Yeah, thanks, but I'll wait for a bit...
on
PDA Speech Translator
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· Score: 3, Funny
"It also works only when the speakers are talking about medical information, and it's only about 80 percent accurate in the lab."
Forgive my immediate misgivings, and you can call me chicken if you want, but I'm really not that keen on walking into a hospital and asking to have a medical procedure done with a 1 in 5 chance that instead of removing my appendix, they might remove my "appendage"...
Up until late 2000 I was living in a little town called Mildura, which sits on the Murray River, in Australia. A river full of carp. In the five years I lived there, I would have heard hundreds of solutions for the carp population problem put forward. Granted, most were completely ridiculous, but that's because I heard most of them in the pub.
The one that interested me most though, was one where either an electrical charge, or a vibration (I may have heard both) was used in a section of water, stunning all fish and causing them to rise to the surface, allowing the carp to be picked up by hand or net. Then the charge or vibration or whatever would be switched off and the rest of the fish (not that many other fish around Mildura anyway) would wake up and swim away. Supposedly, you could get a couple of teams to simply sweep up and down the Murray River for a couple of years, and the carp population would be reduced so dramatically that the local ecology could recover and native species would be able to get a foothold again.
I have to admit I was skeptical. The rumour was that the project was stopped because it would be cruelty to the fish... at the time I was thinking that maybe it was a complete crock of shit.
Has anyone else out there heard of something like this? Is is a crock of shit?
From the little I hear about US elections (and let's face it that's gonna be all the cock-ups & bad press) I wasn't aware that people a) voted much, or b) had much faith that the votes were fairly counted and apportioned anyway...
Then again, perhaps I need to find an alternative to Michael Moore as my sole window into US POlitics.
Okay - so now I concerned. I'm concerned by two things. The first is that somewhere in the world, people pay a TV tax - like for real? Are you having me on? The second (after a moment's thought) is my ignorance in thinking that television would be all free and available everywhere (we've only had Pay TV here for less than ten years, before that it was just the same 4 or 5 free channels the whole country over)
Firstly, I'm not a person who often awards "cool" for non-participation - not even to myself - but you're right, I don't have to mention it every time, and I don't think you honestly believe that I do.
Secondly, I don't think "evangelist" is quite the right word. I'm not trying to save anyone from their television. Further to that, I'm not telling anyone that they need to be saved from their televisions. Rather, my initial point was simply this: if you do not have a television, you won't see shit ads. It was a throw-away comment & it really contributed nothing to the conversation at all. To be frank, I'm a little surprised it wasn't mod'ed as being off topic (I suppose it still could be? I'm new here)
I'm not going to argue with you about the having "some serious issues" bit though. Let's face it, if I didn't have "some serious issues", I'd do like the people do - I'd have a television and I'd eat meat.
NB: I'll read your reply if you post one, but most likely won't post on this issue again unless your is really very thought-provoking. This is nothing personal, I just have a personal tendency not to post more than three times in the one thread. Saves me getting bogged down. Cheers.
Ah, I see I may have to tell the story in a little more depth - no-no, it's no trouble, I like to tell stories.
I walked down to the supermarket with my cousin, who is also my flatmate, and who smokes. As he is a very sociable and chatty person, he knows all the staff at the local supermarket. This particular clerk, who I've also spoken with previously, didn't know that my cousin and I co-habitate. So in chatting, she discovered we share an apartment, discovered we are cousins, and proceeded to compare us to characters in some sit-com or drama show or other, at which point we had to tell her that we'd not the slightest idea of what she was talking about, as we own no television.
As for the rest of it, I'm more into board games than console, so that solves the need for a console, and also hints at how we entertain guests (as well as both being good cooks and lovers of long conversations)
Add a computer with a DVD player (17" screen, but I really don't watch too many DVDs at all) and four full bookcases, and you have a life without television.
*shrug* I don't know anything about the guy in The Onion article, but I know that I sometimes have a lot of trouble with people at parties, work functions, in the office caf, etc when they so often begin conversations with, "Did you watch insert-name-of-show-here last night?" and everyone in the circle nods enthusiastically and I have to say, "Ummm... no. I didn't. I read part of The Arabian Nights and had a conversation with my neighbour about her third boyfriend since June and why she always dates losers." That is when the flaming usually starts. Meh. It's a life.
I hear and read so many people bagging on television advertisements: too many, too long, poor quality, what's the deal with tampon ads during sport, etc.
I have a radical solution to television advertising. It has worked for me for almost 18 months now - and I think you know what's coming next...
Throw out your television.
Yeah, yeah - I get flamed by people irl about this too. The lady at the cigarette counter at my local supermarket told me just last night that for someone to lack a television in this modern day was "just tragic!"
Yes. Exactly that. To "take the piss" is to mock, usually with a mixture of caricature and ironic commentary. That's not from a dictionary - that's just how I (as an accredited piss-taker) would describe it.
I remember those ads. I can't help but wonder whether they tried several different formats and styles of delivery for that (in)famous, brightly delivered, line before they settled on the old, 20's & 30's posters coming to life - which kind of took the edge off by suggesting that, "way back then", such a phrase wasn't as suggestive.
If that's what they were trying though, it didn't work. I was still at school when they aired, and if there was one line guaranteed to bring down the house (treehouse, that is) it was, "I know! Why don't we nibble nobby's nuts?"
Or can we perhaps expect some kind of carpet-bombing style campaign, where in the middle of the night, 200,000 copies of M$Office fall from the sky over Jerusalem with a one-time-only-special-for-you-in-Israel-30-day-tri al-period-before-you-have-to-register-and-discover -you-can't-Unistall-this sting in the tail...
I know that here in Australia, when the government wants the particular section of the population that it chooses to call "youth" to know something, then the information will appear on our Government-funded, nationally-broadcast "youth radio station". Perhaps, if this information has only appeared on Arutz Sheva, the Israeli government is attempting a similar sort of "selective information"?
Slashdot Mirror
"It also works only when the speakers are talking about medical information, and it's only about 80 percent accurate in the lab."
Forgive my immediate misgivings, and you can call me chicken if you want, but I'm really not that keen on walking into a hospital and asking to have a medical procedure done with a 1 in 5 chance that instead of removing my appendix, they might remove my "appendage"...
Up until late 2000 I was living in a little town called Mildura, which sits on the Murray River, in Australia. A river full of carp. In the five years I lived there, I would have heard hundreds of solutions for the carp population problem put forward. Granted, most were completely ridiculous, but that's because I heard most of them in the pub.
The one that interested me most though, was one where either an electrical charge, or a vibration (I may have heard both) was used in a section of water, stunning all fish and causing them to rise to the surface, allowing the carp to be picked up by hand or net. Then the charge or vibration or whatever would be switched off and the rest of the fish (not that many other fish around Mildura anyway) would wake up and swim away. Supposedly, you could get a couple of teams to simply sweep up and down the Murray River for a couple of years, and the carp population would be reduced so dramatically that the local ecology could recover and native species would be able to get a foothold again.
I have to admit I was skeptical. The rumour was that the project was stopped because it would be cruelty to the fish... at the time I was thinking that maybe it was a complete crock of shit.
Has anyone else out there heard of something like this? Is is a crock of shit?
Oh, there's no money in it.
All you get is the government you voted for. Or so goes the theory, anyway...
From the little I hear about US elections (and let's face it that's gonna be all the cock-ups & bad press) I wasn't aware that people a) voted much, or b) had much faith that the votes were fairly counted and apportioned anyway...
Then again, perhaps I need to find an alternative to Michael Moore as my sole window into US POlitics.
Okay - so now I concerned. I'm concerned by two things. The first is that somewhere in the world, people pay a TV tax - like for real? Are you having me on? The second (after a moment's thought) is my ignorance in thinking that television would be all free and available everywhere (we've only had Pay TV here for less than ten years, before that it was just the same 4 or 5 free channels the whole country over)
Firstly, I'm not a person who often awards "cool" for non-participation - not even to myself - but you're right, I don't have to mention it every time, and I don't think you honestly believe that I do.
Secondly, I don't think "evangelist" is quite the right word. I'm not trying to save anyone from their television. Further to that, I'm not telling anyone that they need to be saved from their televisions. Rather, my initial point was simply this: if you do not have a television, you won't see shit ads. It was a throw-away comment & it really contributed nothing to the conversation at all. To be frank, I'm a little surprised it wasn't mod'ed as being off topic (I suppose it still could be? I'm new here)
I'm not going to argue with you about the having "some serious issues" bit though. Let's face it, if I didn't have "some serious issues", I'd do like the people do - I'd have a television and I'd eat meat.
NB: I'll read your reply if you post one, but most likely won't post on this issue again unless your is really very thought-provoking. This is nothing personal, I just have a personal tendency not to post more than three times in the one thread. Saves me getting bogged down. Cheers.
Ah, I see I may have to tell the story in a little more depth - no-no, it's no trouble, I like to tell stories.
I walked down to the supermarket with my cousin, who is also my flatmate, and who smokes. As he is a very sociable and chatty person, he knows all the staff at the local supermarket. This particular clerk, who I've also spoken with previously, didn't know that my cousin and I co-habitate. So in chatting, she discovered we share an apartment, discovered we are cousins, and proceeded to compare us to characters in some sit-com or drama show or other, at which point we had to tell her that we'd not the slightest idea of what she was talking about, as we own no television.
As for the rest of it, I'm more into board games than console, so that solves the need for a console, and also hints at how we entertain guests (as well as both being good cooks and lovers of long conversations)
Add a computer with a DVD player (17" screen, but I really don't watch too many DVDs at all) and four full bookcases, and you have a life without television.
*shrug* I don't know anything about the guy in The Onion article, but I know that I sometimes have a lot of trouble with people at parties, work functions, in the office caf, etc when they so often begin conversations with, "Did you watch insert-name-of-show-here last night?" and everyone in the circle nods enthusiastically and I have to say, "Ummm... no. I didn't. I read part of The Arabian Nights and had a conversation with my neighbour about her third boyfriend since June and why she always dates losers." That is when the flaming usually starts. Meh. It's a life.
I hear and read so many people bagging on television advertisements: too many, too long, poor quality, what's the deal with tampon ads during sport, etc.
I have a radical solution to television advertising. It has worked for me for almost 18 months now - and I think you know what's coming next...
Throw out your television.
Yeah, yeah - I get flamed by people irl about this too. The lady at the cigarette counter at my local supermarket told me just last night that for someone to lack a television in this modern day was "just tragic!"
I see less shit ads though...
Yes. Exactly that. To "take the piss" is to mock, usually with a mixture of caricature and ironic commentary. That's not from a dictionary - that's just how I (as an accredited piss-taker) would describe it.
I remember those ads. I can't help but wonder whether they tried several different formats and styles of delivery for that (in)famous, brightly delivered, line before they settled on the old, 20's & 30's posters coming to life - which kind of took the edge off by suggesting that, "way back then", such a phrase wasn't as suggestive.
If that's what they were trying though, it didn't work. I was still at school when they aired, and if there was one line guaranteed to bring down the house (treehouse, that is) it was, "I know! Why don't we nibble nobby's nuts?"
Or can we perhaps expect some kind of carpet-bombing style campaign, where in the middle of the night, 200,000 copies of M$Office fall from the sky over Jerusalem with a one-time-only-special-for-you-in-Israel-30-day-tri al-period-before-you-have-to-register-and-discover -you-can't-Unistall-this sting in the tail...
I know that here in Australia, when the government wants the particular section of the population that it chooses to call "youth" to know something, then the information will appear on our Government-funded, nationally-broadcast "youth radio station". Perhaps, if this information has only appeared on Arutz Sheva, the Israeli government is attempting a similar sort of "selective information"?