It's called misanthropy. Beautiful thing... it allows me to hate without guilt the slack-jawed yokels breathing with their mouths, people who spit on the sidewalk, and people who laugh uncontrollably on the bus while attempting to sing badly with their friends.
It beautifully expresses the sentiments of us misanthropists, but the ironic intention is that you're right, and that this is a totally unreasonable way to be.
In looking at honestly looking at your flaws, when everyone around you is so terrible, you have a glass half-full/empty question... Is everyone else as good as you, or are you as bad as everyone else?
Sure would be interesting if 5% of the value of each company just went *poof* to the government anytime they wanted to join up....
And how would the government collect that? 5% of the stock? No good... it wouldn't be many decades before the government would own all the businesses... and conversely, the government's actions would be dictated largely by the value of its holdings...
I'm unhappy enough that Disney can lobby so well. I don't want the President of the U.S. saying to himself "If we don't pass this anti-piracy bill, the government's stock will go down, and the government will not be able to fund healthcare."
To avoid that merger, I say let the corporations fuck like bunnies.
As long as people are jumping on him, I'll stick my oar in to point out that it was in Yoshi's Island.... not just an earlier game, but also a true Mario platformer.
"One main thing i always will remember is sex sells, and so i am a bit skeptical about these numbers and the point of this posting."
The question isn't "Does sex sell?" It's "Does anything BUT sex sell?" and further "How much of what is sold is sold because of sex?"
In the eighteenth century and before, you know, people would argue with proverbs. In urging someone to not buy something, someone might say "A penny saved is a penny earned," and then the potential buyer might reply "Penny wise, pound foolish" to suggest that the purchase actually saves money or is otherwise important in the long run.
This method of argument was discredited, and by the end eighteenth century you find authors excusing themselves for even mentioning a proverb.
Why do I bring this up? "Sex sells," is a proverb. It's even alliterative, so points there, but it can't reasonably refute good numbers. It only suggests ways in which to look at them. In this case, you'd say "I KNOW sex sells, but apparently a great number of things aren't sold based on sex. When people do buy for sex, they buy about the same number of titles that are bought by fans of realistic racing or any other reasonably narrow subject. So perhaps sex is, in itself, a narrow subject, and not just a spice that can be added to any other title for extra success?" I wouldn't necessarily defend that. It's just how you use a proverb for inspiration.
nice soldiers that say "stay away from flowers that look like this... we grow them on mine fields."
It isn't that soldiers will grow them in mine fields. The point is that if you live in, say, Laos, and you want to make a new farm, you don't have to walk through it searching for bombs with a stick anymore. You spread these seeds from a plane, then wait. Anywhere the flowers say there's a mine, you do whatever. Throw a big rock at it? Ask the internationally sponsored mine-clearing teams to take it? I don't know.
This is a useful idea many parts of Asia. Vast swathes of countryside were tactically mined in various wars, then abandoned. Nobody really knows which fields these are.
As for kids... it's often children who do the mine-clearing now. There is relatively insignificant chance that children will be more attracted to the flowers which have changed color to indicate a bomb than the rest of the flowers, and at the same time, many children will be saved from operating the bomb-prodding stick. This is sure to bring a net profit of children.
"Your 2 GHz Athlon is not obsolete when the 2.1 GHz one comes out - Joe Sixpack does NOT think this way,"
Sure he does. Joe doesn't buy the new 2.1GHz, it's true, but he does get very, very angry. He shouts about it at the store and at parties.
"If anything seems to be too good to be true, it always is."
Really? So, suppose you tell someone in Somalia that if they live in Canada, doctors will treat you for free, you can get more money just asking people on the street for a few hours than you can earn in Somalia in two weeks, that your chance of being shot or raped is virtually nil...
The question of whether something sounds too good to be true is a matter of a person's expectations. Telling someone to simply trust their expectations is exactly the wrong thing. Then, if their expectations are incorrect, they'll fall for things. What they need is generalized skepticism, even about things that seem perfectly reasonable.
"I much prefer for the generic Cola cans in my ultra realistic game."
The problem is not that they are branded. As you say, it might be better in a realistic game to have
SOME brands about that are inescapable. Say, Pepsi or Coke cans.... not a day goes by that I don't see one of those.
The problem is when the product placement has put me in some strange otherworld where every can of pop is a Mountain Dew. It's distracting. And it usually is these fine products which are less ubiquitous that do the insane product placement trick.
I wouldn't mind, though, if the Pepsi company paid to have its entire range stocked... I'm used to stepping between the Coke universe and the Pepsi universe as I browse the stalls in the food court.
Product placement in a realistic game should be realistic.
"That is why we should be using trained monkeys instead."
You know how, whenever you go to the zoo, you see the monkeys throwing feces?
I wonder if it's a good idea to have your monkey carrying your pack full of grenades.
On the other hand, perhaps we can train the monkeys to throw the grenades at the bad people. Even a stupid monkey could see who's wearing a turban. More effective than the bat bombs, I'm thinking.
You're absolutely right.... I'll be sure to ban the phrase "Slaving away on something" from my phrasebook.... also I'll scratch out the SL for "Slave" on my hard drive and replace it with NSMM for "Not so much the Master." I suppose I can keep the expression "slave to fashion"... Even the sweatshop kids are not so much slaves to their masters as a fashion model is to anorexia.
Further, I can't be "hungry," "tired," "sad," or "lonely"... think of the famine victims, the sufferes of sleep-deprivation torture, the survivors of the Iran earthquake, and the bubble-boys of the world. I can't be "tall," or "strong, or "smart," because of Shaq, Mister Universe and Stephen Hawking (also sometimes known as Mister Universe).
*********
It seems to me that the last thing we should be doing is erasing the other meanings of a word like slave... look how your post has illustrated the difference between metaphorical slavery and real slavery, thus bringing attention to slavery that might otherwise have been missed. In a sense, The Telegraph and you have conspired in community service. Bully for you. Without metaphorical slaves, it could never have happened.
There's a distinction between how a success feels about the money and conditions of life, and how he or she feels about being hated and envied.
For example, I'm sure Gates is quite happy with his money and power... but I wonder how he feels about being cursed by hundreds of thousands of people every day.
So the question remains... how does it feel to be feared and reviled by so many?
The Queen does not refer to herself as "one." She refers to herself as "we." As in "we are very pleased to visit Canada, which has always been dear to our hearts."
I remember sitting about in shop class on the predicted day. It wasn't January 1st, it was in October or something. All the fifteen-year-old Nostradamic fans were REALLY scared.
That's a good point. Why aren't the newspapers taking the time and money to stage the events they cover? Pretty lazy just waiting for something to happen before they write about it.
Seriously, though, publishers do just what you've suggested:
1. Commission someone to write a book for you.
2. Publish.
3. Give the author a tiny little bit of the money, and keep the rest.
4. Profit!
There's no ??? because it's a well-established model, but the the Profit! is optimistic... many books don't earn enough money to pay for the author's advance. It's the blockbusters that pay for the flops, and the flops that create enough volumes to convince customers that a bookstore is any good.
Mitnick is following the journalistic model, though, because he isn't asking people to submit finalized text for him. He's going to write the book from the source material he's given.
There have been a couple of ideas put forward in response to your question... my feeling is that Mitnick isn't famous because he was caught, but because he dared to go for the big score, and because he ran.
Running from the authorities using his advanced level of hacking skill, creating new IDs and such as he went, having stolen the data for the intellectual thrill of it, not for financial gain, then improperly held by a vengeful government... That's a classic tale. I don't know if it's a true story, but that was the popular perception at one point.
In the 18th century, there was, in England, an absolute adoration of the highwayman. There were courteous highwaymen like Dick Turpin, whose victims had only this regret: that they could not have met him under other circumstances and been friends. There were brutal highwaymen, like Jack Sheppard, who was noted for his violence and for escaping Newgate with fetters on his limbs. There were gallant highwaymen, like Claude Duval, whose arrest was supposedly mourned by women across the country.
Other countries and that and other times have had the same respect for any bold thief. John Dillinger is the best modern example.
And as for getting caught, the populace believes that if you live bravely enough as a criminal, you WILL eventually get caught. That's really the basis of the admiration. If you could simply escape the government by being strong enough, as in the 1200s, you'd only be feared as a danger to all. It's the assurance of eventual capture that gives living on the edge its glamour. This, in particular, applies to Mitnick where it wouldn't to a mere modern carjacker, because we know the carjackers aren't caught. There are so many muggers and rapist and straight-up burglars who prey on the populace directly and succeed that we can't respect them. We fear them. A bank robber or a hacker can go after the big score, the wealth of the very rich, and leave us entertained participants.
There are, of course, plenty of major criminal hackers who do get away with it, as with any other crime, hackers we never hear about because they stayed safe, played it smart all the way. Some of them may be reading this now. Hi boys... you're assumed to be mean of spirit, not to have aimed high enough to get caught, mere embezzling rats or at most a sort of criminal investment banker. How does that feel?
Eventually the statute of limitations will start to run out on modern hackers who have done some pretty cool things, and we'll start to read the full stories of the ones who did go for the big score and get away with it in the Net age, just as we now revere some of the early phreakers who dared and won. Until then, the successful hacker will remain the province of fiction.
It's also interesting to note that in the 19th century, it was felt that the effect of the poems and plays about thieves had the same deleterious effect that comic books, rock music and video games were later held to have.
This post is reacher for 600 words, though, and beyond this I might as well write a properly-researched article, so I'll leave it here.
"Personally, I'd use this technology to create something truely useless, like another fishing game, but enhanced, by simulating the dizzyness and nausea felt from all the booze you need to consume to keep from being bored out of your skull."
"And even after I throw in another $30 for a 128MB flash card it's STILL just a tad over a hundred bucks - and I can keep the flash card long after the camera"
"How can you possibly argue film is cheaper than that?"
"from there on out it's free, free, free."
But it isn't free free free. Have you thought about the batteries? They are consumables, just like film. Digitals still suck down the batteries like nothing else. Put in a rechargeable, you've just seriously limited your shooting time, or else you're going to have to spend lots of time recharging several sets.
That's either hundreds of non-reusable batteries over the life of the camera or a bunch of sets of rechargables, plus a charger... maybe two chargers if you want real flexibility on a vacation. You'll want to recharge two sets at night to shoot all the next day.
Also, you'll replace the flash card when you get a new camera because the new cam doesn't read the old format and anyway it's too small for the new higher-res photos... no "using it long after the camera has broken."
All that brings the maintenance on digitals pretty close to that on film. But with film, you get a better picture...
One halogen lamp can be 200W on its own. Two halogen lamps, one for writing, one for general work-area illumination, can certainly be 200W.
Normally you'd use smaller halogens on a desk, but if you have a problem with the sun coming through in just the wrong spot in your room and making it hard to read a 100W halogen may be just the ticket.
This is one of the reasons dorms BEG students not to use halogen lamps.
Music has no set meaning to the phrases, only structure...
Criticizing it on the basis of whether the words have the meanings we commonly associate them with is a low blow. The question is, if the words did mean that, would the style REALLY be that of the analyzed author, or not very much so? Could you make a poem half-way between two?
Of course, Metamagical Themas is required reading here... as are most of the works in the bibliography. There's a lot more to this than just generating pesudo-poetry.
It's a strange thing, though... in the 80's, you didn't patent this stuff. (leave aside whether one could) It was just a toy. Nowadays if you make a program that generates fake poetry, you can patent it as generating real poetry, and if someone else makes a program that generates real poetry with a better analysis model, BANG, you have rights to their work. You've patented doing it with "an analysis model". Weird.
Dr S. Cantrell isn't real. His book, "Market Their Pants Off!" (Engell International, ISBN 0552546925), isn't real. The whole thing was a hoax. I mean, my God, look at the man.. could that more clearly be a prop bow-tie?
The gravestone thing was a hoax as well... I haven't the link at the moment.
So the chances of this being real are terribly, terribly low. Especially with the cleaning of the sidewalks....
In a few days, we'll find out this was a hoax. Those of us who were here to read about it will remember, but a whole new set of people will get interested, and maybe angry, about the next one. Yay. Pthppht.
I suppose in Australia they haven't heard of him, but in the U.S. it's a little like walking around named Hermann Goering. Not everybody knows Goering's name, but you'll run into heavy shit often enough to want a change.
Because they aren't trusting us. They're putting DRMed files with untrusting restrictions on and hoping we'll use their software to use those files, accepting the restrictions, out of ignorance.
If they trusted us, they'd just print up CDs as usual and assume we wouldn't steal them.
I guess they're "trusting" that the ordinary consumer can't program his VCR, let alone evade a simple scheme, but that isn't the sense of trust that one wants.
Slashdot Mirror
I recommend "I've got a little list" from the Mikado...
It beautifully expresses the sentiments of us misanthropists, but the ironic intention is that you're right, and that this is a totally unreasonable way to be.
In looking at honestly looking at your flaws, when everyone around you is so terrible, you have a glass half-full/empty question... Is everyone else as good as you, or are you as bad as everyone else?
And how would the government collect that? 5% of the stock? No good... it wouldn't be many decades before the government would own all the businesses... and conversely, the government's actions would be dictated largely by the value of its holdings...
I'm unhappy enough that Disney can lobby so well. I don't want the President of the U.S. saying to himself "If we don't pass this anti-piracy bill, the government's stock will go down, and the government will not be able to fund healthcare."
To avoid that merger, I say let the corporations fuck like bunnies.
Yellowstone's springs and geysers are already choked with crap from people throwing their laundry in to see it come out clean.
Other than the rape of the American continent which will finish long before we're building Dyson Spheres, though... point taken.
As long as people are jumping on him, I'll stick my oar in to point out that it was in Yoshi's Island.... not just an earlier game, but also a true Mario platformer.
The question isn't "Does sex sell?" It's "Does anything BUT sex sell?" and further "How much of what is sold is sold because of sex?"
In the eighteenth century and before, you know, people would argue with proverbs. In urging someone to not buy something, someone might say "A penny saved is a penny earned," and then the potential buyer might reply "Penny wise, pound foolish" to suggest that the purchase actually saves money or is otherwise important in the long run.
This method of argument was discredited, and by the end eighteenth century you find authors excusing themselves for even mentioning a proverb.
Why do I bring this up? "Sex sells," is a proverb. It's even alliterative, so points there, but it can't reasonably refute good numbers. It only suggests ways in which to look at them. In this case, you'd say "I KNOW sex sells, but apparently a great number of things aren't sold based on sex. When people do buy for sex, they buy about the same number of titles that are bought by fans of realistic racing or any other reasonably narrow subject. So perhaps sex is, in itself, a narrow subject, and not just a spice that can be added to any other title for extra success?" I wouldn't necessarily defend that. It's just how you use a proverb for inspiration.
It isn't that soldiers will grow them in mine fields. The point is that if you live in, say, Laos, and you want to make a new farm, you don't have to walk through it searching for bombs with a stick anymore. You spread these seeds from a plane, then wait. Anywhere the flowers say there's a mine, you do whatever. Throw a big rock at it? Ask the internationally sponsored mine-clearing teams to take it? I don't know.
This is a useful idea many parts of Asia. Vast swathes of countryside were tactically mined in various wars, then abandoned. Nobody really knows which fields these are.
As for kids... it's often children who do the mine-clearing now. There is relatively insignificant chance that children will be more attracted to the flowers which have changed color to indicate a bomb than the rest of the flowers, and at the same time, many children will be saved from operating the bomb-prodding stick. This is sure to bring a net profit of children.
Sure he does. Joe doesn't buy the new 2.1GHz, it's true, but he does get very, very angry. He shouts about it at the store and at parties.
"If anything seems to be too good to be true, it always is."
Really? So, suppose you tell someone in Somalia that if they live in Canada, doctors will treat you for free, you can get more money just asking people on the street for a few hours than you can earn in Somalia in two weeks, that your chance of being shot or raped is virtually nil...
The question of whether something sounds too good to be true is a matter of a person's expectations. Telling someone to simply trust their expectations is exactly the wrong thing. Then, if their expectations are incorrect, they'll fall for things. What they need is generalized skepticism, even about things that seem perfectly reasonable.
The problem is not that they are branded. As you say, it might be better in a realistic game to have SOME brands about that are inescapable. Say, Pepsi or Coke cans.... not a day goes by that I don't see one of those.
The problem is when the product placement has put me in some strange otherworld where every can of pop is a Mountain Dew. It's distracting. And it usually is these fine products which are less ubiquitous that do the insane product placement trick.
I wouldn't mind, though, if the Pepsi company paid to have its entire range stocked... I'm used to stepping between the Coke universe and the Pepsi universe as I browse the stalls in the food court.
Product placement in a realistic game should be realistic.
You know how, whenever you go to the zoo, you see the monkeys throwing feces?
I wonder if it's a good idea to have your monkey carrying your pack full of grenades.
On the other hand, perhaps we can train the monkeys to throw the grenades at the bad people. Even a stupid monkey could see who's wearing a turban. More effective than the bat bombs, I'm thinking.
Further, I can't be "hungry," "tired," "sad," or "lonely"... think of the famine victims, the sufferes of sleep-deprivation torture, the survivors of the Iran earthquake, and the bubble-boys of the world. I can't be "tall," or "strong, or "smart," because of Shaq, Mister Universe and Stephen Hawking (also sometimes known as Mister Universe).
*********
It seems to me that the last thing we should be doing is erasing the other meanings of a word like slave... look how your post has illustrated the difference between metaphorical slavery and real slavery, thus bringing attention to slavery that might otherwise have been missed. In a sense, The Telegraph and you have conspired in community service. Bully for you. Without metaphorical slaves, it could never have happened.
For example, I'm sure Gates is quite happy with his money and power... but I wonder how he feels about being cursed by hundreds of thousands of people every day.
So the question remains... how does it feel to be feared and reviled by so many?
The Queen does not refer to herself as "one." She refers to herself as "we." As in "we are very pleased to visit Canada, which has always been dear to our hearts."
Kids are so funny.
Seriously, though, publishers do just what you've suggested:
1. Commission someone to write a book for you.
2. Publish.
3. Give the author a tiny little bit of the money, and keep the rest.
4. Profit!
There's no ??? because it's a well-established model, but the the Profit! is optimistic... many books don't earn enough money to pay for the author's advance. It's the blockbusters that pay for the flops, and the flops that create enough volumes to convince customers that a bookstore is any good.
Mitnick is following the journalistic model, though, because he isn't asking people to submit finalized text for him. He's going to write the book from the source material he's given.
Running from the authorities using his advanced level of hacking skill, creating new IDs and such as he went, having stolen the data for the intellectual thrill of it, not for financial gain, then improperly held by a vengeful government... That's a classic tale. I don't know if it's a true story, but that was the popular perception at one point.
In the 18th century, there was, in England, an absolute adoration of the highwayman. There were courteous highwaymen like Dick Turpin, whose victims had only this regret: that they could not have met him under other circumstances and been friends. There were brutal highwaymen, like Jack Sheppard, who was noted for his violence and for escaping Newgate with fetters on his limbs. There were gallant highwaymen, like Claude Duval, whose arrest was supposedly mourned by women across the country.
Other countries and that and other times have had the same respect for any bold thief. John Dillinger is the best modern example.
And as for getting caught, the populace believes that if you live bravely enough as a criminal, you WILL eventually get caught. That's really the basis of the admiration. If you could simply escape the government by being strong enough, as in the 1200s, you'd only be feared as a danger to all. It's the assurance of eventual capture that gives living on the edge its glamour. This, in particular, applies to Mitnick where it wouldn't to a mere modern carjacker, because we know the carjackers aren't caught. There are so many muggers and rapist and straight-up burglars who prey on the populace directly and succeed that we can't respect them. We fear them. A bank robber or a hacker can go after the big score, the wealth of the very rich, and leave us entertained participants.
There are, of course, plenty of major criminal hackers who do get away with it, as with any other crime, hackers we never hear about because they stayed safe, played it smart all the way. Some of them may be reading this now. Hi boys... you're assumed to be mean of spirit, not to have aimed high enough to get caught, mere embezzling rats or at most a sort of criminal investment banker. How does that feel?
Eventually the statute of limitations will start to run out on modern hackers who have done some pretty cool things, and we'll start to read the full stories of the ones who did go for the big score and get away with it in the Net age, just as we now revere some of the early phreakers who dared and won. Until then, the successful hacker will remain the province of fiction.
It's also interesting to note that in the 19th century, it was felt that the effect of the poems and plays about thieves had the same deleterious effect that comic books, rock music and video games were later held to have.
This post is reacher for 600 words, though, and beyond this I might as well write a properly-researched article, so I'll leave it here.
The correct link to the SCPH-50001, the improved PS2. (Not the PSX)
Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy.
It'll certainly put an end to jumping up after you win and shouting "Boo-yah."
However, if you have a satellite, you've already spent many millions, unless you're just very large.
"How can you possibly argue film is cheaper than that?"
"from there on out it's free, free, free."
But it isn't free free free. Have you thought about the batteries? They are consumables, just like film. Digitals still suck down the batteries like nothing else. Put in a rechargeable, you've just seriously limited your shooting time, or else you're going to have to spend lots of time recharging several sets.
That's either hundreds of non-reusable batteries over the life of the camera or a bunch of sets of rechargables, plus a charger... maybe two chargers if you want real flexibility on a vacation. You'll want to recharge two sets at night to shoot all the next day.
Also, you'll replace the flash card when you get a new camera because the new cam doesn't read the old format and anyway it's too small for the new higher-res photos... no "using it long after the camera has broken."
All that brings the maintenance on digitals pretty close to that on film. But with film, you get a better picture...
Normally you'd use smaller halogens on a desk, but if you have a problem with the sun coming through in just the wrong spot in your room and making it hard to read a 100W halogen may be just the ticket.
This is one of the reasons dorms BEG students not to use halogen lamps.
Criticizing it on the basis of whether the words have the meanings we commonly associate them with is a low blow. The question is, if the words did mean that, would the style REALLY be that of the analyzed author, or not very much so? Could you make a poem half-way between two?
Of course, Metamagical Themas is required reading here... as are most of the works in the bibliography. There's a lot more to this than just generating pesudo-poetry.
It's a strange thing, though... in the 80's, you didn't patent this stuff. (leave aside whether one could) It was just a toy. Nowadays if you make a program that generates fake poetry, you can patent it as generating real poetry, and if someone else makes a program that generates real poetry with a better analysis model, BANG, you have rights to their work. You've patented doing it with "an analysis model". Weird.
About Identity Marketing
Dr S. Cantrell isn't real. His book, "Market Their Pants Off!" (Engell International, ISBN 0552546925), isn't real. The whole thing was a hoax. I mean, my God, look at the man.. could that more clearly be a prop bow-tie?
The gravestone thing was a hoax as well... I haven't the link at the moment.
So the chances of this being real are terribly, terribly low. Especially with the cleaning of the sidewalks....
In a few days, we'll find out this was a hoax. Those of us who were here to read about it will remember, but a whole new set of people will get interested, and maybe angry, about the next one. Yay. Pthppht.
I suppose in Australia they haven't heard of him, but in the U.S. it's a little like walking around named Hermann Goering. Not everybody knows Goering's name, but you'll run into heavy shit often enough to want a change.
If they trusted us, they'd just print up CDs as usual and assume we wouldn't steal them.
I guess they're "trusting" that the ordinary consumer can't program his VCR, let alone evade a simple scheme, but that isn't the sense of trust that one wants.