Ben w-lfs-n would just get you kicked off AdSense anyway.
Wait, didn't some of us already buy you some kind of nice dinner? Was there some post-dinner blogging of that blessed event that I missed? Quid pro quo, ogged.
Yay! Free comment! It never tasted so good...
if I charge you all $5 for each comment you've left
Guess I'd better start buying lottery tickets.
Oh yeah. Now that we're talking money, Unf shows up. Uh-huh.
And finally! You blog about the "corporate finance" that you're both so excited about.
The cross billing is going to get complicated, ogged.
You are essentially charging for consumeing content (comments). We, on the other hand, must bill for time spent on content creation. Clearly time spent plunging the depths of the hoo-hole is billable, while I suppose you could argue incessent refreshing is our own damn fault.
Last time I did contract work, I billed $100-250/hr. I'm sure the lawyers here have higher hourly rates, and assume some of the students, etc. are much less. Shall we settle on an average of $150/hr ?
All Wiener-pwned comments should be prorated. I'm not paying for a comment someone else already left.
I'd like to discuss royalties for the in-jokes I've created.
Ogged, just subtract what I owe from the ad fees you're paying me for the naming rights to our party.
Ogged, would it be okay if I paid you in unused condoms? I'm sure you have friends who could use them.
I can give you two used condoms for every unused one sam k is offering.
lurker, that is.
That'll be five bucks, sir.
Lord, if I could only bill the time I spend on unfogged, my life would be complete. Can't you people work to develop some actual expertise in something? Then I will search out a rich client who needs to know more about that, whatever it is. And bill my time here as research forevermore!
Oh my would that be wonderful. I'd even start paying the $5 per comment fee. (Charging it back to the client, of course.)
Hey, we have actual expertise in lots of things. Ask me about RICO or fondant.
I'm here if your client needs to know something about unused condoms.
I'm reading up on terroristic interventions (that is, performance art). What can I do you for, Brock?
I'll just send you a bill for system administration in a bit, 'kay?
Oh, and if anyone wants me to go into the DB and disguise who left it, I can do that: $1/comment if you just want it anonymized, $3/comment to have it attributed to someone else.
Anybody got a recipe for RICO au fondant?
I have an acuity for tax law and I do a decent impression of Ella Fitzgerald. How can I be of service?
If your clients needs some advice in narrative semiotics, I'm all yours for a low low price.
w-lfs-n -- an awesome way of celebrating the New Year would be to reattribute all the comments in the database at random (Maybe preserving frequencies).
$3/comment to have it attributed to someone else.
That's right, folks! You could be Standpipe Bridgeplate for the low, low price of $39,990.
Don't be tempted by Ben's offer in 23: I have a copy of the site on CD.
ERROR: Your account has insufficient funds to post this comment. Please add funds to your account, and try again. We apologize for the inconvenience.
19, 25, 26: I can make a bong out of almost anything and can tell you what household products will give you a buzz. Also, parenting advice.
JM -- it's at the very least a roadmap to o-freedom.
You may take away oor comments, but ye'll never take awa' oor freedom ...
CongressOgged shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemblecomment, and to petition the government for a redress of grievancesbetter cock jokes.
Okay, 35 is awesome.
...Damn! I was only off by one post!
Ogged, you'd be a fool to try to monetize this community. Everyone knows the only way to make money on the internet is to have Google buy you.
I think we should charge by the letter, not by the hour. And then commence to explicate our idiosyncratic representations in polysyllabic terminology in order to render them more comprehensible to the attending audience.
Actually, Ogged, if you put ads up and we all religiously clicked on them, it would be possible to fund an international Unfogged Lollapalooza Tour and hold meet-ups in random bars every damned weekend until we all dropped from liver disease.
Yeah, but who wants to click on ads?
I believe that is a species of click fraud.
19/20/21/22/25/32: it sounds like ogged should turn this place into a general purpose consultancy, like google answers, only with cock jokes.
Related -- here's your first billable question: am i the only one who thinks sentence really needs to be broken into two words, one spelled "sentence" that refers to jail term and the like, and one spelled "sentance" that refers to the grammatical groupings of subjects and verbs into which we organize our speech and writing? Having both these meanings carried by the single spelling sentence is pure madness.
am i the only one who thinks sentence really needs to be broken into two words
Yes. That will be $5, please.
Apo, you're undercutting my market here.
It's the invisible hand, baby. Sink or swim.
(I charge by the metaphor.)
JM, Apo beat your price, so I'll go with his answer, even though you're both horribly wrong.
Though, now that I think about it, I've tried to get money to Apo before, and he dodges and evades and generally makes it very difficult, and ends up just inviting you to parties instead. So for lack of a better option I may have to just consider that one a freebie.
The answer in 46 was more sententious, though.
Yeah you did, didn't you? As with my sexual favors, though, I'm not allowed to accept money for my wit and wisdom.
How does one monetize backhanded compliments from Ben w-lfs-n?
That was neither backhanded nor a compliment, you shameless wench.
I am right now commenting from a machine on which I installed Linux. For fun! Have I mentioned my excessive geekitude?
Insults should be counted as gratuities, I'm sure.
Ubuntu. So far, the great triumph was getting the wireless card working.
Now Firefox is telling me I need a shockwave plugin to view the main Unfogged page. Surely not.
And on the list of AP books on the HS webbage itself, it gives as an optional book for US history Zinn's People's History. I'm pretty sure no one ever mentioned that to us when I was there.
Slol: if there's a youtube-embedding post on the front page, surely so.
Oh ah.
Okay, B-wo, what TeX editor do I want?
Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping
63: During my brief stay at the NC School of Science and Math, that was the main text we used for my history class.
Really? That seems, I dunno, quaint. I've been using TeXShop.
That is, you want Emacs, and you also want to use AUCTeX, which you may have to install, and reftex, which comes with, and probably also ebib (though right now it appears not to reliably sort cross-referenced entries after those that cross-reference them, since I think it just goes by a lexicographical sort on entry key---still, it's nice).
Learning to use emacs can be, uh, fun. You don't actually need to know that much to get some use out of it, though.
No, I actually have learned to use Emacs. One of the reasons I mentioned it was quaint, though.
60: Huh, mine too. Just a stub, though.
Does TeXShop come with a web browser?
No. I take it this is meant as a point in favor of emacs?
I'm just saying, emacs is pretty awesome.
Emacs subscribes to the UNIX design philosophy of "do one thing, and do it well". That one thing is kicking ass.
Emacs + auctex + reftex is the best latex environment I know of. It's a little bit fiddly to get it working best on OS X these days, since there isn't an official release that supports it natively.
I've tried things like TexShop, but for any serious amount of editing, emacs just can't be beat.
I'm pleased that my addition of Ezra Klein as a notable alumnus has survived: "# Ezra Klein - Post-gay political blogger"
77: Is exactly wrong.
Emacs is essentially burying a little lisp machine inside whatever it is running as. So in other words, instead of doing on thing and doing it well, it does everything, and does it well (for the most part). This is why you have so many addons (including, for example, a computer algebra system).
ed/ex is the prototypical UNIX philosophy editor. Editors aren't a particularly good application of the philosophy.
Oh, I take it back a bit though, only the first part of 77 is wrong. Emacs does kick all kinds of ass.
Yeah, soubz, it's b/c I normally use OS X that I gave up on emacs. But, you know, there's always something new to learn. Or in this case, something old to re-learn; I haven't used emacs since 1993 or so.
Soubz: I actually do know how emacs works.
See, it's a joke, because part of the stereotypical vi/emacs holy war is vi users saying that emacs doesn't conform to the unix design philosophy…
AMTF.
emacs works very well in OSX, slolr; I use it there pretty much daily. You do have to build from source, but that is easy. You'll have to install auctex and reftex too, unlike a lot o linux distribs that include all that these days. The other thing to do is us `customize' to run pdflatex instead of latex, then OSX preview can view the output.
If you have a slower machine, you might opt for running it all under X and using xdvi to view, like any other *nix. For some reason pdflatex generation is notably slower (I did this on a G4 ibook, on my intel dual-core, it isn't noticeable)
63: We used it as a supplemental text in AP U.S. History. It was a nice change of pace.
You don't have to build from source on OSX -- I downloaded a binary that is working very nicely, thank you.
The only thing I don't have working is gnuclient, but it's only a matter of time.
89: ah, I should say, it works better if you build it. Unless the binaries are more up to date than they were when last I checked. For example, font rendering was much improved....
I use MikTeX on my windows machine, and have been too lazy to try to find an equivalent on a laptop running Ubuntu. The thing is, MikTeX just makes package management so very easy. As for Emacs, the problem is that you have to learn how to use it.
This thread has been officially ruined by geeks.
Can we get a vi-style comment entry box? It would keep out the riff-raff.
Where would we be without riff-raff?
We wouldn't have any fucking cake, that's for sure.
Wow, I thought this thread would be funny. It was, for a brief moment, and then it went to Nerdtown.
Oh, wait:
... In comparison, the total-fit line breaking algorithm used by TeX and developed by Donald Knuth and Michael Plass considers all the possible breakpoints in a paragraph, and finds the combination of line breaks that will produce the most globally pleasing arrangement.
Global pleasure, then.
Donald Knuth! That guy was awesome.
92: I can't help but think that, intentionally or no, this comment is directed at me and my kind.
If this blog doesn't get exciting soon, I may have to actually do some studying. I prefer not to.
It's $10 for geeky comments. Carry on.
Also, 79=awesome.
96: Many things that people otherwise mistakenly use a word processor for.
The geeks also ruined the "how many 60 year olds could Yglesias beat up" thread. Yet they never seem to derail discussions of Latin American dictators or Iraq policy.
79 was awesome. I thought the theme needed some amplification.
You know what I like? Microsoft Word, bitches.
Browsing apo's image directory shows one a very odd mix of disturbing, hilarious, and inscrutable, peppered with cute pictures of Noah.
The other thing to do is us `customize' to run pdflatex instead of latex, then OSX preview can view the output.
(add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook 'tex-pdf-mode)
And Leblanc, what do you mean "was"? Knuth is still alive.
As for 79, I'm just glad that, contrary to my filename-based expectations, the pic was unrelated to lemonparty.jpg.
I'm really starting to like the name Noah. It's pretty and fun to say.
Surely, like Emma, it will now be ruined before I ever get around to having kids.
Personally, for baby names, I prefer Jason, Caleb or Tab.
103: Does this mean there's some sort of arts and crafts ethic going on in the comp sci / mathematics community?
109: Casket_security? That was weird, huh?
116: Yeah, that and "omgwtf.jpg".
112: Noah seemed like a relatively uncommon name when we chose it, but according to the baby name wizard thingie, it was the #23 most popular boy's name last year.
Noah seemed like a relatively uncommon name when we chose it
It's been uncanny, as my friends have had kids in the past couple of years, how every single couple wracks their brains for weeks and finally comes up with a name that strikes them as uncommon, and winds up picking one of the ten most common names of the year.
Here's the older image directory, if you're bored.
Thanks, apo! I am bored (or at least, valiantly avoiding doing work).
114: Possibly. I've had professors type up Math papers in Microsoft Word, but the equations you can get from the equation editor don't look right. The formatting and the way equations are displayed when using TeX or LaTeX is far superior--and once you learn the language, it's much faster than having to deal with word's interface. Plus, you can format your papers to meet whatever exacting publication standards you need without too much difficulty. It makes me happy.
Wow, I'd forgotten about most of those (like this one). So many posts...
114: Most other approaches (word, powerpoint, adobe, whatever) do a very poor job of typsetting mathematics. They used to do a horrifically bad job, so that's improvement I guess. I don't know how consistent it is in computer science these days, but math is pretty consistently done in some form of TeX or other relatively obscure systems.
It's also a better way to handle large documents. I'd hate to write a book or thesis in word, but it works well in latex. There are plenty of things TeX isn't well suited for, of course.
120 -- we have had pretty good luck with "Sylvia".
We're pretty satisfied with Nathaniel, which is never obscure but always rare. Works as a Hebrew name too. I favor "old American" names, as a good place to start from. LB's are some of the best I've ever seen, familiar yet likely to be uncommon.
I might have been able to sell "Harry," now becoming more common, but "Elmer" wouldn't have been acceptable, I know. Ditto "Dolly."
I seem to be involved in a lot of thread-killing these days.
I ban myself.
124 -- Funny, I haven't noticed many Newts among my peers' kids -- perhaps its a regional thing?
Emacs + auctex + reftex + ispell is my LaTeX editing environment of choice.
There is nothing better. I've tried TexShop and quite liked it, but since I work on both PCs and on OS X the emacs based solution means that the environment is the same, whatever machine I use. Plus, if I can't do anything else, I'm able to ssh into a unix box I have a shell account on and work there in a terminal window using all the same commands.
I'd never go back to Word.
128: Nope. Five 'Newt's in our circle, and plenty of 'Sally's.
I actually don't do any writing anymore, and I doubt I'd use Word if I had to write anything longer than 15 pages. But it's not so bad.
133: Fanny is trouble, especially abroad, but so is Dick.
130: Yes, they are hedgehogs. That was just the filename when I found the image, and it has since been linked so very widely (about every sixth or seventh myspace page) that I just left it as is.
I have a secret beautiful English female baby name that I plan to spring on the world at some later date when a female baby whose name I am able to influence may appear. However, I'm not going to tell any of you fecund trendsetters what it is, because it could definitely go the Emma/Abigail/Olivia/Hannah route from obsolescence to omnipresence.
135: It's horrible if you have anything but the most simple mathematics in the text. Otherwise, it's ok.
that ban didn't stick very well.
120: Brand allegiances are not dissimilar.
129: It's illusory.
130: Disgusting.
I favor "old American" names, as a good place to start from. LB's are some of the best I've ever seen, familiar yet likely to be uncommon.
So how are little Oscar and Gertrude doing?
If the current baby-to-be turns out to be a girl, I'm about 70% sold on Cassidy. I'm really struggling with boys' names, though. Keegan has stayed down below 200, but I think you're supposed to pick different names for subsequent children.
"Old Canadian" would be my refuge if overtaken by the forces of mindmeld/Borg. "Wilfred." Bet DA knew of some "Wilfs" growing up, probably mostly old guys now.
You could have a son and daughter, named Winfred and Winifred.
re: 135
I use Word or OpenOffice for short documents, and like them both. I don't think Word is a terrible product for short reports and letters but for longer writing, with more complicated layouts, sections, subsections and so on, and with footnotes, and formulas, LaTeX is just so much better.
The real pain in the ass is if you give your kid a rare name, and then 5 or 10 years later it becomes trendy.
"Old Canadian" would be my refuge if overtaken by the forces of mindmeld/Borg.
Oh, absolutely. In the process of doing something unrelated, I discovered here the nom de plume I'll use if my plume ever requires a nom.
re: 146
An ex-girlfriend used to have a cousin called Kylie, who was about 4 when Kylie hit the UK as a pop-singer in the late 80s. She went through life with people thinking she was named after the singer.
'Celtic' names became very popular for a while, and friends of mine who were called Callum (or whatever) suddenly had names that sounded like trendy Londoners, when in fact it was, for example, their grandfather's name.
So how are little Oscar and Gertrude doing?
Just fine, thanks, or any other name used for a Japanese Aircraft during WWII.
The name "Oscar" was selected by Captain, later Col. Frank T. McCoy, Jr., U.S.A.A.F., and his staff, founders of the code-name system. A native of Tennessee, McCoy tended to select "hillbilly" names such as "Zeke", "Rufe", and "Nate" — short, simple, but unusual enough to stick in the memory.
Lois, my great grandmother's name, has not made the top 1000 since 1983. I predict that it will make it into the top 5 the exact year that I am ready to use it.
My sister was named Zoe before it was well-known. Now it's a freakin' Muppet.
When I was thirteen, I got a hamster and named her "Simba," which I knew was Swahili for "lion." I thought that was pretty ironic and cute. Then that damn movie came out and I had to explain to everyone, "No, see, I got Simba before... nevermind."
So I should pick a name that could never turn suddenly popular, like Luberack or Lugnut.
How about Adolf? That one is bound to be out of general use for a long time.
AWB, you might want to look at the front page.
re:Adolf: Obama's middle name is "Hussein," another crowd-pleaser, even if you don't want bowling shoes.
157: You may say this country isn't ready for a President named Adolf Hussein Osama, but I'm more optimistic.
I have a secret beautiful English female baby name
Is it Chlamydia? I bet it's Chlamydia.
That's a Latin name, Stanley.
It's not Scrofula either.
156: Oh, I didn't see that! I saw it at Fastlad.
Mr w-lfs-n, RE: 70: I am right now in the middle of editing a large LaTeX document with Lemmas and Theorems and the like in Emacs and I had never hear of RefTeX. God bless you, sir. This will change my life.
162: reftex is hella useful. It (and auctex) ought to replace the standard latex mode.
I can't believe how many emacs partisans have been lurking in here. I feel like you all have told me you're furries or something.
*shiver*
164: It isn't emacs per se., I think, just that emacs + auctex + reftex is far and away the most productive latex system out there.
so really, we're latex partisans.
Slighly shorter 165: Emacs = cryptic commands to generate cryptic commands to generate cryptic symbols.
LaTeX isn't cryptic at all. It's very transparent and the learning curve isn't steep. If you don't need formulas or complicated tables, it can be learnt in an afternoon.
Emacs, I'll admit, is much less transparent. But it is very good at what it does [apart from the fact that chording the ctrl commands in Emacs leads, in my experience, to hellish RSI if you overdo it].
167: I've spent every productive minute of the last three months in an Emacs window editing LaTeX. Love the stuff. Couldn't live with out. But, not cryptic? What are you smoking?
167: Helps if you move you ctrl key to the proper place...
168: I don't really get that either. Both basic latex and basic emacs are very straightforward. There are fiddly bits of both to learn if you need them, but those are mostly to do with complicated things.
Basic latex is just text with the odd \section{whatever}, perfectly intuitive. The math markup takes a little to get used to, but it's mostly intuitive once you get the hang of it, and it isn't like there are simpler systems... just horrible `visual' editors for math that don't do what you want anway and involve endless searching through menus. For anything non-trivial, anyway.
Emacs is much the same. By default, there is a simple text editor with mouse over, cut and paste etc. Sure, it doesn't have the default windows CUA bindings. But those bindings aren't so great, anyway, and they are hardly intuitive --- people are just used to them. I know people who use emacs like this all the time. They picked it up in half an hour and never use any powerful features.
Yeah, the baby names thing is humbling. It really makes you realize that there's a lot to be said for generational styles when your preference for "unique, but not crazy like Rainbow or anything, maybe kinda old fashioned" turns out to be the same thing everyone else wants.
Luckily, PK's name has a built-in association that most grownups worry about saddling their kids with. But not us, because we're assholes like that.
The geek comments need to cost $10 each.
I just can't figure out why people aren't naming their kids "Lavender Moss" and "Volcano Aquarius" anymore. Or "Glory-be-to-God-persevere-against-sin". Doesn't anyone feel nostalgic for the good olde days?
If we're going to do topic-sensitive pricing, it's going to be $50 for each "feminist" comment (to be categorized at my discretion) and $500 for any comment that takes offense or has its feelings hurt.
You need to wait probably another half generation for the hippie names to come back, I'd expect.
PK's name has a built-in association that most grownups worry about saddling their kids with.
It seems like this association might have faded a bit in recent years.
I basically only use emacs at an extremely rudimentary level.
44: Ha, B-Wo - even compelled clicking will cause brand names to sink into your subconscious and lead you to purchase strange items you don't need from random advertisers. Or so one could lead them to believe.
Besides, we'd have no guarantee that Ogged wouldn't just take the money and buy himself a really big house and impress a really hott girrll and never, ever let any of us come over for a beer, much less all of that Cristal.
L'abus d'alcool est dangereux pour la santé. Consommer avec modération.
If we're going to do topic-sensitive pricing, it's going to be $50 for each "feminist" comment (to be categorized at my discretion) and $500 for any comment that takes offense or has its feelings hurt.
I also propose increased pricing on any comment suggesting loss of a sense is not a handicap.
Also, discounted rates for teasing Teo about virginity.
Dahmermanson is his first name, his first name is Islamorama.
Dahmermanson ... Islamorama
Stanley, are you listening?
nostalgic for the good olde days?
I would love to have used Prudence. But it wasn't on the table.
I'd like to put a word in for obscure biblical names. They're not that bad! Really!
Beelzebub Barnes is nicely alliterative.
But Baal Barnes has that one-name, macho, quality. Plus, down South he'd be Baaly-Bob.
One-syllable, I meant.
Not down South, I bet.
Stanley, are you listening?
I am now that you caught my attention...
It's come to my attention that there was a people, the Jebusites, whom G-d was supposed to have driven out of the promised land along with the Caananites and sundry others. One assumes they worshipped Jebus, a nation ahead of their time.
They drove a VW g-Bus out of the promised land.
Crappy old comments box. How do you make this thing be funny?
They drove a VW g-Bus out of the promised land
As decided in the storied Jebusite Plebiscite.
heebie's got a good suggestion up in 185.
I'd like to put a word in for obscure biblical names. They're not that bad! Really!
I agree, Hepzibah and Issachar are both cool names. It's hard to find one that doesn't make people assume you're Jewish, though.
Crappy old comments box. How do you make this thing be funny?
One way to start is never to type "Jebus".
Keep the Biblical names in Hebrew, though.
It's hard to find one that doesn't make people assume you're Jewish, though.
Or Mormon, or Amish.
Shouldn't all you whiteys be naming your kids Mohammad or Fatima, to confound the government's oppressive screening strategies?
Maybe Weep-not, Fly-debate, and Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith would actually be better. Then you'd be stereotyped as a WASP type. A WASP type from the late 17th century, but still.
My parents found inspiration in names like Minnie Pearl and Chrystal Gayle in pulling my name out of their ass.
80: I wear Trojans on my crank.
201: Shouldn't all you Shi'a be naming your kids Omar or AbuBakr, to confound the Mahdi Army's oppressive screening strategies?
Wait, I just made the thread sad. I ban myself and renounce any claim to profits from this thread's comments.
It's okay to have a sad thread. Everybody cries, Ned.
171: Is it ... Rumplestiltsken?!
Fatima's very pretty. I already had planned to give my hypothetical future Jewish daughter the middle name "Mary," after my grandma. Hmm: "We cordially invite you to the bat mitzvah of our daughter Fatima Mary"...
John Cole says "Eating anything is not a good idea atm." Ain't that the truth.
Maybe the next trend will be infelicitously applied classical names like Octavius and Posthumous (especially the latter).
It's been uncanny, as my friends have had kids in the past couple of years, how every single couple wracks their brains for weeks and finally comes up with a name that strikes them as uncommon, and winds up picking one of the ten most common names of the year.
I think we've had this discussion before, but I honestly think that people's ideas of popular names are fixed when they're in high school, so when they're 25 or 30 and naming their children and hear a name on TV or read it in a book, they think that's it a rare name because no one they grew up with had it. It's not Kristen or Jessica or Jennifer or Caitlin, is Olivia, it's surely new. But every other set of parents is thinking the same thing.
208 : B doesn't want to admit that she had a crush on Englebert Humperdinck when she was younger. [The composer, not the crooner.] It's tough on PK being known as "Humpy" around his school, but things could have been worse. She could have named him Hänsel. Or Bambi.
OTOH, the Offspring seems to deal just fine with being named "Northwest Orient Male Child Accompanied Minor Destination LAX". We call him Boeing for short.
As decided in the storied Jebusite Plebiscite.
Blathering blatherskite.
But every other set of parents is thinking the same thing
Yeah, but it's that they are seemingly thinking the same thing independently of everyone else that is sort of confounding.
177: My thinking exactly. I mean, no one remembers Engelbert Humperdink any more.
174: $50 for feminist comments? So much for this whole "I'm not sexist" routine.
$50 for feminist comments? So much for this whole "I'm not sexist" routine.
I'm pretty sure it applies to feminist comments by men too.
Women can have money now?
[/ducks!]
219 - The law in its majesty equally forbids the rich and poor to object to Selma Hayek ass shots.
Heh. Fifty years ago we'd have them upside down with a--
What? Do I shock you?
My father wanted to name me Zephaniah. It would have been novel, but I think I'm glad I missed it and he settled for a (different) biblical middle name.
File a lawsuit.
Wine for winners!
The other bullshit lawsuit? It went absolutely nowhere. Do you really think I'm that easy to bluff?
226: I was almost named Borghild Sigrid. Less inflamed minds chose something that would not, in future, sound like a member of a Star Trek collective
