Read my quote. I'm not sure if it's in the book, but in the game, you have to defuse a bomb. It loses track, counting down from a thousand (at random #s around 200), and has to start over. To get it to STFU, you have to notice that the parrot flying around occasionally says "NOBODY LIKES A SMARTASS", among other things, and type it into the bomb.
Great game, and not just because of the (quite advanced, esp. for the time) natural language processing.
I agree with you; my country is far too uptight. But it's like busting Al Capone for tax evasion 'cuz they couldn't get him for bootlegging, rum running, gambling, organized crime, etc.
With Bush and Asscroft in power, it just might work!
It makes sense, though. If you want to take the flexible view, language is constantly evolving, and the verbing (no pun intended) of nouns is popular, as mentioned in the jargon file. We all understood what he meant, anyway. Second-language teachers call this communicative competence.
If you want to be less forgiving, English is a Germanic language. Thus, it makes sense that as German noun-verbing (Esse [food] => essen [to eat], etc) is acceptable and even common, English noun-verbing should be acceptable.
For large companies, this wouldn't be great (I get a feeling of "they haven't forgotten me" when I'm on hold, even though I hate waiting like that), they'd worry about missing the call/being on the phone, etc. For a startup like this guy, it'd be great.
Put actual music on there, and change it. Not stuff that only appeals to a small audience - stuff lots of people like. Blue Man Group, Beatles, ABBA... or whatever. Licensing might be an issue; I don't know. But don't put on Ride of the Valkries and Beethovens 9th 300 kajillion times in a row.
Also from "The Robots of Dawn". Which is related to the Foundation series, in a way. Very pre-historic, from the Foundation's point of view, but Dr. Hans Fastolfe was the guy who originally came up with the idea (although he couldn't implement it) of psychohistory. At Giskard's suggestion. That was why he was so interested in robots; he wondered if the 3 laws had equivalents in humans.
His employer's firing him doesn't make him guilty, and 25 years is overboard. But he broke (probably) some sort of privacy laws, he stole (yes, stole, legally speaking) proprietary information, and he probably can be held responsible for breaking AOL's privacy policy.
IANAL, but I bet he's looking at either some nice fines or a year or three of jail. Minimum security, which, as we know from Office Space, is not a white-collar resort.
As an American, I would kill for BBC. I'd give up cable (TV) if I could get BBC over the internet. That is, if any of the US ISPs would sell me DSL/cable without cable TV or phone service.
I'm just speculating here; but it might require a captcha (yeah, I know, easily beaten) or some series of info that's not necessarily "remembered" - address, phone #, the CC# of the account, mother's maiden name, whatever.
Knowing how smart these companies are, I doubt it'll happen. But hopefully...
My ISP, Comcast, just doubled my speed for free (I think 1.5 to 3.0). All I had to do was unplug my modem for a few minutes, then plug it back in (well, that's what they said; in reality, I just turned it off).
I hate Comcast as much as the next guy; bundling, shitty customer service, moronic tech support... but I'd rather pay $40 and hassle with them (and my dynamic IP) occasionally than pay an extra $20 for speakeasy.
NIST uses the meter internally (the cm is derived from the m). Thus, the inch is defined in terms of the meter/centimeter. The meter is defined as the number of wavelengths a laser from krypton gas in a vacuum or something like that. It's also defined in terms of the speed of light in a vacuum, or it used to be.
So the inch got shorter. There is no official inch/pound/gallon anymore; they're all defined in terms of SI units.
An easy way to convert kilometers to miles; the ratio is about.62, which is about the golden proportion (phi). The ratio between F(n) and F(n+1), where F(n) is the nth Fibbonnacci number, approaches phi as n approaches infinity (translation: the higher you go, the closer it is to phi). There's almost always a pair of numbers that matches up nicely.
Hey, that's cool..3936 (inches in a centimeter) is nearly equal to 39.37 * 10^-2, and 39.37 is the number of inches in a meter.
For those of you who are humor impaired, I saw that "connection", then realized, oh, duh - a centimeter is 10^2 meters. The parent either got his info from a site with a rounding error, or took the inverse of the grandparent's number, which had a rounding error. Heh. I kill me...
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Hmm ... did you by any chance read the article a few weeks/months ago about the spammer from (I think) Eire?
Read my quote. I'm not sure if it's in the book, but in the game, you have to defuse a bomb. It loses track, counting down from a thousand (at random #s around 200), and has to start over. To get it to STFU, you have to notice that the parrot flying around occasionally says "NOBODY LIKES A SMARTASS", among other things, and type it into the bomb.
Great game, and not just because of the (quite advanced, esp. for the time) natural language processing.
I remember now. I read that part and thought, "now I *know* this is a comedy. In the Real World, they'd just steal the credit".
Just 'cuz you've got an address doesn't make you a resident. Just 'cuz you're a resident doesn't make you an illegal resident.
Isn't that more Indian and Dani ... dammit, I've gotta grow a sense of humor.
Which is that from? I know it's in Starship Titanic (game for sure, possibly the book, I forget), but is it in H2G2?
The original quote, as I remember it from the game (GUI, natural language, not the book) was "NOBODY LIKES A SMARTASS". As a defusal code, IIRC.
Aren't flat-panel monitors and TVs *horizontally* challenged?
$52,000? Really? Any relation to the AOL email guy who got $52,000?
You misspelled biatch.
I agree with you; my country is far too uptight. But it's like busting Al Capone for tax evasion 'cuz they couldn't get him for bootlegging, rum running, gambling, organized crime, etc.
With Bush and Asscroft in power, it just might work!
It's more established as a word, but take a look at the root of the word "crafted". Is it a noun? You tell me.
It makes sense, though. If you want to take the flexible view, language is constantly evolving, and the verbing (no pun intended) of nouns is popular, as mentioned in the jargon file. We all understood what he meant, anyway. Second-language teachers call this communicative competence.
If you want to be less forgiving, English is a Germanic language. Thus, it makes sense that as German noun-verbing (Esse [food] => essen [to eat], etc) is acceptable and even common, English noun-verbing should be acceptable.
Yeah, I know, IHBT, IHL, HAND.
I loved that ad!
For large companies, this wouldn't be great (I get a feeling of "they haven't forgotten me" when I'm on hold, even though I hate waiting like that), they'd worry about missing the call/being on the phone, etc. For a startup like this guy, it'd be great.
Put actual music on there, and change it. Not stuff that only appeals to a small audience - stuff lots of people like. Blue Man Group, Beatles, ABBA ... or whatever. Licensing might be an issue; I don't know. But don't put on Ride of the Valkries and Beethovens 9th 300 kajillion times in a row.
Also from "The Robots of Dawn". Which is related to the Foundation series, in a way. Very pre-historic, from the Foundation's point of view, but Dr. Hans Fastolfe was the guy who originally came up with the idea (although he couldn't implement it) of psychohistory. At Giskard's suggestion. That was why he was so interested in robots; he wondered if the 3 laws had equivalents in humans.
For breaking what law?
His employer's firing him doesn't make him guilty, and 25 years is overboard. But he broke (probably) some sort of privacy laws, he stole (yes, stole, legally speaking) proprietary information, and he probably can be held responsible for breaking AOL's privacy policy.
IANAL, but I bet he's looking at either some nice fines or a year or three of jail. Minimum security, which, as we know from Office Space, is not a white-collar resort.
Slowly? Carefully? Tell that to the guy who told me to reformat C: when I called up ... all I wanted was to know when the outage would be over.
As an American, I would kill for BBC. I'd give up cable (TV) if I could get BBC over the internet. That is, if any of the US ISPs would sell me DSL/cable without cable TV or phone service.
I'm just speculating here; but it might require a captcha (yeah, I know, easily beaten) or some series of info that's not necessarily "remembered" - address, phone #, the CC# of the account, mother's maiden name, whatever.
...
Knowing how smart these companies are, I doubt it'll happen. But hopefully
My ISP, Comcast, just doubled my speed for free (I think 1.5 to 3.0). All I had to do was unplug my modem for a few minutes, then plug it back in (well, that's what they said; in reality, I just turned it off).
... but I'd rather pay $40 and hassle with them (and my dynamic IP) occasionally than pay an extra $20 for speakeasy.
I hate Comcast as much as the next guy; bundling, shitty customer service, moronic tech support
NIST uses the meter internally (the cm is derived from the m). Thus, the inch is defined in terms of the meter/centimeter. The meter is defined as the number of wavelengths a laser from krypton gas in a vacuum or something like that. It's also defined in terms of the speed of light in a vacuum, or it used to be.
So the inch got shorter. There is no official inch/pound/gallon anymore; they're all defined in terms of SI units.
An easy way to convert kilometers to miles; the ratio is about .62, which is about the golden proportion (phi). The ratio between F(n) and F(n+1), where F(n) is the nth Fibbonnacci number, approaches phi as n approaches infinity (translation: the higher you go, the closer it is to phi). There's almost always a pair of numbers that matches up nicely.
Hey, that's cool. .3936 (inches in a centimeter) is nearly equal to 39.37 * 10^-2, and 39.37 is the number of inches in a meter.
...
For those of you who are humor impaired, I saw that "connection", then realized, oh, duh - a centimeter is 10^2 meters. The parent either got his info from a site with a rounding error, or took the inverse of the grandparent's number, which had a rounding error. Heh. I kill me
Maybe that's why it didn't work ... they didn't install it!