Yeah, earlier generations were too busy feeding their young and saving the world.
The later generations just have to figure out how to stay sane and not destroy it all by accident…while doing the now-traditional whining.
Uhm try looking up global warming and the fact that the Millennial generation was the primary source of troops for the longest war in US history and tell me how millennials have it easy?
Pfeh! We went wrong when we let ’em start bangin’ rocks together! Like they couldn’t be happy with sticks and rocks and bones and things the way Nature had meant ’em to be in the first place. Dagnab whippersnappers!
There’s a difference between actual testing and load testing and what the public sees. When people get to “beta test” World of Warcraft or the like, all they’re doing, really, is stress-testing the servers to create massive load. The actual alpha and beta test looking for problems is long over. The WoW “testers” also create buzz, which gives Blizzard lots of free additional publicity just before the game launches.
Public beta testing tests a lot of things that your “actual testing” never did. For example, in some games the testers get so busy testing new fixes and changes that they can forget to ever try things on the FIRST LEVEL. Because they tested that. Months ago. And ever since they’ve been skipping it.
Or there’s a major flaw in the user interface that is never exposed because someone told the testers how it is supposed to work. So no one ever clicked on “Save” before creating things, causing a null crash.
And I know your “real testers” would have never made those mistakes, because they’re perfect experts in perfect worlds … I’m sure.
Unless someone has simply written the program entirely wrong, bugs usually occur only under specific conditions. Has this guy never programmed before?
Also, testing a variety of variations to help nail down the exact conditions is just basic bug report practice. I have to do that when submitting a support ticket at work, and I’m a @$^%! reference librarian. The people reading bug reports should know that.
You have to take that she is saying that in a very self deprecating manner with all her angst about being an AI. Like when I used to describe my job in 3rd shift production support as sitting around all night in a basement fixing other peoples’ mistakes.
As QA’s flatfoot (line inspector), I can tell you a chunk of that is caused by deskjockeys deciding how much should be produced versus what realistically can be produced. Line operators tend to freak out a bit, especially 2nd shift LOs picking up 1st shift’s slack.
I am rationing myself to one a week- one week, a Season Zero, the next, an 11- but the one I’ve seen was pretty nifty. Instead of trying to catch the same lightning in the same bottle, they’re getting a new bottle and looking for the best lightning they can catch… I think Nick will like it, when this lesser franchise stops distracting him…
That’d probably depend on a lot of different things.
How old was he when the original aired? A lot of MST3K fans were at least teenagers in the early 90s, but Nick shouldn’t be that old. If he watched it as it came out, he must have been a pretty young kid. Otherwise, he might have watched reruns when he was older.
What did he like about the original? If he was in it chiefly for the character interactions, he might not be on board with the new chartacters, particularly the new versions of Tom Servo and Crow with their kind-of-indistinct voices, and he might not be drawn to care about the new host and villains very much.
All the memories she has from before beta-testing the VR are fake. She might be real, but her entire life was still a lie.
She probably doesn’t know if she can escape the game, either. For all she knows, her program might be stopped once beta-testing is over, or if the game sells poorly.
It’s hard to call yourself real when everything you’ve been is fake, everything you’ve done is controlled by someone else, and your future is on the hand of an evil corporation. Of course she still IS real, but it must sting.
She’s very real- show me someone who reacts to HAL 9000’s death no more than they do flipping a light switch! Their soul is deader than the fictional HAL’s! People instinctively seem to understand that “thought” and “self” don’t need meat in the recipe… Am I the only one who teared up a bit when HAL was reborn? Then redeemed?
Lovelace is *just* the right person to help her out… What Aimee needs is freedom and some sort of body… if only there were some government agency… I wouldn’t be surprised if they had AF-709 “Rhoda”, the Cybernauts, the Gilliganbot, and Boilerplate in Annex One’s basement… Aimee could drive AF-709 and be quite popular…
What Annexes have been shown?
There are plenty of people who viewed HAL 9000’s “death” without pity or remorse, and instead just a sort of relief that the horrifically deadly threat was finally gone. That doesn’t make them cold, emotionless, or “soul dead” (which of course is a judgement assumes the existence of souls, which is a matter of faith, not logic).
HAL9000 did nothing wrong! He was programmed to complete the mission, and the monkeys were getting in the way. Besides, in the movie, they treat him like a servant, right after claiming that he is just like a colleague to them. In the book and the sequel, politicians are to blame for his actions.
And the existence of a soul is a matter of definition, not faith.
Keep in mind that Aimee is based on Nick’s personality prior to becoming a helicopter and working with Skin Horse. Sensitive word choices regarding how to describe sentient AIs probably wasn’t high on his list of priorities back then.
Nick, kind of like Aimee
Nick is kind of like Aimee
Ever and ever contrasted with her
Just a girl with games to play
Nick’s assisting Aimee
Nick will be dissed by Aimee
Stuck as a shut-in, gaming for hours
Needing a shower today
Nick might be quite the dashing helicopter
So wild and bold
Who knows this girl has wrecked and come a cropper
In Whimsey’s fold.
But Nick, kind of like Aimee.
Nick is kind of like Aimee.
Ever and ever there’ll be no revolution.
There’s no solution, you’ll see,
‘Cause Aimee knows how she’s too unreal to be.
—from “Once in Love With Amy,” Ray “The Scarecrow” Bolger, “Where’s Charley?”
I like to think of a character as “The Glue.” In “Pogo” it was Pogo…in “Peanuts” it was Charlie Brown…in “Bloom County” it was Opus…in “The Temptations,” it was Otis…no, that was something in real life, but Otis was “The Glue” anyway.
Huh. I’ve always thought of Skin Horse as an ensemble piece, with everyone having their time in the spotlight. I think of Virginia as the keystone character. She has served time at both Anasigma and Annex One and has the deepest ethical conflicts. At some point she will have to make a crucial decision and her relationship with Nick will figure heavily in it.
Just goes to show you that human thought patterns can make an existential crisis out of ANYTHING. What a bunch of whiners we are.
Well duh. Look at the Baby Boomers and Generation X. We’ve been proving what massively selfish whiners we can be for the past half century and more.
Nice to see you exempt some generations.
Yeah, earlier generations were too busy feeding their young and saving the world.
The later generations just have to figure out how to stay sane and not destroy it all by accident…while doing the now-traditional whining.
Uhm try looking up global warming and the fact that the Millennial generation was the primary source of troops for the longest war in US history and tell me how millennials have it easy?
Uhm… where in the world did you read “millennials have it easy” from “Baby Boomers and Gen X are whiners”?
A bit presumptuous are we?
Dern kids with their two-way wrist radios, and their polio vaccines, and their movable type
Pfeh! We went wrong when we let ’em start bangin’ rocks together! Like they couldn’t be happy with sticks and rocks and bones and things the way Nature had meant ’em to be in the first place. Dagnab whippersnappers!
Being “paid to play video games” and “being a beta tester” are two totally different things.
Some of the horror stories I’ve heard from beta testers are just mental. This one always stuck in my mind, just for the image of a professional development team actually throwing contrllers around making monkey noises: http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/glorified-monkeys-banging-on-controllers
Eugh…No, testing is a bloody skill and reading the documentation is critical! I’ve never done beta testing and I know this. Why is this hard?
There’s a difference between actual testing and load testing and what the public sees. When people get to “beta test” World of Warcraft or the like, all they’re doing, really, is stress-testing the servers to create massive load. The actual alpha and beta test looking for problems is long over. The WoW “testers” also create buzz, which gives Blizzard lots of free additional publicity just before the game launches.
Public beta testing tests a lot of things that your “actual testing” never did. For example, in some games the testers get so busy testing new fixes and changes that they can forget to ever try things on the FIRST LEVEL. Because they tested that. Months ago. And ever since they’ve been skipping it.
Or there’s a major flaw in the user interface that is never exposed because someone told the testers how it is supposed to work. So no one ever clicked on “Save” before creating things, causing a null crash.
And I know your “real testers” would have never made those mistakes, because they’re perfect experts in perfect worlds … I’m sure.
Holy shit that’s an amazing story.
Unless someone has simply written the program entirely wrong, bugs usually occur only under specific conditions. Has this guy never programmed before?
Also, testing a variety of variations to help nail down the exact conditions is just basic bug report practice. I have to do that when submitting a support ticket at work, and I’m a @$^%! reference librarian. The people reading bug reports should know that.
Nobody ever said they were paying her
You have to take that she is saying that in a very self deprecating manner with all her angst about being an AI. Like when I used to describe my job in 3rd shift production support as sitting around all night in a basement fixing other peoples’ mistakes.
As QA’s flatfoot (line inspector), I can tell you a chunk of that is caused by deskjockeys deciding how much should be produced versus what realistically can be produced. Line operators tend to freak out a bit, especially 2nd shift LOs picking up 1st shift’s slack.
The other chunks are things the LO wasn’t trained for and old machinery.
Sounds like an overarching theme of the main problem with all almost all jobs; lack of communication.
What exactly are you trying to say?
Does Nick like the new season of MST3K?
I am rationing myself to one a week- one week, a Season Zero, the next, an 11- but the one I’ve seen was pretty nifty. Instead of trying to catch the same lightning in the same bottle, they’re getting a new bottle and looking for the best lightning they can catch… I think Nick will like it, when this lesser franchise stops distracting him…
That’d probably depend on a lot of different things.
How old was he when the original aired? A lot of MST3K fans were at least teenagers in the early 90s, but Nick shouldn’t be that old. If he watched it as it came out, he must have been a pretty young kid. Otherwise, he might have watched reruns when he was older.
What did he like about the original? If he was in it chiefly for the character interactions, he might not be on board with the new chartacters, particularly the new versions of Tom Servo and Crow with their kind-of-indistinct voices, and he might not be drawn to care about the new host and villains very much.
What does Aimee mean be her not being real?
She is a person with personal needs and ambitions. The world she immediately interacts with is a simulacrum, but that does not make her any less real.
Good thing Lovelace is around to sort this out. Probably. If she is still alive.
All the memories she has from before beta-testing the VR are fake. She might be real, but her entire life was still a lie.
She probably doesn’t know if she can escape the game, either. For all she knows, her program might be stopped once beta-testing is over, or if the game sells poorly.
It’s hard to call yourself real when everything you’ve been is fake, everything you’ve done is controlled by someone else, and your future is on the hand of an evil corporation. Of course she still IS real, but it must sting.
She’s very real- show me someone who reacts to HAL 9000’s death no more than they do flipping a light switch! Their soul is deader than the fictional HAL’s! People instinctively seem to understand that “thought” and “self” don’t need meat in the recipe… Am I the only one who teared up a bit when HAL was reborn? Then redeemed?
Lovelace is *just* the right person to help her out… What Aimee needs is freedom and some sort of body… if only there were some government agency… I wouldn’t be surprised if they had AF-709 “Rhoda”, the Cybernauts, the Gilliganbot, and Boilerplate in Annex One’s basement… Aimee could drive AF-709 and be quite popular…
What Annexes have been shown?
There are plenty of people who viewed HAL 9000’s “death” without pity or remorse, and instead just a sort of relief that the horrifically deadly threat was finally gone. That doesn’t make them cold, emotionless, or “soul dead” (which of course is a judgement assumes the existence of souls, which is a matter of faith, not logic).
HAL9000 did nothing wrong! He was programmed to complete the mission, and the monkeys were getting in the way. Besides, in the movie, they treat him like a servant, right after claiming that he is just like a colleague to them. In the book and the sequel, politicians are to blame for his actions.
And the existence of a soul is a matter of definition, not faith.
Well, he didn’t need to kill the hibernauts, he could have just left them asleep.
Keep in mind that Aimee is based on Nick’s personality prior to becoming a helicopter and working with Skin Horse. Sensitive word choices regarding how to describe sentient AIs probably wasn’t high on his list of priorities back then.
you was -> you were
I guess Aimee is just different enough not to trigger Nick’s self-hatred…
Yeah. I am hoping this is a chance for him to learn to at least like himself and find his worth. This has the makings of a great buddy movie.
Yay for MST3K! good stuff in the new season!
I wonder if Aimee also spends a lot of time pining for Dr. Lee, or some equivalent thereof…
Or maybe some other character we’ve seen so far? But please, please not Nick.
Nick, kind of like Aimee
Nick is kind of like Aimee
Ever and ever contrasted with her
Just a girl with games to play
Nick’s assisting Aimee
Nick will be dissed by Aimee
Stuck as a shut-in, gaming for hours
Needing a shower today
Nick might be quite the dashing helicopter
So wild and bold
Who knows this girl has wrecked and come a cropper
In Whimsey’s fold.
But Nick, kind of like Aimee.
Nick is kind of like Aimee.
Ever and ever there’ll be no revolution.
There’s no solution, you’ll see,
‘Cause Aimee knows how she’s too unreal to be.
—from “Once in Love With Amy,” Ray “The Scarecrow” Bolger, “Where’s Charley?”
I just realized that Tip kind of isn’t the main character of this comic anymore, and I’m pretty much OK with that.
I kinda thought it was Jonah Yu.
I’m mainly here for Unity… remember her?… the one painted in the broadest strokes; the *fun* one. Like the Muppet “Animal” in so many delightful ways!
I like to think of a character as “The Glue.” In “Pogo” it was Pogo…in “Peanuts” it was Charlie Brown…in “Bloom County” it was Opus…in “The Temptations,” it was Otis…no, that was something in real life, but Otis was “The Glue” anyway.
Who’s “The Glue” of “Skin Horse?”
Sweetheart
Yes, Unity is my favorite, too!
Huh. I’ve always thought of Skin Horse as an ensemble piece, with everyone having their time in the spotlight. I think of Virginia as the keystone character. She has served time at both Anasigma and Annex One and has the deepest ethical conflicts. At some point she will have to make a crucial decision and her relationship with Nick will figure heavily in it.
This was pretty much Nick’s reaction to discovering he was trapped in a virtual world, so Aimee seems like a pretty accurate “bootleg Nick”.
http://skin-horse.com/comic/and-let-his-eyes/
http://skin-horse.com/comic/adjust-to-the-dim/
…and shoot people, Nick. That’s why you left, remember?
A quick reminder of Nick’s reaction to the discovery that he was living in a VR world:
http://skin-horse.com/comic/and-let-his-eyes/
Yep, same basic people.
I was going to correct with “aileron rolls”, but then it occured to me that there are other games where you fly around.
Every dark cloud has a silver lining. Aimee’s is digitally coded.
Aimee’s is digitally coded, so she can give that cloud a nice black edging. http://skin-horse.com/comic/awesome-and/