Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:42 pm

With Sprint it's really easy to block numbers. Pretty sure it can be done by texting a code and the number to a sprint number just for that, or go online and add em to a block list. I do it from time to time when people too retarded to remove me from their contact list keep wrong-number-calling me over and over (it happens often enough that I've had to do this multiple times).

I don't know if there is a handy way to document/save the texts for evidence later if the crazy person makes good on their threats to file a false complaint. As with many questions of legal concern, a lawyer is almost certainly the sensible sort of person to contact.

Sarandosil · Post by **Sarandosil** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 8:33 pm

When people say "I'll keep you updated" why don't they ever keep you updated?

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:08 pm

Because, what they're really saying is:

"This conversation is irritating, I will now say something that will sound like I give a fuck, but really, I don't.. and I have every intention of forgetting we ever spoke the second you are no longer inside of my line of sight."

It's just shorter to say, "I'll keep you updated"

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:48 pm

If I pulled that shit on my family, they'd kill me. When I tell them I'll keep them updated, it means, "I don't currently have any information to report, but I will - and you'll be the first to know."

Sarandosil · Post by **Sarandosil** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:57 pm

Yeah that's how I interpret it Maj.

I'm trying to meet up with my cousin. I have stuff to give her to take abroad for family and I'd like to just spend some time with her since I haven't seen her in like 20 years. I ask when I can come over on friday- "I'll keep you updated". Don't hear anything on saturday, I ask again, "I'll keep you updated". Sunday- Nada. Today - Nada.

I don't even know if she's still in the country or if she's back in Saudi Arabia by now.

sabs wrote:Because, what they're really saying is:

"This conversation is irritating, I will now say something that will sound like I give a fuck, but really, I don't.. and I have every intention of forgetting we ever spoke the second you are no longer inside of my line of sight."

It's just shorter to say, "I'll keep you updated"

If that's true then apparently I need to ditch every single one of my friends for some non-assholes.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:06 pm

Sarandosil wrote:
sabs wrote:Because, what they're really saying is:

"This conversation is irritating, I will now say something that will sound like I give a fuck, but really, I don't.. and I have every intention of forgetting we ever spoke the second you are no longer inside of my line of sight."

It's just shorter to say, "I'll keep you updated"
If that's true then apparently I need to ditch every single one of my friends for some non-assholes.

You post on the den, this is ample evidence to support the idea that you thrive on assholes, and that without those friends, you may well wither and die. Unless of course you spent more time on here.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Jun 14, 2012 10:21 pm

So what are copyright laws like in Japan? This is in relation to their movies and literature. When does the copyright expire? I'm interested in quite a few silent era Japanese films and I'm curious.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 7:34 am

They're alot like America's. Don't expect anything that's current under copyright to become public domain any time soon.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 10:59 am

I was under the impression that in Japan, you could make a fanfiction and sell it legally? Isn't that what the word "doujin" means? If that's wrong, please correct me, but that's my honest understanding.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 12:08 pm

Dōjin is the term for a group of like-minded people - like a club - some of whom produce original manga, some of which is based off of established properties (usually) without a license. The term dōjinshi or doujinshi refers to the latter - manga, some adult or pornographic, which uses established characters.

But it's not legal. People who sell doujinshi are violating copyright, can be and sometimes are sued. But it's a bit like TSR suing fan sites on the internet: even if you win, you can't stop more sites from popping up and you look like a bit of an asshole to your fans. So some amount of dōjinshi is tolerated.

angelfromanotherpin · Fri Jun 15, 2012 12:26 pm

As I understood it, the difference was that in the U.S., if you didn't defend your copyright, you lost it. So not occasionally CaDing or suing people would wind up with your copyright rescinded. While in Japan, defending your copyright was entirely optional, so creators mostly didn't bother with the non-egregious fan-stuff.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 12:40 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:As I understood it, the difference was that in the U.S., if you didn't defend your copyright, you lost it. So not occasionally CaDing or suing people would wind up with your copyright rescinded. While in Japan, defending your copyright was entirely optional, so creators mostly didn't bother with the non-egregious fan-stuff.

I entirely don't know about Japan's situation, but I do know that copyright doesn't have the "defend it or lose it" clause in the States. You're thinking of Trademarks, which do have that restriction.

Wikipedia gives some information, which seems to be appreciably more permissive than America. Software can be reproduced for personal use, for example. I don't know the nuances, and recent changes are unlisted (if there are any).

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:19 am

Could someone explain why quality-of-life is so much nicer in Kerala than much of the rest of India?

koz · Post by **koz** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:35 am

Calling all TeXperts:

I've just discovered the magic of TeX (well, LaTeX), and I'm absolutely loving it. At the same time, I'm having a few issues with it, specifically:

- Is there any way to apply some kind of change to my whole document? Specifically, I want the text to all become sans-serif.

- I've wanted to do cool sidebars, like the kinds you get in DnD books. When I Googled it, I got the answer that I should be using textpos and fancybox, but I can't make heads or tails of their documentation or get it to work. All help would be very appreciated.

- When using the epigraph package, how can I apply changes to how epigraphs appear (such as reducing the thickness of the line, changing the spacing between epigraphs, etc)? I can't quite make sense of that either...

Examples are best, because that's how I learn best, but explanations would also be awesome.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 11:01 am

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Could someone explain why quality-of-life is so much nicer in Kerala than much of the rest of India?

Kerala is a communist state that spends lots of money on education and healthcare, relatively speaking. Seriously, until last year the state government was run by the Marxist Communist Party of India (not to be confused with the batshit crazy Maoist Communist Party of India, who are a terrorist army). The last state elections put their Left Front into opposition by two seats, and most of their communist programs are still standing.

Kerala has relatively little corporate foreign investment, but they have a lot of skilled workers who work abroad and send money back to their families. So Kerela has what is in essence foreign investment directly into demand, which in turn favors the creation of locally owned small business.

It is a fair testament that heavy investment in education and social services, financed by taxation, can lead to a relatively prosperous and healthy population even without the "wealth effects" of corporate investment. The Sweden model works in poor regions as well as it works in rich ones.

-Username17

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 2:45 pm

I think I've written myself into a corner and could use some help getting out of it.

So, you are a powerful supernatural in a World of Darkness/After Sundown sort of world. A giant kaiju of clearly supernatural origin (does not closely resemble any creature Earth has seen before and has a few obvious supernatural powers mostly relating to property damage) has just rampaged through Los Angeles Godzilla style. It's just been killed after about three hours rampaging and no trace of its body can be found, and it was never carefully examined, however Long Beach is a smoking ruin and the internet and live television have both been flooded with images of the creature before anyone could shut them down. You and a bunch of other powerful supernaturals need to try and keep the masquerade as strong as possible in spite of this situation. You have the cooperation of pretty much every powerful supernatural in the world, so you have incredible influence over every government, media outlet, and military in the world, but no direct control. What do you do?

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 3:12 pm

Chamomile wrote:What do you do?

The site in question being Earth.

You can't really cover it up since there is hard evidence to go with those reports. Unless you fake an alien invasion and fake repel them. Then humanity is concerned with aliens at least, and not their home-grown supernaturals.

You could flood alternate misinformation into the media and try and clean things up a bit to make it look more like an asteroid impact or something, but that is ultimately dissatisfying. Maybe if at the end of it LA is a crater under water.

Dissatisfying, but works.

Go back and stop it!

But once you take this path then why wouldn't you do this for everything? Harry Potter shows us that you can insult your audience with impunity by doing this, however, so what do I know?

Maybe have some sort of time travel plot device that can only be powered by the kaiju you are trying to stop, effectively making it single-use.

An aside.

I forget what the full scope is of the uber-powers are at your disposal, but I have a feeling that even in such a situation, all the disparate powers would not cooperate. Some might pitch in, but many might just lay low, and some may try and use the situation to their advantage. If shit is about to hit the fan and your worst enemy is blowing serious mojo trying to stop it, maybe stabbing them in the back during their exposed weak time is pretty damned tempting.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 3:13 pm

Yeah most of what Frank said is true. One of the interesting things about Keralites who do go abroad is that they drift towards the middle east rather than the States or Europe. Most of these immigrants, for a large part, are mostly blue collar workers or fast food-esque workers. Most of what they earn is sent back. So the high school+ educated don't really face as much brain drain as in larger portions of India. The brain drain is mostly localized in that they move to larger metropolitan cities outside of Kerala. Aside from Trichy and Calicut (which aren't really that metropolitan) there aren't any decent centers of commerce. Lot of Kerala's industries are cottage industries and fishing. The product is exported but the money isn't hoarded as much. The tax rate in Kerala isn't a flat tax and the CPI governments (past and present) tax the rich more heavily than the poor. All this leads to a more enriched state than other states.

West Bengal (the other Communist state) would have a similar status but there are also more uprisings and other dangerous activities in the area.

On a vaguely related note, the two film industries in India that produce more quality-oriented films rather than a gigantic quantity of films (bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood) are Kerala and West Bengal.
---

A lot of this is based of experience in that as an Indian, my native state is Kerala. I grew up in Bengaluru/Bangalore (situated in a different state - Karnataka) but my family is from Kerala. I emigrated to the States in '97 so I was relatively young but I did go back to India on a regular basis until about 2006.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 3:14 pm

War of the Worlds meets Viral Media campaign.
You also, freaking get a movie with that /exact/ same creature working and yesterday. Make it look like it's a during production media campaign to build up excitement.

That helps with the viral. Also, create videos of long beach and this creature that are clearly done with CGI. So that people start questioning wether it happened or not.

Get reports going of a really bad earthquake having hit Long Beach.

Now, the damage to long beach is much much trickier. First is, don't go cheap. Money is not nearly as important to you as the masquerade. You compensate the people, you rebuild the buildings. Make it look like it's coming in from "relief efforts"

Have some Movie Exec commit career suicide and apologize for the publicity stunt. They have this movie in production, and one of their employees was in Long Beach when the earthquake hit, and so you flooded the internet with 'images of the beast destroying Long Beach' . Apologize for taking advantage of a natural disaster, and then quit in dishonor. The guy replacing him comes on and talks about how there will be an in-depth internal investigation so this kind of unfortunate publicity stunt never happens again.

Sir Neil · Post by **Sir Neil** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 3:22 pm

It's OBVIOUSLY a viral marketing campaign for the new Michael Bay/Guillermo del Toro collaboration. Unfortunately, filming coincided with a nasty earthquake, and a memorial riot for the late Rodney King. Very sad, but earthquake prediction isn't an exact science, says the comfortably paternal white-bearded geologist in a sweater/blazer combo. There are a number of protests because President Bush and the Governator skimped on infrastructure spending during the last administration. You have a loud, angry woman vowing to sue the city to make sure it never happens again. The studio vows to donate some insignificant amount to the restoration of LA.

ZOMG! There are scandalous rumors of a video involving Emma Watson and Carly Rae Jepsen!

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 6:33 pm

Yeah, what Sabs and Sir Neil said, it was a publicity stunt for a new movie. Explain loss of life with mundane tragedies unfortunately coinciding. Maybe get someone who doesn't mind being seen as a douchebag by the public saying that he only thought about the opportunity the disaster presented, rather than thinking about the potential loss of life.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 7:00 pm

A Zen hypothetical: if you run a d20 game using the 3d6 variant, is it still a d20 game?

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:25 pm

Koumei: Remember what they say. If you meet Mike Mearls on the road, kill him.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 7:44 am

So, I bought the digital download format of the Civ V expansion from Best Buy yesterday so that I could get it as soon as it went online and not have to worry about how I was going to get out to Best Buy today for the street release.

It is now almost four hours past the time that Digital Downloads unlocked, and I have no expansion. Best Buy uses a piece of software to distribute digital downloads, rather than email links, and their software isn't installing fully. This is severely pissing me off, especially as I cannot return a digital download and just go buy a hard copy.

Does anyone else have experience with this piece of shit?

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 11:01 am

Why wouldn't you be able to return it if it doesn't work?