If by some strange chance it is Kyle, please inform me that I might add you to my foes list.
Actually, it is. May I ask what I've done to cause offense? Are you Lee, by any chance? That's the only person I can think of who might dislike me, or even know me, at Oberlin.
I'm sorry, allow me to rephrase that: "the level of poverty in rural areas, and Oberlin in particular, is much, much higher than in urban areas." I didn't mean "unbelievably poor" in the absolute sense, just relative to the rest of the USA. Look, prior to visiting Oberlin, I'd never even seen a food stamp machine (actually, I probably had, but it was probably tucked away in the corner somewhere where I didn't notice it, since they do look very similar to credit card readers), either in San Francisco or in Providence, where I go to school. Before you call me a spoiled asshole too (which may be true, but is irrelevant to this conversation), I have spent plenty of time in poor areas (I lived for a year on the outskirts of the Tenderloin in SF) to at least know what urban poverty looks like.
Back to the point at hand, the closest grocery store to Oberlin has one credit card reader, which is not even at a register. Buying something with a card is a several minute long procedure, where they have to take your card to another counter, implying that either a) the residents of Oberlin have an irrational fear of credit and debit cards, or b) lack the credit rating to be able to get credit cards and the bank account balance to be able to use debit cards. The movie theatre charges something like $4, whereas in most urban areas these days, even the most run-down, tiny screened theatre charges $6, megaplexes are pushing $10. Many stores use mechanical cash registers! Electric cash registers were invented nearly 100 years ago, and the rest of the US is leaving the electric registers behind in favor of computerized cash registers!
You're right, in the grand scheme of the entire world, they're not poor. The UN absolute poverty line is US$1 per day, and they're far, far above that. But there's no way you're telling me that the residents of Oberlin are making anything like $30,000 per year, the national median individual income.
My girlfriend is fairly "girly" and non-tech oriented, but she has a lava lamp and I don't. She thinks they're pretty. No, neither of us do drugs. *shrug* Take from it what you will.
One brief point I would make: in the process of creative destruction, there are usually winners and losers. Just because the USA is better off as a whole as a result of our move away from agriculture, doesn't mean there weren't plenty of agricultural workers who were unable or unwilling to find another job, and were left destitute. Hell, you can still see this to some degree in rural areas. My girlfriend goes to Oberlin College, in the tiny town of Oberlin, OH. The people there are unbelievably poor, the stores are more likely to have a food stamp machine than a credit card machine. That's what leads to this resistance to change. Even though your neighbor might be able to make more money working in biotech, you might make less money because you don't have any other skills.
That said, I still support free trade, I don't think it's right to make society as a whole suffer to enrich a few IT professionals with outdated skills.
First of all, I dispute the conclusion that an aging demographic automatically means that current comic buyers have always read comic books. The demographic does not age one year for every year that passes. I first heard about the "aging demographic problem" 10 years ago, when I was 12 years old, and the issue was not a new one then. If your statement were true, the average age of a comic book fan would be at least 50, and they'd be setting up comics shops in retirement homes.
Think about it this way: suppose you heard the statement that "the demographic which watches animated television shows is aging." Would you conclude that children no longer watch cartoons, or would you conclude that The Simpsons, King of the Hill, South Park, televised anime, and so forth, are bringing adults back to animation?
The obvious comeback, of course, is "if that's true, why are sales figures down?" Well, I stand by my statement that the large sales volume of a decade ago was an anomaly, not part of a long term trend. Besides which, the heads of most of these companies had their heads totally up their asses. As things settle down, sales volumes are rising again.
Anyway, I don't agree that Marvel is telling kids to go screw themselves. The Ultimate line is largely about brining kids to comics, dumping that pesky continuty and revisiting the original concepts which made these characters appealing to kids and teens: the fact that the characters were teens themselves, they were people the readers had an easy time relating to. Even mainstream lines, like the New X-Men, are conciously trying to be accessable to anyone who's at least seen the first X-Men movie. Seriously, wait a couple years, I think those movies are going to do tremendous things for comic sales.
How about the bookstore? Barnes & Noble and Borders both carry graphic novels. I agree that comics are no longer distributed in many of the outlets you've mentioned (supermarket, newsstands, etc.), but I don't think this is a bad thing. Instead of being sold like a disposable, montly publication, like a magazine (magazines are the primary reading material sold in all of the places you mentioned above), they are now being sold more like books. Graphic novel sales are increasing much more rapidly than sales of montly issues, and this should help comics to be taken seriously, as well as affording the writers greater ability to develop plot and character (because there's less worry about whether a new reader will be able to pick up any issue at random and be drawn in. Seriously, imagine if book authors had to worry about someone starting on chapter 15).
Of course sales are down, back before the crash people were "speculating" on comics. They'd buy comics and then keep them in plastic cases. The comic industry, especially Marvel, decided to exploit this by introducing hundreds of new comic lines, causing sepculators to grab up as many #1 issues as possible.
Eventually, the bubble burst. The American comic industry has no more "fallen" than the American tech sector has "fallen." Sales were unsustainably high, took a dive, and are now working their way back up to where they should be. There are some bright spots which clearly attest to this, such as Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man, which is selling like nobody's business. Marvel's publishing revenues in 2002 were 150% of what they were the year before.
One thing I'm not getting from the review is why it's called The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book. I think it would be erroneous to claim that American comics have "fallen." As far as I'm concerned, comics have never been better. Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Brian Michael Bendis, and Warren Ellis are all top notch writers, and the art that can be put into comics today is frankly astounding. I've seen some comics that weren't even inked, just pencilled and then colored, which would have been impossible with earlier technology. Artists are now allowed to have distinctive styles, books like Drawing Comics the Marvel Way are now obsolete because artists are no longer regarded as interchangable.
Sure, Marvel went bankrupt a while back, but that's because they were headed Ronald Perelman, a so-called "turnaround specialist," who actually behaves much like the executives of SCO, whom we love so dearly. He pumps up stock prices, issues junk bonds, then bails and lets the company crater. As a brief aside, he now heads Revlon, which is trading around $3 per share.
Sure, I suppose if one were writing a book in the midst of Marvel's bankrupcy, one would be tempted to write a book called The Rise and Fall of American Comics, but in fact that was an artificial situation, and the industry has recovered quite well since then.
Well, it should take up less room than a whole additional scroll wheel. Also, by having two seperate actions (tilting vs. spinning the wheel), it should help to prevent the diagonal scroll problems that crop up with trackballs.
I don't think many PHBs want to sign a contract with SCO. I think most of them just want to switch away from Linux. So your argument isn't much help.
Re:Prohibiting sedition: A fine American tradition
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I can't remember the name, but I think there was another act prohibiting advocating the violent overthrow of the government passed during the Red Scare, around 1917.
That's not all you can't remember. The Soviet Union only dates back to October, 1917! The "Red Scare" is commonly used to refer to the period from the late 1940's to the mid 1950's when McCarthyism was rampant. Assuming such an act was passed in 1917, it was no doubt due to WWI, not the Soviets. Indeed, my own Great-Grandfather changed his last name (removing the second n in "-mann") to make it appear less German, due to rising anti-Germanic sentiments in America.
Standardized bumper height is a complementarity, meaning it is more valuable as more people use it. There is no one God-given "perfect bumper height." However, if all cars had the same bumper height, then all cars would be somewhat safer.
Would you follow it up by showing non-Americans that are no longer starving as a result of the "greedy corporations" moving jobs to their country? Very few Americans are starving. A hell of a lot of Indians are, however.
He means, having the acceleration start slow, build up to 10 G over a period of, say a minute, then slow back down. As opposed to crashing and instantaneously jumping from 1 G to 10 G. The former is much less stressful on the body than the latter.
I don't think he was saying the X-15 was better than the shuttle, he was simply saying that the X-15, an experimental project, was flown more times than the Shuttle, which is not considered experimental. The point is that the Shuttle has not been as thoroughly tested as many people believe, despite its age.
ATI Radeon 7500. Only functioned with the stock drivers on Win2K. Any attempt to upgrade drivers failed completely. Once the new games stopped working with the old drivers, I had to go buy myself an NVidia card.
Yes, it is unreliable. I've had letters disappear, I've had packages delayed by over a month, I've had things delivered to the wrong address, delaying things by over 6 months, and on and on. I think you've been lucky. If all you use USPS for is paying bills (with printed return envelopes that get machine sorted), then yeah, you're probably alright. Anything else and it's not great.
How do you figure? They're claiming memory densities up to 1000 times greater than currently possible. Of course, they don't discuss cost, but supposing it were similar to conventional RAM for a similarly sized chip, that'd be, what, maybe a terabyte? Sounds pretty good now, but they say it may be 3+ years off. By the time it arrives, hard drives will probably be around the same size, and we'll have found a way to fill it.
you are coming up with a justification a posteriori.
So? If it works, it really doesn't matter who came up with it or why. A posteriori arguments are perfectly valid, because the original intentions of the creator are irrelevant to the advantages or drawbacks of a system's continued use.
And it would be a pretty silly argument for a scientist, anyway.
That's true. Most of us aren't scientists, however. It's stupid to justify a measurement system on the basis that "it's better for scientists." If that were a good argument, we'd all be using Kelvin. At least "Kelvin" is the easiest to spell:)
it's still based on something "real", it's not just a bunch of numbers picked at random.
So what? Does it bother you that the meter was mis-measured, and hence isn't based on something "real?"
I believe Kelvin uses the same size for the degrees for legacy support as well. Yes, Fahrenheit is based on funny starting points, however I agree with the grandparent. Although nothing dramatic happens at 0 or at 100 specifically, any temperature below 0 or over 100 is going to be highly uncomfortable, even dangerous, if one does not take proper precautions.
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Actually, it is. May I ask what I've done to cause offense? Are you Lee, by any chance? That's the only person I can think of who might dislike me, or even know me, at Oberlin.
You have no idea. Two of her friends are actually m-to-f transsexuals.
Back to the point at hand, the closest grocery store to Oberlin has one credit card reader, which is not even at a register. Buying something with a card is a several minute long procedure, where they have to take your card to another counter, implying that either a) the residents of Oberlin have an irrational fear of credit and debit cards, or b) lack the credit rating to be able to get credit cards and the bank account balance to be able to use debit cards. The movie theatre charges something like $4, whereas in most urban areas these days, even the most run-down, tiny screened theatre charges $6, megaplexes are pushing $10. Many stores use mechanical cash registers! Electric cash registers were invented nearly 100 years ago, and the rest of the US is leaving the electric registers behind in favor of computerized cash registers!
You're right, in the grand scheme of the entire world, they're not poor. The UN absolute poverty line is US$1 per day, and they're far, far above that. But there's no way you're telling me that the residents of Oberlin are making anything like $30,000 per year, the national median individual income.
My girlfriend is fairly "girly" and non-tech oriented, but she has a lava lamp and I don't. She thinks they're pretty. No, neither of us do drugs. *shrug* Take from it what you will.
That said, I still support free trade, I don't think it's right to make society as a whole suffer to enrich a few IT professionals with outdated skills.
Think about it this way: suppose you heard the statement that "the demographic which watches animated television shows is aging." Would you conclude that children no longer watch cartoons, or would you conclude that The Simpsons, King of the Hill, South Park, televised anime, and so forth, are bringing adults back to animation?
The obvious comeback, of course, is "if that's true, why are sales figures down?" Well, I stand by my statement that the large sales volume of a decade ago was an anomaly, not part of a long term trend. Besides which, the heads of most of these companies had their heads totally up their asses. As things settle down, sales volumes are rising again.
Anyway, I don't agree that Marvel is telling kids to go screw themselves. The Ultimate line is largely about brining kids to comics, dumping that pesky continuty and revisiting the original concepts which made these characters appealing to kids and teens: the fact that the characters were teens themselves, they were people the readers had an easy time relating to. Even mainstream lines, like the New X-Men, are conciously trying to be accessable to anyone who's at least seen the first X-Men movie. Seriously, wait a couple years, I think those movies are going to do tremendous things for comic sales.
How about the bookstore? Barnes & Noble and Borders both carry graphic novels. I agree that comics are no longer distributed in many of the outlets you've mentioned (supermarket, newsstands, etc.), but I don't think this is a bad thing. Instead of being sold like a disposable, montly publication, like a magazine (magazines are the primary reading material sold in all of the places you mentioned above), they are now being sold more like books. Graphic novel sales are increasing much more rapidly than sales of montly issues, and this should help comics to be taken seriously, as well as affording the writers greater ability to develop plot and character (because there's less worry about whether a new reader will be able to pick up any issue at random and be drawn in. Seriously, imagine if book authors had to worry about someone starting on chapter 15).
Eventually, the bubble burst. The American comic industry has no more "fallen" than the American tech sector has "fallen." Sales were unsustainably high, took a dive, and are now working their way back up to where they should be. There are some bright spots which clearly attest to this, such as Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man, which is selling like nobody's business. Marvel's publishing revenues in 2002 were 150% of what they were the year before.
Sure, Marvel went bankrupt a while back, but that's because they were headed Ronald Perelman, a so-called "turnaround specialist," who actually behaves much like the executives of SCO, whom we love so dearly. He pumps up stock prices, issues junk bonds, then bails and lets the company crater. As a brief aside, he now heads Revlon, which is trading around $3 per share.
Sure, I suppose if one were writing a book in the midst of Marvel's bankrupcy, one would be tempted to write a book called The Rise and Fall of American Comics, but in fact that was an artificial situation, and the industry has recovered quite well since then.
The last century, with its two world wars, has the highest death-by-war body count in history. So what do you base this on?
I also enjoyed his Schismatrix stuff, though it was an earlier work.
Well, it should take up less room than a whole additional scroll wheel. Also, by having two seperate actions (tilting vs. spinning the wheel), it should help to prevent the diagonal scroll problems that crop up with trackballs.
I don't think many PHBs want to sign a contract with SCO. I think most of them just want to switch away from Linux. So your argument isn't much help.
That's not all you can't remember. The Soviet Union only dates back to October, 1917! The "Red Scare" is commonly used to refer to the period from the late 1940's to the mid 1950's when McCarthyism was rampant. Assuming such an act was passed in 1917, it was no doubt due to WWI, not the Soviets. Indeed, my own Great-Grandfather changed his last name (removing the second n in "-mann") to make it appear less German, due to rising anti-Germanic sentiments in America.
Just in case anyone thinks he's joking, my girlfriend's father is an ER doctor (at Kaiser in Oakland), and he does refer to motorcyclists as "donors."
Standardized bumper height is a complementarity, meaning it is more valuable as more people use it. There is no one God-given "perfect bumper height." However, if all cars had the same bumper height, then all cars would be somewhat safer.
Would you follow it up by showing non-Americans that are no longer starving as a result of the "greedy corporations" moving jobs to their country? Very few Americans are starving. A hell of a lot of Indians are, however.
It was my impression that the Soyuz capsuls had reclined, shock absorbing chairs. I could be wrong though.
He means, having the acceleration start slow, build up to 10 G over a period of, say a minute, then slow back down. As opposed to crashing and instantaneously jumping from 1 G to 10 G. The former is much less stressful on the body than the latter.
I don't think he was saying the X-15 was better than the shuttle, he was simply saying that the X-15, an experimental project, was flown more times than the Shuttle, which is not considered experimental. The point is that the Shuttle has not been as thoroughly tested as many people believe, despite its age.
ATI Radeon 7500. Only functioned with the stock drivers on Win2K. Any attempt to upgrade drivers failed completely. Once the new games stopped working with the old drivers, I had to go buy myself an NVidia card.
Yes, it is unreliable. I've had letters disappear, I've had packages delayed by over a month, I've had things delivered to the wrong address, delaying things by over 6 months, and on and on. I think you've been lucky. If all you use USPS for is paying bills (with printed return envelopes that get machine sorted), then yeah, you're probably alright. Anything else and it's not great.
How do you figure? They're claiming memory densities up to 1000 times greater than currently possible. Of course, they don't discuss cost, but supposing it were similar to conventional RAM for a similarly sized chip, that'd be, what, maybe a terabyte? Sounds pretty good now, but they say it may be 3+ years off. By the time it arrives, hard drives will probably be around the same size, and we'll have found a way to fill it.
So? If it works, it really doesn't matter who came up with it or why. A posteriori arguments are perfectly valid, because the original intentions of the creator are irrelevant to the advantages or drawbacks of a system's continued use.
And it would be a pretty silly argument for a scientist, anyway.
That's true. Most of us aren't scientists, however. It's stupid to justify a measurement system on the basis that "it's better for scientists." If that were a good argument, we'd all be using Kelvin. At least "Kelvin" is the easiest to spell :)
it's still based on something "real", it's not just a bunch of numbers picked at random.
So what? Does it bother you that the meter was mis-measured, and hence isn't based on something "real?"
I believe Kelvin uses the same size for the degrees for legacy support as well. Yes, Fahrenheit is based on funny starting points, however I agree with the grandparent. Although nothing dramatic happens at 0 or at 100 specifically, any temperature below 0 or over 100 is going to be highly uncomfortable, even dangerous, if one does not take proper precautions.