Actually I did read someone somewhere, might have been Jack Thompson, ranting that The Sims was a tool for pedophiles to practice seduction techniques on kids. They stated it was made even worse by the nudity patch, which the author of course had an enourmous problem with, however the article had strongly emphasized that the game was pedophilic enough without mentioning the patch.
I think that for somebody to come up with that suspicion, they've got to have some issues. It takes one to know one...
Tom Lehrer knew this:
"Old books can be indecent books Though recent books are bolder. For filth, I'm glad to say, Is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd. I can tell ya things about Peter Pan, And the Wizard of Oz - there's a dirty old man!"
I'm not arguing with you, but rather the lawmakers that would have it so: It's stupid because it's a waste product from the whale, that has to float around in the ocean for a decade before becoming what it is. I can't see how the interest in such a product is of any harm to whales, it's not something you need to kill them for.
I sent myself a few emails from another account. My gmail account doesn't include any periods in the username, as you may see in the spam-filtered version in this message header: the username is a single word. I sent a few test messages, throwing a period into some random spot in the name, and all test messages reached me. So that part's certainly broken. However, as some have pointed out, that's potentially a feature not a bug, as I was able to see on the receiving end, which period permutation the message had been addressed to. This is useful for figuring out who gave your email address to a spammer. Just throw in a few periods when you're signing up somewhere, note down the particular combo you used, and when/if you start getting new spam, you'll be able to see if it came out of the particular variation you used on that site. I just might use that 'bug' intentionally at some point and I actually hope they don't fix it, so that it will work when I expect it to.
A method of improving accuracy by permitting the passage of time, until a sufficient amount of time has passed whereby the user has gained a broader understanding of the subject matter and may, at that future time, perceive flaws in previous work and correct those flaws with improved perspective.
So then all that has to be done when a patent is questioned is to run it through a spell-checker. If it contains perfect spelling then we can assume the patent is groundless in various ways and should come under further scrutiny. If it's riddled with spelling errors then it can be assumed that all other due dilligence has been done and the patent should stand.
And also, what if, like Kenny, the Hosts of Heaven have actually been waiting for you to join them so you can be Keanu Reeves and lead them in their upcoming battle with the Prince of Darkness? That would totally suck if you got revived right as Satan was about to attack the Gates...
But you can't stop with just dialup. You have to use MSDOS 2.0, and get yourself a good ansi term program to connect to a dialup that gives you telnet, ftp, nn, lynx, pine, etc. Use a 300 baud modem for maximum attack-throttling also.
I think it's silly that the hull has to be made intentionally fragile in order for the sealant to be properly dispersed. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a hull that's already 'fully repaired'? IE: Whatever that stuff is they're using to harden it all up again, just make it out of that to begin with.
It's like having a firewall that requires you to get successfully attacked before it decides whether or not to put a stop to the traffic.
Yeah, it'll be nice if it has at least one format that isn't locked. With my iPod I can buy music from iTunes if I need to, but if I already have the music I want to put in it, I just can. With this ebook reader, I can choose to buy protected content that's offerred, and if I already have a downloaded text file from somewhere else, I just need to export as a PDF from Office (OO too, though Office XP does it better) and I can load it up with all sorts of content that I don't have to buy from Sony. They can compete with that open area by having a very comprehensive selection to tempt me to pay them. Sounds good to me.
They can give you a few good reasons to pay the same price for the non-phyisical version. As you mention, it's much lighter (takes up less room too), but to me a portable book reader done properly can also be hyperlinked by chapter and sub-chapter topics, have a linked index of terms, and of course, it could be freely searchable. Being so used to reading on the computer, sometimes I'll be reading an old book and want to flip to some specific part of it, having to fight the urge to CTRL-F. It's time that I was allowed to search within the contents of a book in my hands. It's time that I be allowed to bookmark many different sections of a book without having to have all these little bits of paper that can fall out and be lost. Maybe it could have some way of writing one's own 'notes in the margins' as well.
I would pay the same (as dead tree) or more for all that convenience.
Sneaky textbook business model idea here: For students that have difficulty buying the whole textbook at once, let them subscribe to the chapters of it as they need them through the term. It costs slightly more in the end to buy it in smaller sections, but the cost burden to the student is spread out over the course. You're doing them a 'favor' while they give you extra money.
I've noticed that the setup programs for the various versions of windows have all made the same tired boasts about improved speed and reliability, and greater compatability, etc etc. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I like XP better than 2k for a few reasons though, mainly due to the people I have to help with their systems. Everybody with XP already has msconfig, already has at least a basic firewall, and has System Restore which can work really well, if they've left it enabled.
Corporations are not going to just switch to vista in a few months because of SP3 being late either
Heck, I work for a rather large corporation, and we are still using SP1. There's lots of security around it and they're on their toes, so network attacks of various kinds are unheard of. There's a lot of stuff we need to use that we already know is working fine without SP2, and I seriously doubt that we will see Vista on our desktops until somehow there is simply no other option for the company.
I'm not getting it. How do random anonymous search results of any kind assist in determining whether something is constitutionally sound? I take it that they want to make sure the Act is not trampling on anybody's constitutional rights, correct? I'm trying to imagine what you could possibly learn with regards to that, from search results. You can see percentages of people searching for particular things and what they wind up getting as a result. Ok, so you know roughly what random people of unknown ages are searching for, and you have a rough idea of where they might choose to land. I can't find the link to constitutional issues here, so I just have to say: wtf?
I've witnessed such things online a couple of times, in MUDs back in the day. In those instances there were people who did indeed believe the individual and say something to them, dropping everything they were doing to go into "crisis mode". There weren't necessarily pre-existing relationships between the Distressed and the Comforters either, just strangers who happened to be on the same game. I tried to help out with one once too, I didn't know him but he was being pretty unreasonable in his stated motivation so I took a run at pointing out the errors he'd be making in deciding to stop at this particular point. I don't know if it worked or not, because I didn't know him to begin with so didn't manage to remember his name later, to see if he was still around. I wasn't emotionally involved or anything, it had just seemed like "the right thing to do" to have spent a bit of time with him to at least add myself to the growing list of people trying to talk him out of it. Strength in numbers and all that. In the end, looking back, it didn't really matter to me. I suppose it's because Internet People that I haven't actually talked to before don't truly become "real" people to me until some time of association has passed.
Why did I bother then? I'm not sure, and it has occasionally puzzled me how concerned previously-unknown inviduals become when someone talks about committing suicide. I've been in the uncomfortable predicament a few times, of wanting to end my life, to the point where I had done a great deal of research and was mentioning the idea in mixed company. It's just so weird when a complete stranger gets all into you suddenly about how you're needed and all that, because they don't even know what you contribute; and why should it matter if someone they wouldn't have missed continues to not be a part of their life? But it happens, I've seen it, I've been on both sides (talking real people down from it too occasionally, and those people, though also strangers, were of course "real" to me so there was definitely more concern on my part). I honestly still don't get it.
Since we exhibit various biologically-driven species survival traits that we have little control over (like the fight or flight adrenaline reflex, or the urge to fuck every woman possible), maybe this reaction is one of those things. Maybe we're wired to want to make sure others of our species get to survive also, because it furthers the big picture, of the species as a whole continuing to grow and thrive. Wired to have reverence for life.
Shouldn't it be a lot more obvious that the Chinese are nicer than Americans?
I didn't say anything that contradicts that idea at all. What is obvious and what is noticed are often very different things. I'm saying that the sheer number of people on one particular 'side' will result in more than the 'handful' of bad elements that the other groups produce, who don't have sufficient numbers to produce in equal quantity. I'm saying that it should not be surprising if you can identify three or four Chinese gold farmers for every one American gold farmer. There's just more of them in the world than anybody else in general. I see nothing unreasonable or weird in this idea.
If they're farming for the loot drop from a big Boss at the end of a mission, all of them going together is wasting their looter resources. They need to split up and get into as many different groups as they can, because that means many more loots as all those missions get completed, in roughly the same space of time that one mission they'd all go on together would take. They just have to be the fastest looter in each group, that's their main concern. Besides, if they all go together they have to split that one loot drop, and that's not going to work at all.
Oh and I just remembered, there was a silver lining in the experience, because I actually managed to start a proper war between my guild and some Imp guild. They kicked our asses a lot, but we loved it, because now we were getting a proper Rebel experience out of the game and had something solid to focus our learning on.
It would be interesting if Blizzard opened some servers where Horde and Alliance could communicate
Personally, I hated that about Star Wars Galaxies back when I played. There was supposed to be a war going on, but most people had buddies on both sides, freely did business, grouped for hunting, etc. And lots of neutral players too, that hung out with everybody. I was a Rebel Doctor when the Imperial Crackdown code came in, and in the role-playing spirit, in the wake of the first stormtrooper attack in Coronet, my workplace, I decided to limit my public services to Rebels only. Wow, you should have seen the commotion! People were actually calling me racist, can you believe that? Many other derogatory responses were provoked by my announcement. One can only see Declared (available for PvP right here, right now) faction members as what they really are. Neutrals look just like undeclared members of the opposite faction, so if nobody is Declared, Imps and Neutrals all look the same to a Rebel. So of course the neutrals were cut off too, to whose complaints I offered the location of the nearest Rebel Recruiter where they could remedy their plight.:) Very few non-Rebels sent me private messages expressing their approval, though there were indeed some, and that helped me keep going through the onslaught of hate-speech. The Rebels were all for it naturally, since it didn't affect them at all except maybe to improve their place in line.
To multitudinous cries of "Discrimination!" and "You can't do that, you have to be a Doctor for everybody!" I decided to try a different strategy: I advertized a highly inflated price, a ridiculous price, for my buffs, available to all, but offered a very substantial discount (original price) for those I could recognize as Rebels. Didn't make a difference, except that one Imp actually paid my insane price (she had a habit of trying to jump line that way actually) and so I was forced to bite the bullet and give her buffs. So immediately some smartass started shouting that I, as a Rebel, was offering my services to Imperials and that I should be kicked out of the Alliance. He was one of the initial protesters. *sigh* Finally, a particular pair of Imps looked up my guild leader and sent him a nasty-gram complaining about me and that he should seriously reconsider having me as a member blah blah blah.. It was pretty long actually. Of course he forwarded it to me along with his curt response to them. He'd basically responded with, "I have no control over how my members choose to play, I can't tell him what to do, and it's a big game, go somewhere else for what you need. Buh-bye." But once I saw that somebody else was now getting flack for my new policy, I immediately offered to revoke it without him having to ask me, because he didn't ask for that and didn't need to put up with fallout from my actions. It sucked, but I took it back. If I hadn't been guilded at the time I probably would have stuck it out for much longer.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me try it on...
"Wow, those guys really pulled a Hot Coffee."
"Watch the content Bob, we don't want a Hot Coffee on our hands."
"Miss Smith, can you please give me a Hot Coffee? What? Harrassment suit? Why?"
Hell, two out of three aint bad, let's use it.
Actually I did read someone somewhere, might have been Jack Thompson, ranting that The Sims was a tool for pedophiles to practice seduction techniques on kids. They stated it was made even worse by the nudity patch, which the author of course had an enourmous problem with, however the article had strongly emphasized that the game was pedophilic enough without mentioning the patch.
I think that for somebody to come up with that suspicion, they've got to have some issues. It takes one to know one...
Tom Lehrer knew this:
"Old books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder.
For filth, I'm glad to say,
Is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
I can tell ya things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz - there's a dirty old man!"
I'm not arguing with you, but rather the lawmakers that would have it so: It's stupid because it's a waste product from the whale, that has to float around in the ocean for a decade before becoming what it is. I can't see how the interest in such a product is of any harm to whales, it's not something you need to kill them for.
I sent myself a few emails from another account. My gmail account doesn't include any periods in the username, as you may see in the spam-filtered version in this message header: the username is a single word. I sent a few test messages, throwing a period into some random spot in the name, and all test messages reached me. So that part's certainly broken. However, as some have pointed out, that's potentially a feature not a bug, as I was able to see on the receiving end, which period permutation the message had been addressed to. This is useful for figuring out who gave your email address to a spammer. Just throw in a few periods when you're signing up somewhere, note down the particular combo you used, and when/if you start getting new spam, you'll be able to see if it came out of the particular variation you used on that site. I just might use that 'bug' intentionally at some point and I actually hope they don't fix it, so that it will work when I expect it to.
if we only made a concerted effort to capture it.
But watch out because if you get too close it will melt the wax in your wings and you'll fall into the sea.
Hindsight
Abstract
A method of improving accuracy by permitting the passage of time, until a sufficient amount of time has passed whereby the user has gained a broader understanding of the subject matter and may, at that future time, perceive flaws in previous work and correct those flaws with improved perspective.
So then all that has to be done when a patent is questioned is to run it through a spell-checker. If it contains perfect spelling then we can assume the patent is groundless in various ways and should come under further scrutiny. If it's riddled with spelling errors then it can be assumed that all other due dilligence has been done and the patent should stand.
Can I patent that?
You mis-spelled midichlorians dude, everybody know they're what keeps everything going.
And also, what if, like Kenny, the Hosts of Heaven have actually been waiting for you to join them so you can be Keanu Reeves and lead them in their upcoming battle with the Prince of Darkness? That would totally suck if you got revived right as Satan was about to attack the Gates...
But you can't stop with just dialup. You have to use MSDOS 2.0, and get yourself a good ansi term program to connect to a dialup that gives you telnet, ftp, nn, lynx, pine, etc. Use a 300 baud modem for maximum attack-throttling also.
I think it's silly that the hull has to be made intentionally fragile in order for the sealant to be properly dispersed. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a hull that's already 'fully repaired'? IE: Whatever that stuff is they're using to harden it all up again, just make it out of that to begin with.
It's like having a firewall that requires you to get successfully attacked before it decides whether or not to put a stop to the traffic.
Yeah, it'll be nice if it has at least one format that isn't locked. With my iPod I can buy music from iTunes if I need to, but if I already have the music I want to put in it, I just can. With this ebook reader, I can choose to buy protected content that's offerred, and if I already have a downloaded text file from somewhere else, I just need to export as a PDF from Office (OO too, though Office XP does it better) and I can load it up with all sorts of content that I don't have to buy from Sony. They can compete with that open area by having a very comprehensive selection to tempt me to pay them. Sounds good to me.
They can give you a few good reasons to pay the same price for the non-phyisical version. As you mention, it's much lighter (takes up less room too), but to me a portable book reader done properly can also be hyperlinked by chapter and sub-chapter topics, have a linked index of terms, and of course, it could be freely searchable. Being so used to reading on the computer, sometimes I'll be reading an old book and want to flip to some specific part of it, having to fight the urge to CTRL-F. It's time that I was allowed to search within the contents of a book in my hands. It's time that I be allowed to bookmark many different sections of a book without having to have all these little bits of paper that can fall out and be lost. Maybe it could have some way of writing one's own 'notes in the margins' as well.
I would pay the same (as dead tree) or more for all that convenience.
Sneaky textbook business model idea here: For students that have difficulty buying the whole textbook at once, let them subscribe to the chapters of it as they need them through the term. It costs slightly more in the end to buy it in smaller sections, but the cost burden to the student is spread out over the course. You're doing them a 'favor' while they give you extra money.
if we all submit this link as a story (several times each?), will /. editors finally get a point?
No, but I think you may have stumbled upon a sure-fire way to get a submission posted.
I found your post about mold and its many virtues to be highly intriguing, well done!
...if the Internet is shown to be more like a collection of bookstores, where the only people...
Cool, thank you, it makes perfect sense to me now. Mod that up Informative please.
and unintended installs
Aha! Windows is a virus!!
I've noticed that the setup programs for the various versions of windows have all made the same tired boasts about improved speed and reliability, and greater compatability, etc etc. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I like XP better than 2k for a few reasons though, mainly due to the people I have to help with their systems. Everybody with XP already has msconfig, already has at least a basic firewall, and has System Restore which can work really well, if they've left it enabled.
Corporations are not going to just switch to vista in a few months because of SP3 being late either
Heck, I work for a rather large corporation, and we are still using SP1. There's lots of security around it and they're on their toes, so network attacks of various kinds are unheard of. There's a lot of stuff we need to use that we already know is working fine without SP2, and I seriously doubt that we will see Vista on our desktops until somehow there is simply no other option for the company.
I'm not getting it. How do random anonymous search results of any kind assist in determining whether something is constitutionally sound? I take it that they want to make sure the Act is not trampling on anybody's constitutional rights, correct? I'm trying to imagine what you could possibly learn with regards to that, from search results. You can see percentages of people searching for particular things and what they wind up getting as a result. Ok, so you know roughly what random people of unknown ages are searching for, and you have a rough idea of where they might choose to land. I can't find the link to constitutional issues here, so I just have to say: wtf?
I've witnessed such things online a couple of times, in MUDs back in the day. In those instances there were people who did indeed believe the individual and say something to them, dropping everything they were doing to go into "crisis mode". There weren't necessarily pre-existing relationships between the Distressed and the Comforters either, just strangers who happened to be on the same game. I tried to help out with one once too, I didn't know him but he was being pretty unreasonable in his stated motivation so I took a run at pointing out the errors he'd be making in deciding to stop at this particular point. I don't know if it worked or not, because I didn't know him to begin with so didn't manage to remember his name later, to see if he was still around. I wasn't emotionally involved or anything, it had just seemed like "the right thing to do" to have spent a bit of time with him to at least add myself to the growing list of people trying to talk him out of it. Strength in numbers and all that. In the end, looking back, it didn't really matter to me. I suppose it's because Internet People that I haven't actually talked to before don't truly become "real" people to me until some time of association has passed.
Why did I bother then? I'm not sure, and it has occasionally puzzled me how concerned previously-unknown inviduals become when someone talks about committing suicide. I've been in the uncomfortable predicament a few times, of wanting to end my life, to the point where I had done a great deal of research and was mentioning the idea in mixed company. It's just so weird when a complete stranger gets all into you suddenly about how you're needed and all that, because they don't even know what you contribute; and why should it matter if someone they wouldn't have missed continues to not be a part of their life? But it happens, I've seen it, I've been on both sides (talking real people down from it too occasionally, and those people, though also strangers, were of course "real" to me so there was definitely more concern on my part). I honestly still don't get it.
Since we exhibit various biologically-driven species survival traits that we have little control over (like the fight or flight adrenaline reflex, or the urge to fuck every woman possible), maybe this reaction is one of those things. Maybe we're wired to want to make sure others of our species get to survive also, because it furthers the big picture, of the species as a whole continuing to grow and thrive. Wired to have reverence for life.
Shouldn't it be a lot more obvious that the Chinese are nicer than Americans?
I didn't say anything that contradicts that idea at all. What is obvious and what is noticed are often very different things. I'm saying that the sheer number of people on one particular 'side' will result in more than the 'handful' of bad elements that the other groups produce, who don't have sufficient numbers to produce in equal quantity. I'm saying that it should not be surprising if you can identify three or four Chinese gold farmers for every one American gold farmer. There's just more of them in the world than anybody else in general. I see nothing unreasonable or weird in this idea.
Or am I missing something?
If they're farming for the loot drop from a big Boss at the end of a mission, all of them going together is wasting their looter resources. They need to split up and get into as many different groups as they can, because that means many more loots as all those missions get completed, in roughly the same space of time that one mission they'd all go on together would take. They just have to be the fastest looter in each group, that's their main concern. Besides, if they all go together they have to split that one loot drop, and that's not going to work at all.
Oh and I just remembered, there was a silver lining in the experience, because I actually managed to start a proper war between my guild and some Imp guild. They kicked our asses a lot, but we loved it, because now we were getting a proper Rebel experience out of the game and had something solid to focus our learning on.
It would be interesting if Blizzard opened some servers where Horde and Alliance could communicate
:) Very few non-Rebels sent me private messages expressing their approval, though there were indeed some, and that helped me keep going through the onslaught of hate-speech. The Rebels were all for it naturally, since it didn't affect them at all except maybe to improve their place in line.
Personally, I hated that about Star Wars Galaxies back when I played. There was supposed to be a war going on, but most people had buddies on both sides, freely did business, grouped for hunting, etc. And lots of neutral players too, that hung out with everybody. I was a Rebel Doctor when the Imperial Crackdown code came in, and in the role-playing spirit, in the wake of the first stormtrooper attack in Coronet, my workplace, I decided to limit my public services to Rebels only. Wow, you should have seen the commotion! People were actually calling me racist, can you believe that? Many other derogatory responses were provoked by my announcement. One can only see Declared (available for PvP right here, right now) faction members as what they really are. Neutrals look just like undeclared members of the opposite faction, so if nobody is Declared, Imps and Neutrals all look the same to a Rebel. So of course the neutrals were cut off too, to whose complaints I offered the location of the nearest Rebel Recruiter where they could remedy their plight.
To multitudinous cries of "Discrimination!" and "You can't do that, you have to be a Doctor for everybody!" I decided to try a different strategy: I advertized a highly inflated price, a ridiculous price, for my buffs, available to all, but offered a very substantial discount (original price) for those I could recognize as Rebels. Didn't make a difference, except that one Imp actually paid my insane price (she had a habit of trying to jump line that way actually) and so I was forced to bite the bullet and give her buffs. So immediately some smartass started shouting that I, as a Rebel, was offering my services to Imperials and that I should be kicked out of the Alliance. He was one of the initial protesters. *sigh* Finally, a particular pair of Imps looked up my guild leader and sent him a nasty-gram complaining about me and that he should seriously reconsider having me as a member blah blah blah.. It was pretty long actually. Of course he forwarded it to me along with his curt response to them. He'd basically responded with, "I have no control over how my members choose to play, I can't tell him what to do, and it's a big game, go somewhere else for what you need. Buh-bye." But once I saw that somebody else was now getting flack for my new policy, I immediately offered to revoke it without him having to ask me, because he didn't ask for that and didn't need to put up with fallout from my actions. It sucked, but I took it back. If I hadn't been guilded at the time I probably would have stuck it out for much longer.
The 'experiment' lasted less than a day.