One could argue (and probably has, for that matter) that the only reason it's the least "randomly selected number" is because people attribute something special to it because it was picked by Adams as the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
If it shows up now in anything in popular media, it's taken as a nod to Adams. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't - but when it isn't, people tend to attribute it as such.
Book 5 was quite good, in spite of (and even to some extent because of) its "downer ending". There has been speculation that Adams was to write a 6th book that resolved the ending in MH (and there's some material in Salmon of Doubt that supports this) - without giving too much away for those who haven't read it, there was really nothing in the Hitchhiker's universe that couldn't be *undone*, as evidenced by the fact that the Earth returned after being utterly destroyed.
This is correct. According to every official source (and written by Adams himself), he said he needed a funny number, looked out the window, and said "yeah, 42, that's an ordinary number", wrote it down and continued writing.
There was no deep hidden meaning in the selection at all.
United has been doing the "board the window seats first" for a bit now, at least the flights I've taken with them since last October. For families, it's actually fairly easy, because you get 2 or 3 seats together and board all of them together. For more than 3 in a family, you still can end up with one adult per 'n' children, so unless you've got a really big family, this won't be much of an issue either (and the exception in any event).
But the funny thing is that what TFA states is (at least to me) fairly obvious, having been a frequent flier for 5 years. It's really obvious to anyone who files with any sort of regularity that there are better ways to board passengers on a plane and what those ways would be.
and I'm sure the BBC will do it justice as they have his works in the past
The BBC didn't do this series, neither did they do the tertiary, quandry, or quintessential phases of H2G2 - it was Above the Title Productions who did it for BBC4.
As a 15 year veteran of systems administration, I adopted the following personal policy:
If you want to be trustworthy, act trustworthy. For me, this means ALWAYS assume someone is watching you, even if you run all the systems. You never know what other people are doing to see that you're being compliant.
That means if you are accessing confidential data you weren't supposed to access, that you WOULD get caught and you WOULD get fired if someone caught you doing it.
If you are accessing another users' system remotely without their knowledge or permission, you are in the wrong unless you've been given permission/authorization from higher up in the food chain. It doesn't matter *what* you caught them doing, nothing justifies violating the company's policy on privacy (or proper computer usage). NOTHING.
If they're surfing porn, that's their ass on the line. If you're accessing the system remotely without authorization, that's YOUR ass on the line if company policy prohibits this. In a company run properly, BOTH the end user AND the systems administrator should be sacked for their actions.
I've always said that if a systems administrator isn't trusted by the company, they SHOULD NOT be the systems administrator for the company. End of story.
Absolutely. Been married for 10 years, never had a serious fight. Communication is absolutely the key.
Of course everyone's going to have disagreements sooner or later; for my wife and I, it usually comes down to one or the other of us saying (during a "fit of silence" that earmarks a disagreement or one or the other of us being upset) "hey, this is stupid, let's talk about what's wrong and move on".
I've a younger brother who got married last year, and all his friends were telling him to be ready for the fights. It seems that (US at least) society seems to think that there *has* to be conflict in a marriage, but there doesn't.
Then there's the part of (US) society that thinks that if you don't have conflict, it's because one or the other in the relationship just capitulates all the time in order to avoid conflict. That also isn't necessary.
About 20 years ago, I was working in a shopping mall, and the ATM at the end of the mall where I worked accidentally had $20 bills loaded in the $10 slot. I was looking to buy a book, and needed about $7, so I withdrew $10. There were a couple of guys at the machine when I walked up who were taking out cash $10 at a time (ie, they were getting $20 for each withdrawl) up to their daily limit. As I walked away with my $20, they said "hey, don't tell anyone".
A few days later, the bank corrected the error and updated my balance to a withdrawl amount of $20 instead; I received a letter about a week later explaining the error and apologising for any inconvenience because of their error. I wasn't overdrawn, and I suspect they would've waived any charges on a single withdrawl that caused that.
But for a couple of guys who willfully took advantage of the error? I'm sure they got more than a letter and a balance adjustment.
Microsoft has NEVER provided a roadmap for ANYTHING.
You know, I've never ever been accused of being a MS fanboy, but I have to admit that Microsoft has been consistent about one thing: A roadmap. Their roadmap is to get as much money as possible out of as many people as possible for as long as possible.
Has a few extras on it, but only cost something like $40 from Cingular (now AT&T Wireless, wish they'd make up their mind what they want to be called). You can probably get one on eBay cheap.
I also wanted a simple phone, no camera (since I traveled a bit including into places where they don't allow cameras) or a PDA. I've "graduated" to a smart phone now, but the old phone did what I needed at the time. My needs are different now.
My wife's got an inexpensive LG phone, I'll have to get the model number off of it, but same sort of thing - basic phone, no extras.
Most of the wireless carriers have phones like this, but you have to dig because they want to sell you the feature-laden phones (more profit).
Well, that solution works if you only have a couple of bags, but if you've bought a weeks' worth of groceries for a family of 10 (and that's not uncommon where I live), that can be a problem. Especially if there's a risk of people stealing your groceries while you're schlepping bags from the cart to the car.
Used to work for the corporate side of a large food & drug retailer in the US; those shopping carts, wobbly wheels and all, cost on average about $120 each - and that's before the wheel lock systems were put in place (no doubt that has driven the cost up).
The ironic thing here is that some of the supermarkets have parking spaces outside the lot, but the carts don't roll outside the lots, so sometimes people can't get their shopping back to their cars. On the flip side, I watched one lady try to steal one of these carts - she got about 3/4 of a block away with it, and it was quite a struggle for her. Clearly she hadn't read the signs that said the cart wouldn't work outside the parking lot. It also was clear that what was in the cart wasn't her shopping.
Loss prevention is big business. This is what happens when people steal from local stores - the stores end up having to put measures in place that inconvenience everyone.
Well, I s'pose I could've said "stereotypical Disney pirates" (ala Captain Hook and his ilk), but I thought that would be taken as read.;-)
I've not been on the ride either and have no intention of doing so. But in the words of Adam Savage, "[Jim] want big boom!", and on that score, P3 didn't disappoint.
Yep, I saw the second and third. The thing about the Pirates franchise is that it's entirely Disney advertising - it's based on a theme park ride, for cryin' out loud. There's not really a promise of anything in those movies except pirates, fighting, and explosions. Oh, and maybe a story thread here and there.
But Matrix set an expectation about there being a coherent story line, and in Matrix 2 and 3 they failed to meet that expectation. Like someone else here said, Pirates is something a 4-year-old might look forward to. Matrix? Not so much.
(As to suitability, no, I personally don't think Pirates is suitable for a 4-year-old)
Except that the Matrix trilogy wouldn't have won out that way. I loved the first film, but #2 and #3 just didn't live up to the expectations set at the end of the first one. The effects were still mind-blowing, but the story just didn't carry the promise that the first one did.
When at the end of the first film Neo said:
"Now, I'm going to hang up this phone, and I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you...a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world...where anything is possible."
That set a pretty high expectation for the second movie. We didn't get to see anything like this, not in the second film, and not in the Animatrix either. The brothers failed to deliver on that promise.
But I wasn't talking about individual choice at all in my post - I was pointing out something that I thought should have been obvious - that most users don't think about file formats, they go with the defaults that are selected. In MS Word, that's *usually*.doc, so that's what they use. That's how.doc became a de facto standard.
When it comes to corporate or government policy on document formats, the change is implemented technologically to set the default save format to what the policy says. The users still don't have to think about it, they just go with the default the program presents them with. Users generally hate to think about the tool, they're more concerned with doing the job the tool is being used for.
I think you're wrong here - if RTF had been the default save format, everyone would be using it. Users don't want to think about what format to save documents in, they just go with the defaults most of the time.
So let's talk about poorly thought out responses, shall we?;-)
Slashdot Mirror
One could argue (and probably has, for that matter) that the only reason it's the least "randomly selected number" is because people attribute something special to it because it was picked by Adams as the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
If it shows up now in anything in popular media, it's taken as a nod to Adams. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't - but when it isn't, people tend to attribute it as such.
Book 5 was quite good, in spite of (and even to some extent because of) its "downer ending". There has been speculation that Adams was to write a 6th book that resolved the ending in MH (and there's some material in Salmon of Doubt that supports this) - without giving too much away for those who haven't read it, there was really nothing in the Hitchhiker's universe that couldn't be *undone*, as evidenced by the fact that the Earth returned after being utterly destroyed.
"May also"? Um, *did* is more like. Quintessential Phase has been finished for a couple of years, available on CD.
This is correct. According to every official source (and written by Adams himself), he said he needed a funny number, looked out the window, and said "yeah, 42, that's an ordinary number", wrote it down and continued writing.
There was no deep hidden meaning in the selection at all.
RIP, Douglas, we miss you.
United has been doing the "board the window seats first" for a bit now, at least the flights I've taken with them since last October. For families, it's actually fairly easy, because you get 2 or 3 seats together and board all of them together. For more than 3 in a family, you still can end up with one adult per 'n' children, so unless you've got a really big family, this won't be much of an issue either (and the exception in any event).
But the funny thing is that what TFA states is (at least to me) fairly obvious, having been a frequent flier for 5 years. It's really obvious to anyone who files with any sort of regularity that there are better ways to board passengers on a plane and what those ways would be.
The BBC didn't do this series, neither did they do the tertiary, quandry, or quintessential phases of H2G2 - it was Above the Title Productions who did it for BBC4.
That said, yes, it is well done.
As a 15 year veteran of systems administration, I adopted the following personal policy:
If you want to be trustworthy, act trustworthy. For me, this means ALWAYS assume someone is watching you, even if you run all the systems. You never know what other people are doing to see that you're being compliant.
That means if you are accessing confidential data you weren't supposed to access, that you WOULD get caught and you WOULD get fired if someone caught you doing it.
If you are accessing another users' system remotely without their knowledge or permission, you are in the wrong unless you've been given permission/authorization from higher up in the food chain. It doesn't matter *what* you caught them doing, nothing justifies violating the company's policy on privacy (or proper computer usage). NOTHING.
If they're surfing porn, that's their ass on the line. If you're accessing the system remotely without authorization, that's YOUR ass on the line if company policy prohibits this. In a company run properly, BOTH the end user AND the systems administrator should be sacked for their actions.
I've always said that if a systems administrator isn't trusted by the company, they SHOULD NOT be the systems administrator for the company. End of story.
iFolder3 lets you specify whatever folder you want - I sync about 5 or 6 folders and share them with different people in my department.
(And if you're who I believe you are (CC), hey! Drop me a line...)
Whoops, brain fart, I meant to say (and was thinking) "receipt required" mail, but wrote "registered" for some reason.
I mean, really - if they're serious about collection, e-mail's the LAST way I'd go about it. Try registered/certified mail instead.
Then they can't say "oh, we didn't get your message".
Absolutely. Been married for 10 years, never had a serious fight. Communication is absolutely the key.
Of course everyone's going to have disagreements sooner or later; for my wife and I, it usually comes down to one or the other of us saying (during a "fit of silence" that earmarks a disagreement or one or the other of us being upset) "hey, this is stupid, let's talk about what's wrong and move on".
I've a younger brother who got married last year, and all his friends were telling him to be ready for the fights. It seems that (US at least) society seems to think that there *has* to be conflict in a marriage, but there doesn't.
Then there's the part of (US) society that thinks that if you don't have conflict, it's because one or the other in the relationship just capitulates all the time in order to avoid conflict. That also isn't necessary.
About 20 years ago, I was working in a shopping mall, and the ATM at the end of the mall where I worked accidentally had $20 bills loaded in the $10 slot. I was looking to buy a book, and needed about $7, so I withdrew $10. There were a couple of guys at the machine when I walked up who were taking out cash $10 at a time (ie, they were getting $20 for each withdrawl) up to their daily limit. As I walked away with my $20, they said "hey, don't tell anyone".
A few days later, the bank corrected the error and updated my balance to a withdrawl amount of $20 instead; I received a letter about a week later explaining the error and apologising for any inconvenience because of their error. I wasn't overdrawn, and I suspect they would've waived any charges on a single withdrawl that caused that.
But for a couple of guys who willfully took advantage of the error? I'm sure they got more than a letter and a balance adjustment.
Always glad to provide a laugh - even as a side effect to being (mostly) serious. :-)
You know, I've never ever been accused of being a MS fanboy, but I have to admit that Microsoft has been consistent about one thing: A roadmap. Their roadmap is to get as much money as possible out of as many people as possible for as long as possible.
That's something that's never changed for them.
Has a few extras on it, but only cost something like $40 from Cingular (now AT&T Wireless, wish they'd make up their mind what they want to be called). You can probably get one on eBay cheap.
I also wanted a simple phone, no camera (since I traveled a bit including into places where they don't allow cameras) or a PDA. I've "graduated" to a smart phone now, but the old phone did what I needed at the time. My needs are different now.
My wife's got an inexpensive LG phone, I'll have to get the model number off of it, but same sort of thing - basic phone, no extras.
Most of the wireless carriers have phones like this, but you have to dig because they want to sell you the feature-laden phones (more profit).
Well, that solution works if you only have a couple of bags, but if you've bought a weeks' worth of groceries for a family of 10 (and that's not uncommon where I live), that can be a problem. Especially if there's a risk of people stealing your groceries while you're schlepping bags from the cart to the car.
Yep, that's exactly what it's aimed at.
Used to work for the corporate side of a large food & drug retailer in the US; those shopping carts, wobbly wheels and all, cost on average about $120 each - and that's before the wheel lock systems were put in place (no doubt that has driven the cost up).
The ironic thing here is that some of the supermarkets have parking spaces outside the lot, but the carts don't roll outside the lots, so sometimes people can't get their shopping back to their cars. On the flip side, I watched one lady try to steal one of these carts - she got about 3/4 of a block away with it, and it was quite a struggle for her. Clearly she hadn't read the signs that said the cart wouldn't work outside the parking lot. It also was clear that what was in the cart wasn't her shopping.
Loss prevention is big business. This is what happens when people steal from local stores - the stores end up having to put measures in place that inconvenience everyone.
Well, I s'pose I could've said "stereotypical Disney pirates" (ala Captain Hook and his ilk), but I thought that would be taken as read. ;-)
I've not been on the ride either and have no intention of doing so. But in the words of Adam Savage, "[Jim] want big boom!", and on that score, P3 didn't disappoint.
Yep, I saw the second and third. The thing about the Pirates franchise is that it's entirely Disney advertising - it's based on a theme park ride, for cryin' out loud. There's not really a promise of anything in those movies except pirates, fighting, and explosions. Oh, and maybe a story thread here and there.
But Matrix set an expectation about there being a coherent story line, and in Matrix 2 and 3 they failed to meet that expectation. Like someone else here said, Pirates is something a 4-year-old might look forward to. Matrix? Not so much.
(As to suitability, no, I personally don't think Pirates is suitable for a 4-year-old)
Jim
Except that the Matrix trilogy wouldn't have won out that way. I loved the first film, but #2 and #3 just didn't live up to the expectations set at the end of the first one. The effects were still mind-blowing, but the story just didn't carry the promise that the first one did.
When at the end of the first film Neo said:
"Now, I'm going to hang up this phone, and I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you...a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world...where anything is possible."
That set a pretty high expectation for the second movie. We didn't get to see anything like this, not in the second film, and not in the Animatrix either. The brothers failed to deliver on that promise.
It's already been done:
9 9
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/20
As Maxume said, I wasn't the original poster.
.doc, so that's what they use. That's how .doc became a de facto standard.
But I wasn't talking about individual choice at all in my post - I was pointing out something that I thought should have been obvious - that most users don't think about file formats, they go with the defaults that are selected. In MS Word, that's *usually*
When it comes to corporate or government policy on document formats, the change is implemented technologically to set the default save format to what the policy says. The users still don't have to think about it, they just go with the default the program presents them with. Users generally hate to think about the tool, they're more concerned with doing the job the tool is being used for.
I think you're wrong here - if RTF had been the default save format, everyone would be using it. Users don't want to think about what format to save documents in, they just go with the defaults most of the time.
;-)
So let's talk about poorly thought out responses, shall we?
I'm not, but if I had mod points I'd mod you insightful - hadn't thought about it that way, but that's a great analogy.
In other words, the lowest common denominator wins - and getting the LCD is something that a monopoly has an easy job doing.