The general's not a fool. He won't sell at $5/carat. He'll pitch them at 10 - 50% cheaper than DeBeers. Cheaper diamonds, but not *ridiculously* cheap diamonds. Just cheap enough to get the cost-concious buyer to think "Yeah, it's artificial, but it's still a flawless diamond, and it's 25% cheaper than that other, identical stone...".
DeBeers will either have to reduce prices, or deal with the General. There's a good chance things could get nasty. If the general and his process survive, the consumer will benefit.
Re:They aren't so worried about $5 synthetics
on
Diamonds & the RIAA
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yes, it was written in 1982, but it still makes relevant points - it's analysis of why the market is like it is, how the 'Diamonds are Forever' campaign came about, etc, are all spot on the money. Read the entire article and then look at the market today. Not much has changed.
The points about the used diamond market are particularly relevant. As in there is *no* second hand diamond market. Why is that, given that a diamond doesn't physically deteriorate like most other goods?
Well, no, it's not. As others have pointed out, it's an experimental machine that's considered operational *purely* because we've had it for a long time.
If we did 100 flights in one year, we'd be down to three orbiters pretty quick. The loss of two orbiters in a year would convice people that it's experiemental, and that more work needs to be done. Any vehicle with a MTBF of 60 flights, even if you rebuild the damn thing from scratch after each one, is not really flight safe.
As it is, when you drage things out over 23 years, the loss of two vehicles doesn't look *quite* so bad. And Astronauts, being mostly test pilots or Navy guys, are willing to take the risks involved. But it's still an experimental, non-ready-for-primetime system.
This lawsuit was specious. DeCSS had/has nothing to do with illegal DVD duplication as described by the plantiffs - the DVD pirates of Asia don't use it, and never had. They didn't need to.
All it's done is solidify a bad law and provide PR for the DVDCCA and MPAA. Large scale movie piracy will continue, untouched by this ruling, in factories all over China, Russia and Vietnam.
But US citizens will now be unable to exercise reasonable fair-use on DVDs they own.
This is *fantastic* news. Sure, in the short-term it looks bad, but in a few years time the consumer backlash will be a sight to behold. It'll happen, once Joe Sixpack realises he has to buy a seperate copy of "American Wedding III" for each media player he wants to watch it on.
It concentrates pollution at one source ( the extracting facility ) which makes it easier to keep the process environmentally-friendly. It's much easier to make one coal-fired plant 'clean' than to fix millions of gasoline-powered cars.
What's needed is a new energy infrastructure. Fast Breeder nuclear reactors powering hydrogen extracting facilities offer the promise of really, really clean energy, but both face considerable hurdles.
OUR BRAND PROMIES IS SO WAL UNDERS2D BY DA MARK3TPLAEC TAHT DA CONCEPT OF ONE IN OUR NU NME WAS IMEDIAETLY COMPELNG11!!11!! WTF LOL ONE IS A POW3RFUL ADITION 2 TEH INSTANT BRAND R3COGNITION AND IEDNTITY OF DA PALM TEH1!!!1 WTF RED/ORANGE COMBINATION IS A BOLD D3PARTURE FROM TEH BLU3 TAHT PALM HAS USAD FOR MANY YEARS AND BUILDS ON OUR NU SUBRANDS AN3RGY ANTHUSIASM POWER AND INOVATION COM3 ACROS MUCH STRONGAR IN OUR NU COMBINATION
OUR!1!1!1!! NU NME ALSO SIGNALS A NU BGINNG AT PALM1!!1!!!! OMG WTF BUILDNG ON OUR MOMENTUM IN TEH HANDH3LD COMPUTNG SPAEC WORLDWIED AND COMPLEMANTNG IT WIT TEH AXPACTAD INT3GRATION OF DA AWARD-WINNG TR3O LIEN OF SMARTPHONES FROM HANDSPRNG WIL GIEV PALMONE TEH BROAEDST PORTFOLIO OF HANDHELD COMPUTARS AND SMARTPHON3 PRODUCTS LAD BY DA MOST AXPAREINC3D TEM IN DA INDUSTRY 11!!1 WTF LOL
(I didn't write this - I got it from a Palm message board. Still funny, though.)
I swear, I-95 / 93 around Boston has the worst drainage and road surface of any major highway I've seen (but no, I've not driven around LA.:). When it rains, the water just mists above the surface rather than draining away, drastically reducing visibility in otherwise OK conditions. Plus, the lack of clear road markings on I-95/rte 128 make it a case of 'spot the lanes', especially at night in bad weather.
Haven't they heard of reflective paint and cat's eyes? I pity non-local drivers exposed to those roads - it's no wonder there are so many accidents there.
Heh. That's funny. I guess the EFF lawyer told them there are four other (real) towns in the US called Pebble Beach, and that his clients will gladly change the name of their (fictional) town just as soon as the PBC forces those four towns to change their names.
Yeah, I know they're saving Rohan and Gondor for expansion packs, but still. I want my City of Stone to be really, really big. And not at all like Camelot in DAoC.
Yeah, it's called "San Francisco".
on
Cities Create Weather
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Honestly, you'll be in Oakland in clear blue skys, and you look across the bay and there's this big-ass black raincloud squatting over San Francisco.
The place looks like Mordor some times, especially with that red blinkenlight on top of the pyramid tower thingy.
You don't say how big...how about Samsung?
on
Buying a New TV?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
They do a nice 30" HDTV-ready 16:9 ratio unit for a little over $1,000, I think it's the 3096 / 3097 / 3098 model numbers, but they may have changed. Cambridge Soundworks usually has one set up in their stores. If you already have a surround-sound system, get the *97 (2 tuner, more home theater tweaks than the *96, but without the built in sub-woofer, which you won't be needing).
But really, so long as you're not being dirt cheap, you can't go too far wrong with a Sony Wega.
Just kick back, take the paycheck, and do what is asked of you. Do it well if you want satisfaction of a job well done, do it just well enough to avoid being fired if work is just someplace you go between 8am and 5pm.
Really, unless your job description specifically allows you to suggest and make improvements to processes (and the company culture is *clearly* open to such things), don't try to get into the inner circle - you'll only target yourself for the next round of cuts as 'that guy who's always being negative'. In my case, by suggesting other ways to do things, I was seen as 'negative', even though I didn't say 'don't do that!', merely 'you know, this way may be better...'.
Attain a state of Zen - You are an employee. They pay you to show up and do what you're told for eight hours a day. In exchange, they give you money. Nothing more. To try to attribute higher meaning or greater value to your job where none exists is just adding to your stress levels.
Why yes, I am bitter. But now I have experience, and I have attained Zen.
This was the case at the university I attended - the 'senior team' had new, good kit while the lab equipment was old and breaking down. The directors were on a 18-mo (if that) replacement cycle. The labs were on a 42-mo replacement cycle. Nothing like trying to work on a P166 while the bosses use PIII-650s to play solitaire.
I work for a company called Co-nect that tries to teach effective use of technology in schools. While our website may suck, our products don't. Honestly. We have something called "Co-nect Tech" (yeah, imaginative naming, I know) that is specifically geared towards teaching teachers how to use tech (whatever tech they have) effectively. You can check it out here:
We usually work with 'failing schools' that qualify for some kind of government grant, although the tech product is geared towards any school that can pay us, as it seems poor technology teaching isn't limited to poor schools.;-p
I've always wanted to learn to fly, and it looks like I'll finally have the opportunity in a year or two. I must have logged thousands of hours in flight sims over the years, including (at a rough guess) at least several hundred hours in FS98 where I was actually trying to do things 'right' in a Cessna (using real FAA Approach Templates and IFR/VOR and stuff).
I'm very curious to know how much, if any, of my FS98 skillset will transfer over to flying a real Cessna. Certainly I have the principles of flight down pat, I know about approach patterns and basic flight maneuvers, crosswind landings and takeoff, recovering from stalls and equipment failures - aside from radio use and 'hands on' experience, I think I ought to be pretty good.
Of course, the temptation to do an 'acrobatic' style landing in a Cessna may be too strong... some of my approaches have been a little... adventurous. Anyone here flown for real after logging plenty of Sim time?
It's all part of NASA's plans to recruit Panzerbjorn for their Conquest of the Red Planet. Apparently they intend to send an armored bear expedition to the Martian north pole via an Aeronaut balloon, to claim the ice deposits in the name of Science. In other news, NASA plans to change it's name to the General Oblation Board...
Let's take a step back, here, and consider who VCs *are*, and what they *want*.
VCs are people with a *lot* of money, who do all the traditional investing strategies and then take a *part* of their fortunes and invest in risky enterprises. They know (or ought to, going in) that there's a high chance the money will not give a return. There's also a chance the money will give a *dramatic* return - much higher than their other, more traditional, investments. For the article to say that 'one-hit wonders' aren't part of the VC mindset boggles the mind - that's *exactly* what most VCs want - a quick ( 3 year) high rate of return on their initial investment, then take the money out and do something else.
More likely, I think, is that VCs have been steered away from games development companies (despite the tremendous growth in the games market in spite of the economic downturn) because the large VC firms that handle their money *don't understand the market*. This isn't too surprising, since most institutional VCs I've met don't seem to be too bright in the more traditional industries, either.
We use Symantec for Microsoft Exchange. It'll scan and clean files within zip files. SoBig.E has not been a problem for us (aside from the fact that we're running MS Exchange, of course).
That said, I was surprised to find one of the largest employers in MA doesn't have *any* AV protection on their Exchange servers, and had quite a bit of downtime as a result. So I guess AV on mail servers aren't as commonsensical as I thought...;-p
Running Exchange is bad enough, but do-able. To run Exchange *without* decent, up-to-date AV software is just incompetent.
I agree. BoP was a great idea with tonnes of potential, but hideously flawed in it's execution. Your opponent would always chose to escalate over the most trivial of things, and you'd either blow the world up or lose badly on points (by basically capitulating every time your opponent objected to some policy of yours).
I remember that, when I played as the US, I could blow up the world by objecting to the invasion of Afghanistan (fair enough). But when I was the USSR, the US would also object if I invaded Afghanistan, and blow up the world. I.E. the computer player could get away with stuff you couldn't do in the same position.
Which, to me, is bad game design. So gee, he wrote a book on it. Good for him. I'll pass, and learn my lessons from examining his works.
I've been doing this for a few years now, and I have over 100 unique email addresses with firms I've done business with since 2000.
Aside from Amazon.com making a 'mistake' (which they quickly corrected) I've had perhaps 1 spam from the lot of them - and in that case, it was easily identifiable and led to Oracle sending lawyers after someone.
If you're going to insure the package (which I would) then either a) ship it in it's original packaging or b) go to a Mailboxes etc and have them pack it for you. Tell them it's a fragile computer, and get a receipt. Either way it's the *only* way you'll have a valid claim if it gets damaged in transit.
If you DIY pack a machine, don't expect the shipper to honor your insurance claim. "bad packing" is an easy out for them.
Until the folks being sued are labelled as 'terrorists' under some obscure rider provision of PATRIOT that you've never heard of, and sentenced to 300 years in jail.:)
There are a few dozen startups all pitching their toolsets to console makers, seeking to be the 'official' MMORPG SDK for that platform, with all the attendant royalties such a placement would bring. I assume these guys are one of them, though I've not heard of them before.
Anyway, what they all appear to have in common are a few very skilled programmers and an evangelical CEO who probably doesn't *quite* understand the technology, but knows how to talk to other CEOs. The CEO that gets the best 'buzz' and gets along the best with their target patron (be it Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony) will be the winner, irregardless of the merits of their particular technology.
That's a much better situation than I feared. I think it's less likely Atari/Infogrames will stomp on DLA than Hasbro (Atari should at least understand the mod community better than the House of Barbie). Of course, if Infogrames have any in-house DragonLance plans, you're probably screwed.
Kudos on what looks like an excellent mod, by the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Two words:
Price War.
The general's not a fool. He won't sell at $5/carat. He'll pitch them at 10 - 50% cheaper than DeBeers. Cheaper diamonds, but not *ridiculously* cheap diamonds. Just cheap enough to get the cost-concious buyer to think "Yeah, it's artificial, but it's still a flawless diamond, and it's 25% cheaper than that other, identical stone...".
DeBeers will either have to reduce prices, or deal with the General. There's a good chance things could get nasty. If the general and his process survive, the consumer will benefit.
Yes, it was written in 1982, but it still makes relevant points - it's analysis of why the market is like it is, how the 'Diamonds are Forever' campaign came about, etc, are all spot on the money. Read the entire article and then look at the market today. Not much has changed.
The points about the used diamond market are particularly relevant. As in there is *no* second hand diamond market. Why is that, given that a diamond doesn't physically deteriorate like most other goods?
Well, no, it's not. As others have pointed out, it's an experimental machine that's considered operational *purely* because we've had it for a long time.
If we did 100 flights in one year, we'd be down to three orbiters pretty quick. The loss of two orbiters in a year would convice people that it's experiemental, and that more work needs to be done. Any vehicle with a MTBF of 60 flights, even if you rebuild the damn thing from scratch after each one, is not really flight safe.
As it is, when you drage things out over 23 years, the loss of two vehicles doesn't look *quite* so bad. And Astronauts, being mostly test pilots or Navy guys, are willing to take the risks involved. But it's still an experimental, non-ready-for-primetime system.
This lawsuit was specious. DeCSS had/has nothing to do with illegal DVD duplication as described by the plantiffs - the DVD pirates of Asia don't use it, and never had. They didn't need to.
All it's done is solidify a bad law and provide PR for the DVDCCA and MPAA. Large scale movie piracy will continue, untouched by this ruling, in factories all over China, Russia and Vietnam.
But US citizens will now be unable to exercise reasonable fair-use on DVDs they own.
This is *fantastic* news. Sure, in the short-term it looks bad, but in a few years time the consumer backlash will be a sight to behold. It'll happen, once Joe Sixpack realises he has to buy a seperate copy of "American Wedding III" for each media player he wants to watch it on.
At the moment, yes. But.
It concentrates pollution at one source ( the extracting facility ) which makes it easier to keep the process environmentally-friendly. It's much easier to make one coal-fired plant 'clean' than to fix millions of gasoline-powered cars.
What's needed is a new energy infrastructure. Fast Breeder nuclear reactors powering hydrogen extracting facilities offer the promise of really, really clean energy, but both face considerable hurdles.
OUR BRAND PROMIES IS SO WAL UNDERS2D BY DA MARK3TPLAEC TAHT DA CONCEPT OF ONE IN OUR NU NME WAS IMEDIAETLY COMPELNG11!!11!! WTF LOL ONE IS A POW3RFUL ADITION 2 TEH INSTANT BRAND R3COGNITION AND IEDNTITY OF DA PALM TEH1!!!1 WTF RED/ORANGE COMBINATION IS A BOLD D3PARTURE FROM TEH BLU3 TAHT PALM HAS USAD FOR MANY YEARS AND BUILDS ON OUR NU SUBRANDS AN3RGY ANTHUSIASM POWER AND INOVATION COM3 ACROS MUCH STRONGAR IN OUR NU COMBINATION
OUR!1!1!1!! NU NME ALSO SIGNALS A NU BGINNG AT PALM1!!1!!!! OMG WTF BUILDNG ON OUR MOMENTUM IN TEH HANDH3LD COMPUTNG SPAEC WORLDWIED AND COMPLEMANTNG IT WIT TEH AXPACTAD INT3GRATION OF DA AWARD-WINNG TR3O LIEN OF SMARTPHONES FROM HANDSPRNG WIL GIEV PALMONE TEH BROAEDST PORTFOLIO OF HANDHELD COMPUTARS AND SMARTPHON3 PRODUCTS LAD BY DA MOST AXPAREINC3D TEM IN DA INDUSTRY 11!!1 WTF LOL
(I didn't write this - I got it from a Palm message board. Still funny, though.)
I swear, I-95 / 93 around Boston has the worst drainage and road surface of any major highway I've seen (but no, I've not driven around LA. :). When it rains, the water just mists above the surface rather than draining away, drastically reducing visibility in otherwise OK conditions. Plus, the lack of clear road markings on I-95/rte 128 make it a case of 'spot the lanes', especially at night in bad weather.
Haven't they heard of reflective paint and cat's eyes? I pity non-local drivers exposed to those roads - it's no wonder there are so many accidents there.
Heh. That's funny. I guess the EFF lawyer told them there are four other (real) towns in the US called Pebble Beach, and that his clients will gladly change the name of their (fictional) town just as soon as the PBC forces those four towns to change their names.
Yeah, I know they're saving Rohan and Gondor for expansion packs, but still. I want my City of Stone to be really, really big. And not at all like Camelot in DAoC.
Honestly, you'll be in Oakland in clear blue skys, and you look across the bay and there's this big-ass black raincloud squatting over San Francisco.
The place looks like Mordor some times, especially with that red blinkenlight on top of the pyramid tower thingy.
They do a nice 30" HDTV-ready 16:9 ratio unit for a little over $1,000, I think it's the 3096 / 3097 / 3098 model numbers, but they may have changed. Cambridge Soundworks usually has one set up in their stores. If you already have a surround-sound system, get the *97 (2 tuner, more home theater tweaks than the *96, but without the built in sub-woofer, which you won't be needing).
But really, so long as you're not being dirt cheap, you can't go too far wrong with a Sony Wega.
Don't sweat it.
Just kick back, take the paycheck, and do what is asked of you. Do it well if you want satisfaction of a job well done, do it just well enough to avoid being fired if work is just someplace you go between 8am and 5pm.
Really, unless your job description specifically allows you to suggest and make improvements to processes (and the company culture is *clearly* open to such things), don't try to get into the inner circle - you'll only target yourself for the next round of cuts as 'that guy who's always being negative'. In my case, by suggesting other ways to do things, I was seen as 'negative', even though I didn't say 'don't do that!', merely 'you know, this way may be better...'.
Attain a state of Zen - You are an employee. They pay you to show up and do what you're told for eight hours a day. In exchange, they give you money. Nothing more. To try to attribute higher meaning or greater value to your job where none exists is just adding to your stress levels.
Why yes, I am bitter. But now I have experience, and I have attained Zen.
This was the case at the university I attended - the 'senior team' had new, good kit while the lab equipment was old and breaking down. The directors were on a 18-mo (if that) replacement cycle. The labs were on a 42-mo replacement cycle. Nothing like trying to work on a P166 while the bosses use PIII-650s to play solitaire.
Co-nect tech product page.
We usually work with 'failing schools' that qualify for some kind of government grant, although the tech product is geared towards any school that can pay us, as it seems poor technology teaching isn't limited to poor schools. ;-p
No, it's possible that Atlantis caused the crash.
Ohhh, I know. Gallows humor. I'll stop now.
I've always wanted to learn to fly, and it looks like I'll finally have the opportunity in a year or two. I must have logged thousands of hours in flight sims over the years, including (at a rough guess) at least several hundred hours in FS98 where I was actually trying to do things 'right' in a Cessna (using real FAA Approach Templates and IFR/VOR and stuff).
I'm very curious to know how much, if any, of my FS98 skillset will transfer over to flying a real Cessna. Certainly I have the principles of flight down pat, I know about approach patterns and basic flight maneuvers, crosswind landings and takeoff, recovering from stalls and equipment failures - aside from radio use and 'hands on' experience, I think I ought to be pretty good.
Of course, the temptation to do an 'acrobatic' style landing in a Cessna may be too strong... some of my approaches have been a little... adventurous. Anyone here flown for real after logging plenty of Sim time?
It's all part of NASA's plans to recruit Panzerbjorn for their Conquest of the Red Planet. Apparently they intend to send an armored bear expedition to the Martian north pole via an Aeronaut balloon, to claim the ice deposits in the name of Science. In other news, NASA plans to change it's name to the General Oblation Board...
Let's take a step back, here, and consider who VCs *are*, and what they *want*.
VCs are people with a *lot* of money, who do all the traditional investing strategies and then take a *part* of their fortunes and invest in risky enterprises. They know (or ought to, going in) that there's a high chance the money will not give a return. There's also a chance the money will give a *dramatic* return - much higher than their other, more traditional, investments. For the article to say that 'one-hit wonders' aren't part of the VC mindset boggles the mind - that's *exactly* what most VCs want - a quick ( 3 year) high rate of return on their initial investment, then take the money out and do something else.
More likely, I think, is that VCs have been steered away from games development companies (despite the tremendous growth in the games market in spite of the economic downturn) because the large VC firms that handle their money *don't understand the market*. This isn't too surprising, since most institutional VCs I've met don't seem to be too bright in the more traditional industries, either.
We use Symantec for Microsoft Exchange. It'll scan and clean files within zip files. SoBig.E has not been a problem for us (aside from the fact that we're running MS Exchange, of course).
;-p
That said, I was surprised to find one of the largest employers in MA doesn't have *any* AV protection on their Exchange servers, and had quite a bit of downtime as a result. So I guess AV on mail servers aren't as commonsensical as I thought...
Running Exchange is bad enough, but do-able. To run Exchange *without* decent, up-to-date AV software is just incompetent.
I agree. BoP was a great idea with tonnes of potential, but hideously flawed in it's execution. Your opponent would always chose to escalate over the most trivial of things, and you'd either blow the world up or lose badly on points (by basically capitulating every time your opponent objected to some policy of yours).
I remember that, when I played as the US, I could blow up the world by objecting to the invasion of Afghanistan (fair enough). But when I was the USSR, the US would also object if I invaded Afghanistan, and blow up the world. I.E. the computer player could get away with stuff you couldn't do in the same position.
Which, to me, is bad game design. So gee, he wrote a book on it. Good for him. I'll pass, and learn my lessons from examining his works.
I've been doing this for a few years now, and I have over 100 unique email addresses with firms I've done business with since 2000.
:)
Aside from Amazon.com making a 'mistake' (which they quickly corrected) I've had perhaps 1 spam from the lot of them - and in that case, it was easily identifiable and led to Oracle sending lawyers after someone.
So it works.
If you're going to insure the package (which I would) then either a) ship it in it's original packaging or b) go to a Mailboxes etc and have them pack it for you. Tell them it's a fragile computer, and get a receipt. Either way it's the *only* way you'll have a valid claim if it gets damaged in transit.
If you DIY pack a machine, don't expect the shipper to honor your insurance claim. "bad packing" is an easy out for them.
Quite.
:)
Until the folks being sued are labelled as 'terrorists' under some obscure rider provision of PATRIOT that you've never heard of, and sentenced to 300 years in jail.
There are a few dozen startups all pitching their toolsets to console makers, seeking to be the 'official' MMORPG SDK for that platform, with all the attendant royalties such a placement would bring. I assume these guys are one of them, though I've not heard of them before.
Anyway, what they all appear to have in common are a few very skilled programmers and an evangelical CEO who probably doesn't *quite* understand the technology, but knows how to talk to other CEOs. The CEO that gets the best 'buzz' and gets along the best with their target patron (be it Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony) will be the winner, irregardless of the merits of their particular technology.
Straight from the Dragon's mouth, as it were. :)
That's a much better situation than I feared. I think it's less likely Atari/Infogrames will stomp on DLA than Hasbro (Atari should at least understand the mod community better than the House of Barbie). Of course, if Infogrames have any in-house DragonLance plans, you're probably screwed.
Kudos on what looks like an excellent mod, by the way.