One man (albeit a high ranking one), in an as yet unconfirmed and unknown context, makes an ignorant statement which is then attached to the company that he happens for work for. Guilt by association.
So if I meet a geek/linux advocate/open sourcer/christian/scientologist/amish/doctor/whate ver on the street and they make a moronic statement can I flame the rest of the group and call them losers and evil doers?
It's hard to judge the true meaning of a conversation based on two sentences. The media continually mis-quotes or singles out specific statements in order to get eyeballs. These mis-quotes or semi-facts get spread around and then the conspiracy theorists unite and begin to pick everything apart. Pretty soon it's like this big rumour mill about how since so and so didn't like X that their an active campaign against X by the entire company/government/world.
So lets just attempt to make the assumption that this MS guy is really not evil but just ignorant. In this particular aspect he is undereducated and does not understand the Open Source effort. Possibly he has seen the recent failure of some Open Source business model and made his assumptions on that. Maybe he's listened to all the hate out there and made his mind up based on that. Maybe it's a pride thing "I can do it better".
The other issue is the open endedness of the statement "I'm an American, I believe in the American way". I'm an American, I can't honestly say that I am for the "American way", I can't honestly say what the "American way" is (greed?, selfishness?, theft?, enslavement?, hour long shows where people screw each other over for money, with 30 minutes of commercials and 5 minutes of actual entertainment, what?). I mean to each person it's different especially based on whatever cultural background you happen to have. For many the "American way" is the way that "we've always done it". Some at MS may think that that is indeed the "American Way". Many people use such statements to build the confidence of others to a cause, I think that's what's happening here. This gentleman for whatever reason has created this opinion and seeks further validation and backing and the need for his opinion to be 'popular'.
Just like Linux/Open Source "advocates" think they are doing a service to the 'movement' by flaming and mailbombing during different 'causes', this gentleman might believe he is also helping. Unfortunately companies rarely force their employees to retract statements and very often those retractions that do occur get ignored.
A second issue might be the fact that the ATI card has hardware DVD support as opposed to being limited to software support. Just like with modems (winmodem) software support is not always the best or fastest since it takes some of your CPU time. The Guillemot card does not have hardware DVD to my knowledge. This discrepency between features could be cause for the differences that you are seeing. This might also be why players tweaked for ATI chipsets work better, by calling more on the DVD hardware than a pure software solution does.
No all society.It's not limited to capitalism, this process occurs in all cultures and even appears in the gift culture. Socialists/Communists would like to pretend that it doesn't happen in their 'successfully' architected worlds, but in reality we know that it happens and is apparent in areas like organized crime, corruption, and simple things like nepetism/cronyism (again things that appear in all cultures including capitalism).
Re:What else can you do with deadbeats?
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DSL Woes
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· Score: 1
See here's the odd part about that. Not only Covad has this problem. SWBell and others have similar problems telling you exactly what the problem is, how to fix it, why it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Other companies also have some contractual obligations which typically state that there is a remedy process where by you get money back, this process also states that you cannot withhold funds/payment as remedy.
I used to work for a telecomm company and when our larger customers signed up they usually wanted us to sign agreements that said that if they went without service we had to pay them a penalty fee. Phones had to be manned, answered, problems solved, services running etc. all within a specific range specified in the contract and if it didn't then we had to fork over some cash. And it happened, oh boy did it. If we didn't fulfill our end of the contract it was considered breeched and they could go and find another carrier and possibly sue us for damages.
So the questions come to mind as to why other companies have not followed a similar path? So many of these companies are bleeding off cash selling services for below cost to everyone, selling what they can't provide, satiating the customer with free time/cash back when service is not met, it's a wonder that anyone has money to pay any of their bills. 6 months of service with my current provider and I received 200$ free equipment (standard) and to date 4 months free service (two when I started and two due to a month long outage) and paid for 2 months. All for a service that they were losing money on even if I had paid for all six months. So where is the money coming from to get bills paid? From other services that cost next to nothing to run? Like my phone service that I pay almost $50 for and just get call waiting and caller ID and yet my cell phone (another major money loser) I pay 24.95 for and get all that plus some. Discrepency much?
I currently have DSL with another company. The problems that I've seen are two fold. Lack of knowledge of the technician, lack of communication between two companies. My provider said that they couldn't even call the other company because the FCC had set up rules against that, their only means of communicating was via a ticket system (other people in the company verified that this happened). The company (according to a former employee) was even supposed to use their systems to access a remote system which then redirected them back into their own network for the sole purpose of limiting the company to the same speed as any ISP's that might want to use that system (competition issues). I believe the FCC also has some rules about how many users you can put out of service at a given time and what you are to do to transition them onto another carrier but this might only be in relation to phone/paging/cellular and not ISP's.
Here's the real problem (as I see it). And you can apply this to any company not just ISP/Telecom:
1) company A offers great new service
offers service below cost to build subscription rates.
raises rates on other goods/services to narrow loss
2) company B sees 'success' of company A's plan, decides to compete with similar plan
offers lower rate than company A
promises better service than company A
3) company C,D,E,F follow suit.
4) Investors see huge increase in subscribtion numbers as sign of 'success' (see AOL)
5) Earnings report moderate "growth".
more investors
more follower companies
6) Rates for previously cheap services now seem expensive to user due to rate hikes needed to cover losses on other service.
user cuts down on services used
user "shops" for new service with different company
7) Diminishing cash flow puts halt on hiring, build out, etc.
people continue to sign up and be accepted for service
people begin to bad mouth company for not 'moving' in their area
service begins to decline due to lack of staff/turnover/etc. while demand for such increases daily, existing users complain
8) Earnings report shows loss
Investors begin to back away
"cost saving" measures begin to be looked at such as slashing staff, increasing price of good/service/increased marketing some try the reverse lower price to gain higher subscription hoping to cash in on secondary service purchases.
9) Services begin to erode
customer satisfaction at all time low
customer retention plans failing
new customer sources dwindling, no capacity to service, service options limited
And so this is where we end up. The company had hoped to gain customers and at some point cover the loss through volume or secondary products. Unfortunately every other company got into the same mindset and the margins went into the toilet and the fierce competition dissallowed raising the price of the original service for fear of losing customers. The monitary loss could be covered temporarily but would eventually show through causing the investors to run which in turn reduced the money available to garner more customers and more improved services. All this led to record losses and the companies involved found it easier to withhold payment on certain debts in an effort to ease "bleeding money out of the eye sockets syndrome".
Paging, ISP, Cellular, Telephony, California power, Dodge cars/trucks. You name it most of the companies out there have at one time or another used this strategy and failed with it (miserably). Companies are bleeding money off like crazy the past couple of years because there were so many investors, now that investments have started to dry up instead of improving their business practices they've taken to layoffs/bankruptcy/debt avoidance/finger pointing/price gouging.
Slow growth is still the best growth IMHO. All of this fierce competition in the market is causing too many companies to fail and in the end leaving gaps in the market. Older longer lasting companies then take over these gaps and you end up 'stuck' with a company you can't stand and marginal services.
While competition sparks innovation it can in the end stifle it for periods also. It's all cyclical. Rapid growth - innovation - competition - failure - no innovation - rinse and repeat as necessary.
XBOX Technologies of Minnesota (corp) and Florida, per their website, is nothing more than a holding company. It appears that the companies sole business is that of acquisitions and mergers of technology companies. To put it simply they "acquire" a company, hire new management, redesign business processes, train and restaff and then probably do one of two things sell the company or use it as leverage on it's next acquisition.
Unfortunately XBOX Technologies is also listed as a company that's goals are knowledge management, training, discemination of information across a network, wireless, desktop, or web enabled device, listed as a tech support company, media portal, and previously did business in the design of processes for plastics engineering. Is this a company that's really just in search of something to do. It doesn't appear that XBOX Technologies even knows what kind of company it is since it's own website lists it as two different things not to mention the descriptions available from other sites.
This leads me to the other issue. Trademark law is very goods/services oriented. They understand that there are only so many name/letters/combinations out there for companies and therefore trademarks are usually based around a product or service. Trademark disputes typically happen between two business who are in direct competition or when one business has a mark that could be considered famous. XBOX Technologies does not at present produce anything that competes with Microsoft and XBOX has not come into use or enough recognition to be considered famous. (Famous usually means that the mark has been in use by a company for several years and that a wide variety of people associate that mark with the companies product or service). The trademark office should be able to easily allow both marks to co-exist.
Now there is one more problem to throw in. XBOX Technologies is apparently in need of some positive cash flow, they have one major investor and their stock price, although up from it's low of 0.06, is 0.25. Happy coincidence (most likely not a planned coincidence) they have requested the same trademark as a possibly hot new product offered by a company with some pretty deep pockets. So the question comes up as to whether or not they can cash in on this coincidence and garner some much needed cash and possibly some free recognition/press for their ailing company. Positive cash flow and free press draw in investors (which seems to be this companies primary purpose, as an investment).
So now just months before the MS XBOX is to be released discussion begins over trademark issues and who owns what and what it's worth to Microsoft. Microsoft wants the ability to market more than just the box under the XBOX brand and they've invested millions already and so it's pretty late in the game to wait for a court battle, add a hyphen, add MS to the mark, or to drop the name for something else. Cases have been designed, ads readied, printed material, logo's, websites, documentation, millions and millions of dollars. So what's easiest. MS has to make an offer that will keep the issue out of court, whether or not it's an issue that even needs to go to court. Remember this is 'civil' court and things can get pretty protracted, injunctions, motions, etc. possible product delay, negative press for a new product, lawyers fees. You know the drill. So the question now is "How much is it worth to Microsoft?" "How much has MS spent on XBOX to date?" and possibly a secondary question arises "Is what XBOX Technologies is doing ethical?"
Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?
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Clever Girl Bess
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· Score: 2
So in essence what you are saying is that it is okay for marketers of products to target marketing at children who are visiting websites from school. So would you also agree that it's okay for those same marketers to come to the school without it's permission and put up alcahol/tobaco/movie posters etc. in the hallways? Because in essence this is what you are allowing for.
I have used many of the filtering programs and have found, humorous and disturbing as it is, that the filtering does not seem to block links provided from ads on approved web sites even though those ads may indeed contain information that I would prefer my children not be looking at. My children have no purchasing power, despite what statistics might say, I make the purchasing decisions in my household and I ignore ads because 99% are lies and misleading. I feel that all this effort being put into tracking statistics and ad targeting is for naught. Marketing is falling into the law of diminishing returns, new billboards, more magazine ads, more TV spots, more ad banners, and for what so someone can ignore them, fast forward through them, get up and get a soda during them, go directly to the table of contents and find what they want and not see them.
How many people here actually buy a product based on an ad? How many people here buy a product based on a need? How many people here buy a product after researching it? How many purchases are on a whim because you saw it in the store? How many purchases are made on products that have minimal or zero advertising?
Pharmaceutical companies spend huge amounts of money on ignorant commercials that don't even seem to target anyone, many of those commercials don't even tell you what the product does, just makes you sit there and go 'WHAT?' Then the company decides to claim that the reason their products are so expensive is because of R&D when in truth it's because of the amount of money they are spending on crappy useless commercials.
I don't realistically think that any amount of targeting or better ad placement is going to help the sales of most products. I think the major thing that would help most products is just the creation of a better product, because the best advertising in the world is word of mouth.
Hell why not. Everybody in this sh**-hole is blaming everyone else. "If it weren't for the tree huggers we'd have more power plants, we'd get our nuclear that's the reason." "If it weren't for the greedy oil companies..." "if it weren't for the government..." "if it weren't for the United States..." "If it weren't for the paranoid scientists..." "If it weren't for the fact that the moderators mod up all the morons" (Hey mod me up man I'm a moron)
We are constantly looking to put the finger on someone aren't we. We want to look for ways out of our situation, look for reasons why scientists would lie to us, look for paterns that may/may not exist. All the while we are simply ignoring the fact that we are F***ING our planet daily. You get the environmentalists on one side who want to save every blade of grass, and then the industrialists on the other side who either say "f*** it cement's cheaper to take care of" or "we'll plant a tree somewhere in the state as a sign of our devotion to ecology". This group is taking that group to court, this group is slandering that group. Questionable studies, statistics, outright lies. "Well someone did a study in Greenland and in the 1800's the temperature was the same... blah blah blah"
FACT: Volcanoes, animals, and natural decay are continually adding 'contamenants' to the air and helping with global warming.
FACT: None of the previously mentioned items can be directly linked to the 'beautiful' sky around Los Angeles or other major metropolitan areas... "Nature never knew colors like that... wooohooooo!"
FACT: While nature has always provided a certain amount of 'green house gases' due to it's own changing nature, it has also always provided a scrubbing system for such material. These scrubbing systems are being destroyed by our own arrogance. First by assuming that the habitat is non-essencial or insignificant. Second by assuming that if said habitat is essencial that it can be changed/moved/recreated by our own hands. Third by underestimating our impact on that environment, after all we are part of nature, aren't we naturally in balance with it?
The Christians all want to blame the government and point to heaven and say it's all a conspiracy to devalue 'Our God' and to negate the 'Perfect World he created for us'. Or worse to say 'It will all be over soon anyway, Jesus our savior is coming tomorrow' - Meaning they've already given up on this world and all the people in it so who cares. THE END IS NIGH...
The agnostics/atheists will use the excuse that nature will strike a balance. That either the ecology will evolve to take care of our extra polution, that we will evolve to handle it ourselves throug invention, or that we have grossly underestimated the ecology and that it takes care of much more than we thought with fewer square acres.
The point in all this? It's all useless theorizing. It's psuedo-science at best, part science part speculation. Doctor1:"Diabetes might be caused by this little tiny molecule" Doctor2:"No diabetes is caused by these three molecules" Doctor1:"Well I'm gonna try my rats on these three drugs and you try yours on those three drugs and well see who wins" TRIAL AND ERROR, GUESS WORK, PSUEDO-SCIENCE. This is what our scientific community has been reduced to. Throwing millions of random combinations together in the hopes that they might maybe find the cure for cancer... and oh by the way win the Nobel prize... and oh by the way keep the drug companies rich... and oh by the way keep the really good drugs in the hands of the rich. Scanning random plots of sky night after night and shooting data off to thousands of ET junkies in the hopes that someone might discover a blip of an alien ham radio. And all the while call every other scientist, doing the same thing they are in a different way, a quack/nut/lunatic. It's all about finger pointing.
Take a look around people! For every study that's out that is based on good science there are five studies based on poor science trying to debunk the first one. For every product out there that makes sense to use, sense for our ecology, there are millions that are "cheaper", "better", "faster", "sexier".
The new complaint I hear about electric cars is "Oh well what does it matter if the gas is burned in the car or in the power plant?" Go find a study. See which one really makes sense. How efficient is the modern combustable engine in todays cars compared to say a gas turbine in a power plant? What's the weight of pollutants generated by those automobiles compared to the weight of pollutants generated by enough power plants to support that same number of automobiles? What are the regulatory rules and emmissions laws and how strict are they between the two items? "Oh well we don't have time to figure that out, after all I've got QuakeIII to play and a Apache server to get up and running, and I'm just such a damn busy person."
So what's the answer? Damned if I know I'm just rambling at this point. But it should probably be something like this: Instead of talking about building new power plants, going to court, defacing property, public tirades (woohoo!), "we're gonna fix it like this, we're gonna fix it like that", how about just living a little bit smarter lives. I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it. I'll be the first to admit that I suck up a huge amount of juice, and burn off a ton of crap into the air, but I'm working on it and teaching people around me how to do it too. I've started recycling most if not all of my paper (shread it up, throw in the old jeans I was going to throw out, wet it down, screen it - voila new paper), recycling cans for two years - plus the cans of all of my coworkers, compost heap, ride sharing. I want to teach my children how to have an impact on the earth and those around them in a positive way and not teach them to leave everything up to someone else. See we want to blame our congressman, our president, our clergy, or even Canada, but we are unwilling to blame ourselves. Unwilling to clutter our car with cigarette butts, after all that's what the street sweepers are for, and we wouldn't want anyone to know that we smoked:( ! Unwilling to bend at the waist and lower ourselves to pick up someone elses trash, as we enter work. Unwilling to spend $5-10 on a light bulb guaranteed to last 5 years and consume 10-25% less energy than the pack of five 60watt lightbulbs that we will tear through in the next three months, simply because we aren't reading the lamps clearly marked wattage message.
We, the people (remember that one), should, instead of becoming a mirror of the world, become screens to it, reflecting back and showing the picture that people should see. We should be reflecting back that we care about what actions we take, that we are responsible and thoughtful when taking them, and that we rely on noone elses judgement, flawed logic, or skewed belief system to make those decisions for us. We as individuals should take heart that at least we are doing something other than complaining and making jokes. We as individuals should understand that one by one things can change.... or we can just take that lovely defeatest/. attitude and say 'F*** you, stop typing so much and go save a whale or something.' It's up to you.
Well I watched all three nights, forced my wife to sit through it so that I could get a 'virgin's' thoughts also. In the end I think this is one of those shows that should be put back in the can and burried somewhere really really deep, maybe a nuclear waste facility.
My wife, having not read the books, was completely lost, she was unable to follow many of the major transitions, I got repeated questions about terminology "who's shai halud", "what's the water of life", "what do they mean by changing the water", "what happens if the worm goes under while everyone is riding", etc. etc. ad nauseum. And understand that my wife is not by any sense of the word a moron. She's been able to understand the vast majority of Sci-fi's I've forced her to sit through (she's not really a sci-fi fan).
My primary problem with the mini-series is that the director and associates touted this as the "fans movie" that this would be a make up or redo for the '84 Lynch movie. Honestly there should be a lemon law for badly produced TV mini-series and made for TV movies. The problem happened when I went in with the expectation of getting one thing and in the end getting something completely different. If they had marketed this as "John Harrison's Dune - The Broadway Play" it would have gone over little better in so far as what people's expectations were going into it. But NO they marketed it as "Frank Herbert's DUNE" even though Frank's been dead for several years and they left out so many key elements that it seemed to be more like "John Harrison's interpretation of Brian Herbert's interpretation of Frank Herbert's Dune - THE PLAY". Sad sad sad.
I'm really tired of hearing people say "aw give em a break, a book can't translate completely as a movie" Why not? The argument is usually "it would be too long". BULL! People are more than willing to sit through hours of programming, set up their VCR's to tape them, wait for days for a plot to develop. Remember all of those 80's miniseries, Thornbirds, Shogun, the Civil war shows, Lonesome Dove. Why were they such big hits? Because they made characters that the audience was enthralled with, they developed relationships between the characters, they developed history and motivation for those characters, when someone died or got hurt you felt the pain and anguish or were saddened by the loss. This pale comparison of a miniseries had none of that.
I could excuse all of the glaring inaccuracies and inconsistencies if they had simply made characters that inspired me. I could deal with the bratty spoiled acting Paul, if his attitude had somehow effected those around him. I could look up to Gurney if his brief biography (about Leto rescuing him from slavery) had inspired me in any way. Personally none of the characters inspired me, they were all too one dimensional. Paul continued to portray the bratty misfit by the end of the movie with the only added trait being a sense of vileness brought to the character. These were all stage actors to me, people who would do well in plays on broadway or off, in whimsical Shakespearean productions, or grand musicals, but not in a sci-fi epic.
The casting just really seemed off, too young, too old, too heavy, too thin. And all the details to fill in plot devices were non-existent. EX: You have a society that lives on a planet that is completely covered by desert, they've gone to the trouble of cremating their dead and reclaiming their water, creating stilsuits that reclaim water from sweat, urine, and feces. This all gives the impression that they are super conservative about evaporation or loss of any water, right? Yet the first scenes you see are of a woman sloppily squeezing water into peasants cups in front of the main house. Peasants who although out in the open, in mid day, when the heat has got to be unbearable, are not wearing stilsuits and are loosely dressed lots of exposed skin (nothing like a true desert person would dress). Later you see the fremen living in pueblo like caverns openely exposed to the desert air, walking about without shirts or with open front tunics, no seals on doors, walking through the desert with ill fitted (loose) stilsuits and masks not conforming/sealing to the face, no worry of losing water, no consistency.
It's little details, small seemingly insignificant details that make a movie a 'good' movie. It's when every little detail of the movie builds on the last detail and in the end makes a the picture of what's happening all more clear. So many of the devices used should not have been because their was no need. IE Paul in the room with the Hunter Seeker, there was no need for either voice over or the maid to be in the room. The look and motion of the Seeker should have explained well enough it's intent (no need for a sinister looking slithering cgi, a simple cylinder with a needle on the end). The look and lack of motion from Paul would have suggested that it could detect only movement. This would have been reinforced when the Shadout Mapes entered the room (and the seeled door made a hiss) and the Seeker went toward her. Not everything need be explained in lurid detail as it unfolds. Allow people to use their imagination somewhat and it will be rewarded.
I could go on and on about the failings of this mini-series: The lack of character development (Yueh, Thufur, Piter, Raban, Mohiam, et al). The exclusion of characters (Jamis' wife and sons, children being taught the weirding way, any visual representation of the fedayken (they were mentioned several times, but never visually introduced). The poorly designed and filmed back drops (an oval sun/moon, showing as such because the camera angle relative to the back drop, poor shadowing, and the same three birds flying across in different directions every time a back drop is in the shoot). The reuse of extras in every single scene (people remember faces and no matter how you dress them people can still recognize).
To me it just appears that they tried to appease the fans by reversing the things that the DUNE movie supposedly did wrong. IE no voiceovers, no dark sets, brighter costumes, fill in missing scenes, etc. Well those 'fixes' can also be failures IE no explanation of an event or process, no distinction of geography/location, flamboyant (damn not even gay people dress like that) costuming (why is it that people in the future always seem to dress like something out of Rocky Horror Picture Show/Studio 54), missing scenes are in, wrong people speaking lines other scenes now missing, character development now out because of time constraints.
Oh well maybe in another 15 years someone will retry and get closer to what it should be, entertainment.
... then you clip someone as you weave through the slow pokes (going 80) flip your car, cause their car to carene into a van, killing the entire family except for a 4 year old boy who will now live with a permanent limp and partial brain damage. 6 people dead, 4 severely injured, and cool boy that you are you walk away with a slight head wound and a broken arm, because you were so damned relaxed (drunk maybe) that you didn't hurt yourself. Now that's the American way of life.
Try not to crash into a bus load of nuns or anything tomorrow. I'd hate for you to hurt yourself.
We're talking about two different things I think. The design is supposed to be that fines along with jail terms are while punative are also deterents and in some way rehabilitative. The thought is that if you lock a man away for 10 years that within that time he will have thought about what he has done and once released not commit the offense again. Likewise with a fine a similar process happens. Unfortunately money and time are relative things. For some $100 bucks is a months worth of groceries, to others a simple night out with the wife. Time for some is the same, depending on the person a day's confinement is a nightmare, to others it's just another day. If we do not personalize the punishment then we can expect the criminal to perform the same crime time and time again.
Too many crimes lately are going with higher punishments without a reasoning behind them. Oh the generic "it will make criminals think twice" is always used, but statistics show that criminals are in fact not thinking twice.
Unfortunately in the real world if you are making 101,000 and getting taxed 9,700 you pay an accountant 1,700 and he finds a way for you to keep the other 8,000 == 0 taxes.
The rich and big business argue that without the loopholes and tax breaks that it would be prohibitive to do business. That's bullshit. There are a lot of people out there starting up businesses and running businesses because it's their life long dream to do so, not because the gov gave them a tax break. I think somewhere around 80% of business in America is small business, these are the people who typically take the hit on taxes and yet year after year they continue to do business and grow and create more business and throw their hard earned money into the economy while big business complains about "possible" tax reforms that may 'hurt' them.
What people fail to understand is that taxes are supposed to be used for the betterment of the people who are paying them. Therefore if Steve pay's 20,000 in taxes because he makes 100,000, then Betty who makes 10,000 gets free job training, gets a better job at 50,000. The programs allow more people into the work place to fill higher skilled jobs which in turn increases tax revenue, leading to surplus, and eventually a lower tax percentage. Then when Steve becomes disabled and can only work for 20,000 a year, the taxes that Betty and others are paying can go into helping him. It's a circle people rarely understand.
A co-worker always gripes about the fact that his tax dollars go towards funding things for my children. He doesn't have children, why should his tax dollars be used towards that. Simply because when he's old and drawing off of those tax dollars for help, it will be my children who are the ones footing the funding. If his tax dollars hadn't gone towards better schools, my children would not get a proper education and would be getting a lower wage which in turn reduces the amount of tax dollars and effectively reduces the amount of money that he would be able to draw off of should he need it later in life.
This Christmas for me and mine is going to be somewhat limited. Why? Because I have a thousand dollar tax bill due at the end of December. So, what does this mean? Mr. Big Business gets less of my money (and for similar reasons a lot of other peoples money) which means he doesn't make as big of a profit. So big business get's to make a choice of how they want to lose money, do they lose it by giving it away in taxes, or do they lose it by the fact that the customer never gave it to them?
the only problem with the "progressive" system is that the theory is unsound. Take the US for example. While the the wealthy and the corporations appear to be the ones who will front the most in taxes it is actually the middle class who do. The progressive scale says that the higher your income the more in taxes you pay and vice versa. In the US the lower income get tax breaks based on the fact that they are lower income, the wealthy/corporate get tax breaks based on their ability to pay CPA's who will creatively find tax breaks for them or based on government breaks that are "an incentive for doing business". The company I work for recently built a brand new building and they are now leasing it from another corporation that they effectively created specifically to use for tax write off purposes. A co-worker of mine is self-employed (contractor) we often go out to eat on his "corporate account", while everyone chips in and gives him cash, he charges it on his card and at the end of the year uses some of those charges to lower his tax burden. The people with the most money seem to come out on top in the equation Tax wise or fine wise. Doesn't seem quite right. Too many loopholes when you complicate the rules so much.
Unfortunately there's about as much thought put into our legal system as our tax laws, so the punishment doesn't ever seem to fit the crime. Either the punishment is too harsh or not harsh enough, and there's always someone crying foul. Trial by jury is a joke because the jurists are so rarely anywhere near being a peer to the accused. When was the last time you saw a crack addict convicted by a group of crack addicts or a cat burglar convicted by other cat burglars. It's all done by numbers now, who will be sympathetic, who won't, who might help me get a mistrial, what cross section of Americana do I want to display to the cameras. Secondly they allow one juror to dominate the others, often through intimidation or threats to tie up people's time. Lost wages and productivity push people to make quick judgements on someone "who must have done it, just look at him". Fines follow the same rule. I've been in court and seen $500 an hour lawyers argue out $50 in parking fines. I've seen a 16 year old girl with a history of speeding and car wrecks get a 50 in a 25 thrown out, while a 29 year old first offender going 32 in a 25 gets a $65 fine. Too many discrepencies. Too widespread to ignore, but it still happens.
Will we become ghosts in the machine? Hiding our bodies away from sight. Electrolysis to remove all our hair, cathoders and feeding tubes, our consciousness uploaded to some remote machine, travelling at light speed through the net scavenging little bits of code to add to our amalgamated consciousness. Would we feel the need to upload ourselves to a body and interact with other entities in a physical realm or would we remain semi-non-corporial.
Remote bands of pigmy's using cars and making their own gasoline. Trading with other tribes for paper, tobacco, computer keyboards, and rubber tires. The technologically enhanced majority ignoring the rights/needs of the less technologically advanced or worse, setting up reservations for those of us who don't fit the current cultural norm.
This might be the way things work. Throughout our history the more "civilized", technologically advanced cultures have dominated those that were less so. Will the people who turn from the extremes of technology be limited to survival in remote areas unwanted by the more technologically driven counterpart. More likely captolism will drive this change just as it has in the past. The more technologically advanced will begin to trade and gain more and more ground as the less tech oriented will begin to lose ground and possibly rights. Of course this is a doom and gloom premise, because we all know that it'll never happen that way because we're all very humane and respect the rights and space of others and worry about their well being as well as our own.
While it's nice that the English will lay claim to this invention, I've seen this device around for many years. The Sabolich's showed a similar device on Oprah about 2 years back, plus I saw a demo of something similar in highschool (www.sabolich.com).
Now where they seem to be laying claim to fame is not in the development of the mechanism or reading an impulse from the human operator but in making it "self contained". Seems like a little bit of a fishy statement, what exactly is "self contained"? The model that I saw several years ago was 'self contained' in my opinion, it had a small battery that fit into the unit and no external devices. Unfortunately the unit could only run for about 30 minutes on a charge. So what exactly have they 'invented' that hasn't been around for the past several years? Anyone know?
damn... well it is off topic for the general group but it wasn't off topic in regards to the post for which it is a reply. What happened to that post anyway I didn't know that you could delete a post or did the Mods get it.
How do you report a bug in their bug reporting tool?
I used to have problems with this in NS4. It would crash the bug reporter would open up to report the bug, then the bug reporter would crash.
Oh yeah you get that very difficult confirm dialog that says something like "You can't store this in the recycle bin are you sure you want to permanently delete it? " and then you have to move the mouse all the way over to the buttons and click on the right one. I guess if you didn't have any arms or legs that might be a difficult action to perform so you could technically say that the icons were 'undeletable'.
Well or you might be using that oh-so-impossible to use add-on TweakUI which makes it nearly impossible to customize Windows.
Damn MS, their just so ignorant of what the customer really wants.
I think we're probably all looking at this problem from the wrong angle. Look at it like this. When you go into a book store it's neatly divided into book types Fiction/Non-fiction/Biography/Reference etc. Most book stores have the Sci-Fi section but if you look at that area closer it's set up with sub-sections (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Sci-Fantasy, and sometimes various horror). All the AD&D books are together as Fantasy, Star-Trek is usually under the Science-Fiction, Star Wars sometimes under Sci-Fi but usually under Science-Fantasy. You get the idea.
The book store keeps all of the harlequin romances, quick sales, junk books and stuff they'd rather not categorize up front where people can get it quick and get out quick. The majority of the shoppers shop here. In to get a mag or cheap romance novel, maybe a present for a friend but not in far enough to need to make sense out of how things are categorized on the shelf, much less how the "sci-fi" books are categorized
See to 99% of the population Lord of the Rings is Sci-Fi along with Chronicles of Narnia and Dungeons and Dragons. That 99% doesn't think about the distinctions between books nor really the distinction between movies. To them it's "I want something to scare me... make me laugh... look cool... with lots of fighting... with hot chics... romantic..." They don't even hear the first word in 'dark-comedy', they just hear 'comedy' and then are disappointed when the movie wasn't funny the way they wanted it to be (cable guy).
To me it appears that critics of Red Planet are guilty of the same thing. This was so not a Sci-Fi movie. Personally it's border line even being a Sci-Fantasy movie. Cool special effects, liked the suits, the ship, the robot, etc. But in the end it didn't rely on the hard science that true Sci-Fi's typically rely on. That's where the problem lies. So many of the movies that we see today are clasified by the media and the people who watch them as 'Sci-fi' when in reality they are 'Sci-Fantasy'. Did Star Wars ever explain how the light saber worked or why Obi-Wan dissappeared like that? Hell No! Why? Cuz it was science fantasy, just enough realism to be believable but enough fantasy to make you forget about realism for awhile.
I personally liked Red Planet, I think it succeeded where Mission to Mars failed. Mission to Mars tried to rely to heavily on the science but would chuck it out the door when necessary just to do something neat. That went beyond what I would call artistic liscense. Red Planet didn't focus on the science, nor did it focus on the people really. By the end of the movie you knew that one dead guy had a granddaughter, the other dead guy was too cocky, another dead guy (the nice guy) wasn't quite so nice (spineless), and that dead guy number four 'the jerk' was probably a pretty good guy after all, taking one for humanity and all. We find that the lead character is more resourceful than given credit for and that the female co doesn't need 'rescuing'. Do we really need to know that Kate came from a long line of Navy, or Burchenal was a drunk, or Robby's wife died two years ago, or that Ted had an abusive father. No because it doesn't really help any with the story line. None of their jobs or skills really even help with the story line, because in the end they are stripped down to only one thing, surviving with their humanity. And that in the end is what this movie is about. Humanity, how easily some of us give up on it all, how those of us who seem to have given up really haven't, how the meek sometimes aren't, all the flaws and accomplishments that we have as a species, right there for people to take a look at if they weren't so damned interested in Carrie-Anne Moss's or the fact that oxygen levels could be easily detected well before reaching the planet.
Truth is movie goers are stupid, even the 'smart' ones.
Personally I've read a lot of science fiction and it just fucking bores me to tears sometimes. You know those 6 pages that you have to skip here and there because the author starts talking about singularities, gravitational forces, and space time. YAWN. You know that 99% of the people would leave the movie theater if that happened and that nice three hour long 200million$ science accurate sci-fi would be considered the 2nd Ishtar.
Active Desktop requires explorer to be loaded as the shell. Active Desktop cannot run without explorer because explorer provides the desktop and communications functions that Active Desktop relies on to function correctly. Yes there may be some preloading of IE components if you use explorer as your shell. This is probably only to help facilitate the functioning of Active Desktop and not the functioning of IE. Active Desktop of course is, simply put, a browser used as the desktop. It displays a web page on the desktop nothing more to it than that, you can add flash, active x, everything that a normal web page will hold, that's why it requires IE.
I just love these piss poor statements of people who can't just shut the fuck up and admit that they either don't know or are wrong. "Well, they gotta be doing something wrong..." "Well, something starts...". This "I don't really know but I'm sure gonna piss and moan about it", "Someone is screwing me somewhere".
Read back through the posts before posting any more crap responses.
Secondly all this bullshit talk about secret api's and loading the browser with the OS- preloading components is bullshit to any real computer user/programmer. There are hundreds of programs that preload components to facilitate the speed of opening the program. Windows user will atest to how many modern apps want to put an icon in the systray (some whether you like it or not). They put their little statements in your windows ini files, the registry, the startup, as a service in NT, config.sys/autoexec.bat, hell most of this started with DOS hence the term "Terminate and Stay Resident". Should we be knocking MS for them taking advantage of a well known technique or should we be knocking NS for not finding a way to innovate on that technique.
Really WTF do I care if my OS load takes 3-4 minutes. Gives me time to get a coke, scratch my balls, flirt with my wife (not necessarily in that order). In the end I may have gained some time getting applications to load faster and be able to do some productive work once I am on the PC. I only have to recycle the OS once every 30-45 days typically because I've installed some new hardware or some particullarly irritating software (PS not all software in Win32 needs a restart - they request it but it's not always necessary, much to my satisfaction).
Unfortunately you are correct there is no corroberating evidence to prove that NS stole/liscensed the Mosaic code. There is only guess work. Like timelines --- Andreessen left NCSA in 1993 worked for some time on another venture and then met up with SGI founder to form MCOM in early 1994, the first versions of Netscape started showing up in April of 1994 with later beta version.93 (.94?) showing up in November of '94. By the November beta they already supported Win3.1/WFW/NT/Mac and X-Windows on several of the *nix platforms plus had added several major improvements over Mosaic.
So in ?11? months they created a company and a product that matched the feature set of Mosaic plus added functionality on mutliple platforms with a relatively small core (23 people including Management, support, server developement, and client/crossplatform developers) , not to mention a server product also. All this with no initial framework to work from and everything was rewritten from scratch. I would have to say that
1) that was the best most tight team of coders ever thrown together
2) they had a framework to begin working from, notably Mosaic
Again this is just my take on the subject and I can in no way PROVE that NS did anything vile or devious. I too have witnessed arguments with NS employees and seen e-mails thrown back and forth, and heard rumor after rumor and defense after defense. It's all guess work, and also I guess in the past (as someone else pointed out to me).
Wow what a way to get really really really far off topic.
Actually this was another settlement issue. Spyglass didn't liscense by revenue but by copy and when MS was not forthcoming with actual numbers Spyglass threatened to audit. Spyglass at the time was having financial problems and their stock was sinking. MS fearing an audit made an offer of paying for the back royalties plus an additional amount to cover future royalties but it would be a one time only payment. Spyglass alas took the offer (8million) and lost any future revenue from the Mosaic code base from Microsoft IE. Although there was some "strategic relationship" deal struck in the undisclosed part of the settlement. Possibly part of that was SurfWatch liscensing or some such revenue generation.
Netscape could still pull itself together and do something right. Even Gates has admitted that MS isn't a forever thing especially with today's markets. Worse companies than NS have made surprising come backs, but then again better companies have been wiped off the face of the planet.
where as netscape just stole it outright because Andreessen was "entitled".
Check your history both NS and IE are based on the Spyglass/NSCA Mosaic code base. Andreesen worked on the base at NCSA with some other coders/students. After he left he continued to use the code in his new venture "Mosaic Communications Corporation" (which later changed to "Netscape Communications" due to trademark infringement over the name 'Mosaic'). Meanwhile NCSA stopped development on Mosaic and sold/liscensed the code to Spyglass from which MS liscensed (not baught, MS has to pay Spyglass royalties for several technologies)(which you might also note that IE displays all of this information openly in it's about box along with other liscensed technology). NS was sued by NCSA, changed it's name but was allowed to retain use of the Mosaic code (details of the settlement were of course not disclosed).
Now of course Netscape claims that none of the original code from Mosaic was used and that they just got half a dozen developers from NCSA and rewrote the whole code in a few months (a feat they have yet to duplicate). But really now... the truth, come on... NCSA was charging about $100,000+ for liscensing and how do you think Andreessen would have felt about spending that kinda cash on code he helped create.
A Funny read is this article on Wired. Some of the predictions made and assumptions are pretty funny. Like the talk about how Netscape wasn't going to get sold in a box but shipped with Internet enabled PC's... hmmmmm... where have I heard that before... oh yeah MS does that... oh but Netscape says that's bad now. And then there's the thing about Netscape creating proprietary standards... isn't MS getting in trouble for that now too... hmmm. Sad that MS just seems to copy Netscapes bad ideas huh?
I think it's a hoot that this piece of satire so elloquently nails every issue with Linux and the opensource movement. Of course they could have made it slightly more believeable but then all the zealots would have attempted to proclaim it as authentic.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay here's the problem I have with this:
One man (albeit a high ranking one), in an as yet unconfirmed and unknown context, makes an ignorant statement which is then attached to the company that he happens for work for. Guilt by association.
So if I meet a geek/linux advocate/open sourcer/christian/scientologist/amish/doctor/whate ver on the street and they make a moronic statement can I flame the rest of the group and call them losers and evil doers?
It's hard to judge the true meaning of a conversation based on two sentences. The media continually mis-quotes or singles out specific statements in order to get eyeballs. These mis-quotes or semi-facts get spread around and then the conspiracy theorists unite and begin to pick everything apart. Pretty soon it's like this big rumour mill about how since so and so didn't like X that their an active campaign against X by the entire company/government/world.
So lets just attempt to make the assumption that this MS guy is really not evil but just ignorant. In this particular aspect he is undereducated and does not understand the Open Source effort. Possibly he has seen the recent failure of some Open Source business model and made his assumptions on that. Maybe he's listened to all the hate out there and made his mind up based on that. Maybe it's a pride thing "I can do it better".
The other issue is the open endedness of the statement "I'm an American, I believe in the American way". I'm an American, I can't honestly say that I am for the "American way", I can't honestly say what the "American way" is (greed?, selfishness?, theft?, enslavement?, hour long shows where people screw each other over for money, with 30 minutes of commercials and 5 minutes of actual entertainment, what?). I mean to each person it's different especially based on whatever cultural background you happen to have. For many the "American way" is the way that "we've always done it". Some at MS may think that that is indeed the "American Way". Many people use such statements to build the confidence of others to a cause, I think that's what's happening here. This gentleman for whatever reason has created this opinion and seeks further validation and backing and the need for his opinion to be 'popular'.
Just like Linux/Open Source "advocates" think they are doing a service to the 'movement' by flaming and mailbombing during different 'causes', this gentleman might believe he is also helping. Unfortunately companies rarely force their employees to retract statements and very often those retractions that do occur get ignored.
A second issue might be the fact that the ATI card has hardware DVD support as opposed to being limited to software support. Just like with modems (winmodem) software support is not always the best or fastest since it takes some of your CPU time. The Guillemot card does not have hardware DVD to my knowledge. This discrepency between features could be cause for the differences that you are seeing. This might also be why players tweaked for ATI chipsets work better, by calling more on the DVD hardware than a pure software solution does.
No all society.It's not limited to capitalism, this process occurs in all cultures and even appears in the gift culture. Socialists/Communists would like to pretend that it doesn't happen in their 'successfully' architected worlds, but in reality we know that it happens and is apparent in areas like organized crime, corruption, and simple things like nepetism/cronyism (again things that appear in all cultures including capitalism).
I used to work for a telecomm company and when our larger customers signed up they usually wanted us to sign agreements that said that if they went without service we had to pay them a penalty fee. Phones had to be manned, answered, problems solved, services running etc. all within a specific range specified in the contract and if it didn't then we had to fork over some cash. And it happened, oh boy did it. If we didn't fulfill our end of the contract it was considered breeched and they could go and find another carrier and possibly sue us for damages.
So the questions come to mind as to why other companies have not followed a similar path? So many of these companies are bleeding off cash selling services for below cost to everyone, selling what they can't provide, satiating the customer with free time/cash back when service is not met, it's a wonder that anyone has money to pay any of their bills. 6 months of service with my current provider and I received 200$ free equipment (standard) and to date 4 months free service (two when I started and two due to a month long outage) and paid for 2 months. All for a service that they were losing money on even if I had paid for all six months. So where is the money coming from to get bills paid? From other services that cost next to nothing to run? Like my phone service that I pay almost $50 for and just get call waiting and caller ID and yet my cell phone (another major money loser) I pay 24.95 for and get all that plus some. Discrepency much?
I currently have DSL with another company. The problems that I've seen are two fold. Lack of knowledge of the technician, lack of communication between two companies. My provider said that they couldn't even call the other company because the FCC had set up rules against that, their only means of communicating was via a ticket system (other people in the company verified that this happened). The company (according to a former employee) was even supposed to use their systems to access a remote system which then redirected them back into their own network for the sole purpose of limiting the company to the same speed as any ISP's that might want to use that system (competition issues). I believe the FCC also has some rules about how many users you can put out of service at a given time and what you are to do to transition them onto another carrier but this might only be in relation to phone/paging/cellular and not ISP's.
Here's the real problem (as I see it). And you can apply this to any company not just ISP/Telecom:
1) company A offers great new service
offers service below cost to build subscription rates.
raises rates on other goods/services to narrow loss
2) company B sees 'success' of company A's plan, decides to compete with similar plan
offers lower rate than company A
promises better service than company A
3) company C,D,E,F follow suit.
4) Investors see huge increase in subscribtion numbers as sign of 'success' (see AOL)
5) Earnings report moderate "growth".
more investors
more follower companies
6) Rates for previously cheap services now seem expensive to user due to rate hikes needed to cover losses on other service.
user cuts down on services used
user "shops" for new service with different company
7) Diminishing cash flow puts halt on hiring, build out, etc.
people continue to sign up and be accepted for service
people begin to bad mouth company for not 'moving' in their area
service begins to decline due to lack of staff/turnover/etc. while demand for such increases daily, existing users complain
8) Earnings report shows loss
Investors begin to back away
"cost saving" measures begin to be looked at such as slashing staff, increasing price of good/service/increased marketing some try the reverse lower price to gain higher subscription hoping to cash in on secondary service purchases.
9) Services begin to erode
customer satisfaction at all time low
customer retention plans failing
new customer sources dwindling, no capacity to service, service options limited
And so this is where we end up. The company had hoped to gain customers and at some point cover the loss through volume or secondary products. Unfortunately every other company got into the same mindset and the margins went into the toilet and the fierce competition dissallowed raising the price of the original service for fear of losing customers. The monitary loss could be covered temporarily but would eventually show through causing the investors to run which in turn reduced the money available to garner more customers and more improved services. All this led to record losses and the companies involved found it easier to withhold payment on certain debts in an effort to ease "bleeding money out of the eye sockets syndrome".
Paging, ISP, Cellular, Telephony, California power, Dodge cars/trucks. You name it most of the companies out there have at one time or another used this strategy and failed with it (miserably). Companies are bleeding money off like crazy the past couple of years because there were so many investors, now that investments have started to dry up instead of improving their business practices they've taken to layoffs/bankruptcy/debt avoidance/finger pointing/price gouging.
Slow growth is still the best growth IMHO. All of this fierce competition in the market is causing too many companies to fail and in the end leaving gaps in the market. Older longer lasting companies then take over these gaps and you end up 'stuck' with a company you can't stand and marginal services.
While competition sparks innovation it can in the end stifle it for periods also. It's all cyclical. Rapid growth - innovation - competition - failure - no innovation - rinse and repeat as necessary.
XBOX Technologies of Minnesota (corp) and Florida, per their website, is nothing more than a holding company. It appears that the companies sole business is that of acquisitions and mergers of technology companies. To put it simply they "acquire" a company, hire new management, redesign business processes, train and restaff and then probably do one of two things sell the company or use it as leverage on it's next acquisition.
Unfortunately XBOX Technologies is also listed as a company that's goals are knowledge management, training, discemination of information across a network, wireless, desktop, or web enabled device, listed as a tech support company, media portal, and previously did business in the design of processes for plastics engineering. Is this a company that's really just in search of something to do. It doesn't appear that XBOX Technologies even knows what kind of company it is since it's own website lists it as two different things not to mention the descriptions available from other sites.
This leads me to the other issue. Trademark law is very goods/services oriented. They understand that there are only so many name/letters/combinations out there for companies and therefore trademarks are usually based around a product or service. Trademark disputes typically happen between two business who are in direct competition or when one business has a mark that could be considered famous. XBOX Technologies does not at present produce anything that competes with Microsoft and XBOX has not come into use or enough recognition to be considered famous. (Famous usually means that the mark has been in use by a company for several years and that a wide variety of people associate that mark with the companies product or service). The trademark office should be able to easily allow both marks to co-exist.
Now there is one more problem to throw in. XBOX Technologies is apparently in need of some positive cash flow, they have one major investor and their stock price, although up from it's low of 0.06, is 0.25. Happy coincidence (most likely not a planned coincidence) they have requested the same trademark as a possibly hot new product offered by a company with some pretty deep pockets. So the question comes up as to whether or not they can cash in on this coincidence and garner some much needed cash and possibly some free recognition/press for their ailing company. Positive cash flow and free press draw in investors (which seems to be this companies primary purpose, as an investment).
So now just months before the MS XBOX is to be released discussion begins over trademark issues and who owns what and what it's worth to Microsoft. Microsoft wants the ability to market more than just the box under the XBOX brand and they've invested millions already and so it's pretty late in the game to wait for a court battle, add a hyphen, add MS to the mark, or to drop the name for something else. Cases have been designed, ads readied, printed material, logo's, websites, documentation, millions and millions of dollars. So what's easiest. MS has to make an offer that will keep the issue out of court, whether or not it's an issue that even needs to go to court. Remember this is 'civil' court and things can get pretty protracted, injunctions, motions, etc. possible product delay, negative press for a new product, lawyers fees. You know the drill. So the question now is "How much is it worth to Microsoft?" "How much has MS spent on XBOX to date?" and possibly a secondary question arises "Is what XBOX Technologies is doing ethical?"
I have used many of the filtering programs and have found, humorous and disturbing as it is, that the filtering does not seem to block links provided from ads on approved web sites even though those ads may indeed contain information that I would prefer my children not be looking at. My children have no purchasing power, despite what statistics might say, I make the purchasing decisions in my household and I ignore ads because 99% are lies and misleading. I feel that all this effort being put into tracking statistics and ad targeting is for naught. Marketing is falling into the law of diminishing returns, new billboards, more magazine ads, more TV spots, more ad banners, and for what so someone can ignore them, fast forward through them, get up and get a soda during them, go directly to the table of contents and find what they want and not see them.
How many people here actually buy a product based on an ad? How many people here buy a product based on a need? How many people here buy a product after researching it? How many purchases are on a whim because you saw it in the store? How many purchases are made on products that have minimal or zero advertising?
Pharmaceutical companies spend huge amounts of money on ignorant commercials that don't even seem to target anyone, many of those commercials don't even tell you what the product does, just makes you sit there and go 'WHAT?' Then the company decides to claim that the reason their products are so expensive is because of R&D when in truth it's because of the amount of money they are spending on crappy useless commercials.
I don't realistically think that any amount of targeting or better ad placement is going to help the sales of most products. I think the major thing that would help most products is just the creation of a better product, because the best advertising in the world is word of mouth.
Hell why not. Everybody in this sh**-hole is blaming everyone else. "If it weren't for the tree huggers we'd have more power plants, we'd get our nuclear that's the reason." "If it weren't for the greedy oil companies..." "if it weren't for the government..." "if it weren't for the United States..." "If it weren't for the paranoid scientists..." "If it weren't for the fact that the moderators mod up all the morons" (Hey mod me up man I'm a moron)
We are constantly looking to put the finger on someone aren't we. We want to look for ways out of our situation, look for reasons why scientists would lie to us, look for paterns that may/may not exist. All the while we are simply ignoring the fact that we are F***ING our planet daily. You get the environmentalists on one side who want to save every blade of grass, and then the industrialists on the other side who either say "f*** it cement's cheaper to take care of" or "we'll plant a tree somewhere in the state as a sign of our devotion to ecology". This group is taking that group to court, this group is slandering that group. Questionable studies, statistics, outright lies. "Well someone did a study in Greenland and in the 1800's the temperature was the same... blah blah blah"
The Christians all want to blame the government and point to heaven and say it's all a conspiracy to devalue 'Our God' and to negate the 'Perfect World he created for us'. Or worse to say 'It will all be over soon anyway, Jesus our savior is coming tomorrow' - Meaning they've already given up on this world and all the people in it so who cares. THE END IS NIGH...
The agnostics/atheists will use the excuse that nature will strike a balance. That either the ecology will evolve to take care of our extra polution, that we will evolve to handle it ourselves throug invention, or that we have grossly underestimated the ecology and that it takes care of much more than we thought with fewer square acres.
The point in all this? It's all useless theorizing. It's psuedo-science at best, part science part speculation. Doctor1:"Diabetes might be caused by this little tiny molecule" Doctor2:"No diabetes is caused by these three molecules" Doctor1:"Well I'm gonna try my rats on these three drugs and you try yours on those three drugs and well see who wins" TRIAL AND ERROR, GUESS WORK, PSUEDO-SCIENCE. This is what our scientific community has been reduced to. Throwing millions of random combinations together in the hopes that they might maybe find the cure for cancer... and oh by the way win the Nobel prize... and oh by the way keep the drug companies rich... and oh by the way keep the really good drugs in the hands of the rich. Scanning random plots of sky night after night and shooting data off to thousands of ET junkies in the hopes that someone might discover a blip of an alien ham radio. And all the while call every other scientist, doing the same thing they are in a different way, a quack/nut/lunatic. It's all about finger pointing.
Take a look around people! For every study that's out that is based on good science there are five studies based on poor science trying to debunk the first one. For every product out there that makes sense to use, sense for our ecology, there are millions that are "cheaper", "better", "faster", "sexier".
The new complaint I hear about electric cars is "Oh well what does it matter if the gas is burned in the car or in the power plant?" Go find a study. See which one really makes sense. How efficient is the modern combustable engine in todays cars compared to say a gas turbine in a power plant? What's the weight of pollutants generated by those automobiles compared to the weight of pollutants generated by enough power plants to support that same number of automobiles? What are the regulatory rules and emmissions laws and how strict are they between the two items? "Oh well we don't have time to figure that out, after all I've got QuakeIII to play and a Apache server to get up and running, and I'm just such a damn busy person."
So what's the answer? Damned if I know I'm just rambling at this point. But it should probably be something like this: Instead of talking about building new power plants, going to court, defacing property, public tirades (woohoo!), "we're gonna fix it like this, we're gonna fix it like that", how about just living a little bit smarter lives. I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it. I'll be the first to admit that I suck up a huge amount of juice, and burn off a ton of crap into the air, but I'm working on it and teaching people around me how to do it too. I've started recycling most if not all of my paper (shread it up, throw in the old jeans I was going to throw out, wet it down, screen it - voila new paper), recycling cans for two years - plus the cans of all of my coworkers, compost heap, ride sharing. I want to teach my children how to have an impact on the earth and those around them in a positive way and not teach them to leave everything up to someone else. See we want to blame our congressman, our president, our clergy, or even Canada, but we are unwilling to blame ourselves. Unwilling to clutter our car with cigarette butts, after all that's what the street sweepers are for, and we wouldn't want anyone to know that we smoked :( ! Unwilling to bend at the waist and lower ourselves to pick up someone elses trash, as we enter work. Unwilling to spend $5-10 on a light bulb guaranteed to last 5 years and consume 10-25% less energy than the pack of five 60watt lightbulbs that we will tear through in the next three months, simply because we aren't reading the lamps clearly marked wattage message.
We, the people (remember that one), should, instead of becoming a mirror of the world, become screens to it, reflecting back and showing the picture that people should see. We should be reflecting back that we care about what actions we take, that we are responsible and thoughtful when taking them, and that we rely on noone elses judgement, flawed logic, or skewed belief system to make those decisions for us. We as individuals should take heart that at least we are doing something other than complaining and making jokes. We as individuals should understand that one by one things can change.... or we can just take that lovely defeatest /. attitude and say 'F*** you, stop typing so much and go save a whale or something.' It's up to you.
My wife, having not read the books, was completely lost, she was unable to follow many of the major transitions, I got repeated questions about terminology "who's shai halud", "what's the water of life", "what do they mean by changing the water", "what happens if the worm goes under while everyone is riding", etc. etc. ad nauseum. And understand that my wife is not by any sense of the word a moron. She's been able to understand the vast majority of Sci-fi's I've forced her to sit through (she's not really a sci-fi fan).
My primary problem with the mini-series is that the director and associates touted this as the "fans movie" that this would be a make up or redo for the '84 Lynch movie. Honestly there should be a lemon law for badly produced TV mini-series and made for TV movies. The problem happened when I went in with the expectation of getting one thing and in the end getting something completely different. If they had marketed this as "John Harrison's Dune - The Broadway Play" it would have gone over little better in so far as what people's expectations were going into it. But NO they marketed it as "Frank Herbert's DUNE" even though Frank's been dead for several years and they left out so many key elements that it seemed to be more like "John Harrison's interpretation of Brian Herbert's interpretation of Frank Herbert's Dune - THE PLAY". Sad sad sad.
I'm really tired of hearing people say "aw give em a break, a book can't translate completely as a movie" Why not? The argument is usually "it would be too long". BULL! People are more than willing to sit through hours of programming, set up their VCR's to tape them, wait for days for a plot to develop. Remember all of those 80's miniseries, Thornbirds, Shogun, the Civil war shows, Lonesome Dove. Why were they such big hits? Because they made characters that the audience was enthralled with, they developed relationships between the characters, they developed history and motivation for those characters, when someone died or got hurt you felt the pain and anguish or were saddened by the loss. This pale comparison of a miniseries had none of that.
I could excuse all of the glaring inaccuracies and inconsistencies if they had simply made characters that inspired me. I could deal with the bratty spoiled acting Paul, if his attitude had somehow effected those around him. I could look up to Gurney if his brief biography (about Leto rescuing him from slavery) had inspired me in any way. Personally none of the characters inspired me, they were all too one dimensional. Paul continued to portray the bratty misfit by the end of the movie with the only added trait being a sense of vileness brought to the character. These were all stage actors to me, people who would do well in plays on broadway or off, in whimsical Shakespearean productions, or grand musicals, but not in a sci-fi epic.
The casting just really seemed off, too young, too old, too heavy, too thin. And all the details to fill in plot devices were non-existent. EX: You have a society that lives on a planet that is completely covered by desert, they've gone to the trouble of cremating their dead and reclaiming their water, creating stilsuits that reclaim water from sweat, urine, and feces. This all gives the impression that they are super conservative about evaporation or loss of any water, right? Yet the first scenes you see are of a woman sloppily squeezing water into peasants cups in front of the main house. Peasants who although out in the open, in mid day, when the heat has got to be unbearable, are not wearing stilsuits and are loosely dressed lots of exposed skin (nothing like a true desert person would dress). Later you see the fremen living in pueblo like caverns openely exposed to the desert air, walking about without shirts or with open front tunics, no seals on doors, walking through the desert with ill fitted (loose) stilsuits and masks not conforming/sealing to the face, no worry of losing water, no consistency.
It's little details, small seemingly insignificant details that make a movie a 'good' movie. It's when every little detail of the movie builds on the last detail and in the end makes a the picture of what's happening all more clear. So many of the devices used should not have been because their was no need. IE Paul in the room with the Hunter Seeker, there was no need for either voice over or the maid to be in the room. The look and motion of the Seeker should have explained well enough it's intent (no need for a sinister looking slithering cgi, a simple cylinder with a needle on the end). The look and lack of motion from Paul would have suggested that it could detect only movement. This would have been reinforced when the Shadout Mapes entered the room (and the seeled door made a hiss) and the Seeker went toward her. Not everything need be explained in lurid detail as it unfolds. Allow people to use their imagination somewhat and it will be rewarded.
I could go on and on about the failings of this mini-series: The lack of character development (Yueh, Thufur, Piter, Raban, Mohiam, et al). The exclusion of characters (Jamis' wife and sons, children being taught the weirding way, any visual representation of the fedayken (they were mentioned several times, but never visually introduced). The poorly designed and filmed back drops (an oval sun/moon, showing as such because the camera angle relative to the back drop, poor shadowing, and the same three birds flying across in different directions every time a back drop is in the shoot). The reuse of extras in every single scene (people remember faces and no matter how you dress them people can still recognize).
To me it just appears that they tried to appease the fans by reversing the things that the DUNE movie supposedly did wrong. IE no voiceovers, no dark sets, brighter costumes, fill in missing scenes, etc. Well those 'fixes' can also be failures IE no explanation of an event or process, no distinction of geography/location, flamboyant (damn not even gay people dress like that) costuming (why is it that people in the future always seem to dress like something out of Rocky Horror Picture Show/Studio 54), missing scenes are in, wrong people speaking lines other scenes now missing, character development now out because of time constraints.
Oh well maybe in another 15 years someone will retry and get closer to what it should be, entertainment.
Try not to crash into a bus load of nuns or anything tomorrow. I'd hate for you to hurt yourself.
Too many crimes lately are going with higher punishments without a reasoning behind them. Oh the generic "it will make criminals think twice" is always used, but statistics show that criminals are in fact not thinking twice.
The rich and big business argue that without the loopholes and tax breaks that it would be prohibitive to do business. That's bullshit. There are a lot of people out there starting up businesses and running businesses because it's their life long dream to do so, not because the gov gave them a tax break. I think somewhere around 80% of business in America is small business, these are the people who typically take the hit on taxes and yet year after year they continue to do business and grow and create more business and throw their hard earned money into the economy while big business complains about "possible" tax reforms that may 'hurt' them.
What people fail to understand is that taxes are supposed to be used for the betterment of the people who are paying them. Therefore if Steve pay's 20,000 in taxes because he makes 100,000, then Betty who makes 10,000 gets free job training, gets a better job at 50,000. The programs allow more people into the work place to fill higher skilled jobs which in turn increases tax revenue, leading to surplus, and eventually a lower tax percentage. Then when Steve becomes disabled and can only work for 20,000 a year, the taxes that Betty and others are paying can go into helping him. It's a circle people rarely understand.
A co-worker always gripes about the fact that his tax dollars go towards funding things for my children. He doesn't have children, why should his tax dollars be used towards that. Simply because when he's old and drawing off of those tax dollars for help, it will be my children who are the ones footing the funding. If his tax dollars hadn't gone towards better schools, my children would not get a proper education and would be getting a lower wage which in turn reduces the amount of tax dollars and effectively reduces the amount of money that he would be able to draw off of should he need it later in life.
This Christmas for me and mine is going to be somewhat limited. Why? Because I have a thousand dollar tax bill due at the end of December. So, what does this mean? Mr. Big Business gets less of my money (and for similar reasons a lot of other peoples money) which means he doesn't make as big of a profit. So big business get's to make a choice of how they want to lose money, do they lose it by giving it away in taxes, or do they lose it by the fact that the customer never gave it to them?
Unfortunately there's about as much thought put into our legal system as our tax laws, so the punishment doesn't ever seem to fit the crime. Either the punishment is too harsh or not harsh enough, and there's always someone crying foul. Trial by jury is a joke because the jurists are so rarely anywhere near being a peer to the accused. When was the last time you saw a crack addict convicted by a group of crack addicts or a cat burglar convicted by other cat burglars. It's all done by numbers now, who will be sympathetic, who won't, who might help me get a mistrial, what cross section of Americana do I want to display to the cameras. Secondly they allow one juror to dominate the others, often through intimidation or threats to tie up people's time. Lost wages and productivity push people to make quick judgements on someone "who must have done it, just look at him". Fines follow the same rule. I've been in court and seen $500 an hour lawyers argue out $50 in parking fines. I've seen a 16 year old girl with a history of speeding and car wrecks get a 50 in a 25 thrown out, while a 29 year old first offender going 32 in a 25 gets a $65 fine. Too many discrepencies. Too widespread to ignore, but it still happens.
Remote bands of pigmy's using cars and making their own gasoline. Trading with other tribes for paper, tobacco, computer keyboards, and rubber tires. The technologically enhanced majority ignoring the rights/needs of the less technologically advanced or worse, setting up reservations for those of us who don't fit the current cultural norm.
This might be the way things work. Throughout our history the more "civilized", technologically advanced cultures have dominated those that were less so. Will the people who turn from the extremes of technology be limited to survival in remote areas unwanted by the more technologically driven counterpart. More likely captolism will drive this change just as it has in the past. The more technologically advanced will begin to trade and gain more and more ground as the less tech oriented will begin to lose ground and possibly rights. Of course this is a doom and gloom premise, because we all know that it'll never happen that way because we're all very humane and respect the rights and space of others and worry about their well being as well as our own.
you forgot 'merkin' fake hair that looks real and covers used to cover the area above the vagina. Please remove before eating.
www.sabolich.com is working on HOT/COLD and sense of touch.
While it's nice that the English will lay claim to this invention, I've seen this device around for many years. The Sabolich's showed a similar device on Oprah about 2 years back, plus I saw a demo of something similar in highschool (www.sabolich.com). Now where they seem to be laying claim to fame is not in the development of the mechanism or reading an impulse from the human operator but in making it "self contained". Seems like a little bit of a fishy statement, what exactly is "self contained"? The model that I saw several years ago was 'self contained' in my opinion, it had a small battery that fit into the unit and no external devices. Unfortunately the unit could only run for about 30 minutes on a charge. So what exactly have they 'invented' that hasn't been around for the past several years? Anyone know?
damn... well it is off topic for the general group but it wasn't off topic in regards to the post for which it is a reply. What happened to that post anyway I didn't know that you could delete a post or did the Mods get it.
How do you report a bug in their bug reporting tool? I used to have problems with this in NS4. It would crash the bug reporter would open up to report the bug, then the bug reporter would crash.
Well or you might be using that oh-so-impossible to use add-on TweakUI which makes it nearly impossible to customize Windows.
Damn MS, their just so ignorant of what the customer really wants.
Well that's a pretty interesting statistic. And what was the percentage of participants in the study that asked "What's a JVM" right after that?
I think we're probably all looking at this problem from the wrong angle. Look at it like this. When you go into a book store it's neatly divided into book types Fiction/Non-fiction/Biography/Reference etc. Most book stores have the Sci-Fi section but if you look at that area closer it's set up with sub-sections (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Sci-Fantasy, and sometimes various horror). All the AD&D books are together as Fantasy, Star-Trek is usually under the Science-Fiction, Star Wars sometimes under Sci-Fi but usually under Science-Fantasy. You get the idea.
The book store keeps all of the harlequin romances, quick sales, junk books and stuff they'd rather not categorize up front where people can get it quick and get out quick. The majority of the shoppers shop here. In to get a mag or cheap romance novel, maybe a present for a friend but not in far enough to need to make sense out of how things are categorized on the shelf, much less how the "sci-fi" books are categorized
See to 99% of the population Lord of the Rings is Sci-Fi along with Chronicles of Narnia and Dungeons and Dragons. That 99% doesn't think about the distinctions between books nor really the distinction between movies. To them it's "I want something to scare me... make me laugh... look cool... with lots of fighting... with hot chics... romantic..." They don't even hear the first word in 'dark-comedy', they just hear 'comedy' and then are disappointed when the movie wasn't funny the way they wanted it to be (cable guy).
To me it appears that critics of Red Planet are guilty of the same thing. This was so not a Sci-Fi movie. Personally it's border line even being a Sci-Fantasy movie. Cool special effects, liked the suits, the ship, the robot, etc. But in the end it didn't rely on the hard science that true Sci-Fi's typically rely on. That's where the problem lies. So many of the movies that we see today are clasified by the media and the people who watch them as 'Sci-fi' when in reality they are 'Sci-Fantasy'. Did Star Wars ever explain how the light saber worked or why Obi-Wan dissappeared like that? Hell No! Why? Cuz it was science fantasy, just enough realism to be believable but enough fantasy to make you forget about realism for awhile.
I personally liked Red Planet, I think it succeeded where Mission to Mars failed. Mission to Mars tried to rely to heavily on the science but would chuck it out the door when necessary just to do something neat. That went beyond what I would call artistic liscense. Red Planet didn't focus on the science, nor did it focus on the people really. By the end of the movie you knew that one dead guy had a granddaughter, the other dead guy was too cocky, another dead guy (the nice guy) wasn't quite so nice (spineless), and that dead guy number four 'the jerk' was probably a pretty good guy after all, taking one for humanity and all. We find that the lead character is more resourceful than given credit for and that the female co doesn't need 'rescuing'. Do we really need to know that Kate came from a long line of Navy, or Burchenal was a drunk, or Robby's wife died two years ago, or that Ted had an abusive father. No because it doesn't really help any with the story line. None of their jobs or skills really even help with the story line, because in the end they are stripped down to only one thing, surviving with their humanity. And that in the end is what this movie is about. Humanity, how easily some of us give up on it all, how those of us who seem to have given up really haven't, how the meek sometimes aren't, all the flaws and accomplishments that we have as a species, right there for people to take a look at if they weren't so damned interested in Carrie-Anne Moss's or the fact that oxygen levels could be easily detected well before reaching the planet.
Truth is movie goers are stupid, even the 'smart' ones.
Personally I've read a lot of science fiction and it just fucking bores me to tears sometimes. You know those 6 pages that you have to skip here and there because the author starts talking about singularities, gravitational forces, and space time. YAWN. You know that 99% of the people would leave the movie theater if that happened and that nice three hour long 200million$ science accurate sci-fi would be considered the 2nd Ishtar.I just love these piss poor statements of people who can't just shut the fuck up and admit that they either don't know or are wrong. "Well, they gotta be doing something wrong..." "Well, something starts...". This "I don't really know but I'm sure gonna piss and moan about it", "Someone is screwing me somewhere".
Read back through the posts before posting any more crap responses.
Secondly all this bullshit talk about secret api's and loading the browser with the OS- preloading components is bullshit to any real computer user/programmer. There are hundreds of programs that preload components to facilitate the speed of opening the program. Windows user will atest to how many modern apps want to put an icon in the systray (some whether you like it or not). They put their little statements in your windows ini files, the registry, the startup, as a service in NT, config.sys/autoexec.bat, hell most of this started with DOS hence the term "Terminate and Stay Resident". Should we be knocking MS for them taking advantage of a well known technique or should we be knocking NS for not finding a way to innovate on that technique.
Really WTF do I care if my OS load takes 3-4 minutes. Gives me time to get a coke, scratch my balls, flirt with my wife (not necessarily in that order). In the end I may have gained some time getting applications to load faster and be able to do some productive work once I am on the PC. I only have to recycle the OS once every 30-45 days typically because I've installed some new hardware or some particullarly irritating software (PS not all software in Win32 needs a restart - they request it but it's not always necessary, much to my satisfaction).
So in ?11? months they created a company and a product that matched the feature set of Mosaic plus added functionality on mutliple platforms with a relatively small core (23 people including Management, support, server developement, and client/crossplatform developers) , not to mention a server product also. All this with no initial framework to work from and everything was rewritten from scratch. I would have to say that
1) that was the best most tight team of coders ever thrown together
2) they had a framework to begin working from, notably Mosaic
Again this is just my take on the subject and I can in no way PROVE that NS did anything vile or devious. I too have witnessed arguments with NS employees and seen e-mails thrown back and forth, and heard rumor after rumor and defense after defense. It's all guess work, and also I guess in the past (as someone else pointed out to me).
Wow what a way to get really really really far off topic.
Netscape could still pull itself together and do something right. Even Gates has admitted that MS isn't a forever thing especially with today's markets. Worse companies than NS have made surprising come backs, but then again better companies have been wiped off the face of the planet.
Check your history both NS and IE are based on the Spyglass/NSCA Mosaic code base. Andreesen worked on the base at NCSA with some other coders/students. After he left he continued to use the code in his new venture "Mosaic Communications Corporation" (which later changed to "Netscape Communications" due to trademark infringement over the name 'Mosaic'). Meanwhile NCSA stopped development on Mosaic and sold/liscensed the code to Spyglass from which MS liscensed (not baught, MS has to pay Spyglass royalties for several technologies)(which you might also note that IE displays all of this information openly in it's about box along with other liscensed technology). NS was sued by NCSA, changed it's name but was allowed to retain use of the Mosaic code (details of the settlement were of course not disclosed).
Now of course Netscape claims that none of the original code from Mosaic was used and that they just got half a dozen developers from NCSA and rewrote the whole code in a few months (a feat they have yet to duplicate). But really now... the truth, come on... NCSA was charging about $100,000+ for liscensing and how do you think Andreessen would have felt about spending that kinda cash on code he helped create.
A Funny read is this article on Wired. Some of the predictions made and assumptions are pretty funny. Like the talk about how Netscape wasn't going to get sold in a box but shipped with Internet enabled PC's... hmmmmm... where have I heard that before... oh yeah MS does that... oh but Netscape says that's bad now. And then there's the thing about Netscape creating proprietary standards... isn't MS getting in trouble for that now too... hmmm. Sad that MS just seems to copy Netscapes bad ideas huh?
Good reading at wired
I think it's a hoot that this piece of satire so elloquently nails every issue with Linux and the opensource movement. Of course they could have made it slightly more believeable but then all the zealots would have attempted to proclaim it as authentic.