Posts by James Green
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I'd had to go through an operator to work out how to use the pay phones (they need area codes, but there are no area codes posted anywhere around)
US payphones are remarkably difficult and confusing to use, relative to most other countries, and I think it revolves around weird things relating to area codes. Or something. Anyway, turns out its much easier to convince someone to lend you their cellphone.
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On gmail and attachments...
I was already rather fond of gmail, and then we got hooked up to google via KAREN at work, and the download speed is a near religious experience.
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Another point* is that these parasites use every Applied Psychology trick in the book to make the punter think he's got a chance. They are clinical about it.
I just groan when I see my friends claiming they were "so close" to winning on the scratchies.
Yeah. Like there is some 'chance' that you weren't only 1 thing away from a $10,000 prize...
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I don't believe that myself and most of my friends are part of some freak statistical outlier that hardly ever gamble? So what makes us different - it isn't randomness - I think it just comes back to the self-respect thing.
It's somewhat like Nigerian Scam/Spam. You don't need a huge uptake for it to work profitably.
Also, people that are you friends are not a random sample! That is, you share experiences, some of which may make you less likely to gamble.
Also, people who don't have a particular vice are far more likely to believe that their lack of vice is due to their own agency (virtue, discipline) than it probably is. Some interesting reading at fundamental attribution errorAs for oil futures or whatever, I entirely agree. But at the point that you've learnt that, then you've probably learnt too much to play pokies. Also, bear in mind that the best way to lose money investing/trading is day-trading, which suffers from the same sort of issues as pokies. A very quick gamble-reward pay-off time, you have a few big wins, and then you think you have a good "strategy"...
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Rich: Prolly a lucky combination of learning history and genes. Also, I think if during your stint of playing as a 17 y.o. you either didn't win at all, or had a sufficiently rubbish streak that it seemed like it wasn't worth it, then you don't get hooked in (which is basically a part of your learning history). The worst possible scenario is when you start playing you have a couple of small wins, and you start to think that you are "lucky".
In reality, like me, I'd guess you were actually lucky, in that it seemed kind of dull, and not worth it. -
but to build a society where people have a better level of self-respect and personal resilience
Are you meaning that people should just be able to use self-restraint with respect to staying away from pokie machines?
Basic behaviourism suggests that the variable ratio schedule used by the machine gives the a very high response rate and strong resistance to extinction (ie, stopping). This combined with a high degree of temporal contiguity (ie, the reinforcement arrives immediately after the action, cf. Lotto) makes them pretty bloody insidious. -
They really do need some kind of framework. Not that the bill is going anywhere, but they could do much worse than extending the definition of therapeutic to include "fun" things, and roll them in with the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill.
One of the daft things is that if you buy super-market branded paracetamol, it's sold in the same dose size and absorption rate as any other paracetamol. Much the same way that if you drink 2 different beers that are 1.2 standard drinks, then they're going to be approximately the same. But is BZP like that? Hell no.
And I also think in reviewing the "safety"of such products, it's also worth comparing them to other things that people do for "fun". Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are numerous sport/recreation activities that are more dangerous (both in terms of fatalities and treatment costs; hard to get comparable data on long term health risks however) than things like party pills. I don't see the govt in line to ban fishing, horse-riding, or mountaineering on public safety grounds...
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Did anyone see Arnie's advice to California's wildfire arsonists to turn themselves in? It rather seemed like he was delivering a movie line, and that there was the real possibility that he might go chase them down himself.
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Thanks for the dodgy zip code advice. It may not work on Amazon I guess, but I managed to buy a metrocard on the NY subway using 00000 as my zip-code. That doesn't seem very secure that that is effectively your credit card pin. On the other hand, nobody has actually asked to see the signature on the back of my card since I've been in the US...
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It's reassuring to know I'm not the only one with a stack of vinyl that hasn't seen a lot action lately. Hard to get rid of, so one of the hard solutions has to be found... I've got a reasonable set-up for digitising and I can borrow a turntable from work- it's just the time involved.
Yeah. That was a bit my point. I think many of us (well me anyway) would quite happily pay for a good service, and I assume that with a good set-up, it would be quite straight forward for the person doing it.
It's kind of like replacing your own brake pads. Sure I managed to do it in the past, but it's kinda hard, the pro probably does it better, and certainly a lot more easily. Oh, and then there's the asbestos thing.