so in your example, the company may be smaller and not be taking those kinds of precautions.
It saddens me that your angry ranting got an insightful mod. There's a lot of opinion flying here, but not much evidence to make the discussion interesting. I'll address some of your points and then some additional commentary.
I am glad this guy made this comment and wanted to have this class. Intelligent design is not backed by any biologists. It is only so we can have creationism taught in our schools. What a bunch of shit. bunch of shit.
The comments on this story are full of this type of misinformation spouted as fact with no links for support. I'll provide a rebuttal with fact for a change. NPR has done a few stories about the hostile environment toward intelligent design in the academic community. There are many biologists who see credibility in the idea of ID, but are afraid to speak up for it because of the anger and intolerance from their institutions and colleagues.
Here is a story from NPR about a scientist with a PhD in biology who was attacked for publishing this article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. (Read the introduction of his paper at least. These lines indicate some of the direction of it.)
In making this claim, Muller and Newman are careful to affirm that evolutionary biology has succeeded in explaining how preexisting forms diversify under the twin influences of natural selection and variation of genetic traits.[...]Central to their concern is what they see as the inadequacy of the variation of genetic traits as a source of new form and structure. They note, following Darwin himself, that the sources of new form and structure must precede the action of natural selection (2003:3)--that selection must act on what already exists. Yet, in their view, the "genocentricity" and "incrementalism" of the neo-Darwinian mechanism has meant that an adequate source of new form and structure has yet to be identified by theoretical biologists.
Now back to your rant.
If they worked with biologists to understand organisms and all of the stuff already studied, then maybe it could be considered.
If they didn't just deride evolution instead of studying real things and relating them to the world, then maybe there could be a discussion considered.
That has been done, contrary to your belief. In the article I linked to above, Steven C. Meyer considers the biology aspect of ID, which is a bit misunderstood by people who are antagonistic to creationism. ID does split off the science side from the religious side of creationism. ID looks at the structure of organisms--plant, animal, etc. and sees indications that the structure of these things is so complex that it seems unlikely that it could happen at random from a pure evolution perspective.
I'll use the FSM as an illustration of this difference. The FSM is compatible with the scientific aspect but not with the religious. Intelligent design still applies, in that nature shows itself to be too complex to be random. There is a level of structure and organization that indicates a directing force for this design, rather than random interaction. That designing force could take any form(FSM or God or unknown), as far as intelligent design is concerned. That is why it has equal credence with theoretical evolution as the basis for the origin of life forms. Natural selection has shown to cause differentiation of existing species, but there is no proven cause for origin, so any proposal as an explanation of that is theory.
So the religious side is that people choose to believe what form that "designing force" takes. Various religions attribute that to the specific character and personality of a deity, but that is outside the scope of intelligent design.
You forgot the funniest part of that quote right before that.
many times, while I was at my desk (it sat under there) I forgot it was there and kicked it over.
Wow, this shows a level of idiocy I would not have thought possible. After the first time kicking it over, the thought should have come up, "CRAP! That's a terrible place to keep that. I should move it to somewhere more out of the way, where it won't get knocked over all the time."
"Whoa, that's the fourth time I've knocked that thing over. I'll bet I've learned my lesson now."
Get a grip, dude. Remember what we're talking about here. This is not music that you listen to over and over. This is low quality old television shows. They're more suited to one-time viewing than music is because television shows were more plot driven. Once you have seen it, you know the plot, and it's not as good to watch it over and over.
So I suppose you don't care about being able to make a backup for yourself? I guess you like re-buying your content every time your media fails?
That's nice for some stuff, but not necessarily for this. I don't know if I would want to fill up my shelves with DVDs of this stuff if I could watch them once for less than a buck per show.
Wow, that's great, I'm happy for you that *YOU* don't care about quality but some of us would like to be able to play the content we pay good money for on multiple resolutions. If everyone had your attitude we would be buying new versions of our favorite content every time a new device came out.
I've seen some of the DVDs of older material. It doesn't look so hot anyway. If they can't even make it look good for a DVD, I don't think they're going to get much better in a downloadable form. Besides, this is TV we're talking about here. It didn't have high quality production values and impressive visuals. If you can see and hear what's going on, that's most of the effect of the show.
Tipping doesn't make service better. Go visit a restaurant in a country where tipping isn't done (i.e. most countries outside the US) and you'll see.
You're generalising all countries outside the US to be the same. Maybe that was the case from your experience, but I went to Italy for a couple of weeks and went to a few different towns, and had exactly the opposite experience from you. Service was terrible to non-existent in about every restaurant we went to, except for a couple of really nice upscale places. I think tipping is the major factor in that. They have no motivation to do any better because there is no potential tip to be earned.
Speaking of rejected stories...What I thought was really funny/annoying was when I submitted a potential poll topic. It got "rejected" and then showed up on the front page within a day or two. Huh? Well gee, thanks for the petulant but spurious rejection. While you're at it, why don't you just give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it.
It was something pretty obscure, too, so I doubt anyone else would have submitted the same thing at the same time I did.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the aspect of this that broke a lot of them too easily is that they weren't keeping their minds on something else. They were focusing on what it was like and having to talk about how they were feeling and such. That just intensifies things like that and makes them worse. I'll bet the best ways to stand stuff like that is to put your mind in a totally different place and daydream really hard to make yourself as unaware of it as possible.
A dialog box comes up, and the user quickly clicks one of the choices and it disappears.
Me: "Wait, what was that?"
User: "I don't know."
Me: "Well, what was it asking?"
User: "I don't know."
There is such a strong fear of unexpected dialog boxes in many users, that it overrides their reason, and they will instinctively click anything at random to make the box go away so they don't have to see it. These episodes are followed by me encouraging them to try what they wanted to do again, and this time we'll read what the question says and decide what answer to click.
I can't believe the number of useless comments I'm seeing here from people who are giving suggestions that don't apply to this guy's computer situation.
To the person who suggested using JACK on OS X: He isn't using OS X! He's using Windows, so let's get some Windows utilities suggested, eh?
To the parent, who suggested plugging an audio cable from the server's audio-out to the media center's audio-in: His server doesn't have a sound card! That's the entire problem he's trying to solve. He wants something that handles the sound data in software because there is no sound card to work with.
I know that most Ask Slashdot questions are incredibly stupid,(i.e. "I need help doing my job" or "I need legal advice") but I think this one is kind of interesting and something I would like to find out about. Please read the description of his scenario though, so you can give intelligent suggestions.
And anything regarding dupes, and you have ONE daddypants email account to check, which has been gathering cobwebs for a long time.
It's hilarious that these showed up in the same installment of Slashback. These two stories show an incredible contrast. Most of the discussion so far here has focused on the Wikipedia story, and how the "news" sites are criticising it for its innaccuracy. As someone pointed out, they are strongly implying that they don't have those kinds of problems.
So, for our next trick, lets contrast the "professional media"'s attitude with what just happened with the Google PC story. Someone at the CES expo thought up the idea that Google might be coming up with a cheap PC because the CEO was coming to speak at a consumer electronics show. That rumor got picked up by an overly-excited and speculative media community and was reported by every major newspaper and magazine in the world (without checking it with Google) because no one wanted to look like they were missing out on the biggest news of the month. So yesterday, Google had to issue a press release that it was nothing but a false rumor, and they have no plans or desire to get into the low margin PC business.
Yup, that's the large series of Sonic games.
That's definitely not Sonic. I'm glad you mentioned Grim Fandango, and I will second someone's vote for Sam and Max.
So you think no one is capable of mentally making the transition from a place where you do something to a program where you do something?
Right, so a program called 'photo shop' would do...what? Anyone? Beuler? That's right--produce/modify/create images! So if I were to create a program called Greeting Card Studio, people would be absolutely dumbfounded by it because it's cemented in their mind as a physical building where people design greeting cards? I don't think so.
Why is everyone so confused about PhotoShop, proposing that it implies buying photos?
Didn't the concept of workshop or woodshop or metalshop come to anyone's mind? When I hear of any kind of object-shop, that implies a place of manipulating/working on that object. At least that is the convention in the US culture. object-store would mean a place that sells it, vs. object-shop would mean a place that works on it. I think that the word "shop" does have more of a buying/selling connotation in British English, though.
Yeah, the size of vehicles they used was the first thing that jumped out at me as making their conclusions totally bogus. People don't talk about the drag of an A/C compressor on a huge SUV with a V8, like they used. It's just a couple of percent of the power on something like that. The real issue is with small cars, where it feels like you just hit an animal when you turn on the air conditioner. Also, driving 50mph around a circular, enclosed track doesn't exactly imitate the wind drag you would experience on a highway.
The key aspect about Rosetta Stone is the method of learning that it uses. It tries to imitate the learning environment of growing up in the culture so that you can learn it more naturally than from a "class teaching" type of system.
If that's your opinion of the long-term value of real estate, then you are not familiar with the reality of it for over a century. Now what you said is true in the case of trailers, but not for traditionally built houses. The real estate bubble discussion is only related to the rate of growth in some areas, but it sure is not going to go down.
I am very much with you on the get out of debt idea though. We got our attitude turned around in the Spring to turn away from the standard credit card and debt procedure that keeps most Americans' lives very broke but flashy looking. We'll be debt free except for the house next month, and we're on track to have the mortgage paid off in about another 3 years. After that, we will have truly freed up our greatest wealth-building tool--our income. No payments owed to anyone changes your life. And to think that we're figuring this out before we're 30 years old, that's going to make a huge difference in our financial picture long term. If you're interested in the type of plan we're using for it(basic budgeting and saving), check out Dave Ramsey's website. He has a radio show that you can listen to on his site to get an idea of where he's coming from.
Um, yeah, I can see that you are so much more righter-er than that other guy. You think universities develop those drugs for the drug companies? And I suppose in their spare time they're also the ones who are making the cutting edge advancements in semiconductor technology year after year.
Oh, wait a second, I see we're confusing research projects to earn tenure at a college with the work people do as a career to create products that will earn substantial sums of money for their employers.
Sorry for the harsh tone(kinda), but your comment struck me as "Drug companies don't develop the drugs; the elves do!"
The main thing that bothers me about the de-regulating thing is how the "unbundling" is working out. I live in Boise Idaho, and our local phone monopoly is Qworst. They are the only guys who can supply the DSL connection. I was excited when I heard about them unbundling DSL from their local service, so I could get DSL hopefully cheaper than the $49 a month I pay for cable internet right now. The unbundling didn't do squat because they made no requirement about the price at all. What Qwest is doing is that their price for DSL by itself, if you don't do local service, has a jacked-up price that basically amounts to paying the extra price for the local service without getting it. Whoo! Some great deal they're offering us, eh? It's good that the government "helped us out" by requiring them to "unbundle".
With their screwed up price structure, DSL ends up costing within a few dollars of my $49 cable internet. Thanks a lot, Qworst.
Larry Craig is mentioned prominently in the BoingBoing article of this story. I have never been more proud to be an Idahoan. Idaho is strongly characterized by individual freedom and privacy interests. It's one of those "leave me alone" type of states, and I am not surprised to see that he was on the leading edge of opposing it. I hope he will also take this position with respect to some of the other crap in congress like the broadcast flag and other **AA-written legislation.
I'll bet you just don't understand your company's IT setup with respect to those messaging clients. They can use the client program without necessarily running on messenger servers on the open internet. We have the MSN messenger client set up on most people's Windows machines here, but they only connect to internal messenger servers. We can't connect to anyone outside the company network, and we do use GAIM with Jabber servers for the people with UNIX or Linux machines. We are a company with many thousands of people though, so in your example, the company may be smaller and not be taking those kinds of precautions.
The comments on this story are full of this type of misinformation spouted as fact with no links for support. I'll provide a rebuttal with fact for a change. NPR has done a few stories about the hostile environment toward intelligent design in the academic community. There are many biologists who see credibility in the idea of ID, but are afraid to speak up for it because of the anger and intolerance from their institutions and colleagues.
Here is a story from NPR about a scientist with a PhD in biology who was attacked for publishing this article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. (Read the introduction of his paper at least. These lines indicate some of the direction of it.)
Now back to your rant.
That has been done, contrary to your belief. In the article I linked to above, Steven C. Meyer considers the biology aspect of ID, which is a bit misunderstood by people who are antagonistic to creationism. ID does split off the science side from the religious side of creationism. ID looks at the structure of organisms--plant, animal, etc. and sees indications that the structure of these things is so complex that it seems unlikely that it could happen at random from a pure evolution perspective.
I'll use the FSM as an illustration of this difference. The FSM is compatible with the scientific aspect but not with the religious. Intelligent design still applies, in that nature shows itself to be too complex to be random. There is a level of structure and organization that indicates a directing force for this design, rather than random interaction. That designing force could take any form(FSM or God or unknown), as far as intelligent design is concerned. That is why it has equal credence with theoretical evolution as the basis for the origin of life forms. Natural selection has shown to cause differentiation of existing species, but there is no proven cause for origin, so any proposal as an explanation of that is theory.
So the religious side is that people choose to believe what form that "designing force" takes. Various religions attribute that to the specific character and personality of a deity, but that is outside the scope of intelligent design.
Wow, this shows a level of idiocy I would not have thought possible. After the first time kicking it over, the thought should have come up, "CRAP! That's a terrible place to keep that. I should move it to somewhere more out of the way, where it won't get knocked over all the time."
"Whoa, that's the fourth time I've knocked that thing over. I'll bet I've learned my lesson now."
These aren't included in TweakUI, but they are some important settings in Windows 98 (joke)w photo.php?photo=612
http://www.dungeonkeepersdomain.com/PhotoPost/sho
There have been affordable video cards around for a while. They sell under the brand name "Used".
That's nice for some stuff, but not necessarily for this. I don't know if I would want to fill up my shelves with DVDs of this stuff if I could watch them once for less than a buck per show.
I've seen some of the DVDs of older material. It doesn't look so hot anyway. If they can't even make it look good for a DVD, I don't think they're going to get much better in a downloadable form. Besides, this is TV we're talking about here. It didn't have high quality production values and impressive visuals. If you can see and hear what's going on, that's most of the effect of the show.
Speaking of rejected stories...What I thought was really funny/annoying was when I submitted a potential poll topic. It got "rejected" and then showed up on the front page within a day or two. Huh? Well gee, thanks for the petulant but spurious rejection. While you're at it, why don't you just give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it.
It was something pretty obscure, too, so I doubt anyone else would have submitted the same thing at the same time I did.