See, I haven't done a truly nerdy/academic posting in a while, so I figure it's time, especially since my mother has taken up Sudoku (has anyone not at this point?).
Speaking of whom, her same bizarre self (who insisted I teach her how to play Texas Hold 'em over the holidays...I have this terrible image of her exclaiming "Read 'em and weep boys! Woo hooo! Kiss the pretty ladies...oh yeah..." *shudder*) introduced me to "Deal or No Deal," a deceptively simple little game show.
Be afraid: it's a game show on CNBC.
Anyway, the game is simple: you, as a contestant, are presented with 26 suitcases guarded by beautiful models (too thin for me, but that's another rant). Not really guarded, mind you...you don't get attacked by a frothing but beautiful woman if you get too close...that would be cool if unsanitary...rather, guarded in the Vanna White sense of standing near for no apparent reason. Each suitcase contains a dollar amount, generally between one cent and one million dollars, and these amounts are all listed on a board. The amounts are at standard, currency-like denominations. Unfortunately, the cash itself isn't in the case, which is something I think they should do...at the moment it's just sparkly signs like on that plebian game show The Price is Right. Pshaw. We cannot be bothered to consort with the peasants. You! Fetch me the Wall Street Journal! You! And you! Fight to the death!
Where was I? Oh yeah. So you pick a suitcase but don't open it. That's your suitecase, and you get the amount of money listed in it unless during the course of the game you do something to fuck it up. Now the game begins. You start by picking 6 cases to open. The pretty ladies do so, and 6 values get removed from the board. Then the "banker" calls and offers you some amount of money based on what's left on the board. If you take it, you get the cash you were offered, and the game stops. Otherwise, you keep going, open another 5 cases, and repeat.
This cycle continues, with the number of cases you have to open in the intervening period decreasing each time until you are only opening one at a time, until you stop the game by taking the deal or until you reject the deal offered to you with two values left on the board, in which case you open your case and get whatever value is in there.
What value gets offered by the banker, you may ask? Well, they don't tell you. In game terms, it's the value the banker is willing to pay to stop you from going forward and potentially extracting more money out of him. More mathematically, it seems to be some percentage of the average amount left on the board (I'm thinking about 60% of the average of what's on the board). Probably the formula is a little more complicated than that, but it's a good estimate.
So I spent waaay waaay too much time last night, while I couldn't sleep, trying to figure out what the ideal strategy for this game is. I quickly realized there is a problem.
In game theoretic terms, the optimal strategy is to never accept the deal and to always take what's in your case. Here's why: at any given stage of the game, the expected value of what's in your case is going to be the average of the values left on the board, yet we just said you will be offered some percentage of the average of what's left on the board, ergo, you should always reject the deal. Ergo, if you always reject the deal, you'll eventually open your briefcase.
Here's the rub though: the expected value, especially of a game like this, tells you only in aggregate what the payoff of a game will be. That is, if a million people play the game, the average payoff of all of them will be the expected value of the game. Great! Except for one thing. You're not a million people. You're one person, and you get one chance to play the game. For you, an offer of $200k might be worth more than a 1/3 chance of $1 million and a 2/3 chance of $0.
So, I haven't quite figured out how to reconcile that. I haven't figured out how to reason about the ideal strategy for a single instance of a game. I have a feeling there will be scads of information about this in the options trading literature and I'll have a "duh" moment when I find it, but for now I'm left scratching my head. I could also ask the lab's game theorist, but I think he'll tell me I'm stupid. That seems to happen a lot.
Incidentally, my pseudo-strategy is to reject the deal so long as it's likely (i.e., >50% probability) that you can make the average value of the board go up in some subsequent round. Specifically, if it's likely that there will be a tile greater than or equal to $100k on the board when you're done choosing, keep going. Try it yourself.
Interesting experiment for the procrastinating: play some relatively large number of games (greater than 26...like 30 or 50...or more!) always declining the deal. Keep track of your aggregate score. Then do the same thing with my strategy (or your own) and see how you do. My guess would be that your average is going to be higher in the playing-to-the-end strategy, but other metrics like your minimum payout, standard deviation of your scores, number of payouts less than, say, $50k, etc. will likely be better with my strategy.
I should probably go to bed now, huh?
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Monday, December 26, 2005
"You'll be damned to burn in eternal hellfire if you watch it, but otherwise a good movie..."
"'We're not going to go out and protest it because it would probably play into the marketing plans of the producers,' he said. 'They'd say, the Christian right is opposed to this movie, so you really, really, really want to see it.'"
Fuck...they're learning. It's scary when otherwise delusional fringe groups have brief moments of insight into the real world.
Fuck...they're learning. It's scary when otherwise delusional fringe groups have brief moments of insight into the real world.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Two rants for the price of one!
So, I haven't yet commented on the NYC transit strike yet. This was not simply due to laziness (though certainly that delicious sin played a role)...I wanted to read a bit about what was going on before I passed judgment (I do that sometimes...I don't know why since no one else seems to). It certainly looked from the casual observer's perspective that the union leaders were just being douchebags. And to some degree they were.
But allow me to take a short but important detour: In the process of trying to read up on this issue, I found it surprisingly and infuriatingly difficult to find any fucking information about the points of contention in the strike. I had to go to the TWU home page to get an explanation of what they were pissed about, and I have yet to find a concise description of the MTA's position. The news organizations have been fucking useless on this issue, even the New York Times.
Have all reporters become such pussies that they're afraid to report _anything_ substantial related to a controversial issue? Is the safer "human interest" bullshit stories all you nadless writers have left? Get some fucking balls and don't waste my goddamn time by writing an article about the woman who had never seen the ground above the subway in Manhattan before and FUCKING TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON! I am more pissed about this than I am about anything related to the strike. Were you people jerking off all the way through journalism school? Is "who," "what," "when," "how," and most-bloody-importantly "_WHY_" such difficult concepts to master? Do you fuckwits honestly think it's reporting when you tell me how someone feels about walking through the cold? Here, I'll help you: it sucks and it makes your nipples chafe! There! Are you happy? Stop fondling the coin purse of the Everyman and do some fucking reporting, you fucking coddled and overpaid assholes! Jesus.
I hope you choke on your goddamn espressos, douchebags.
Ah hem. Moving on...
Okay...my take on the strike: partially justified, but stupid nonetheless. I sympathize with the union...I really do. They're being dicked over the same way most of the middle class is being dicked over, and in particular they're being dicked over by dishonest and irresponsible Republican leaders. Basically, here's what happened:
Long, long ago, in a governor's mansion far, far away, a happy little Republican named George Pataki had the brilliant realization that people like you better when you give them stuff, and in particular rich people like you when you give them stuff, and they tend to give you stuff in return. "Awesome!" little Pataki thought to himself. "I can make everybody happy!" So he frittered away a massive amount of money...some tax cuts here, some salary increases and pension contribution reductions there, and pretty soon he was deep in Republican Red (I just thought of that...see, Republican states are "red," and so is a "deep, gaping accounting deficit," and Republicans these days are retarded and have the fiscal responsibility of a teenage valley girl, so, see, "Republican Red"...haha...I'm a genius! Go forth. Use it).
However, to his great surprise, Mr. Pataki suddenly found himself with a pension funding crunch several years later. "Hmm..." he thought to himself, "well, we can't actually take money from the people who have it because they are the ones who are going to elect me when I seek higher office...if only there were a group I don't like anyway that can't really do anything about it if I screw them over..."
...and thus you end up in the nice little pissing-match-I-mean-contract-negotiation we find ourselves in. The strike is basically a "fuck you too." The "fuck you" that inspired the "fuck you too" was first and foremost trying to take the budget shortfall out of union workers' pockets, and secondly drastically increasing pension contributions in the MTA's offer for no apparent reason other than to piss the union off. Knowing a "fuck you" when he saw it, Toussaint invoked the one reciprocal "fuck you" he had at his disposal: a transit strike.
So was it justified? Well, sort of. The union, as I said, had gotten major pension contribution rollbacks several years earlier. And they don't really have a right to complain about the retirement age being bumped up from 55 since, really, who the fuck else gets a retirement age that low? And they're paid pretty well.
At the same time, they were being asked to pony up for something that wasn't their fault, and what they were asking for was essentially pocket change compared to other shit (like tax cuts) the government had happily paid for, not to mention the fact that the MTA was running a nice little surplus. That would piss me off too. How would you like it if some wealthy douchebag came in and tried to take money from you because a) it would play well to his political base, and b) because he and other wealthy douchebags had fucked up the budget in the first place. I'd be goddamn livid.
However, it's fairly obvious at this point that striking was absolutely the wrong move. It's now cost the union several million in fines and driven public opinion sharply...and I mean SHARPLY...against it. They've pissed everybody off and gotten nothing for their trouble. It seems all that money would have been much better spent on a public relations campaign. Granted, even that might not have worked since modern America seems to believe that mismanagement is a desirable trait in a public official so long as he won't let gay people get married and that an economy doesn't work unless those without a college education get ass-raped as much as humanly possible. Because hell...if an Indian guy living on dirt under a thatched roof can live off $1.25 a day, so can our workers! If they don't like it, they should...umm...start an entrepreneurial venture marketing...their dirt...in their free time after their 12 hour shift...and make money so they're not poor...because see they must have chosen to be poor...or something. Yeah. Go Jesus! Support our troops.
Anyway...seems to be the death throes of a fading union movement. Robber baron 20's, here we come! Child labor laws are for pussies! Etc. But yeah...I'd be pissed if I lived in New York too. I mean, your life sucks...why should those fuckers get to make your life suck _more_ just because their life sucks too? You should at least get to make their life suck somehow...seems only fair...
But allow me to take a short but important detour: In the process of trying to read up on this issue, I found it surprisingly and infuriatingly difficult to find any fucking information about the points of contention in the strike. I had to go to the TWU home page to get an explanation of what they were pissed about, and I have yet to find a concise description of the MTA's position. The news organizations have been fucking useless on this issue, even the New York Times.
Have all reporters become such pussies that they're afraid to report _anything_ substantial related to a controversial issue? Is the safer "human interest" bullshit stories all you nadless writers have left? Get some fucking balls and don't waste my goddamn time by writing an article about the woman who had never seen the ground above the subway in Manhattan before and FUCKING TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON! I am more pissed about this than I am about anything related to the strike. Were you people jerking off all the way through journalism school? Is "who," "what," "when," "how," and most-bloody-importantly "_WHY_" such difficult concepts to master? Do you fuckwits honestly think it's reporting when you tell me how someone feels about walking through the cold? Here, I'll help you: it sucks and it makes your nipples chafe! There! Are you happy? Stop fondling the coin purse of the Everyman and do some fucking reporting, you fucking coddled and overpaid assholes! Jesus.
I hope you choke on your goddamn espressos, douchebags.
Ah hem. Moving on...
Okay...my take on the strike: partially justified, but stupid nonetheless. I sympathize with the union...I really do. They're being dicked over the same way most of the middle class is being dicked over, and in particular they're being dicked over by dishonest and irresponsible Republican leaders. Basically, here's what happened:
Long, long ago, in a governor's mansion far, far away, a happy little Republican named George Pataki had the brilliant realization that people like you better when you give them stuff, and in particular rich people like you when you give them stuff, and they tend to give you stuff in return. "Awesome!" little Pataki thought to himself. "I can make everybody happy!" So he frittered away a massive amount of money...some tax cuts here, some salary increases and pension contribution reductions there, and pretty soon he was deep in Republican Red (I just thought of that...see, Republican states are "red," and so is a "deep, gaping accounting deficit," and Republicans these days are retarded and have the fiscal responsibility of a teenage valley girl, so, see, "Republican Red"...haha...I'm a genius! Go forth. Use it).
However, to his great surprise, Mr. Pataki suddenly found himself with a pension funding crunch several years later. "Hmm..." he thought to himself, "well, we can't actually take money from the people who have it because they are the ones who are going to elect me when I seek higher office...if only there were a group I don't like anyway that can't really do anything about it if I screw them over..."
...and thus you end up in the nice little pissing-match-I-mean-contract-negotiation we find ourselves in. The strike is basically a "fuck you too." The "fuck you" that inspired the "fuck you too" was first and foremost trying to take the budget shortfall out of union workers' pockets, and secondly drastically increasing pension contributions in the MTA's offer for no apparent reason other than to piss the union off. Knowing a "fuck you" when he saw it, Toussaint invoked the one reciprocal "fuck you" he had at his disposal: a transit strike.
So was it justified? Well, sort of. The union, as I said, had gotten major pension contribution rollbacks several years earlier. And they don't really have a right to complain about the retirement age being bumped up from 55 since, really, who the fuck else gets a retirement age that low? And they're paid pretty well.
At the same time, they were being asked to pony up for something that wasn't their fault, and what they were asking for was essentially pocket change compared to other shit (like tax cuts) the government had happily paid for, not to mention the fact that the MTA was running a nice little surplus. That would piss me off too. How would you like it if some wealthy douchebag came in and tried to take money from you because a) it would play well to his political base, and b) because he and other wealthy douchebags had fucked up the budget in the first place. I'd be goddamn livid.
However, it's fairly obvious at this point that striking was absolutely the wrong move. It's now cost the union several million in fines and driven public opinion sharply...and I mean SHARPLY...against it. They've pissed everybody off and gotten nothing for their trouble. It seems all that money would have been much better spent on a public relations campaign. Granted, even that might not have worked since modern America seems to believe that mismanagement is a desirable trait in a public official so long as he won't let gay people get married and that an economy doesn't work unless those without a college education get ass-raped as much as humanly possible. Because hell...if an Indian guy living on dirt under a thatched roof can live off $1.25 a day, so can our workers! If they don't like it, they should...umm...start an entrepreneurial venture marketing...their dirt...in their free time after their 12 hour shift...and make money so they're not poor...because see they must have chosen to be poor...or something. Yeah. Go Jesus! Support our troops.
Anyway...seems to be the death throes of a fading union movement. Robber baron 20's, here we come! Child labor laws are for pussies! Etc. But yeah...I'd be pissed if I lived in New York too. I mean, your life sucks...why should those fuckers get to make your life suck _more_ just because their life sucks too? You should at least get to make their life suck somehow...seems only fair...
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
I do love me some beating up boy scouts
This is the most simple yet satisfying game I've played in a while.
Today's douchebag of liberty
...is Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska!
"'Nothing is more germane and essential to national defense than energy,' Stevens said. 'Extreme environmentalists think it (ANWR) is their playground.'
"Stevens warned if ANWR is dropped from the defense bill, he would seek to delete other items attached to it such as funding for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, the bird flu pandemic and a program that helps poor families pay heating bills."
...and in further interviews, Stevens propped a puppy up in front of the camera, held a .37 magnum held to its head, cocked it, and was heard to say, "I'll do it...I swear to god, I'll do it..."
(Wow...that guy really is a douchebag!)
"'Nothing is more germane and essential to national defense than energy,' Stevens said. 'Extreme environmentalists think it (ANWR) is their playground.'
"Stevens warned if ANWR is dropped from the defense bill, he would seek to delete other items attached to it such as funding for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, the bird flu pandemic and a program that helps poor families pay heating bills."
...and in further interviews, Stevens propped a puppy up in front of the camera, held a .37 magnum held to its head, cocked it, and was heard to say, "I'll do it...I swear to god, I'll do it..."
(Wow...that guy really is a douchebag!)
Richard Stallman is an idiot
I swear, every time I read an interview with Richard Stallman, I get more pissed at him.
Both the acronym "GNU" and the labelling of his "4 freedoms" from "0 to 3" are so telling of the way he looks at the world. Both are computer science jokes: "GNU" because it is a recursive definition (GNU = GNU is Not UNIX...what does the G stand for? GNU. What does GNU stand for? GNU is Not Unix...etc. Yes, this is funny if you do computer programming. Or rather, it was the very first time someone thought of it 20 years ago. Today it's obnoxious and annoying), and the "4 freedoms" because they are numbered the way programmers would number things, namely as indices into arrays (...and arrays used to be pointers into memory, and the indices were offsets to the base of the array, so to get to the first element, you had to use offset 0, hence computer scientists count starting at 0...see? Haha. So funny. I know.)
Anyway, point being, Stallman is a hopeless nerd that finds it impossible to view the world from the point of view of a normal person. So Richie, grow the fuck up. No one has ever "subjugated" anyone using a computer program, okay? Made their lives annoying? Sure. But let's not get hyperbolic here. Talk to someone who was in a japanese internment camp about subjugation. Then explain to them how their experience is like having to use a proprietary operating system. With any luck, you'll be punched in the face. Maybe it will knock some sense into you.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there are actual benefits to not being able to tinker with a computer you own. The Xbox is a fantastic example of this principle. The Xbox creators went to a fantastic amount of trouble to make it difficult (if not downright impossible...that remains to be seen) to hack the xbox, going even so far as to design special, encrypted hardware. Why? To protect the IP rights and revenue streams of big evil video game developers, sure, but also to prevent cheating, pure and simple. The future of video games is online, and a small number of people hell-bent on cheating can absolutely ruin an online game. Ask Evercrack whores.
See, bits aren't just bits any more. The higher-level structure imposed on those bits is increasingly important. A video game structures bits into a game with arbitrary rules that are important to the game. Being able to futz with the lower-level bit structures is equivalent to breaking the rules of the game, and hence it is cheating. Thus, to maintain the integrity of the game, it's important that end-users not be able to fuck with their machines. And if you ask players, I think they'd be perfectly willing to give up the ability to fuck with their software if it meant guaranteeing a level playing field in an online game.
So Stallman...seriously...shut up. I'm tired of hearing you. There are benefits of open source that I think need to be better integrated into proprietary systems, certainly. But so long as you're waddling around spewing ideological nonsense, we're not going to get anywhere. At least as long as people listen to you.
Both the acronym "GNU" and the labelling of his "4 freedoms" from "0 to 3" are so telling of the way he looks at the world. Both are computer science jokes: "GNU" because it is a recursive definition (GNU = GNU is Not UNIX...what does the G stand for? GNU. What does GNU stand for? GNU is Not Unix...etc. Yes, this is funny if you do computer programming. Or rather, it was the very first time someone thought of it 20 years ago. Today it's obnoxious and annoying), and the "4 freedoms" because they are numbered the way programmers would number things, namely as indices into arrays (...and arrays used to be pointers into memory, and the indices were offsets to the base of the array, so to get to the first element, you had to use offset 0, hence computer scientists count starting at 0...see? Haha. So funny. I know.)
Anyway, point being, Stallman is a hopeless nerd that finds it impossible to view the world from the point of view of a normal person. So Richie, grow the fuck up. No one has ever "subjugated" anyone using a computer program, okay? Made their lives annoying? Sure. But let's not get hyperbolic here. Talk to someone who was in a japanese internment camp about subjugation. Then explain to them how their experience is like having to use a proprietary operating system. With any luck, you'll be punched in the face. Maybe it will knock some sense into you.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there are actual benefits to not being able to tinker with a computer you own. The Xbox is a fantastic example of this principle. The Xbox creators went to a fantastic amount of trouble to make it difficult (if not downright impossible...that remains to be seen) to hack the xbox, going even so far as to design special, encrypted hardware. Why? To protect the IP rights and revenue streams of big evil video game developers, sure, but also to prevent cheating, pure and simple. The future of video games is online, and a small number of people hell-bent on cheating can absolutely ruin an online game. Ask Evercrack whores.
See, bits aren't just bits any more. The higher-level structure imposed on those bits is increasingly important. A video game structures bits into a game with arbitrary rules that are important to the game. Being able to futz with the lower-level bit structures is equivalent to breaking the rules of the game, and hence it is cheating. Thus, to maintain the integrity of the game, it's important that end-users not be able to fuck with their machines. And if you ask players, I think they'd be perfectly willing to give up the ability to fuck with their software if it meant guaranteeing a level playing field in an online game.
So Stallman...seriously...shut up. I'm tired of hearing you. There are benefits of open source that I think need to be better integrated into proprietary systems, certainly. But so long as you're waddling around spewing ideological nonsense, we're not going to get anywhere. At least as long as people listen to you.
Monday, December 19, 2005
On Hoochie-mamas
I started watching VH1's documentary on hip-hop video girls, and I quickly had to turn it off.
I have limited sympathy for these girls. They were framing the issue with the same kind of grave narration and tragedy music that would more befit a subject that generates that "I think I'm going to be ill" feeling deservedly, like child pornography (don't worry...that's not a link to child porn...it's just a link to a disturbing New York Times article, I promise), but I'm sorry...as a controversy it's a non-starter.
The supposed issue is that the girls in hip-hop videos are leered at, asked to perform sexual favors for the stars and their entourages, are generally degraded, etc. Normally this might be a problem, but here's the thing: why exactly am I supposed to feel sorry for you if you're actively seeking out a job that by its very nature treats you like nothing more than a sexual object, and you find, to your inexplicable astonishment, that you are treated like a sexual object in the context of that job? Seriously...grow the fuck up. The industry itself is exploitative. If you don't want to be exploited, go do something else. It's really that simple. I swear. There are some girls who are total groupies and are willing to sell their bodies in order to have the opportunity to bask in the periphery of stars' limelights. Fine. But I don't want to hear them bitch about it. You got what you paid for. Deal.
As for the "desperate mothers who are just trying to pay the bills," it's essentially a completely a disingenuous argument. Okay, so she's a poor single mom who can't make ends meet. She's desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. Where does hip-hop and its objectifying culture figure into this? If you took away the option to be a hip-hop girl, she'd do something else desperate. Would you feel better if she turned to prostitution? Stripping? Insurance fraud? What's an acceptable level of desperation? What would you feel okay about her doing given that she's currently unable to pay her bills and support her child? The solution is to have adequately funded welfare programs that make sure she doesn't need to do this desperate shit. Anything short of that is a dishonest plea for sympathy on the part of the documentarian.
Anyway...just pissed me off, and I need something to do for the half hour it takes for Ambien to kick in. There are so many genuine scandals out there at the moment...why focus on this ridiculous one? (I know...ratings...sigh)
I have limited sympathy for these girls. They were framing the issue with the same kind of grave narration and tragedy music that would more befit a subject that generates that "I think I'm going to be ill" feeling deservedly, like child pornography (don't worry...that's not a link to child porn...it's just a link to a disturbing New York Times article, I promise), but I'm sorry...as a controversy it's a non-starter.
The supposed issue is that the girls in hip-hop videos are leered at, asked to perform sexual favors for the stars and their entourages, are generally degraded, etc. Normally this might be a problem, but here's the thing: why exactly am I supposed to feel sorry for you if you're actively seeking out a job that by its very nature treats you like nothing more than a sexual object, and you find, to your inexplicable astonishment, that you are treated like a sexual object in the context of that job? Seriously...grow the fuck up. The industry itself is exploitative. If you don't want to be exploited, go do something else. It's really that simple. I swear. There are some girls who are total groupies and are willing to sell their bodies in order to have the opportunity to bask in the periphery of stars' limelights. Fine. But I don't want to hear them bitch about it. You got what you paid for. Deal.
As for the "desperate mothers who are just trying to pay the bills," it's essentially a completely a disingenuous argument. Okay, so she's a poor single mom who can't make ends meet. She's desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. Where does hip-hop and its objectifying culture figure into this? If you took away the option to be a hip-hop girl, she'd do something else desperate. Would you feel better if she turned to prostitution? Stripping? Insurance fraud? What's an acceptable level of desperation? What would you feel okay about her doing given that she's currently unable to pay her bills and support her child? The solution is to have adequately funded welfare programs that make sure she doesn't need to do this desperate shit. Anything short of that is a dishonest plea for sympathy on the part of the documentarian.
Anyway...just pissed me off, and I need something to do for the half hour it takes for Ambien to kick in. There are so many genuine scandals out there at the moment...why focus on this ridiculous one? (I know...ratings...sigh)
Shocking!
Rich people are stingy?! Surely not...next you'll be suggesting that capitalism can't cure all the world's ills...
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Friday, December 16, 2005
Penny Arcade on Wikipedia
It seems Penny Arcade shares my dislike of Wikipedia.
If you click on the news post, Tycho has a rant strikingly similar to one you, dear reader, have probably read in this here blog.
If you click on the news post, Tycho has a rant strikingly similar to one you, dear reader, have probably read in this here blog.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Fun with Ebay!
So, I have resorted to Ebay to try to get my hands on an Xbox 360 before this weekend when "friends" will be emerging from the shadows to converge on my humble abode. Let's just say it hasn't gone according to plan.
The first snafu was when I bid on an item, was outbid, gave up, bid on another item, and suddenly got a notification that a bid had been rescinded and I had won the original item. Great. So now I have duplicate exposure.
As if that weren't bad enough, the item I suddenly found myself to have won turned out to be sold by a very stupid con man. Now, I knew the listing was sketchy...it was written in all caps with lots of misspellings, and it listed the shipping price as "$300," which I was optimistically hoping was a typo. But since the guy was local, I figured the worst that could happen would be that I piss off a scammer and he leaves bad feedback for me. No biggie.
So of course that's what ends up happening. Long story short, Captain Lobotomy repeatedly threatens me over email that he will report me as a "non-buyer" if I don't pony up the money within 24 hours. To which I reply, "How can I be a non-buyer when I've repeatedly offered to pay you? Just tell me where and when to meet you (or whomever) so I can give you the money and you can give me my xbox."
Basically, at this point, I've told him to give me my xbox or fuck off, and oh-by-the-way if you continue to threaten me, I'll report your ass to Ebay's abuse department, and you can have fun explaining the $300 shipping charge. And don't contact me again. Dick. I'm really hoping he doesn't bother to go through with filing a complaint, but since all the evidence up to this point suggests he's a fucktard, he probably will. Oh well. Just means I'll have to exchange some emails with Ebay. I'm really not terribly intimidated by going toe-to-toe with a guy who can't figure out the caps lock.
The really funny thing is that this has gotten me thinking about ways I could fuck with him. My first thought was that, if I weren't so lazy, he clearly has the net-savvy of a hamster, and he would easily succumb to a phishing attack. All I'd have to do would be to craft an email that looked like a notification from paypal that I had paid him. Then I could set up a rudimentary PayPal clone site somewhere, get him to log into it, and grab his password. It took me a while to figure out what I could do with that (besides the obvious transfer money out of his bank account), and I decided true poetic justice would be to buy another really expensive xbox off of ebay and pay for it with his account. It is so fucking tempting. Yeah, sure, it's "illegal," but still...very tempting.
Beyond that, the simpler forms of usual harassment are to sign him up for gay porn newsletters. Depending on how much of a dick he continues to be, he may well be getting some unexpected hot man-on-man action in his email. A whole lot of it, if possible.
Mmm...sweet, sweaty, homoerotic justice...
The first snafu was when I bid on an item, was outbid, gave up, bid on another item, and suddenly got a notification that a bid had been rescinded and I had won the original item. Great. So now I have duplicate exposure.
As if that weren't bad enough, the item I suddenly found myself to have won turned out to be sold by a very stupid con man. Now, I knew the listing was sketchy...it was written in all caps with lots of misspellings, and it listed the shipping price as "$300," which I was optimistically hoping was a typo. But since the guy was local, I figured the worst that could happen would be that I piss off a scammer and he leaves bad feedback for me. No biggie.
So of course that's what ends up happening. Long story short, Captain Lobotomy repeatedly threatens me over email that he will report me as a "non-buyer" if I don't pony up the money within 24 hours. To which I reply, "How can I be a non-buyer when I've repeatedly offered to pay you? Just tell me where and when to meet you (or whomever) so I can give you the money and you can give me my xbox."
Basically, at this point, I've told him to give me my xbox or fuck off, and oh-by-the-way if you continue to threaten me, I'll report your ass to Ebay's abuse department, and you can have fun explaining the $300 shipping charge. And don't contact me again. Dick. I'm really hoping he doesn't bother to go through with filing a complaint, but since all the evidence up to this point suggests he's a fucktard, he probably will. Oh well. Just means I'll have to exchange some emails with Ebay. I'm really not terribly intimidated by going toe-to-toe with a guy who can't figure out the caps lock.
The really funny thing is that this has gotten me thinking about ways I could fuck with him. My first thought was that, if I weren't so lazy, he clearly has the net-savvy of a hamster, and he would easily succumb to a phishing attack. All I'd have to do would be to craft an email that looked like a notification from paypal that I had paid him. Then I could set up a rudimentary PayPal clone site somewhere, get him to log into it, and grab his password. It took me a while to figure out what I could do with that (besides the obvious transfer money out of his bank account), and I decided true poetic justice would be to buy another really expensive xbox off of ebay and pay for it with his account. It is so fucking tempting. Yeah, sure, it's "illegal," but still...very tempting.
Beyond that, the simpler forms of usual harassment are to sign him up for gay porn newsletters. Depending on how much of a dick he continues to be, he may well be getting some unexpected hot man-on-man action in his email. A whole lot of it, if possible.
Mmm...sweet, sweaty, homoerotic justice...
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Triumph of American engineering
Can someone please explain to me why they could get this shit right 30 years ago but not now?
*amused*
I'm immensely amused that being "Pro-American" anywhere else in the world is like being Pro-French here.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Republicans are lame
It's just downright sleazy to not give Democratic senators access to Iraq intelligence and war information they're cleared to know, especially after claiming that they "had the same intelligence as the President did" when they voted to give the President the power to go to war.
And did I mention the Texas redistricting is going to be heard by the Supreme Court now? Nevermind that DeLay is still under indictment. As is Cheney's former chief of staff. And then there's this little looming ridiculousness. Hey guys: do a quick search for "Abe Fortas" if you want precedent for judicial filibusters. And while we're at it, stop giving us this shit about "up or down" votes. I'm fucking sick of it. It's not a principle the Republicans have ever stuck to, especially when they were out of power themselves. The Senate operates on obscure procedural details, and all kinds of stupid procedural hurdles are regularly invoked to prevent decent bills from ever being voted on. So seriously...just shut the fuck up, ok?
Republicans really are douchebags, you know that?
And did I mention the Texas redistricting is going to be heard by the Supreme Court now? Nevermind that DeLay is still under indictment. As is Cheney's former chief of staff. And then there's this little looming ridiculousness. Hey guys: do a quick search for "Abe Fortas" if you want precedent for judicial filibusters. And while we're at it, stop giving us this shit about "up or down" votes. I'm fucking sick of it. It's not a principle the Republicans have ever stuck to, especially when they were out of power themselves. The Senate operates on obscure procedural details, and all kinds of stupid procedural hurdles are regularly invoked to prevent decent bills from ever being voted on. So seriously...just shut the fuck up, ok?
Republicans really are douchebags, you know that?
Saturday, December 10, 2005
R.I.P. Richard Pryor
One of the great trinity of comedy (the others being Lenny Bruce and George Carlin) has fallen. We'll miss you, Richard. Jokes about monkey sex and setting yourself on fire just won't be the same...
Friday, December 09, 2005
Yes, yes, he's a governor now
Words cannot possibly begin to describe how disturbing this video of Arnold in Rio is.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Silly Coulter
I stopped taking anything Coulter says seriously a long time ago. I really do think she's just saying things she knows are ridiculous to get attention.
I do love, "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am," though. Oh, Anne...silly, silly Anne...
I do love, "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am," though. Oh, Anne...silly, silly Anne...
D'oh!!!
Transcript of someone reading this article on the 100 Dumbest Moments in Business:
"D'oh!!! Sigh...well, I'm sure the next one won't be...
D'oh!!! Okay, the next one can't possibly be...
D'OH!! Oh for fuck's sake...how could they...why would you...Gaaahh!"
"D'oh!!! Sigh...well, I'm sure the next one won't be...
D'oh!!! Okay, the next one can't possibly be...
D'OH!! Oh for fuck's sake...how could they...why would you...Gaaahh!"
Friday, December 02, 2005
Home state pride!
Woo hoo! Go North Carolina!
(*sigh*)
Honestly, I don't particularly care. Personally, I'm against the death penalty, mostly because it's pointless. It's demonstrably not a deterrent, both statistically and logically. I mean, if you're fucked up enough to kill your wife and father-in-law in front of two of your children, do you honestly think you're actually going to say to yourself on the front porch, "You know, I'd really like to fuck up my wife and father-in-law in front of two of my children. I'd be okay with spending the rest of my life in prison, but you know, I'd really prefer not to be killed quickly by the state. Fuck it...nevermind. Stupid death penalty..."?
So clearly it's just bloodlust. People feel better if the stupid fuck is killed. Which, though fun, don't really have a place in law. Law is about maintaining order, deterring crime, and arguably rehabilitating criminals. And it's not like killing the guy is going to make the victims' families feel any better. Doesn't exactly bring back the victims, now does it? Doesn't even help them cope psychologically. Just kind of pisses us off that the guy killed people and we'd like to fuck with him. And that really isn't a good basis for a law, now is it?
That said, the number of executions that actually take place is so small, and the likely fraction of erroneous convictions within that small population is so small, that it seems kind of silly to get worked up about the issue from a public policy standpoint. It just doesn't have much of an impact on the crime rate or society in general one way or another. So while I think the idea in general is stupid, I don't really worry about it very much. Many more people die in the world every day for much stupider and more pointless reasons.
(*sigh*)
Honestly, I don't particularly care. Personally, I'm against the death penalty, mostly because it's pointless. It's demonstrably not a deterrent, both statistically and logically. I mean, if you're fucked up enough to kill your wife and father-in-law in front of two of your children, do you honestly think you're actually going to say to yourself on the front porch, "You know, I'd really like to fuck up my wife and father-in-law in front of two of my children. I'd be okay with spending the rest of my life in prison, but you know, I'd really prefer not to be killed quickly by the state. Fuck it...nevermind. Stupid death penalty..."?
So clearly it's just bloodlust. People feel better if the stupid fuck is killed. Which, though fun, don't really have a place in law. Law is about maintaining order, deterring crime, and arguably rehabilitating criminals. And it's not like killing the guy is going to make the victims' families feel any better. Doesn't exactly bring back the victims, now does it? Doesn't even help them cope psychologically. Just kind of pisses us off that the guy killed people and we'd like to fuck with him. And that really isn't a good basis for a law, now is it?
That said, the number of executions that actually take place is so small, and the likely fraction of erroneous convictions within that small population is so small, that it seems kind of silly to get worked up about the issue from a public policy standpoint. It just doesn't have much of an impact on the crime rate or society in general one way or another. So while I think the idea in general is stupid, I don't really worry about it very much. Many more people die in the world every day for much stupider and more pointless reasons.
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