Sorry, the sibling relation is irreflexive. You could try cloning yourself, but unless it was carried in your mother's womb I don't think the resulting being would be more sibling than offspring.
This is perhaps the most disturbing semi-serious reply I've ever had to make.
Put it this way: if she's telling the truth overall, then she added in such an astounding amount of bias into the description of her plight that any sympathy I could muster was preempted by disbelief.
Perhaps I am using the wrong definition of troll. I realize that one usage of the word is for a recurring and overused dramatic story based on lies, for the purpose of eliciting a response or emotion from readers. In this case, if you take out the word recurring/overused and keep the part about it being a dramatized lie, that is what I was accusing the poster of.
> "For another, it was posted by an established slashdot user and not an AC. [...] and replies to too many posters to fit the "troll" profile."
Point.
> "Third, she gives too much specific detail"
Actually it was the detail that made me suspect her in the first place. If she hadn't laden the whole thing with so much fluff that I wanted to grab a very very small fiddle, then I probably would not have questioned her post. As it is, given everyone else's response (including hers to mine), I'll grant maybe she's not lying, but she sure as hell didn't do any favors to her credibility in my eyes by framing the original post the way she did.
> "What is your doubt based on?"
Ok, I'll try to explain that. Here are some of the things that tripped my instinct:
First paragraph: - Accident occurred during broad daylight at full speed at a stop sign - places the poster entirely in the clear and the other lady entirely at fault; how righteous of the protagonist and how vicious of every other character for mistreating her in the face of such a blatant wrongdoing. It's not that this by itself is implausable, it's that it's so open-and-shut that it seems to leave no leeway or gray-areas for corruption to play a role. - Occurred in front of a hospital, officers arrived late, and wind blew ticket off seat - none of these are particularly unlikely, but each of them is necessary for the progression of the story. Her experience would not have ended up the way it did without all three of these occurring by chance alone, so that chance compounds the unliklihood of the whole tale. If the officers did not really arrive "late" but that's rather an emotional characterization the victim added on her own, then that actually helps me believe the situation. - Officer acts in an absolutely outrageous manner - I don't know how to justify my disbelief here. It's just that I'd think there'd be better technicalities to bust someone on than "failure to prove insurance by physically touching a paper", and I also doubt the officer would just slip that ticket in her neckbrace. For that matter, why would the officer pick on the poster at all? Making her life hell doesn't lesson the liability of the antagonist or aid her in any other way. Either the original poster did something to seriously piss the officer off and omitted that part in this tale, or she must've gotten the crabbiest guy in the force.
Remaining paragraphs: - Again, what's with picking on the victim? Did she do something to piss off the entire city? I still don't see how all this is in line with looking out for the little old lady. - I have trouble imagining how all these facts are clearly in support of her side and the DA still felt it was safe enough to corruptly protect the guilty party. - It's all just too damn melodramatic for me to bear. The cadillac is the icing on the cake.
I will grant her this to her credit however: In my original reading of the post, I assumed there were a judge and court stenographer present during the conversation with the DA, and thus that this tale relied on the injustice of many important parties in the legal system despite all the evidence and dialog being in the public record. In my second reading I notice no mention of either persons, but she does say it was in court. As IANAL, I don't know whether it's possible to have such a proceeding without the judge/stenographer.
Congrats, this has got to be the most successful troll I've seen. And to think I thought the one about the CD-store owner not being able to buy his daughter good clothes was overdone. But they ate it up, so I guess you did something right. Maybe it's the choice of topic? That must be it, if the topic and moral of the story are in alignment with people's biases then they don't give a damn about the details. The CD one for instance promoted the wrong side of the debate, namely, anti-piracy. Funny, that the same phenomenon that slashdotters endlessly complain about and satirize (with phrases such as "Think of the children", "Child porn is the root password to the Constitution", etc.) turns out to hold no special exemption for themselves.
"Oh, you're SO right. I GUESS I should be more concerned with [objective descriptions] than covering my own butt! And MAYbe I'm talking like this because I can't STOP! Help me, [Safiire]! I have SERious MENTAL problems!"
Actually, I intended "staged" to mean "reenacted". The point still stands, as a true geek would probably not have made that kind of mistake when asked to look like he's typing.
I was about to respond with links to the definitions of those words, but then I realized you were probably being clever with the topic of the documentary. I admit defeat.
Let's try a ship analogy. You're on the titanic. You are an expert in china. You know exactly what color, shape, and style it should be in the room it's placed in, given the decorations of the room. You have no authority to control the china; that privilege is reserved for the captain, who also worries about the helm, the crew, and staying alive. Due to the mistakes of the previous captain, you're all heading for an iceberg and are about to die. You may care about the length of your life, but you are far more outspoken about your love of china. Given that everyone else on the ship is louder and more stubborn than you are about which way to turn to avoid the iceberg, you conclude that you have an equal chance of getting screwed either way and decide to at least support the guy you knew from china school.
Anyone care to rephrase in the form of a car analogy?
Did you even see "An Inconvenient Truth"? They had this staged conversation on his cellphone as he was typing at his computer. As the conversation became more dramatic towards the end, he positioned his finger over a key and at the right climactic moment, pressed it. The key was the spacebar.
I don't know why you characterize it as a bargain. That would imply that the creator has chips on the table. The default state is that there is no protection on content. Then society steps in and says, "In order to promote the creation and diversity of content, we'll give you a limited right to exercise exclusive control over the distribution and use of your work." The proper response from the creator is "Thank you for your generocity, sir, I won't disappoint you," not "'Bout time!" followed by attempts at grabbing more rights from the public.
There is no "version you can't make copies of" or "nullifying the bargain" - the creators do not have that privledge.
I didn't see Starship Troopers until a few months ago and I found it to be an amazing work that I should have watched long ago. I couldn't stop thinking of Starcraft as I saw it though, and I think much of the charm of the story, dialog, and attitude in SC can be attributed to ST.
For whatever reason Konqueror decided to submit my half-assed post before I gave it the other half of the ass.
Amended post reads:
> "I'm no rocket scientist...but it seems like that'd be a bad idea to seal yourself in a spacesuit with limited oxygen and a cigar..."
Easily fixed with some dialog from Thank You For Smoking:
Jeff Megall: Sony has a futuristic sci-fi movie they're looking to make. Nick Naylor: Cigarettes in space? Jeff Megall: It's the final frontier Nick. Nick Naylor: But wouldn't they, ya know, blow up in an all oxygen environment? Jeff Megall: Probably... but you know, its an easy fix. One line of dialogue..."Thank god we created the, ya know, whatever device."
> "I watched the High Definition trailor and [...]"
I don't have that luxary as Blizzard seems to be doing everything in its power to prevent people from viewing it under linux without jumping through hoops. It does not offer downloadable movies on its site, rather, it makes available windows or mac executables that presumably extract or torrent said movies. And these ones linked to in this summary require various plugins that I am not willing to download. But then again Blizzard has quite a history of disgracing its users in money-grabbing attempts to make advertising revenue, for example by not offering high-speed patch downloads off its website but rather outsourcing that to cruddy file hosting sites (Battle.net of course is not an option if you're under linux).
It's quite disappointing to see these kinds of signs after getting my hopes and opinion of the company raised so high.
The truly messed up thing is how the industry has managed to spin this to the public in their advertisements. After viewing one of those commercials where the parent screams at the teenager for an outrageous phone bill, have you ever just.. stepped out of the whole process and had an existential moment, where you realize, "Wait a minute, they admit that their prices are extortionate, and now they're just screwing me over in incrementally smaller amounts"? The whole emphasis on the keyword "minutes" - where they're treated like a currency, as the principle object of interest in all things cellphone-related - it is a tool and a trap almost in the same way people like Stallman consider the phrase "intellectual property" a trap. It brings you into a mentality that is against your interest, the idea that you agree with the telcoms, that they're on your side working with you; and it somehow suppresses common sense.
I wonder if a few centuries from now, people will look back on us and scoff at our free-culture beliefs in the way that Europeans looked upon Native Americans with no concept of land ownership. Maybe the natives were on to something there...
I recently got two unsolicited and unprofessional emails, supposedly from my bank (HSBC), that seemed very suspicious. They asked me to log in with my existing username and password for a new service, and mentioned that inaction on my part would lead to no further contact on the matter. They made that sound friendly yet threatening enough to induce me to actually consider visiting whatever service they were describing. All the images and hyperlinks were from a different domain (hsbcusa.com) than their well-known and advertised one (hsbc.com), and although the first website frequently linked to the main one, there were no return links to indicate to me that both were legit. To top it off, words like "free" were capitalized and highlighted, and the subject line contained "Urgent action needed on your account".
I'm guessing it was legit because the domain hsbcusa.com was registered with reasonable whois information (as far as I can judge) and I kind of doubt a phisher would care to mask his tracks from someone who'd actually investigate that. But if it is, then that demonstrates that it's more difficult than it should be to tell the difference between fraudulent and real messages, even for an educated user (unless I'm a moron - here's crossing my fingers that I'm not).
But Blizzard did in fact beat out Duke Nukem Forever. Now taking bets on Diablo 3.
Seriously, I'm very conflicted about this. Part of me realizes that the original developers are long gone and creating subscription games of a different franchise and genre. The other part of me knows this must have been in the works for a very, very long time, and probably went through many fine-tuning incarnations, and is really looking forward to seeings this released.
On the bright side, either way I'll have a chance this time around to learn to play well before the first wave of popularity dies off.
But there's so much in there that is so exclusively geeky.
Monroe is like the collective overmind of the entire geek population on the internet. I don't know if his thoughts radiate out mind control beams to our subconscious, or if he's a manifestation of all our thoughts but with a better vocabulary. Either way, I feel like I should worship him like I would any other overlord.
If you need any convincing: http://xkcd.com/c239.html Pay special attention to the alt-text for this one. He takes an entire world of the unwritten dreams of an entire population and its struggle against a corporate world with contrary interests, and condenses it all into a few panels of a stick figure comic. He understands because he is one of us, but unlike a lot of us he knows just how to express it, in the purest, simplest form, and he does it very, very well.
Sure, there's a layer of humor, but no non-geek who hasn't thought (at least subconsciously) the things that lie beneath the surface, can truly appreciate xkcd.
I opened up that article after reading the summary, ready to condemn the staff for their terrible judgement. Instead I found myself focusing on how the media used the kid and parent to produce a sob story (referring specifically to the video link). I'm actually finding it difficult to decide whether I dislike the school or the reporter more; both seem to have used the kids.
Genericon is trying to get him to come to RPI next year, so with any luck I may get my chance to meet him. Until then I'll just keep plastering comics on my door.
The Microsofties get all indignant when I try to convert them to the Way of the Floss. They dismiss me as a fanatic zealot if I dwell too long on the teachings of Stallman, or on the miracles performed by Linus. And they get really get freaked out when I reach the part about the commandment against eating penguin meat.
Irrelevant. Fair Use has no place in today's media-sponsered culture. Lawsuits and threats take place without regard to the actual legal merits of the case - this is true in all civil law, not just copyright law. The DMCA simply makes it slightly easier.
That's the first thing I thought when I read this, but then I realized that this kind of law is definitly required. What I'm not so thrilled about are the laws that push the line, like the one in New York that will allow the ticketing of people who listen to mp3 players while crossing the street. Some people are capable of looking both ways, despite hearing music. I suspect almost no one seriously believes they can safely drive while engaging in an IM conversation.
I'm not a fan of wireless, period. Provided the driver / management software is good enough to reconnect transparently, it's useful for web surfing. But it's worthless for gaming, and what's the point of having a "high-speed" (quotations used to illustrate my disdain for the term) connection if that's the case?
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, the sibling relation is irreflexive. You could try cloning yourself, but unless it was carried in your mother's womb I don't think the resulting being would be more sibling than offspring.
This is perhaps the most disturbing semi-serious reply I've ever had to make.
Put it this way: if she's telling the truth overall, then she added in such an astounding amount of bias into the description of her plight that any sympathy I could muster was preempted by disbelief.
Perhaps I am using the wrong definition of troll. I realize that one usage of the word is for a recurring and overused dramatic story based on lies, for the purpose of eliciting a response or emotion from readers. In this case, if you take out the word recurring/overused and keep the part about it being a dramatized lie, that is what I was accusing the poster of.
> "For another, it was posted by an established slashdot user and not an AC. [...] and replies to too many posters to fit the "troll" profile."
Point.
> "Third, she gives too much specific detail"
Actually it was the detail that made me suspect her in the first place. If she hadn't laden the whole thing with so much fluff that I wanted to grab a very very small fiddle, then I probably would not have questioned her post. As it is, given everyone else's response (including hers to mine), I'll grant maybe she's not lying, but she sure as hell didn't do any favors to her credibility in my eyes by framing the original post the way she did.
> "What is your doubt based on?"
Ok, I'll try to explain that. Here are some of the things that tripped my instinct:
First paragraph:
- Accident occurred during broad daylight at full speed at a stop sign - places the poster entirely in the clear and the other lady entirely at fault; how righteous of the protagonist and how vicious of every other character for mistreating her in the face of such a blatant wrongdoing. It's not that this by itself is implausable, it's that it's so open-and-shut that it seems to leave no leeway or gray-areas for corruption to play a role.
- Occurred in front of a hospital, officers arrived late, and wind blew ticket off seat - none of these are particularly unlikely, but each of them is necessary for the progression of the story. Her experience would not have ended up the way it did without all three of these occurring by chance alone, so that chance compounds the unliklihood of the whole tale. If the officers did not really arrive "late" but that's rather an emotional characterization the victim added on her own, then that actually helps me believe the situation.
- Officer acts in an absolutely outrageous manner - I don't know how to justify my disbelief here. It's just that I'd think there'd be better technicalities to bust someone on than "failure to prove insurance by physically touching a paper", and I also doubt the officer would just slip that ticket in her neckbrace. For that matter, why would the officer pick on the poster at all? Making her life hell doesn't lesson the liability of the antagonist or aid her in any other way. Either the original poster did something to seriously piss the officer off and omitted that part in this tale, or she must've gotten the crabbiest guy in the force.
Remaining paragraphs:
- Again, what's with picking on the victim? Did she do something to piss off the entire city? I still don't see how all this is in line with looking out for the little old lady.
- I have trouble imagining how all these facts are clearly in support of her side and the DA still felt it was safe enough to corruptly protect the guilty party.
- It's all just too damn melodramatic for me to bear. The cadillac is the icing on the cake.
I will grant her this to her credit however: In my original reading of the post, I assumed there were a judge and court stenographer present during the conversation with the DA, and thus that this tale relied on the injustice of many important parties in the legal system despite all the evidence and dialog being in the public record. In my second reading I notice no mention of either persons, but she does say it was in court. As IANAL, I don't know whether it's possible to have such a proceeding without the judge/stenographer.
Congrats, this has got to be the most successful troll I've seen. And to think I thought the one about the CD-store owner not being able to buy his daughter good clothes was overdone. But they ate it up, so I guess you did something right. Maybe it's the choice of topic? That must be it, if the topic and moral of the story are in alignment with people's biases then they don't give a damn about the details. The CD one for instance promoted the wrong side of the debate, namely, anti-piracy. Funny, that the same phenomenon that slashdotters endlessly complain about and satirize (with phrases such as "Think of the children", "Child porn is the root password to the Constitution", etc.) turns out to hold no special exemption for themselves.
By all means, please recommend one.
"Oh, you're SO right. I GUESS I should be more concerned with [objective descriptions] than covering my own butt! And MAYbe I'm talking like this because I can't STOP! Help me, [Safiire]! I have SERious MENTAL problems!"
Actually, I intended "staged" to mean "reenacted". The point still stands, as a true geek would probably not have made that kind of mistake when asked to look like he's typing.
I was about to respond with links to the definitions of those words, but then I realized you were probably being clever with the topic of the documentary. I admit defeat.
Let's try a ship analogy. You're on the titanic. You are an expert in china. You know exactly what color, shape, and style it should be in the room it's placed in, given the decorations of the room. You have no authority to control the china; that privilege is reserved for the captain, who also worries about the helm, the crew, and staying alive. Due to the mistakes of the previous captain, you're all heading for an iceberg and are about to die. You may care about the length of your life, but you are far more outspoken about your love of china. Given that everyone else on the ship is louder and more stubborn than you are about which way to turn to avoid the iceberg, you conclude that you have an equal chance of getting screwed either way and decide to at least support the guy you knew from china school.
Anyone care to rephrase in the form of a car analogy?
Did you even see "An Inconvenient Truth"? They had this staged conversation on his cellphone as he was typing at his computer. As the conversation became more dramatic towards the end, he positioned his finger over a key and at the right climactic moment, pressed it. The key was the spacebar.
I don't know why you characterize it as a bargain. That would imply that the creator has chips on the table. The default state is that there is no protection on content. Then society steps in and says, "In order to promote the creation and diversity of content, we'll give you a limited right to exercise exclusive control over the distribution and use of your work." The proper response from the creator is "Thank you for your generocity, sir, I won't disappoint you," not "'Bout time!" followed by attempts at grabbing more rights from the public.
There is no "version you can't make copies of" or "nullifying the bargain" - the creators do not have that privledge.
Maybe I'll believe that when they release the trailers in a cross-platform format rather than through OS-specific executables.
I mean, for God's sake you'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask.
I didn't see Starship Troopers until a few months ago and I found it to be an amazing work that I should have watched long ago. I couldn't stop thinking of Starcraft as I saw it though, and I think much of the charm of the story, dialog, and attitude in SC can be attributed to ST.
For whatever reason Konqueror decided to submit my half-assed post before I gave it the other half of the ass.
Amended post reads:
> "I'm no rocket scientist...but it seems like that'd be a bad idea to seal yourself in a spacesuit with limited oxygen and a cigar..."
Easily fixed with some dialog from Thank You For Smoking:
Jeff Megall: Sony has a futuristic sci-fi movie they're looking to make.
Nick Naylor: Cigarettes in space?
Jeff Megall: It's the final frontier Nick.
Nick Naylor: But wouldn't they, ya know, blow up in an all oxygen environment?
Jeff Megall: Probably... but you know, its an easy fix. One line of dialogue..."Thank god we created the, ya know, whatever device."
> "I watched the High Definition trailor and [...]"
I don't have that luxary as Blizzard seems to be doing everything in its power to prevent people from viewing it under linux without jumping through hoops. It does not offer downloadable movies on its site, rather, it makes available windows or mac executables that presumably extract or torrent said movies. And these ones linked to in this summary require various plugins that I am not willing to download. But then again Blizzard has quite a history of disgracing its users in money-grabbing attempts to make advertising revenue, for example by not offering high-speed patch downloads off its website but rather outsourcing that to cruddy file hosting sites (Battle.net of course is not an option if you're under linux).
It's quite disappointing to see these kinds of signs after getting my hopes and opinion of the company raised so high.
> "I'm no rocket scientist...but it seems like that'd be a bad idea to seal yourself in a spacesuit with limited oxygen and a cigar..."
Easily fixed with some dialog from Thank You For Smoking: 'Thank god we invented the... whatever'
The truly messed up thing is how the industry has managed to spin this to the public in their advertisements. After viewing one of those commercials where the parent screams at the teenager for an outrageous phone bill, have you ever just.. stepped out of the whole process and had an existential moment, where you realize, "Wait a minute, they admit that their prices are extortionate, and now they're just screwing me over in incrementally smaller amounts"? The whole emphasis on the keyword "minutes" - where they're treated like a currency, as the principle object of interest in all things cellphone-related - it is a tool and a trap almost in the same way people like Stallman consider the phrase "intellectual property" a trap. It brings you into a mentality that is against your interest, the idea that you agree with the telcoms, that they're on your side working with you; and it somehow suppresses common sense.
I wonder if a few centuries from now, people will look back on us and scoff at our free-culture beliefs in the way that Europeans looked upon Native Americans with no concept of land ownership. Maybe the natives were on to something there...
I recently got two unsolicited and unprofessional emails, supposedly from my bank (HSBC), that seemed very suspicious. They asked me to log in with my existing username and password for a new service, and mentioned that inaction on my part would lead to no further contact on the matter. They made that sound friendly yet threatening enough to induce me to actually consider visiting whatever service they were describing. All the images and hyperlinks were from a different domain (hsbcusa.com) than their well-known and advertised one (hsbc.com), and although the first website frequently linked to the main one, there were no return links to indicate to me that both were legit. To top it off, words like "free" were capitalized and highlighted, and the subject line contained "Urgent action needed on your account".
I'm guessing it was legit because the domain hsbcusa.com was registered with reasonable whois information (as far as I can judge) and I kind of doubt a phisher would care to mask his tracks from someone who'd actually investigate that. But if it is, then that demonstrates that it's more difficult than it should be to tell the difference between fraudulent and real messages, even for an educated user (unless I'm a moron - here's crossing my fingers that I'm not).
But Blizzard did in fact beat out Duke Nukem Forever. Now taking bets on Diablo 3.
Seriously, I'm very conflicted about this. Part of me realizes that the original developers are long gone and creating subscription games of a different franchise and genre. The other part of me knows this must have been in the works for a very, very long time, and probably went through many fine-tuning incarnations, and is really looking forward to seeings this released.
On the bright side, either way I'll have a chance this time around to learn to play well before the first wave of popularity dies off.
But there's so much in there that is so exclusively geeky.
Monroe is like the collective overmind of the entire geek population on the internet. I don't know if his thoughts radiate out mind control beams to our subconscious, or if he's a manifestation of all our thoughts but with a better vocabulary. Either way, I feel like I should worship him like I would any other overlord.
If you need any convincing: http://xkcd.com/c239.html
Pay special attention to the alt-text for this one. He takes an entire world of the unwritten dreams of an entire population and its struggle against a corporate world with contrary interests, and condenses it all into a few panels of a stick figure comic. He understands because he is one of us, but unlike a lot of us he knows just how to express it, in the purest, simplest form, and he does it very, very well.
Sure, there's a layer of humor, but no non-geek who hasn't thought (at least subconsciously) the things that lie beneath the surface, can truly appreciate xkcd.
I opened up that article after reading the summary, ready to condemn the staff for their terrible judgement. Instead I found myself focusing on how the media used the kid and parent to produce a sob story (referring specifically to the video link). I'm actually finding it difficult to decide whether I dislike the school or the reporter more; both seem to have used the kids.
Genericon is trying to get him to come to RPI next year, so with any luck I may get my chance to meet him. Until then I'll just keep plastering comics on my door.
The Microsofties get all indignant when I try to convert them to the Way of the Floss. They dismiss me as a fanatic zealot if I dwell too long on the teachings of Stallman, or on the miracles performed by Linus. And they get really get freaked out when I reach the part about the commandment against eating penguin meat.
Funny, I have the same combination on my luggage.
Irrelevant. Fair Use has no place in today's media-sponsered culture. Lawsuits and threats take place without regard to the actual legal merits of the case - this is true in all civil law, not just copyright law. The DMCA simply makes it slightly easier.
That's the first thing I thought when I read this, but then I realized that this kind of law is definitly required. What I'm not so thrilled about are the laws that push the line, like the one in New York that will allow the ticketing of people who listen to mp3 players while crossing the street. Some people are capable of looking both ways, despite hearing music. I suspect almost no one seriously believes they can safely drive while engaging in an IM conversation.
I'm not a fan of wireless, period. Provided the driver / management software is good enough to reconnect transparently, it's useful for web surfing. But it's worthless for gaming, and what's the point of having a "high-speed" (quotations used to illustrate my disdain for the term) connection if that's the case?