Then say "hire me! here's my resume." Saying "hire american" isn't looking out for #1, it's just stupid nationalism. And that is the very definition of Nazi-ism, National Socialism was an attempt to bolster a failing German economy through central control, justified with nationalist rhetoric. Also, captialism is not increasing your profit at the expense of others. Capitalist exchanges are voluntary, and better both parties. Only governments and theives can enrich themselves at the expense of others.
America is not rich because up until now companies have been making irrational hiring choices. America is rich because we have an unbelievable level of productivity, and therefore it is often cheapest to hire American. In the case of the person who originally posted the question, this may not be the case, or maybe it is the case and he just doesn't know it yet. Either way, the best way to continue to improve American productivity and economic development is to allow companies to make rational cost-benefit analysis, not forcing them to be uncompetitive on the international market. Believe me, the American economy would be much worse if the American companies couldn't compete effectively than if they compete by outsourcing a few jobs to "Bangla-fucking-desh."
As for your slum the size of Chicago or New York, what about a slum the size of Deli, Bombay, or Calcutta? Again, aside from nationalist prejudices, I don't see why suffering matters less if it's Indian than if it's American.
Why? Are the citizens of other countries morally inferior in some way, deserving of poverty? That idea right there, that there is a group of people bound by language, culture and ethnicity inherently destined for greatness, was the core of the National Socialism movement of the 1930's, I find it appalling that it would continue to resurface today.
It is pretty obvious this guy hates the entire Star Wars franchise from the start.
I would advise you to go back and look at the archives of his reviews. Sadly, the archives don't go back far enough to see his original reviews for the original trilogy. However, when they were re-released in '97, he gave each one four stars. Even The Phantom Menace got 3 and a half stars. So I think it's pretty obvious that this guy loves the Star Wars franchise, but this one really let him down.
Okay, one issue with the whole racial stereotype thing: if they're all clones, they have to be one single race, right? Furthermore, they're evil. So what race would be safe? Even the old fallback (if minorities are likely to get offended, just make them white) doesn't really work, because then they'll look like Nazi ubermensch or something. The Stormtroopers are already named Stormtroopers after all, do we need more WWII parallels?.
Actually, he hasn't given a 4 in over a month, and he puts out about half a dozen reviews a week. More recently, he gave Life or Something Like It one star, and Jason X zero and a half stars.
The one thing I do find amusing is that Ebert seems to talk more about the good things in movies he doesn't like, and more about the bad things in movies he does. I guess it makes sense, because if a movie really bites, the bad parts are likely to be simple ("the plot was stupid, the acting was bad"), while the good parts are likely to be more subtle ("but they did do some interesting lighting in these scenes"). Still, if you read the reviews without looking at the rating, sometimes it can be difficult to tell if he liked a movie or not.
Cuba can't even make cigars right anymore. Seriously, talk to any tobaccanist, even if they still prefer Cubans, they'll concede that they're not overwhelmingly considered the best as they once were. If Cuba can't even make cigars well, then I'd say concerns about nuclear power plants are well founded.
Alright, with a bit more searching, it seems that more people agree with May 25th than the last Friday in May. However, there is also "Happy Adams Day" set for Feb. 11th, the 42nd day of the year (also exactly 1 month before his birthday, and 3 months before the anniversary of his death). Therefore, in the spirit of community cohesion, I abandon my stance that it should be May 31st, going instead with May 25th.
I would like to further propose that this be the LAST towel day, and that starting next year, we all celebrate DNA on February 11th, and that said celebration include carrying towels. Sound good to everyone?
According to the old h2g2 site, the first towel day was May 25th, which happened to be the last Friday of the month. The author of that node therefore suggests that it always be the last Friday of the May. This explains why some people think it's May 25th and some think the last Friday of May. Where the first Thursday after May 11th came from, I have no idea. To allow those of us with sufficiently lenient casual Friday policies to participate, the last Friday of May sounds more reasonable.
I have a Yahoo account, and I didn't delete it. Want to know why? Because first of all, Yahoo doesn't have anything they can use to annoy me in new ways (phone #, physical address, etc.). Second of all, my yahoo address is what I use when not corresponding with family or friends, it's the box I expect to get spammed. So I care about my privacy, but in this case, I just don't see anything to worry about.
I was much more annoyed when Yahoo removed pop3 access. Now how am I supposed to archive old email?
Alright, I feel like an idiot because I've posted three replies on this subject now, but after checking amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, it appears that this only applies to the version sold in the UK. So British buyers beware, but the rest of us are okay (though if the Amazonian reviewers are to be trusted, apparently it is a pretty weak effort compared to Williams' prior work).
Is it labled as not playing in a PC? Apparently there should be a disclaimer if it is protected. If you don't see one, maybe there are multiple versions, or the original article is wrong. Maybe only the British version? The site's located in the UK.
Wow, that's got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. The overlap between Star Wars fans and people who listen to music on their computers has got to be enormous. I actually would have bought this, but now I guess I'll just wait for someone to post an analog rip to KaZaa(-lite), since I haven't owned a stereo for 3 years now.
Damn straight, the article intro is, simply put, bullshit. It's also important to remember that, outside of the context of a war, shooting large numbers of people with a gun is about the most evil thing one can do, but no one tries to make the argument that "because it was okay to do this to the Nazis in WWII, it's okay to do it to Hollywood today." Well, no one aside from that dumbfuck with the.sig saying that Osama should have bombed Hollywood and Disneyland.
IANAL, so I'm not going to comment on whether what this article claims is going to happen or not, but at least one free software project has closed down because of concerns about liability: Broadcast 2000. The page describing the situation is here.
Now I don't know if his fears are well founded or not, but I'm sure he had some reason for taking the action of yanking the previously available source. Perhaps an anti-lemon law with an explicit "software made available for no cost is exempted" would be better, although even then I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Should Red Hat be held responsible if one of the beta products in the distribution is buggy (say, the situation with Mozilla a year ago)? Besides, what level of bugginess is okay? Is 99% uptime sufficient? 99.999%? 100%, every crash results in a lawsuit? I just don't know about this...
"Confederacy of Independent Systems?" You've got to be joking me. Can't Lucas even make up alliance names without ripping off existing, real world alliances? What's next, the Naboo-Antilles Treaty Organization?
But Russia is the whole POINT! You have to realize that at this time, there really were Soviet spies in America. Much of academia believed in what the Russians were doing, and were more than willing to pass research on to them. The design of the first Soviet atomic bomb was actually identical to an American design, right down to the same number of rivets on the outer casing. Furthermore, it was the avowed goal of the Russians to destroy all capitalist countries, and usher in a worldwide communist reign.
So, yes, there were abuses of power by the FBI. Yes, Einstein was innocent. However, there was a very real threat, and it is understandable, if not totally acceptable, that the FBI would keep tabs on prominent research scientists with known communist sympathies.
Re:Its audio collage just like visual collage.
on
Mashed-Up Music
·
· Score: 1
Litter? Well yeah, isn't that how you'd describe most pop music these days?
You mean like Scarborough Fair crossed with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme? Or for that matter, 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night? Now, admittedly, Simon and Garfunkel were excellent musicians, but this stuff is from the 60's! Just because people are doing it now with computers, and illegally, doesn't make it all of a sudden new and cool. I haven't heard any of these new ones, but I'm guessing aside from the novelty, they probably sound like ass.
I agree with most of your post, with all the technology we have, it ought to be possible to develop an ultra-low power, ultra-low heat chip that does all your word processing and spreadsheeting and emacs/vi coding without breaking the bank. In fact, if I understand it correctly, the Crusoe IS such a chip.
Unfortunately, you're wrong about it being cheaper. A water pump is orders of magnitudes cheaper to engineer than a completely new chip. Furthermore, the total abject failure of the Crusoe in the marketplace seems to suggest that few people will make the tradeoff of higher price and lower performance for less power and less heat (unless, of course, it comes in fruity colors). Maybe in another couple years when someone sues because of first degree leg burns received from their "laptop" things will change...
On a similar subject, Trey Parker (one of the creators of South Park) wrote about how unbelievably different it was warding off an NC-17 rating for South Park versus Orgazmo and Baseketballs. For South Park, they got a letter much like the above, and the studio helped them write appropriate responses, and generally negotiated it down to an R. For the other two, they basically got something that said "The MPAA has rated this NC-17." They tried to guess which parts they needed to cut, and were successful for Baseketballs, but not for Orgazmo. So, apparently the larger your budget and more influential the studio you're working for, the easier it is to get more favorable ratings.
I also remember hearing once that some movies that are worried about getting an NC-17 intentionally put in scenes that are way over the top, so that they have things they can cut easily to bring down their ratings. It's a fairly corrupt system all around it seems.
Yeah, a writing class I took featured that prominently as an example of bad writing. Yeesh, it really was awful, with passages like "He was a mysterious man. Everyone knew he was mysterious, even when he was a child in school." That wasn't it, but it was something like that. Really, really bad.
To add to the above comments, apparently he was some kind of a creative consultant on Babylon 5 (heh, amusingly, I'm working my way through the series on Kazaa(lite) right now, so I guess I'm part of the problem).
Missing the middle finger on his right hand? Wow, you would think in all the star trek I've watched, I would have noticed something like that... Did anybody else notice? Did they have him wear some kind of a prostetic glove?
Slashdot Mirror
America is not rich because up until now companies have been making irrational hiring choices. America is rich because we have an unbelievable level of productivity, and therefore it is often cheapest to hire American. In the case of the person who originally posted the question, this may not be the case, or maybe it is the case and he just doesn't know it yet. Either way, the best way to continue to improve American productivity and economic development is to allow companies to make rational cost-benefit analysis, not forcing them to be uncompetitive on the international market. Believe me, the American economy would be much worse if the American companies couldn't compete effectively than if they compete by outsourcing a few jobs to "Bangla-fucking-desh."
As for your slum the size of Chicago or New York, what about a slum the size of Deli, Bombay, or Calcutta? Again, aside from nationalist prejudices, I don't see why suffering matters less if it's Indian than if it's American.
Why? Are the citizens of other countries morally inferior in some way, deserving of poverty? That idea right there, that there is a group of people bound by language, culture and ethnicity inherently destined for greatness, was the core of the National Socialism movement of the 1930's, I find it appalling that it would continue to resurface today.
I would advise you to go back and look at the archives of his reviews. Sadly, the archives don't go back far enough to see his original reviews for the original trilogy. However, when they were re-released in '97, he gave each one four stars. Even The Phantom Menace got 3 and a half stars. So I think it's pretty obvious that this guy loves the Star Wars franchise, but this one really let him down.
Okay, one issue with the whole racial stereotype thing: if they're all clones, they have to be one single race, right? Furthermore, they're evil. So what race would be safe? Even the old fallback (if minorities are likely to get offended, just make them white) doesn't really work, because then they'll look like Nazi ubermensch or something. The Stormtroopers are already named Stormtroopers after all, do we need more WWII parallels?.
The one thing I do find amusing is that Ebert seems to talk more about the good things in movies he doesn't like, and more about the bad things in movies he does. I guess it makes sense, because if a movie really bites, the bad parts are likely to be simple ("the plot was stupid, the acting was bad"), while the good parts are likely to be more subtle ("but they did do some interesting lighting in these scenes"). Still, if you read the reviews without looking at the rating, sometimes it can be difficult to tell if he liked a movie or not.
Cuba can't even make cigars right anymore. Seriously, talk to any tobaccanist, even if they still prefer Cubans, they'll concede that they're not overwhelmingly considered the best as they once were. If Cuba can't even make cigars well, then I'd say concerns about nuclear power plants are well founded.
I would like to further propose that this be the LAST towel day, and that starting next year, we all celebrate DNA on February 11th, and that said celebration include carrying towels. Sound good to everyone?
According to the old h2g2 site, the first towel day was May 25th, which happened to be the last Friday of the month. The author of that node therefore suggests that it always be the last Friday of the May. This explains why some people think it's May 25th and some think the last Friday of May. Where the first Thursday after May 11th came from, I have no idea. To allow those of us with sufficiently lenient casual Friday policies to participate, the last Friday of May sounds more reasonable.
Excellent, hey, thanks a lot.
I was much more annoyed when Yahoo removed pop3 access. Now how am I supposed to archive old email?
Alright, I feel like an idiot because I've posted three replies on this subject now, but after checking amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, it appears that this only applies to the version sold in the UK. So British buyers beware, but the rest of us are okay (though if the Amazonian reviewers are to be trusted, apparently it is a pretty weak effort compared to Williams' prior work).
Is it labled as not playing in a PC? Apparently there should be a disclaimer if it is protected. If you don't see one, maybe there are multiple versions, or the original article is wrong. Maybe only the British version? The site's located in the UK.
Wow, that's got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. The overlap between Star Wars fans and people who listen to music on their computers has got to be enormous. I actually would have bought this, but now I guess I'll just wait for someone to post an analog rip to KaZaa(-lite), since I haven't owned a stereo for 3 years now.
Damn straight, the article intro is, simply put, bullshit. It's also important to remember that, outside of the context of a war, shooting large numbers of people with a gun is about the most evil thing one can do, but no one tries to make the argument that "because it was okay to do this to the Nazis in WWII, it's okay to do it to Hollywood today." Well, no one aside from that dumbfuck with the .sig saying that Osama should have bombed Hollywood and Disneyland.
Now I don't know if his fears are well founded or not, but I'm sure he had some reason for taking the action of yanking the previously available source. Perhaps an anti-lemon law with an explicit "software made available for no cost is exempted" would be better, although even then I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Should Red Hat be held responsible if one of the beta products in the distribution is buggy (say, the situation with Mozilla a year ago)? Besides, what level of bugginess is okay? Is 99% uptime sufficient? 99.999%? 100%, every crash results in a lawsuit? I just don't know about this...
Dude, it's not funny anymore.
"Confederacy of Independent Systems?" You've got to be joking me. Can't Lucas even make up alliance names without ripping off existing, real world alliances? What's next, the Naboo-Antilles Treaty Organization?
So, yes, there were abuses of power by the FBI. Yes, Einstein was innocent. However, there was a very real threat, and it is understandable, if not totally acceptable, that the FBI would keep tabs on prominent research scientists with known communist sympathies.
Litter? Well yeah, isn't that how you'd describe most pop music these days?
You mean like Scarborough Fair crossed with Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme? Or for that matter, 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night? Now, admittedly, Simon and Garfunkel were excellent musicians, but this stuff is from the 60's! Just because people are doing it now with computers, and illegally, doesn't make it all of a sudden new and cool. I haven't heard any of these new ones, but I'm guessing aside from the novelty, they probably sound like ass.
Unfortunately, you're wrong about it being cheaper. A water pump is orders of magnitudes cheaper to engineer than a completely new chip. Furthermore, the total abject failure of the Crusoe in the marketplace seems to suggest that few people will make the tradeoff of higher price and lower performance for less power and less heat (unless, of course, it comes in fruity colors). Maybe in another couple years when someone sues because of first degree leg burns received from their "laptop" things will change...
I also remember hearing once that some movies that are worried about getting an NC-17 intentionally put in scenes that are way over the top, so that they have things they can cut easily to bring down their ratings. It's a fairly corrupt system all around it seems.
Yeah, a writing class I took featured that prominently as an example of bad writing. Yeesh, it really was awful, with passages like "He was a mysterious man. Everyone knew he was mysterious, even when he was a child in school." That wasn't it, but it was something like that. Really, really bad.
To add to the above comments, apparently he was some kind of a creative consultant on Babylon 5 (heh, amusingly, I'm working my way through the series on Kazaa(lite) right now, so I guess I'm part of the problem).
Missing the middle finger on his right hand? Wow, you would think in all the star trek I've watched, I would have noticed something like that... Did anybody else notice? Did they have him wear some kind of a prostetic glove?