Only women believe in astrology. I've known about an equal number of men and women who believe in astrology, personally.
Stupid assumption number 2: Women believe what they read in fashion magazines, if they read them at all. I haven't read one in a decade, but even at the age of 13 I thought they were mostly bullshit. I just thought the clothes were pretty. Most women I know take any fashion magazine with a large grain of salt.
Stupid assumption number 3: That any women would want to date 99.9999999999999% of the people responding to this post after reading the comments. Sheesh, people.
Stupid assumption number 4: What, women aren't scientists?
Why not individual suits? In small claims, at least, the consumer doesn't have to pay for a lawyer, while the company would have to pay for an employee to attend. And enough of them sure as hell would get any company's attention.
I think in this case, you're mistaking a number of people's reasons for using Foxit. I know I personally was recommended it by my very nongeeky brother for the sole reason that it's faster. I know my brother. He does't give a damn about security, and hell, it's not like Adobe's reader isn't free too. He just likes it because it loads a lot faster than Adobe's reader. Which is pretty much the exact same reason I use it too. Fast is good. I like fast.
Personally, I have never encountered the problem you have. I don't particularly doubt you that it exists, but I don't think I've ever used Foxit in two page mode. And so this horrible fatal flaw that irritates you so badly is completely and utterly irrelevant to me. You want to hate it for that? No skin off my nose if you use a different reader. For me, Foxit serves my needs just fine, and the needs of everyone I know with it installed just fine. So maybe it doesn't work for you, but it sure works fine for a bunch of people.
Don't ask for a can opener attachment! Once they start giving human amputees bionic arms with can openers, the day will come when cats are given bionic legs with can openers. The human race will be doomed!
Phantoms in the Brain by Ramachandran doesn't go into detail onto the neurons firing like this article, but he does suggest an interesting experiment:
Get a friend. (This being slashdot, if you don't have any, I suggest building a robot.)
Conceal your hand underneath a table so that you can't see it. Have him tap on it in a weird pattern.
With his other hand, have him tap the table where you can see it in the same pattern he's doing on your hand. After he's been doing this for a bit, the sensation will seem to be coming from the table.
Note that it doesn't work on everyone, for some reason. But it will work on about half the people you try (I think. Half in my experience, at least.)
Also, read Phantoms in the Brain. It's an awesome book.
That very basic economic principle of supply and demand. The more money people are willing to pay for something, the higher the supply is. Therefore, reducing costs below the level where companies can recoup their investment means that the supply of new drugs will drop to virtually nothing.
I have to wonder how many of the people rating you informative frequent Snopes, and never noticed because they had Adblock. God knows that I certainly find you informative for that reason.
Even the ex-Mormons I've met seem to have few bad things to say and if they do, you can't help but notice there's a certain lingering nostalgia in their eyes. So is now a bad time to share how in high school, after my mom died, I played around with the idea of converting to Mormonism to see if she really would come back to life and eat their brains for trying to convert me like she threatened to? My mother was raised Mormon, and she generally was one of the more easy-going people I've known, but wow did she hate Mormonism.
I'd argue with this on the basis it depends on what climate you're in. I live in Los Angeles with my father, and he refuses to turn on the air conditioning on in the summer, except maybe on the hottest nights. Going outside when it's 100 degrees outside still doesn't appeal to me because the heat just drains me of any energy whatsoever.
For the most part though, I think you made an interesting argument there. If nothing else, when your home's air-conditioned, you don't always dress for the weather, making going outside infinitely worse.
I'd really have to say it's the size, cost, and lack of moving parts. It's perfect for slipping into my purse (though I expect this'll make it targeted more towards women, since they're the ones already carrying around something that'll hold this). It's cheaper than any other laptop out there, especially the small ones. The fact it has a flash drive means that a) the hard drive will be less likely to be the first thing to fail because I've jarred it so much and b) sitting on my lap as I type in bed, it's still less noisy than my desktop 10 feet away, which is nice for insomniac nights where I hate noise. It boots up faster than any other notebook I've had.
The Linux version it comes with by default isn't really my favorite, but I'll probably get around to tweaking it one of these days. I have, however, noticed that when I show complete technological illiterates my laptop, they tend to figure out how to find stuff faster than when I've shown them Windows stuff. Personally, I tend to figure it's the kind of machine that's great for either know-nothings, or experts. I'm not an expert by any means, but I'm willing to read online instructions for any tweaks I want.
It's a laptop that's expected to be used 99% of the time just to get you on the internet, and I don't have any real complaints about that. I have a desktop if I want to use a regular keyboard and a decent size monitor. This is for portability, and it's damn good at that.
To the person who tagged this article as "fragging furries", wouldn't "yiffing furries" be a more likely outcome of this? After all, the avatars would likely resemble plushies.
No, indeed, while I am no fan of the MAFIAA, there IS a very real problem with our young people and their perceptions on copyright. The general consensus is that if they didn't have to filch if off a store shelf, it's morally a-ok, and this mentality pervades every college campus I've ever been to.
I'd have to agree with that, but it's also very easy to see why. One party has unilaterally declared a position that everyone can agree is downright absurd (and if you don't think that $15 dollar CDs, a copyright term extending multiple generations past the death of the creator, DRM stopping even fair use use of most music and movies is absurd, I'd like to see what is). In the absence of a reasonable outline of fair use, people create their own version. Unlike the RIAA's, it lacks legal force, but, like the RIAA's, it's to their own advantage. If the music and movie industries hadn't tried to screw over their consumers so hard, then their customers probably wouldn't be screwing them over right back.
My book collection comprises several thousand books. I prefer longer books to shorter ones, so I'm guessing they average 400-500 pages. I estimate that I would die of old age before finishing scanning them in. I'd call that far more trouble, wouldn't you?
My guess is because they were going for a fairly light-hearted story, with a few light gasps and chills, and not trying to get people actually furious. The last thing I'd put the Tuskegee study in is with a bunch of experiements described as wacky. Would you?
Which would you rather have, a choice between three consoles who are all somewhat different, each catering to a different set of gamers, or a market where all three console manufacturers shipped boxes that were essentially identical and catered to only a narrow market?
Well, that's easy. If I'm in that narrow market (as much of Slashdot is), I want all three consoles competing for my dollar. What do I care that non-hardcore gamers are being ignored by the market? I've got three companies competing with each other to give me something squarely aimed at my interests.
That's short term thinking, of course, since hardcore gamers don't start out hardcore, and eventually, if the companies only released for the hardcore market, they'd die through lack of new blood. But it's not a gamer's job to be thinking that- It's Nintendo's and Sony's and the XBox's teams'.
Who would you hold responsible? Let's see... The company that makes the robots, the middlemen, the city they tasered you in, the maintenance people, the people who stood around watching as you were hurt, the hospital that inflicted additional emotional distress on you in mishandling your injuries...
I'd probably skip suing the bystanders though. Unless one of them was rich.
I've been watching this since it started, and what continually amazes me is how poorly livejournal is handling this. Over 24 hours into this, there is no announcement. Nothing reassuring users that their journal won't be next. Nothing apologizing for wiping out the incest survivor's livejournal in their witchhunt. Not even something saying "This is business, deal." The only news livejournallers have heard from livejournal came from an outside news source.
Forget the deletions. People were upset, but would have forgotten it quickly if livejournal had just said "We purged some pedophile rings, but some other stuff may have gotten caught in it. If there are any livejournals purged that were genuinely innocent, tell us." People would've bitched, would have said the sky was falling down, that Livejournal had gone down the tubes since Six Apart bought them, but there wouldn't have been this sort of mass hysteria.
Now, I'm anticipating the next great fandom migration will be happening a few years sooner than otherwise, and this makes me grumpy, because migrations are a pain in the ass. And it wouldn't be happening any time soon if Livejournal weren't currently doing their level best to make fandom - a group of people who in my experience pay a great deal of money for their playspace - feel unwelcome.
Amen. I only hope that someday game designers will start animating guys' asses with the same loving attention to detail. Girls want eyecandy too, damnit.
Damnit. I'm forfeiting mod points to respond, but you hit a major pet peeve of mine there.
You do not get to define the terms of a debate. You do not get to say "If you do not take a particular action that I like you to take, you have lost the ability to debate this without being a flaming hypocrite." You can also lay off the self-aggrandizing holier-than-thou soapboxing, but I don't really care about that.
I'm probably not going to contact my representative on this issue. I may, because I think this is as much bullshit as everyone else, but frankly I have so much shit going on in my life right now that I just have absolutely no desire to do so. On the other hand, I decided years ago that I wouldn't give the RIAA or the MPAA a single cent, nor would I give them mindshare by pirating. I'm not going to say I've never broken that, but only twice. (It helps that I prefer books and videogames to music and movies.) And you're saying that if I don't take a single action you think I should take I lose the right to bitch about the RIAA? Um. No.
Personally, I'm also not convinced that patents and copywrites are entirely vital to creativity, but that's another debate entirely.
For me, personally, I might have gone into programming -if I'd ever been in any meaningful way exposed or encouraged in it. I enjoy what very little programming I know, but no one ever said, "Hey, acherusia, you're pretty good at math and I rarely see you off that computer of yours. Have you ever considered making a career out of that?" It was more "Wow, you really love reading - are you going to become a writer?" Or "Own your own company! You'd be awesome at it." (Every single person in my family who works, bar one cousin, runs their own business or is part of a family business, so that was definitely something I was encouraged in.) And that's probably at least part of the reason I'm looking to get a job in publishing when I graduate.
It seems like a minor thing, but I don't know many people who were never encouraged in what they eventually chose as their career goal. And very few women I've known were ever encouraged to go into computers. It's not really obvious, but I do wonder how much of it comes from the fact that girls are rarely told, "You seem the like computers. Why not make a career out of it?"
Actually, what I think is ideal is a powerpoint that you can write on while you're talking.
I got a tablet PC a year or so ago. (I'm writing this post on it, as a matter of fact.) And the very few times I've had the opportunity to present on it, being able to actually write on it has been invaluable. I can check off the points I'm covering to emphasize them. I can draw a chart that occurs to me in the middle of my presentation. I can correct errors on the spot. If I were sufficiently comfortable speaking with it (in all honesty, I haven't used it for presentations enough to be that comfortable yet), I'd leave blank slides for me to write on as I speak.
At the same time, the PowerPoint lets me have a certain degree of information already in place. I can use graphs, I can have all the pre-written stuff that PowerPoint currently lets me have, without sacrificing flexibility.
I don't really think tablet PCs are that useful yet for anyone who doesn't present a lot, who doesn't take a lot of notes that wee for purely personal use (college students, i.e. me), or who doesn't write nearly as well when typing as opposed to writing (also me). But for anyone who fits those categories, tablet pcs are great.
Even if it does keep thinking I wrote 'wee' whenever I write 'are'.
Sadly, he also tragically forgot speciesism, vitalism, and antidisestablishmentarianism, and thus the award for most -isms in a comment does not go to him.
Slashdot Mirror
Only women believe in astrology. I've known about an equal number of men and women who believe in astrology, personally.
Stupid assumption number 2: Women believe what they read in fashion magazines, if they read them at all. I haven't read one in a decade, but even at the age of 13 I thought they were mostly bullshit. I just thought the clothes were pretty. Most women I know take any fashion magazine with a large grain of salt.
Stupid assumption number 3: That any women would want to date 99.9999999999999% of the people responding to this post after reading the comments. Sheesh, people.
Stupid assumption number 4: What, women aren't scientists?
Why not individual suits? In small claims, at least, the consumer doesn't have to pay for a lawyer, while the company would have to pay for an employee to attend. And enough of them sure as hell would get any company's attention.
I think in this case, you're mistaking a number of people's reasons for using Foxit. I know I personally was recommended it by my very nongeeky brother for the sole reason that it's faster. I know my brother. He does't give a damn about security, and hell, it's not like Adobe's reader isn't free too. He just likes it because it loads a lot faster than Adobe's reader. Which is pretty much the exact same reason I use it too. Fast is good. I like fast.
Personally, I have never encountered the problem you have. I don't particularly doubt you that it exists, but I don't think I've ever used Foxit in two page mode. And so this horrible fatal flaw that irritates you so badly is completely and utterly irrelevant to me. You want to hate it for that? No skin off my nose if you use a different reader. For me, Foxit serves my needs just fine, and the needs of everyone I know with it installed just fine. So maybe it doesn't work for you, but it sure works fine for a bunch of people.
Don't ask for a can opener attachment! Once they start giving human amputees bionic arms with can openers, the day will come when cats are given bionic legs with can openers. The human race will be doomed!
...You know you've been on the internet too long when your first thought is "I bet there's a fetish website for that."
Phantoms in the Brain by Ramachandran doesn't go into detail onto the neurons firing like this article, but he does suggest an interesting experiment:
Note that it doesn't work on everyone, for some reason. But it will work on about half the people you try (I think. Half in my experience, at least.)
Also, read Phantoms in the Brain. It's an awesome book.
That very basic economic principle of supply and demand. The more money people are willing to pay for something, the higher the supply is. Therefore, reducing costs below the level where companies can recoup their investment means that the supply of new drugs will drop to virtually nothing.
I have to wonder how many of the people rating you informative frequent Snopes, and never noticed because they had Adblock. God knows that I certainly find you informative for that reason.
I'd argue with this on the basis it depends on what climate you're in. I live in Los Angeles with my father, and he refuses to turn on the air conditioning on in the summer, except maybe on the hottest nights. Going outside when it's 100 degrees outside still doesn't appeal to me because the heat just drains me of any energy whatsoever.
For the most part though, I think you made an interesting argument there. If nothing else, when your home's air-conditioned, you don't always dress for the weather, making going outside infinitely worse.
I'd really have to say it's the size, cost, and lack of moving parts. It's perfect for slipping into my purse (though I expect this'll make it targeted more towards women, since they're the ones already carrying around something that'll hold this). It's cheaper than any other laptop out there, especially the small ones. The fact it has a flash drive means that a) the hard drive will be less likely to be the first thing to fail because I've jarred it so much and b) sitting on my lap as I type in bed, it's still less noisy than my desktop 10 feet away, which is nice for insomniac nights where I hate noise. It boots up faster than any other notebook I've had.
The Linux version it comes with by default isn't really my favorite, but I'll probably get around to tweaking it one of these days. I have, however, noticed that when I show complete technological illiterates my laptop, they tend to figure out how to find stuff faster than when I've shown them Windows stuff. Personally, I tend to figure it's the kind of machine that's great for either know-nothings, or experts. I'm not an expert by any means, but I'm willing to read online instructions for any tweaks I want.
It's a laptop that's expected to be used 99% of the time just to get you on the internet, and I don't have any real complaints about that. I have a desktop if I want to use a regular keyboard and a decent size monitor. This is for portability, and it's damn good at that.
To the person who tagged this article as "fragging furries", wouldn't "yiffing furries" be a more likely outcome of this? After all, the avatars would likely resemble plushies.
No, indeed, while I am no fan of the MAFIAA, there IS a very real problem with our young people and their perceptions on copyright. The general consensus is that if they didn't have to filch if off a store shelf, it's morally a-ok, and this mentality pervades every college campus I've ever been to. I'd have to agree with that, but it's also very easy to see why. One party has unilaterally declared a position that everyone can agree is downright absurd (and if you don't think that $15 dollar CDs, a copyright term extending multiple generations past the death of the creator, DRM stopping even fair use use of most music and movies is absurd, I'd like to see what is). In the absence of a reasonable outline of fair use, people create their own version. Unlike the RIAA's, it lacks legal force, but, like the RIAA's, it's to their own advantage. If the music and movie industries hadn't tried to screw over their consumers so hard, then their customers probably wouldn't be screwing them over right back.
My book collection comprises several thousand books. I prefer longer books to shorter ones, so I'm guessing they average 400-500 pages. I estimate that I would die of old age before finishing scanning them in. I'd call that far more trouble, wouldn't you?
My guess is because they were going for a fairly light-hearted story, with a few light gasps and chills, and not trying to get people actually furious. The last thing I'd put the Tuskegee study in is with a bunch of experiements described as wacky. Would you?
Which would you rather have, a choice between three consoles who are all somewhat different, each catering to a different set of gamers, or a market where all three console manufacturers shipped boxes that were essentially identical and catered to only a narrow market?
Well, that's easy. If I'm in that narrow market (as much of Slashdot is), I want all three consoles competing for my dollar. What do I care that non-hardcore gamers are being ignored by the market? I've got three companies competing with each other to give me something squarely aimed at my interests.
That's short term thinking, of course, since hardcore gamers don't start out hardcore, and eventually, if the companies only released for the hardcore market, they'd die through lack of new blood. But it's not a gamer's job to be thinking that- It's Nintendo's and Sony's and the XBox's teams'.
Who would you hold responsible? Let's see... The company that makes the robots, the middlemen, the city they tasered you in, the maintenance people, the people who stood around watching as you were hurt, the hospital that inflicted additional emotional distress on you in mishandling your injuries...
I'd probably skip suing the bystanders though. Unless one of them was rich.
I've been watching this since it started, and what continually amazes me is how poorly livejournal is handling this. Over 24 hours into this, there is no announcement. Nothing reassuring users that their journal won't be next. Nothing apologizing for wiping out the incest survivor's livejournal in their witchhunt. Not even something saying "This is business, deal." The only news livejournallers have heard from livejournal came from an outside news source.
Forget the deletions. People were upset, but would have forgotten it quickly if livejournal had just said "We purged some pedophile rings, but some other stuff may have gotten caught in it. If there are any livejournals purged that were genuinely innocent, tell us." People would've bitched, would have said the sky was falling down, that Livejournal had gone down the tubes since Six Apart bought them, but there wouldn't have been this sort of mass hysteria.
Now, I'm anticipating the next great fandom migration will be happening a few years sooner than otherwise, and this makes me grumpy, because migrations are a pain in the ass. And it wouldn't be happening any time soon if Livejournal weren't currently doing their level best to make fandom - a group of people who in my experience pay a great deal of money for their playspace - feel unwelcome.
Who else is using a coffee shop's free WiFi to check Slashdot?
Don't worry. When global warming hits, cold showers will look much more desireable.
Amen. I only hope that someday game designers will start animating guys' asses with the same loving attention to detail. Girls want eyecandy too, damnit.
Damnit. I'm forfeiting mod points to respond, but you hit a major pet peeve of mine there.
You do not get to define the terms of a debate. You do not get to say "If you do not take a particular action that I like you to take, you have lost the ability to debate this without being a flaming hypocrite." You can also lay off the self-aggrandizing holier-than-thou soapboxing, but I don't really care about that.
I'm probably not going to contact my representative on this issue. I may, because I think this is as much bullshit as everyone else, but frankly I have so much shit going on in my life right now that I just have absolutely no desire to do so. On the other hand, I decided years ago that I wouldn't give the RIAA or the MPAA a single cent, nor would I give them mindshare by pirating. I'm not going to say I've never broken that, but only twice. (It helps that I prefer books and videogames to music and movies.) And you're saying that if I don't take a single action you think I should take I lose the right to bitch about the RIAA? Um. No.
Personally, I'm also not convinced that patents and copywrites are entirely vital to creativity, but that's another debate entirely.
For me, personally, I might have gone into programming -if I'd ever been in any meaningful way exposed or encouraged in it. I enjoy what very little programming I know, but no one ever said, "Hey, acherusia, you're pretty good at math and I rarely see you off that computer of yours. Have you ever considered making a career out of that?" It was more "Wow, you really love reading - are you going to become a writer?" Or "Own your own company! You'd be awesome at it." (Every single person in my family who works, bar one cousin, runs their own business or is part of a family business, so that was definitely something I was encouraged in.) And that's probably at least part of the reason I'm looking to get a job in publishing when I graduate.
It seems like a minor thing, but I don't know many people who were never encouraged in what they eventually chose as their career goal. And very few women I've known were ever encouraged to go into computers. It's not really obvious, but I do wonder how much of it comes from the fact that girls are rarely told, "You seem the like computers. Why not make a career out of it?"
Actually, what I think is ideal is a powerpoint that you can write on while you're talking.
I got a tablet PC a year or so ago. (I'm writing this post on it, as a matter of fact.) And the very few times I've had the opportunity to present on it, being able to actually write on it has been invaluable. I can check off the points I'm covering to emphasize them. I can draw a chart that occurs to me in the middle of my presentation. I can correct errors on the spot. If I were sufficiently comfortable speaking with it (in all honesty, I haven't used it for presentations enough to be that comfortable yet), I'd leave blank slides for me to write on as I speak.
At the same time, the PowerPoint lets me have a certain degree of information already in place. I can use graphs, I can have all the pre-written stuff that PowerPoint currently lets me have, without sacrificing flexibility.
I don't really think tablet PCs are that useful yet for anyone who doesn't present a lot, who doesn't take a lot of notes that wee for purely personal use (college students, i.e. me), or who doesn't write nearly as well when typing as opposed to writing (also me). But for anyone who fits those categories, tablet pcs are great.
Even if it does keep thinking I wrote 'wee' whenever I write 'are'.
You forgot ageism, you-you-you AGEIST.
Sadly, he also tragically forgot speciesism, vitalism, and antidisestablishmentarianism, and thus the award for most -isms in a comment does not go to him.