I note that at this moment, the front page has

• two iPhone stories
• three iPad stories

-- all separate, i.e. five stories.

FUCK THIS SHIT, and fuck all the Apple astroturfers like Paska just below.

or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus? (OK, I can see how that might not be for everyone ... but I find it hard to imagine someone liking Twelve Monkeys but not Imaginarium.)

It would be obvious to anyone with half a braincell that this is not a tactic that you employ after you've already received the product (when you get up to pay in a restaurant) or with someone who literally has no power to offer deals (the checkout operator). Trying to haggle before you eat the meal is entirely reasonable, however.

When haggling is practised in a non-brain-dead way, the GP is absolutely correct. If you're in a supermarket looking at the wine section and you talk to someone who actually has some responsibility in that section, then sure they might be willing to consider giving you a deal if you're buying a case at a time. (Getting a deal on three bottles, as the GP says ... well, good luck.) If you're in an electronics shop and you talk to someone who isn't (a) someone on their first day on the job, (b) a powerless checkout operator, or (c) an ass, of course it's OK to discuss alternative pricing options. (If the sitation is (c), it is of course best to go to a different shop.)

They might be less willing if the product you're after is already discounted, but then we're back in "Is brain operational?" territory; it's still worth a try, but don't get your hopes up.

Syntax is not morphology: response to TaoPhoenix

TaoPhoenix's useful summary of the development of the "fruitfly" correctly points out that the summary is missing an o. However, the author incorrectly describes this as a syntax error.(1)

This is not a syntax error but a morphology error. Syntax refers to the study of observed patterns in the sequential arrangement of words or lexemes;(2) morphology refers to the study of how lexemes change their form (e.g. requiring an extra "o" or not).(3)

In addition, the author's use of the spelling "Drosophilia" is a morphology error. ("Drosophilia" would signify "the love of dew" in the abstract; "Drosophila", with the implied substantive "zoa", signifies "life-forms that love dew".)(4),(5)

References:
(1) TaoPhoenix, Re:Backwards compatibility
(2) Wikipedia, Syntax
(3) Wikipedia, Morphology (linguistics)
(4) LSJ Greek-English Lexicon, philia
(5) LSJ Greek-English Lexicon, philos, sense II.2

That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.

Duh!

I think that kind of attitude to classics is a direct consequence of how classics are chosen for schooling purposes. I don't know why, but high school curricula tend to focus on the most depressing reading they can find. Given a choice between two classics, where one is fun and/or uplifting and the other is depressing and/or horrifying, they'll always opt for the latter. Compare the following two lists:

• Madame Bovary; The Idiot; Hard Times; Jane Eyre; Heart of Darkness; Catcher in the Rye; Nineteen Eighty-Four; the Iliad

Painful, degrading; books to slit your wrists to. Even dreary in some cases. Great, maybe, but horrible. However:

• Tom Jones; Crime and Punishment; The Pickwick Papers; Pride and Prejudice; Robinson Crusoe; Dangerous Liaisons; the Odyssey; The Three Musketeers

Terrific, human, inspiring; when they're not uplifting, they make up for it by being funny. Completely different, even though two authors and one epic tradition appear in both lists.

So why not go for the second list? Actually, I think I know the reason: it's politics. Tom Jones and Dangerous Liaisons have too much sex, Marx liked Robinson Crusoe, Pride and Prejudice sends the wrong messages about gender roles, the Odyssey sends the message that vengeance is OK (obviously it isn't; vengeance is only OK in war, like in the Iliad) and so on. I guess books that encourage suicidal depression are fine, though.

guest@xkcd:/$ look
You are at a computer using unixkcd.

Exits: west, south
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
Life is peaceful there.

Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
In the open air.

Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
Where the skies are blue.

Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
This is what we're gonna do.

Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
Sun in wintertime.

Exits: east, west
guest@xkcd:/$ go west
We will do just fine.

Ah, but:

guest@xkcd:/$ sudo make me a sandwich

Okay.

First reply! From Wellington

... wait, that's the wrong way round

What on earth are you talking about? or even think you are talking about? What is it you imagine Google has done here? Conroy was simply attacking Google to distract attention from how much everyone hates the censorship, not because Google had done or said anything at all.

Maybe a full transcript of his remarks will help. TRANSCRIPT follows. Context: the host is trying to get quick closing comments from the Minister and from Colin Jacobs, the VP of Electronic Frontiers Australia. He asks for a closing comment from the Minister first; Jacobs is not given a chance to comment. (No one has even mentioned Google, Inc.)

CONROY. And while I appreciate some people might want to elevate the internet into something special, could I just draw them back to the - this argument, and those who advocate this argument, I mean recently the founder of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because, notwithstanding -

HOST. Mm.

CONROY. - their alleged "Do no evil" policy, they recently created something called, ah, "Buzz", and there was a - a reaction, ah, and people said, well look, aren't you publishing private information.

HOST. Mm.

CONROY. And -

HOST. We are almost out of time, by the way, Minister.

CONROY. - Mr Schmidt said, said the following: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." This is the founder of Google.

HOST. Mm.

CONROY. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, "We - love - cash." In a sentence, that was it, just "We - love - cash."

HOST. Yes, heh heh -

CONROY. So when people say, shouldn't we just leave it up to, y'know the Googles of this world - to determine - what the filtering policy should be, and make no mistake, anybody who wants to go onto Google's sites now and look up their filtering policy will actually find - they filter more material -

HOST. Minister -

CONROY. - on a broader range of topics than we are proposing to do for what -

HOST. We, we have - uh - we - heh -

CONROY. I'll back our parliament to stand fast on these issues rather than Google.

HOST. We have to wrap it.

CONROY. Thank you.

HOST. Good to talk to you. Thanks very much ... [thanks guests, end of programme]

(a) It's called "lobbying". I realise this may shock you, but it's not actually uncommon, and it is rarely frowned on anywhere.

(b) Google has done nothing of the kind. Conroy's comments were an unprovoked attack on Google, not a response to an attack by Google.

I just came here after playing some Morrowind. That takes a lot less than 1 GB. Even heavily modded to make it look visually stunning it takes less than 1 GB.

Now, sure, there are serious immersion-breaking AI limitations, gameplay irritations, it's got olde-style graphics, and the art design isn't to everyone's taste. But I still find it a hell of a lot more immersive than any game published since that I can think of. No invisible walls; no unopenable doors; no unkillable NPCs; lethal parts of the world are explicably lethal; major towns are major, minor out-in-the-wop-wops towns are out-in-the-wop-wops. Any artificiality that is there doesn't come from the design, but from the limitations of gaming technology in 2001. That kind of limitation is something I can forgive; invisible walls, no.

I'm not saying it's perfect, just that what the author of TFA is asking for is not something unachievable. It has been done. It could be done even better. I look forward to that (and welcome recommendations!).

Addendum: there's a link to a higher-quality QuickTime copy of the demo video, and also a Youtube copy if you dislike Vimeo.

Yes, video. Not commercially yet, but it's on its way. Take a look at Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene, from 2007. It's ... rather impressive. Removal of defects and occluding objects is shown in the demo video at 00:44 onwards and 6:00 onwards.

Judging from the results of several Google searches, one of the people credited for the demo, Aseem Agarwala, works for Adobe -- look for interesting things in After Effects CS5. One of the others, Pravin Bhat, apparently works for Weta Digital; and two of the others, Michael Cohen and Sing Bing Kang, are with Microsoft. The rest appear to be academics.