This movie won six academy awards, including best picture. If you haven't heard of it, you're not in the target audience (i.e.: people who actually see movies).
It didn't really have a traditional marketing blitz where every other commercial on TV is for it, like it was this past week for Machete and The American. But it was the kind of movie that all the critics raved about, and when that happens word tends to get out fairly quickly through various sources.
If the only movies you see are the ones that you see advertisements for, you never see any movie reviews, you never go to IMDB.com or other movie websites, and you never see what a movie you haven't heard of is about when you read the title in the listings, etc. etc., then yeah, you wouldn't have heard of this movie. But then I would argue that you don't care that much about movies anyway (at least not new ones - I watch mostly older movies myself but still pay attention to what's new in case there's anything good).
I liked the movie for a variety of reasons. I thought it was overhyped and some of it was certainly silly/ridiculous, but overall I thought it was good, and very effective as an anti-war movie for the times. I don't really understand all the hate most in here so far have expressed for it. It's popular to say you dislike it, I guess, especially since it won so many awards (I don't think it deserved most of the Academy Awards it won, but it deserved the nominations at least).
And some are saying Avatar should have won Best Picture over this... you have got to be kidding me! Personally I thought Up, Up in the Air, or Inglorious Basterds would have been excellent choices from the nominees (I liked District 9, too, but wouldn't say it was best picture material considering the competition).
Anyway, the real reason I'm replying is because of Repo Men. I thought you meant Repo Man, the 1984 classic, and didn't realize there was a new movie actually called Repo Men.
What I'm ultimately saying is, watch Repo Man - you'll like it.
I took a few courses like this, and it greatly depends on the professor how well it works. Generally, universities have good lecture halls that can handle the load if they offer these size courses, but the professor has to know how to utilize the space properly and to teach to the entire room and not just the front row (although most of the back rows can safely be ignored since they probably don't care).
Of maybe three or four course like this I took (can't remember how many) only one professor could really do it, and he was really good. He somehow made it seem like a much smaller class than it actually was, and got to know many of the students, not just the ones who sit in the front row.
Do you really get your entire tuition paid for, and a presumably large stipend if it totals to $50,000, for teaching two 30 student sections?
I taught three 30 student sections for under $20,000 a year (two semesters) and tuition is supposed to come out of that (a relatively inexpensive state school, but a large state school in California with its ridiculous budget problems still means $2-3000 a semester for grad students), so I'm just wondering. Based on my limited research into the matter, I think I did pretty well compared to what most schools offer. So I can't tell if you're just exaggerating or if you got some ridiculously great deal at an expensive school. I went to an expensive private school for my undergrad degree, and the TAs there definitely were not getting their tuition paid for, at least not by being TAs.
And yeah, I also greatly enjoyed it, and the students were able to connect with me much more easily than with the professors. In my case, as a grad student at 22 and 23 some of the students were actually older than me;)
I do this too. Never had any stuttering as the other replier did, but I do occasionally run into problem files.
At least with the stuff I have - a lot of older movies and TV shows, not necessarily encoded by people who know the best methods to do so, but also plenty of HD rips and so on that should be properly encoded - almost everything needs to be transcoded on the fly, and while it usually works fine the high CPU and bandwidth usage can cause problems occasionally. Then you hit a problem file as I mentioned, and it just won't work or the sound is out of sync or whatever. Can't think of any time I got stutters, but it's possible that happens too.
It's also a little fiddly with things like subtitles and alternate audio tracks - you can't use the subtitle and audio button on the PS3 remote, PS3MediaServer gives you several "links" for lack of a better term labeled with the different options and sometimes they don't work properly. If you watch a lot of foreign movies you will get frustrated with this. Most of the time I have to rename the subtitle file (and occasionally convert them to a different format) to get PS3MediaServer to pick it up.
I like the scroll bars on news channels, because most of the stuff they're actually talking about is absolute drivel and that way I can look at something else. I only tend to watch those channels if I'm sitting in an airport or somewhere like that, and it's often not when the interesting shows with decent news are on, so the scroll bars are great if I don't want to use my nexus one or laptop (assuming there's free wifi) while I wait.
Also, I was in Thailand for a couple months and don't know the language well enough to keep up with fast-paced news. They would sometimes have English headlines scroll by the bottom, though, so I had something to read while my companions listened.
I love my macbook pro, and I also hate branding. Not everyone who uses apple products do it for the brand image. I covered the glowing apple logo, myself.
I refuse to get an iPhone (I have a Nexus One... which has a big Google logo on the back...), greatly dislike iPods, and most every other thing Apple does these days, but their computers - especially the laptops - are great. I use what's best for my purposes (that I can afford anyway), not what my favorite brand makes. I mainly use Microsoft mice, for example, but I don't use Windows on anything.
I bought a Thinkpad T61 a few years ago with Red Hat linux preinstalled, not windows. Not only was there no Windows sticker, but there weren't any other stickers except for an Intel one, which frankly I don't really mind. The cheaper Lenovo laptops come with the full slew of stickers - I know a few people who have them - but they treat the more expensive ones well. Similar price range as macbooks... in almost anything, once you go higher-end the logos play less of a role. Sure you can buy designer clothes with huge logos, but the actually nice stuff usually won't have a logo at all except on the inside.
My main computer now is a macbook pro, though, and yes I did appreciate the clean design when I got it. I did cover up the glowing apple logo on the back, though, with black gaffer's tape and a drawing in silver sharpie.
I covered mine with gaffer's tape and drew a penguin on it (personal trademark, not Tux - see my username - though I am a linux user as well). Used silver sharpie so it matches the nice brushed aluminum.
Doesn't fool anyone into thinking it's not a mac, but it's not as obvious. I'm "thinking different" rather than looking like all the other people with macbooks with that glowing apple on them.
I've been considering of doing something less rough-looking (it's literally just a 3x1 inch piece of black gaffer's tape...) and cutting out the design from the tape so that it glows through the penguin design rather than just completely covering up the light, but I haven't gotten around to it.
All that said, yes, I think the design of the aluminum macbook pro is very nice and it would look ridiculous with all those stupid stickers on it every other laptop has. I can't say I really give them a lot of credit for not putting the stickers on... it should be obvious *not* to put stickers on, not to default to putting stickers on. The fact that every manufacturer loads them on is a sign of mindless corporate copying. I can't imagine there's any real benefit to doing it.
Aren't military games pretty popular among soldiers? I would wager that many are going to play this game anyway, and will just be annoyed that they can't get it on the base. I guess I am also a little surprised they even have video game stores on military bases...
These sorts of models are great because you run the model, and then see which parts of the earth don't fit in real life. You can then investigate that area more closely and either refine the model, or refine your understanding of that particular region.
I'm a geologist and most of my undergrad and graduate studies were on tectonics. What they've got here is fantastic and will yield a lot of great new research and discoveries about plate interactions. It's basically an extension of what people have been doing for decades (modeling and comparing models to reality where possible), so the idea is really not new, but the implementation is fantastic.
So at first it should be fairly clunky, and if you run the model as you suggest going through all of earth's history, yes it will be wrong. But if you take it step-by-step based on what's already understood about past tectonic plate positions (which is quite a lot), i.e. constraining the model, it should be able to show us all kinds of new things and ultimately a complete run-through should be possible that's very accurate. They will be able to continually refine it, of course, as new research comes out, and have a fairly complete model of plate evolution based on whatever the currently accepted progression is.
Well... who *wouldn't* read about it on wikipedia before going out to see it? Chances are theaters advertise it as being a huge classic, yet most these days may not have heard of it and may only be slightly familiar with Christie's work. Before potentially wasting a potentially expensive evening, I would probably do some casual reading on the internet about it. The first place I would look would probably be Wikipedia. There's really no reason to expect major spoilers without some warning there, and I might not read the whole page straight through in order. Something might inadvetantly catch my eye near the bottom as I look for the related links/sources... like the identity of the killer.
If one casually reads Wikipedia and isn't familiar with it, they might assume they're not going to give away the ending. I know I was a bit surprised the first time I suddenly ruined the ending of a movie I was reading about on Wikipedia that I had planned to watch before realizing what I was reading.
You're right that if there's a section titled "Ending" then it's clear you shouldn't read that if you don't want spoilers. However, in most cases there is not such a section. Plot summaries can be very short, and if it's not clear what you're reading you can find yourself getting all the big plot twists in less than a couple of sentences. You really have to be careful, or just avoid Wikipedia altogether if you haven't seen/read something, because they usually don't indicate spoilers. Many like to read about things on the internet before spending time watching or reading them, though, and Wikipedia is often a more useful source than IMDB or random sites across the internet. It really makes no sense not to include a spoilers warning. IMDB is very good about this these days (they weren't originally).
They need to be consistent, and it's common courtesy to avoid giving away the ending without warning. There's really no excuse not to. And honestly, I don't expect that if I open any other encyclopedia that I'll get spoilers for anything. That has never been how things worked in the past. I wouldn't expect to even see things that are general knowledge now like (spoiler alert) Vader being Luke's father (sorry if you didn't know). Does that really belong in an encyclopedia? A brief overview of the plot, sure, but not major twists and so on. I realize Wikipedia is more in-depth than other encyclopedias, especially on cultural topics like plays and movies, and I think that's great - but use a damn spoiler tag, because otherwise you're being a jerk to those who haven't seen whatever it is.
I would guess there is indeed a big "market" for a large torrent like that. You can find them with every NES/SNES game, every movie by a certain director, every released recording by a band, etc... people download this stuff just because they can. Some downloaders may actually look at some of it, most probably don't:)
In any case if you're looking for something more obscure, it's most likely to survive with seeders in a huge torrent like that rather than on its own. For something like this, with a little publicity (like the parent's slashdot post, which would be enough to get quite a few downloaders I'd imagine) geeks across the internet would be all over it.
And here we are discussing the possibility... there's no way there isn't already a torrent out there somewhere with at least part of the collection, either actually from that same site or from other sources.
Union Carbide avoided this, to a great extent. Bhopal is the name of the city where the gas leak occurred - Union Carbide operated the pesticide plant that was the source of the leak.
I wasn't even born then but I don't think if you mention Union Carbide most people would know who they were, though many would be aware of Bhopal - and everyone knows Exxon and BP from their oil spills.
Kodak's image these days is fairly poor; although their digital cameras are pretty popular in the cheap category they're basically non-existent in the professional arena.
Which is too bad, because they did a lot of things to advance photography over the years, not least of which was introducing it to "the masses". I guess now that I think about it, that's what they're still trying to do now with their cheap digital cameras that are fairly decent. But of course they used to contribute much to professionals as well, especially good quality film. They never really had high-end cameras that were used professionally, it was really all about the film, so the switch to digital hit them hard.
My uncle worked as head of a research division at Kodak for many years, and still lives in Rochester. I attended the University of Rochester, which back when George Eastman was around got quite a lot of Kodak money and wouldn't be the school it is today without it. So I've had a lot of exposure to Kodak over the years. I've heard of this digital camera before, and other interesting things they've done.
If you're in the area it's definitely worth checking out the George Eastman House museum. It's his rather incredible mansion, turned into a photography museum. I don't remember if I heard about this camera there; possibly not but they do have all kinds of old equipment on display. They also have an attached movie theater, which shows a different classic, art-house, etc. film every single night. I don't live there any more, but as a student I went to their classic film showings all the time. Always on 35mm and great prints. There's a school for film preservation there, and a huge collection of films.
Last time I was in NYC I searched google maps on my nexus one for the Metropolitan Art Museum... a huge landmark in Central Park (I did already know where it was). Google Maps doesn't know it exists, apparently.
We've all seen obviously fake reviews, on all our favorite internet stores. However, you've probably also seen very nice, balanced user reviews (I sometimes leave these on Amazon whether I liked or disliked whatever it is... I don't think I've ever reviewed a game on there, though).
So how hard would it be to pay people to write reviews that aren't so obviously fake? Provide your fake reviewers with mostly positive points about the game - not "It's great! I can't stop playing it!!!" nonsense, but actual aspects of interesting gameplay or whatever (assuming your game has this). Also provide them with a few negative points. Ask the programmers, I don't expect the marketing droids to be able to figure this out for themselves. Just ask the programmer for a few honest negative points that they wish they'd had time to improve before release. They don't have to heavily criticize huge aspects of the game, just a few small points.
Then the marketing droids can come up with several similarly-worded reviews, different enough to not obviously be the same, to post on various sites. It'll be an overall positive review, but it will seem balanced from the negative points (and the lack of mindless praise), meaning people will be more likely to trust it. Meaning you'll influence people a lot more effectively. If certain market segments are actually influenced by the mindless positive reviews, then post those too I guess if it makes you money.
Well, I don't know why I'm giving the marketing department ideas. I'm not saying I would approve of such measures, I'm just saying that if they had given it even a little bit of fault they could be a whole lot more effective, and those of us who recognize the fake reviews might not be able to anymore.
I was in Rochester a couple days ago (I currently live in nearby Buffalo), and drove through the University of Rochester campus, from whence I graduated two years ago. The students were just moving into the dorms. The campus is fairly close to the airport (not as close as RIT), so I certainly hope they were able to hear or feel the explosion to provide some entertainment before classes start... because Rochester is pretty dull normally:)
You can take it further than that. Star Wars is heavily inspired (with some elements lifted directly) from Akira Kurosawa samurai films.
If you watch the Akira Kurosawa films, you realize that they're heavily influenced by American Westerns. Several of his films were re-made as westerns for western audiences, like The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai) and A Fistful of Dollars (Yojimbo). I think at least one of his films is a remake of a John Ford western, even, though I can't think of which one it is.
So yeah, it's similar to a western. But it's not really a John Wayne kind of western, it's a western by way of Japan.
I don't disagree with your point but I did kind of laugh at your selection of shows. I don't like any of those shows - they're very mainstream and while mainstream stuff can be good in many cases, it usually doesn't interest me.
There are plenty of TV shows I like - even relatively mainstream ones like Quantum Leap, Seinfeld, and assorted other classics, as well as new mainstream stuff like Mad Men or Top Gear (UK).
The point is that even if you exclude classics, there is a lot of excellent programming these days that goes way beyond House, which I consider to be schlock, or CSI which can have interesting stories but is more than a little ridiculous (I'm not familiar with Fringe). And there are interesting shows about engineering, manufacturing, and science on the Science Channel, and good nature documentaries on Discovery HD Theater (besides stuff like Mythbusters on the regular Discovery Channel).
That doesn't mean I'm going to ever pay $80/month for it, of course. I watch online when possible or at my parents' house, where they pay for cable. If I had to pay a whole lot for it, I'd do without.
Google's an American company, and while my mobile phone has all those things as well, that is because... it's a Google Nexus One. A very small percentage of phones, even smartphones, in the US will do everything that the parent suggested, although it seems that they aren't fully aware of what they can do these days.
Anyway Google does make money off of me from Google Voice, because I make international calls and they charge for international calls.
I do this as well but there are some caveats. As is more-or-less typical of Android and Google products, it works great, except when it doesn't.
Specifically, I call a number in Thailand at least once a day. The country code is 66. In my contacts the number is listed as +66###... which is how it must be to get routed through Google Voice. If you want to dial directly through your carrier, you'd put 011 instead of +, so 01166### (or something like that). Supposedly 011 and + are interchangeable, but that's how the phone parses things.
Now here's the problem - as I said, in my contacts I entered the numbers as +66, not 01166. Yet if I dial the number, depending on how I enter it (or perhaps randomly, it's hard to tell), by going through the recent calls list, going to the contact, etc., it will start dialing 01166... and not +66. This means Google Voice doesn't catch it, and then that's apparently the wrong format for AT&T as well - which is a good thing, because they'd charge me $1.50 a minute for those calls if I didn't notice:)
This is perhaps a Nexus One or Android-specific issue and not Google Voice, but it seems to me that if the phone is randomly transposing 011 for + in international numbers, Google Voice should understand this and always work properly the first time.
Also, recently the in-call volume has been ridiculously low; it used to be fine and now I can barely hear the other end. If they call me (not through Google) it's loud and clear, so it's got to be Google Voice's problem.
All that said it's hard to complain because it mostly works and is a great service, it's only 3 cents per minute to Thailand and I don't have to go buy phone cards and enter in long pin codes or any of that kind of nonsense, just dial the number directly from my phone.
FYI, the percentage of the USGS budget that goes toward topographic maps is around 1%, or less. They've got complete coverage of the US, but most areas aren't really being updated because they don't have the money to do so, and usually it doesn't matter that much. But, they can get really, really outdated in some places.
The maps are what they're most well known for (most of the wikipedia page is about their maps, for example), and earthquake monitoring if you live in California, but they actually do tons of other stuff instead these days.
Slashdot Mirror
This movie won six academy awards, including best picture. If you haven't heard of it, you're not in the target audience (i.e.: people who actually see movies).
It didn't really have a traditional marketing blitz where every other commercial on TV is for it, like it was this past week for Machete and The American. But it was the kind of movie that all the critics raved about, and when that happens word tends to get out fairly quickly through various sources.
If the only movies you see are the ones that you see advertisements for, you never see any movie reviews, you never go to IMDB.com or other movie websites, and you never see what a movie you haven't heard of is about when you read the title in the listings, etc. etc., then yeah, you wouldn't have heard of this movie. But then I would argue that you don't care that much about movies anyway (at least not new ones - I watch mostly older movies myself but still pay attention to what's new in case there's anything good).
I liked the movie for a variety of reasons. I thought it was overhyped and some of it was certainly silly/ridiculous, but overall I thought it was good, and very effective as an anti-war movie for the times. I don't really understand all the hate most in here so far have expressed for it. It's popular to say you dislike it, I guess, especially since it won so many awards (I don't think it deserved most of the Academy Awards it won, but it deserved the nominations at least).
And some are saying Avatar should have won Best Picture over this... you have got to be kidding me! Personally I thought Up, Up in the Air, or Inglorious Basterds would have been excellent choices from the nominees (I liked District 9, too, but wouldn't say it was best picture material considering the competition).
Anyway, the real reason I'm replying is because of Repo Men. I thought you meant Repo Man, the 1984 classic, and didn't realize there was a new movie actually called Repo Men.
What I'm ultimately saying is, watch Repo Man - you'll like it.
I took a few courses like this, and it greatly depends on the professor how well it works. Generally, universities have good lecture halls that can handle the load if they offer these size courses, but the professor has to know how to utilize the space properly and to teach to the entire room and not just the front row (although most of the back rows can safely be ignored since they probably don't care).
Of maybe three or four course like this I took (can't remember how many) only one professor could really do it, and he was really good. He somehow made it seem like a much smaller class than it actually was, and got to know many of the students, not just the ones who sit in the front row.
Do you really get your entire tuition paid for, and a presumably large stipend if it totals to $50,000, for teaching two 30 student sections?
I taught three 30 student sections for under $20,000 a year (two semesters) and tuition is supposed to come out of that (a relatively inexpensive state school, but a large state school in California with its ridiculous budget problems still means $2-3000 a semester for grad students), so I'm just wondering. Based on my limited research into the matter, I think I did pretty well compared to what most schools offer. So I can't tell if you're just exaggerating or if you got some ridiculously great deal at an expensive school. I went to an expensive private school for my undergrad degree, and the TAs there definitely were not getting their tuition paid for, at least not by being TAs.
And yeah, I also greatly enjoyed it, and the students were able to connect with me much more easily than with the professors. In my case, as a grad student at 22 and 23 some of the students were actually older than me ;)
I do this too. Never had any stuttering as the other replier did, but I do occasionally run into problem files.
At least with the stuff I have - a lot of older movies and TV shows, not necessarily encoded by people who know the best methods to do so, but also plenty of HD rips and so on that should be properly encoded - almost everything needs to be transcoded on the fly, and while it usually works fine the high CPU and bandwidth usage can cause problems occasionally. Then you hit a problem file as I mentioned, and it just won't work or the sound is out of sync or whatever. Can't think of any time I got stutters, but it's possible that happens too.
It's also a little fiddly with things like subtitles and alternate audio tracks - you can't use the subtitle and audio button on the PS3 remote, PS3MediaServer gives you several "links" for lack of a better term labeled with the different options and sometimes they don't work properly. If you watch a lot of foreign movies you will get frustrated with this. Most of the time I have to rename the subtitle file (and occasionally convert them to a different format) to get PS3MediaServer to pick it up.
I like the scroll bars on news channels, because most of the stuff they're actually talking about is absolute drivel and that way I can look at something else. I only tend to watch those channels if I'm sitting in an airport or somewhere like that, and it's often not when the interesting shows with decent news are on, so the scroll bars are great if I don't want to use my nexus one or laptop (assuming there's free wifi) while I wait.
Also, I was in Thailand for a couple months and don't know the language well enough to keep up with fast-paced news. They would sometimes have English headlines scroll by the bottom, though, so I had something to read while my companions listened.
I love my macbook pro, and I also hate branding. Not everyone who uses apple products do it for the brand image. I covered the glowing apple logo, myself.
I refuse to get an iPhone (I have a Nexus One... which has a big Google logo on the back...), greatly dislike iPods, and most every other thing Apple does these days, but their computers - especially the laptops - are great. I use what's best for my purposes (that I can afford anyway), not what my favorite brand makes. I mainly use Microsoft mice, for example, but I don't use Windows on anything.
I bought a Thinkpad T61 a few years ago with Red Hat linux preinstalled, not windows. Not only was there no Windows sticker, but there weren't any other stickers except for an Intel one, which frankly I don't really mind. The cheaper Lenovo laptops come with the full slew of stickers - I know a few people who have them - but they treat the more expensive ones well. Similar price range as macbooks... in almost anything, once you go higher-end the logos play less of a role. Sure you can buy designer clothes with huge logos, but the actually nice stuff usually won't have a logo at all except on the inside.
My main computer now is a macbook pro, though, and yes I did appreciate the clean design when I got it. I did cover up the glowing apple logo on the back, though, with black gaffer's tape and a drawing in silver sharpie.
I covered mine with gaffer's tape and drew a penguin on it (personal trademark, not Tux - see my username - though I am a linux user as well). Used silver sharpie so it matches the nice brushed aluminum.
Doesn't fool anyone into thinking it's not a mac, but it's not as obvious. I'm "thinking different" rather than looking like all the other people with macbooks with that glowing apple on them.
I've been considering of doing something less rough-looking (it's literally just a 3x1 inch piece of black gaffer's tape...) and cutting out the design from the tape so that it glows through the penguin design rather than just completely covering up the light, but I haven't gotten around to it.
All that said, yes, I think the design of the aluminum macbook pro is very nice and it would look ridiculous with all those stupid stickers on it every other laptop has. I can't say I really give them a lot of credit for not putting the stickers on... it should be obvious *not* to put stickers on, not to default to putting stickers on. The fact that every manufacturer loads them on is a sign of mindless corporate copying. I can't imagine there's any real benefit to doing it.
I think perhaps he meant be careful because it could discolor or damage the laptop itself, not just the sticker residue.
Aren't military games pretty popular among soldiers? I would wager that many are going to play this game anyway, and will just be annoyed that they can't get it on the base. I guess I am also a little surprised they even have video game stores on military bases...
These sorts of models are great because you run the model, and then see which parts of the earth don't fit in real life. You can then investigate that area more closely and either refine the model, or refine your understanding of that particular region.
I'm a geologist and most of my undergrad and graduate studies were on tectonics. What they've got here is fantastic and will yield a lot of great new research and discoveries about plate interactions. It's basically an extension of what people have been doing for decades (modeling and comparing models to reality where possible), so the idea is really not new, but the implementation is fantastic.
So at first it should be fairly clunky, and if you run the model as you suggest going through all of earth's history, yes it will be wrong. But if you take it step-by-step based on what's already understood about past tectonic plate positions (which is quite a lot), i.e. constraining the model, it should be able to show us all kinds of new things and ultimately a complete run-through should be possible that's very accurate. They will be able to continually refine it, of course, as new research comes out, and have a fairly complete model of plate evolution based on whatever the currently accepted progression is.
Well... who *wouldn't* read about it on wikipedia before going out to see it? Chances are theaters advertise it as being a huge classic, yet most these days may not have heard of it and may only be slightly familiar with Christie's work. Before potentially wasting a potentially expensive evening, I would probably do some casual reading on the internet about it. The first place I would look would probably be Wikipedia. There's really no reason to expect major spoilers without some warning there, and I might not read the whole page straight through in order. Something might inadvetantly catch my eye near the bottom as I look for the related links/sources... like the identity of the killer.
If one casually reads Wikipedia and isn't familiar with it, they might assume they're not going to give away the ending. I know I was a bit surprised the first time I suddenly ruined the ending of a movie I was reading about on Wikipedia that I had planned to watch before realizing what I was reading.
You're right that if there's a section titled "Ending" then it's clear you shouldn't read that if you don't want spoilers. However, in most cases there is not such a section. Plot summaries can be very short, and if it's not clear what you're reading you can find yourself getting all the big plot twists in less than a couple of sentences. You really have to be careful, or just avoid Wikipedia altogether if you haven't seen/read something, because they usually don't indicate spoilers. Many like to read about things on the internet before spending time watching or reading them, though, and Wikipedia is often a more useful source than IMDB or random sites across the internet. It really makes no sense not to include a spoilers warning. IMDB is very good about this these days (they weren't originally).
They need to be consistent, and it's common courtesy to avoid giving away the ending without warning. There's really no excuse not to. And honestly, I don't expect that if I open any other encyclopedia that I'll get spoilers for anything. That has never been how things worked in the past. I wouldn't expect to even see things that are general knowledge now like (spoiler alert) Vader being Luke's father (sorry if you didn't know). Does that really belong in an encyclopedia? A brief overview of the plot, sure, but not major twists and so on. I realize Wikipedia is more in-depth than other encyclopedias, especially on cultural topics like plays and movies, and I think that's great - but use a damn spoiler tag, because otherwise you're being a jerk to those who haven't seen whatever it is.
I would guess there is indeed a big "market" for a large torrent like that. You can find them with every NES/SNES game, every movie by a certain director, every released recording by a band, etc... people download this stuff just because they can. Some downloaders may actually look at some of it, most probably don't :)
In any case if you're looking for something more obscure, it's most likely to survive with seeders in a huge torrent like that rather than on its own. For something like this, with a little publicity (like the parent's slashdot post, which would be enough to get quite a few downloaders I'd imagine) geeks across the internet would be all over it.
And here we are discussing the possibility... there's no way there isn't already a torrent out there somewhere with at least part of the collection, either actually from that same site or from other sources.
Union Carbide avoided this, to a great extent. Bhopal is the name of the city where the gas leak occurred - Union Carbide operated the pesticide plant that was the source of the leak.
I wasn't even born then but I don't think if you mention Union Carbide most people would know who they were, though many would be aware of Bhopal - and everyone knows Exxon and BP from their oil spills.
Kodak's image these days is fairly poor; although their digital cameras are pretty popular in the cheap category they're basically non-existent in the professional arena.
Which is too bad, because they did a lot of things to advance photography over the years, not least of which was introducing it to "the masses". I guess now that I think about it, that's what they're still trying to do now with their cheap digital cameras that are fairly decent. But of course they used to contribute much to professionals as well, especially good quality film. They never really had high-end cameras that were used professionally, it was really all about the film, so the switch to digital hit them hard.
My uncle worked as head of a research division at Kodak for many years, and still lives in Rochester. I attended the University of Rochester, which back when George Eastman was around got quite a lot of Kodak money and wouldn't be the school it is today without it. So I've had a lot of exposure to Kodak over the years. I've heard of this digital camera before, and other interesting things they've done.
If you're in the area it's definitely worth checking out the George Eastman House museum. It's his rather incredible mansion, turned into a photography museum. I don't remember if I heard about this camera there; possibly not but they do have all kinds of old equipment on display. They also have an attached movie theater, which shows a different classic, art-house, etc. film every single night. I don't live there any more, but as a student I went to their classic film showings all the time. Always on 35mm and great prints. There's a school for film preservation there, and a huge collection of films.
Indeed, there's a lot of weird stuff like this.
Last time I was in NYC I searched google maps on my nexus one for the Metropolitan Art Museum... a huge landmark in Central Park (I did already know where it was). Google Maps doesn't know it exists, apparently.
We've all seen obviously fake reviews, on all our favorite internet stores. However, you've probably also seen very nice, balanced user reviews (I sometimes leave these on Amazon whether I liked or disliked whatever it is... I don't think I've ever reviewed a game on there, though).
So how hard would it be to pay people to write reviews that aren't so obviously fake? Provide your fake reviewers with mostly positive points about the game - not "It's great! I can't stop playing it!!!" nonsense, but actual aspects of interesting gameplay or whatever (assuming your game has this). Also provide them with a few negative points. Ask the programmers, I don't expect the marketing droids to be able to figure this out for themselves. Just ask the programmer for a few honest negative points that they wish they'd had time to improve before release. They don't have to heavily criticize huge aspects of the game, just a few small points.
Then the marketing droids can come up with several similarly-worded reviews, different enough to not obviously be the same, to post on various sites. It'll be an overall positive review, but it will seem balanced from the negative points (and the lack of mindless praise), meaning people will be more likely to trust it. Meaning you'll influence people a lot more effectively. If certain market segments are actually influenced by the mindless positive reviews, then post those too I guess if it makes you money.
Well, I don't know why I'm giving the marketing department ideas. I'm not saying I would approve of such measures, I'm just saying that if they had given it even a little bit of fault they could be a whole lot more effective, and those of us who recognize the fake reviews might not be able to anymore.
I was in Rochester a couple days ago (I currently live in nearby Buffalo), and drove through the University of Rochester campus, from whence I graduated two years ago. The students were just moving into the dorms. The campus is fairly close to the airport (not as close as RIT), so I certainly hope they were able to hear or feel the explosion to provide some entertainment before classes start... because Rochester is pretty dull normally :)
You can take it further than that. Star Wars is heavily inspired (with some elements lifted directly) from Akira Kurosawa samurai films.
If you watch the Akira Kurosawa films, you realize that they're heavily influenced by American Westerns. Several of his films were re-made as westerns for western audiences, like The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai) and A Fistful of Dollars (Yojimbo). I think at least one of his films is a remake of a John Ford western, even, though I can't think of which one it is.
So yeah, it's similar to a western. But it's not really a John Wayne kind of western, it's a western by way of Japan.
I don't disagree with your point but I did kind of laugh at your selection of shows. I don't like any of those shows - they're very mainstream and while mainstream stuff can be good in many cases, it usually doesn't interest me.
There are plenty of TV shows I like - even relatively mainstream ones like Quantum Leap, Seinfeld, and assorted other classics, as well as new mainstream stuff like Mad Men or Top Gear (UK).
The point is that even if you exclude classics, there is a lot of excellent programming these days that goes way beyond House, which I consider to be schlock, or CSI which can have interesting stories but is more than a little ridiculous (I'm not familiar with Fringe). And there are interesting shows about engineering, manufacturing, and science on the Science Channel, and good nature documentaries on Discovery HD Theater (besides stuff like Mythbusters on the regular Discovery Channel).
That doesn't mean I'm going to ever pay $80/month for it, of course. I watch online when possible or at my parents' house, where they pay for cable. If I had to pay a whole lot for it, I'd do without.
Google's an American company, and while my mobile phone has all those things as well, that is because... it's a Google Nexus One. A very small percentage of phones, even smartphones, in the US will do everything that the parent suggested, although it seems that they aren't fully aware of what they can do these days.
Anyway Google does make money off of me from Google Voice, because I make international calls and they charge for international calls.
I do this as well but there are some caveats. As is more-or-less typical of Android and Google products, it works great, except when it doesn't.
Specifically, I call a number in Thailand at least once a day. The country code is 66. In my contacts the number is listed as +66###... which is how it must be to get routed through Google Voice. If you want to dial directly through your carrier, you'd put 011 instead of +, so 01166### (or something like that). Supposedly 011 and + are interchangeable, but that's how the phone parses things.
Now here's the problem - as I said, in my contacts I entered the numbers as +66, not 01166. Yet if I dial the number, depending on how I enter it (or perhaps randomly, it's hard to tell), by going through the recent calls list, going to the contact, etc., it will start dialing 01166... and not +66. This means Google Voice doesn't catch it, and then that's apparently the wrong format for AT&T as well - which is a good thing, because they'd charge me $1.50 a minute for those calls if I didn't notice :)
This is perhaps a Nexus One or Android-specific issue and not Google Voice, but it seems to me that if the phone is randomly transposing 011 for + in international numbers, Google Voice should understand this and always work properly the first time.
Also, recently the in-call volume has been ridiculously low; it used to be fine and now I can barely hear the other end. If they call me (not through Google) it's loud and clear, so it's got to be Google Voice's problem.
All that said it's hard to complain because it mostly works and is a great service, it's only 3 cents per minute to Thailand and I don't have to go buy phone cards and enter in long pin codes or any of that kind of nonsense, just dial the number directly from my phone.
FYI, the percentage of the USGS budget that goes toward topographic maps is around 1%, or less. They've got complete coverage of the US, but most areas aren't really being updated because they don't have the money to do so, and usually it doesn't matter that much. But, they can get really, really outdated in some places.
The maps are what they're most well known for (most of the wikipedia page is about their maps, for example), and earthquake monitoring if you live in California, but they actually do tons of other stuff instead these days.