The funny part about those expenses, is most of them come out of the artist's royalties, not out of the raw price. Since most signed bands go into debt with their contract, the recording industry does end up paying for it out of their share, but it's interesting how they screw the bands out of money any way they can.
The one constant with the entertainment industry is how creative their accounting processes are, and how thoroughly they try to avoid paying those involved in the creation of the product. In the music industry, you have the situation above, where the publisher takes the majority of the profits from selling the work, and then charges all the expenses of producing the product to the artist's royalties, too. In the movie industry, you have creative ways of making movies have a net profit of $0, so that those writers that signed contracts to get a certain percentage of that profit get nothing. I'm sure the gaming industry will come up with something just as scummy sooner or later (as if the treatment of their employees wasn't enough).
You contradict yourself. If region coding does diddley squat, it would not be possible blah blah blah blah...
You missed a very important part of what the previous poster was saying. It doesn't nothing to prevent piracy. No one disputes the fact the differential pricing strategy makes the movie industry more money, but it does nothing to prevent piracy. I suppose one could argue that allowing this differential pricing means they can make some money off markets that would otherwise be completely lost to piracy, but it doesn't directly contribute to any type of anti-piracy measures.
Don't forget the bullshit over the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow) cases discovered in Canada. Shortly before the borders were to open to Canadian beef, an association of U.S. ranchers brought a lawsuit to prevent it from happening. Why? They're raking in the profits, and don't want it to stop. Oh, wait, the official line is something like, "protecting the public safety". Pure protectionism is all it really is.
They only give you the page it's on and a couple pages of context if the copyright owner has specifically authorized that. If they haven't, you only get two or three lines. O'Reilly, for example, has authorized Google to provide full pages to searchers because it provides them with extremely useful, free advertising. I imagine just about everyone who writes non-fiction and reference books would find Google books a valuable service for promoting their books, but I can imagine that fiction writers may have less use for it.
Since the Canadian system doesn't involve huge payoffs, er, contracts to friends of whichever party is in power at the time for faulty voting machines, it obviously cannot be used in the US elections. Corporate welfare is the only policy both US parties agree on, the only thing they really disagree about is who should get the money.
I hope we never change our system in Canada. It may be archaic, quaint, or just plain old, but it's surprisingly transparent, and resistent to tampering. Elections Canada is resposible for enumerating the voters, not the parties, and has an agreement with the Canadian Revenue Agency to get data from those filing tax returns if the citizen consents (helps prevent the dead from rising up and voting, and strongly discourages multiple votes since it's easier to catch). Everyone who is a citizen of the required age is allowed to vote, even if they're incarcerated. The vote is extremely simple, with only one choice on the ballot - which local representative to choose for the House of Commons, so spoilage is quite low.
Macrovision and Macromedia are two separate, very different companies. Macrovision is in the copy prevention business, and has been for decades. Macrovision's products include SafeDisc (popular game copy prevention for CDs), CDS (audio CD copy prevention), and Macrovision (analog video copy prevention).
It could be argued that altering a web page in-transit like this would be creating a derivative work, and therefore could be copyright infringement. I'm sure a lot of other things would be tacked onto such a lawsuit, including the ever popular anti-trust violations and trademark violations. This is all speculation because IANAL, of course.
I hope you jerry-rigged those batteries outside the UPS case and the room is well ventilated. Given the fact that unsealed lead-acid batteries have a tendency to produce hydrogen, there could be an explosion danger with doing something like that.
The other reason you don't want to wire the entire room is that if you have a laser printer, it cannot be on the UPS. Laser printers have a tendancy to need a large amount of power in a very short time which can easily overload most UPSs. Any other high-draw device can also cause problems (fridge, microwave, air conditioner, etc).
In addition, there a a number of devices that do not like the modified sine wave output from UPSs. Many RF based devices (radio, television, satellite, etc) may experience interference, some electric motors may run poorly, and battery chargers may cause damage to the batteries being charged.
Frankly, it's probably easier to decide what to include on the UPS, than it is to decide how to exclude certain devices.
Read some other Microsoft blogs sometime. Either this "guy" is a real Microsoft insider, or he's spent far too much time studying the company. He's not writing about anything that isn't present on other websites, but he writes about them in more detail. Of course, there's also the fact that none of his fellowMicrosoftbloggers (outside of Ballmer) seem to be saying that what he's saying isn't true. There's always a chance that this is an elaborate hoax, but I don't think the chances of that are very high. Some of these Microsoft folks would've stepped up to deny this, and wouldn't be saying nice things about mini-microsoft.
Better to ask -- how many vulnerabilities were discovered or aided because of the very fact that Mozilla family of products are open source but have not been reported.
And how many bugs were found and fixed by Microsoft silently, rolled into the next hotfix or service pack, and never reported? I seriously doubt Microsoft would issue an advisory for an internally found bug unless it was also discovered by an outside entity because it gets them more bad press. Mozilla engineers never really have this option.
I challenge you to find a laptop manufacturer that hasn't had those types of problems. Dell's had it's share of exploding battery packs and fire hazard power adapters. HP's had it's share problems, including the memory problem that was recently subject to a recall (also affected Toshiba). The floppy drive issue on the Toshiba laptops involved more than just Toshiba -- a few other laptops had similar issues (including Compaq).
That may not work for them, either. I believe it's still possible for the defendant to force the issue by having some counterclaims against the RIAA. Even if the RIAA drops their side of the case, the defendant's side would still go to trial. Now, if this goes to trial without the RIAA's claims and with the defendant's claims, the RIAA would be left with nothing to gain, and everything to lose.
I'll bet there are people within the RIAA murmuring that maybe they should just pay off those two mothers that are fighting back... It's the only way they can get out of this unscathed, and even that might backfire.
Because for desktop apps, it more or less is dead. It's like a lot of other Sun technologies where the company didn't quite know what to do with it until it had lost almost everything. Swing and the company's facination with "applets" is probably at least partially to blame.
Today you see some business apps written in it and a fair number of server apps, but desktop java is completely absent. And frankly with Microsoft's.NET framework, I'm not sure Java even has much of a chance at that anymore.
Lawnmowers may spit out more pollution per unit of fuel, but automobiles consume a lot more fuel. Assuming the 30x number is correct, then consuming one gallon of fuel in your lawnmower is like consuming 30 gallons of fuel in your car. I also assume that 30x figure specifically excludes carbon dioxide, and only includes the pollutants that would normally be taken care of by a car's catalytic converter. There have been recommendations to start requiring catalytic converters on lawn mowers, but the guidelines aren't set to be fully implemented until 2007.
Besides, if you're worried about pollution from your lawnmower, there are a number of electric models, and some of them are even cordless these days. There's also the old classic push mowers that still do an excellent job and produce no pollution, but require more physical effort.
A good managers objective is to make it appear that he and his team are always successful even when they are not.
No, what you've described was a successful manager, not a good one. Good managers are not always successful, and successful managers are not always good. There are plenty of managers who are immensely successful, but can't manage their own life let alone a team of people. There are a lot of good and bad books on how to manage the team. The problem is that the bad ones reaffirm the nose-to-the-grindstone, slave-driver mentality which seems to be common sense, and the good ones have strange ideas that would appear to hurt productivity rather than help it.
Good managers are truly rare beasts. It's hard to quantify exactly what makes a good manager, and it may actually vary from industry to industry, but generally those working under a good manager know it. They're the ones that keep you informed of all the important information about what's going on in your company, and somehow know how to make people work together rather than as just a bunch of independent workers in the same area.
Personally, I suspect the business/marketing/PR/HR side of MS is to blame.
So... I assume you mean Steve Ballmer, and the act-alikes that seem to be talking for the company these days. Judging by that interview, Ballmer should go into politics because he already talks like a politician.
Where is all this hydrogen supposed to come from? The ocean? Well, it takes energy to extract the hydrogen...solar power isn't efficient enough to produce as much hydrogen as we'd need.
The best source for hydrogen is hydrocarbons
Uhm... What's wrong with hydroelectric generation? You have both the water you'd need for electrolysis and the electricity you'd need to do it. I guess the big problem is the U.S. just doesn't have the hydroelectric infrastructure to do it. With a measly 7% of your power coming from hydroelectric sources, it hardly even registers.
Nuclear reactors are the other option. They require water for cooling anyway, so producing hydrogen should be simple. Aside from a small amount of radioactive waste, the environmental impact is fairly small. This would be the most likely avenue for U.S. companies that wish to get into the hydrogen business.
Unfortunately, regardless of all of this, hydrogen is still an immature technology, and I don't expect it to matter a whole lot for a minimum of another 10 to 20 years.
If you look at all the proposals in that article, none of them are really for Novell's benefit. A $500M share repurchase program would push the share prices up, while depleting Novell's cash. Divesting their divisions would largely hurt the company's integration between their products. But again, it would raise money for the company, and bolster the stock prices.
The entire "proposal" seems to me is an attempt bump the stock price up so they can sell off. I seriously doubt they have the best interests of the corporation in mind. Their proposal has shades of recent HP management -- hitting short term goals (Profit!!), while ignoring the long term health of the company.
There are some console RPGs that are open ended, but they are the minority, and the ones that do exist are typically either PC ports (Baldur's Gate), or developed by companies that are primarily PC developers (like Microsoft's Fable). Most console RPGs tend to be heavily scripted stories either with no forks in them at all, or temporary forks (Chrono Cross, Star Ocean, FFX-2) that typically rejoin the main story fairly quickly.
You can look at the games as forcing you to work to get your next cut scene, or you can look at it as a game periodically interrupted by cut scenes. If you can't envision the game play as anything other than work, then I guess it would be difficult to enjoy. However, even the most linear console RPG has hidden things for you to find, and side quests for you to do that may either make you more powerful (usual), or affect the plot line (rarely).
I disliked FF9 far more than I disliked FF8. Maybe because it was being billed as a return to the basics of the series (it was anything but), or maybe it was the superdeformed freaks that made up your party who seemed to be different only for the sake of being different, or maybe the utter absurdity of the events in the story. The plot twisted more than a tornado, and left you with no real idea of what you were doing playing the game.
On the other hand, Chrono Cross which was released the same year was exceptional. Unlike the liberties they took with the Final Fantasy game mechanics in FF8 and FF9, the changes in Chrono Cross versus Chrono Trigger made the game more interesting and enjoyable. Vagrant Story was also exceptional, although I wasn't a fan of the gameplay itself (early mistakes can hurt you far into the game).
Most console RPGs are basically interactive stories. Some people prefer to be told a story and others prefer to tell the story themselves. It's very difficult for someone who's a fan of one form to understand the appeal of the other. Final Fantasy and most other console RPGs set you on a specific storyline that you must follow to progress. The game will set you on a rail, and tell you an epic story. Morrowind, NWN and most computer RPGs allow you the freedom to build your own story. The game puts you into the world, and you can follow whatever the bread crumb trail of story that come your way.
Personally, I enjoy both types, but I enjoy the console RPGs a little more. If you played FF expecting it to be Morrowind, you'd be disappointed.
You misunderstand me. I'm saying they're screwing over the search engine placement folks. The guys that claim they can get you to be the top hit on a particular google search are being hurt, but they had a pretty shifty business to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
The one constant with the entertainment industry is how creative their accounting processes are, and how thoroughly they try to avoid paying those involved in the creation of the product. In the music industry, you have the situation above, where the publisher takes the majority of the profits from selling the work, and then charges all the expenses of producing the product to the artist's royalties, too. In the movie industry, you have creative ways of making movies have a net profit of $0, so that those writers that signed contracts to get a certain percentage of that profit get nothing. I'm sure the gaming industry will come up with something just as scummy sooner or later (as if the treatment of their employees wasn't enough).
Don't forget the bullshit over the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow) cases discovered in Canada. Shortly before the borders were to open to Canadian beef, an association of U.S. ranchers brought a lawsuit to prevent it from happening. Why? They're raking in the profits, and don't want it to stop. Oh, wait, the official line is something like, "protecting the public safety". Pure protectionism is all it really is.
They only give you the page it's on and a couple pages of context if the copyright owner has specifically authorized that. If they haven't, you only get two or three lines. O'Reilly, for example, has authorized Google to provide full pages to searchers because it provides them with extremely useful, free advertising. I imagine just about everyone who writes non-fiction and reference books would find Google books a valuable service for promoting their books, but I can imagine that fiction writers may have less use for it.
I hope we never change our system in Canada. It may be archaic, quaint, or just plain old, but it's surprisingly transparent, and resistent to tampering. Elections Canada is resposible for enumerating the voters, not the parties, and has an agreement with the Canadian Revenue Agency to get data from those filing tax returns if the citizen consents (helps prevent the dead from rising up and voting, and strongly discourages multiple votes since it's easier to catch). Everyone who is a citizen of the required age is allowed to vote, even if they're incarcerated. The vote is extremely simple, with only one choice on the ballot - which local representative to choose for the House of Commons, so spoilage is quite low.
Macrovision and Macromedia are two separate, very different companies. Macrovision is in the copy prevention business, and has been for decades. Macrovision's products include SafeDisc (popular game copy prevention for CDs), CDS (audio CD copy prevention), and Macrovision (analog video copy prevention).
It could be argued that altering a web page in-transit like this would be creating a derivative work, and therefore could be copyright infringement. I'm sure a lot of other things would be tacked onto such a lawsuit, including the ever popular anti-trust violations and trademark violations. This is all speculation because IANAL, of course.
I hope you jerry-rigged those batteries outside the UPS case and the room is well ventilated. Given the fact that unsealed lead-acid batteries have a tendency to produce hydrogen, there could be an explosion danger with doing something like that.
In addition, there a a number of devices that do not like the modified sine wave output from UPSs. Many RF based devices (radio, television, satellite, etc) may experience interference, some electric motors may run poorly, and battery chargers may cause damage to the batteries being charged.
Frankly, it's probably easier to decide what to include on the UPS, than it is to decide how to exclude certain devices.
Read some other Microsoft blogs sometime. Either this "guy" is a real Microsoft insider, or he's spent far too much time studying the company. He's not writing about anything that isn't present on other websites, but he writes about them in more detail. Of course, there's also the fact that none of his fellow Microsoft bloggers (outside of Ballmer) seem to be saying that what he's saying isn't true. There's always a chance that this is an elaborate hoax, but I don't think the chances of that are very high. Some of these Microsoft folks would've stepped up to deny this, and wouldn't be saying nice things about mini-microsoft.
I challenge you to find a laptop manufacturer that hasn't had those types of problems. Dell's had it's share of exploding battery packs and fire hazard power adapters. HP's had it's share problems, including the memory problem that was recently subject to a recall (also affected Toshiba). The floppy drive issue on the Toshiba laptops involved more than just Toshiba -- a few other laptops had similar issues (including Compaq).
I'll bet there are people within the RIAA murmuring that maybe they should just pay off those two mothers that are fighting back... It's the only way they can get out of this unscathed, and even that might backfire.
Today you see some business apps written in it and a fair number of server apps, but desktop java is completely absent. And frankly with Microsoft's .NET framework, I'm not sure Java even has much of a chance at that anymore.
Besides, if you're worried about pollution from your lawnmower, there are a number of electric models, and some of them are even cordless these days. There's also the old classic push mowers that still do an excellent job and produce no pollution, but require more physical effort.
Read about it here. The URL on that site is broken, so if you want to read more, try this http://www.microsoft.com/backstage/bkst_column_46. mspx">archive.org link
Good managers are truly rare beasts. It's hard to quantify exactly what makes a good manager, and it may actually vary from industry to industry, but generally those working under a good manager know it. They're the ones that keep you informed of all the important information about what's going on in your company, and somehow know how to make people work together rather than as just a bunch of independent workers in the same area.
No, it's closer to a riced Yugo with a flashy paintjob, wing, fart can, and body kit.
The problem can be summarized by a quote from a Microsoft employee's blog. "... in my experience working with various corporations, what the people in the trenches think is disregarded. If you're below a certain level, you're treated as someone from whom output is expected, but not opinions." This is a problem in any organization, but is only worsened when the managers and executives choose to surround themselves with yes-men. The result is a powerful reality distortion field, and usually poor decisions that leave those who work in the trenches disenfranchised. It's not just large corporations that are susceptable to this, either. I work for a medium sized business and regularily experience this.
Nuclear reactors are the other option. They require water for cooling anyway, so producing hydrogen should be simple. Aside from a small amount of radioactive waste, the environmental impact is fairly small. This would be the most likely avenue for U.S. companies that wish to get into the hydrogen business.
Unfortunately, regardless of all of this, hydrogen is still an immature technology, and I don't expect it to matter a whole lot for a minimum of another 10 to 20 years.
The entire "proposal" seems to me is an attempt bump the stock price up so they can sell off. I seriously doubt they have the best interests of the corporation in mind. Their proposal has shades of recent HP management -- hitting short term goals (Profit!!), while ignoring the long term health of the company.
As for Novell R&D, they've got iFolder, Hula mail and calendar server, and Mono. There's a few other things on Novell's Forge site, but they're not as "sexy" or even as useful as those other projects.
You can look at the games as forcing you to work to get your next cut scene, or you can look at it as a game periodically interrupted by cut scenes. If you can't envision the game play as anything other than work, then I guess it would be difficult to enjoy. However, even the most linear console RPG has hidden things for you to find, and side quests for you to do that may either make you more powerful (usual), or affect the plot line (rarely).
On the other hand, Chrono Cross which was released the same year was exceptional. Unlike the liberties they took with the Final Fantasy game mechanics in FF8 and FF9, the changes in Chrono Cross versus Chrono Trigger made the game more interesting and enjoyable. Vagrant Story was also exceptional, although I wasn't a fan of the gameplay itself (early mistakes can hurt you far into the game).
Personally, I enjoy both types, but I enjoy the console RPGs a little more. If you played FF expecting it to be Morrowind, you'd be disappointed.
You misunderstand me. I'm saying they're screwing over the search engine placement folks. The guys that claim they can get you to be the top hit on a particular google search are being hurt, but they had a pretty shifty business to begin with.