Just because it doesn't make sense doesn't mean they don't do it --- and here I'm Going to Make a Generalization(TM) and say that females are worse at this than males. I can't even begin to tell you how many girls/women would just sit and watch whatever crap was on TV when I was in school. During the day, at night, on weekends. And this wasn't just fat girls, this was pretty much across the board.
I never understood what was so exciting about turning on the TV. Certainly there's worthwhile stuff on there, but just to turn it on to "see what's on"? I only ever do that if I am ironing because I have no other choice.
Actually, it's quite the opposite. It's much harder to tip the balance out of equilibrium. MUCH harder. Even an ice age is an equlibrium since the temperatures are within a pretty narrow range from the norm. When there's an equilibrium, it is there for a reason - systems already exist to make something a certain way. Following your logic, it is easier to make Earth's mean temperature 0 Fahrenheit than to keep the mean temperature where it is right now. I think we're being extremely arrogant to think that we can actually make these changes and have absolute control over them, both on Mars and here on Earth.
was with prices dropping from the "insane" level to the "almost reasonable" level, do any college students have plasma/LCD televisions? That's one place where it would actually make sense, space-wise, to have a slim TV. I would imagine that the risk of it being stolen would be extremely high. I would find a way to bolt that sucker in, somehow.
Anyone in college or dealing with college students in dorms know what the popularity of the LCD/plasma TVs is? From the smaller 13" ones to the 40- and 50-inchers?
"Blogging's legacy is pretty much just a series of articles on the subject of how important blogging is."
One of the reasons I stopped even wandering towards DailyKOS daily is that it was getting to be very irritating to listen to all these people talk about how important they are, or how important blogging is. And then they talk about it like it is a year old.
Blogging is, at the base level, still posting news on a webpage. With links. Why wasn't blogging around in a big way in 1996? Is it because a lot of people didn't have internet access? Because now "having a web page" is now known as "blogging" when "blogging" is not any different, mechanically, from what has existed before.
I mean, if the internet didn't exist, and then suddenly it appeared, and suddenly blogging appeared too, then yes -- but what makes blogging so special? I ran a news site for the (original, shoddy) Unreal multiplayer "scene" (and I use that in quotes because it was probably under 5,000 people worldwide that cared).
Blogging, in essence, is a LOT of people sharing their opinions. Except there's no way for any person to "take in" more opinions now than 5 years ago. If anything, now with blogging, you have to deal with a lot of crap. Think of doing science research by looking at Slashdot comments in the Science section as opposed to reading journals. Both have strengths and weaknesses, but without the regular media, blogging doesn't exist. It's just a sub-group. In politics, they've "given" back twice -- the Rather story, and now this. Yet, day to day, they exist and rely based on information that the media gives them.
They're sort of like the little fish that clean up whales and larger fish. It's a symbiotic relationship, but the little fish is still just sucking up all the crap from the big fish. It's not a partnership.
This is an endless circular argument. The "Death of the Album" has been talked about for the past fifteen years at least, and it doesn't happen.
Even if you look at Billboard's Top 200 chart you're going to see a lot of, well, albums.
If anything, I would imagine the re-birth of the album. As single tracks are easier to get and download (and not pay $7 for a CDS with four tracks), artists will focus on the album.
But we'll have the same mix we've always had. About twenty percent of good and great stuff, twenty percent of really awful stuff, and sixty percent of material that might have a good song or two but is ultimately forgettable.
...will unfortunately be so expensive it would've been the same price to buy a new company. That and they have to replace ALL the Chief-level executives, you can't just change one.
It seems their printer business affected them more than they realized.
Why not have that rate out there? If no one wants to pay it, you're in the same boat. If people pay it, now you're making more money than before. Hell, charge 10% more than the Geek Squad with people knowing they will get some good service. Now your visits are 3 to 4x what they were before...
If I was in your position, I would do the following:
First off, don't charge anything to anyone in your immediate family or friends. This ideally should be a group of at most about five people.
Second, think about the possibility of trading and/or bartering services, whether formally or informally. Surely at some point it will be beneficial if you can count on free/reduced services from, say, a plumber, or a real estate agent, or an attorney, or any number of people.
Then charge everyone else. I would do it officially and get a business license which is probably not too expensive and you can recoup the costs after 25 hours of work, I would guess. (Again, maybe an accountant or attorney can help you incorporate in this case). Then charge something like $25 per visit plus $15 per hour, or whatever you feel your time is worth. The people you are charging are customers, and you are legitimately providing services to help them. I would certainly "fix it right" the first time and maybe offer a sheet or two of common traps so that they don't have this problem in the future.
There's franchises that already do this, like Geeks on Call (disclaimer: I have no ties with them whatsoever). More than likely you will want to do something smaller.
I suggest creating a company or getting a license (plus listing any certs you have helps) because eventually you might be the guy to help a small business at which you can easily make a lot of money. Also, when its a company (and not "my brother-in-law Steve, he's great") it's OK to charge more because people expect overhead, etc.
I would only do this final step if you're really interested and if it seems worthwhile. You can always have a very high rate that is charged to businesses but you help residential customers for less on the side.
Basically, do it right and all the way or don't do it at all and stick to helping close family members and those whose services you might use in the future. The third step is what can easily cause you to go from a casual helper to someone who can make a decent chunk of change.
Far be it from me to judge a book by its cover but judge I will. The graphics are not all bad, some of it seems really good, but is this really a "platformer"? Some of it looks like an RPG with lists of items you have and occasional reminders of the Zelda series on the NES/Famicom.
Anyone play it yet? Is it too RPGish or are we looking at a regular "fun" platformer without tedious RPG elements?
I sincerely hope the plan is not to outfit each student with one of these ridiculous things. Certainly I learned how to do everything without a computer, and had the honor of seeing computers/internet introduced into the classroom gradually through my education and can tell you that for the most part, they didn't do much.
Most of the uses were for Power Point slides and other useless replacements of existing technology: a blackboard, an eraser, chalk, paper, pencil, etc. It has made research a lot easier, but not necessarily better. You can find stuff faster but is the time savings used to put together more convincing arguments or properly written materials?
I think the $100 laptop is a good idea for schools to have in small numbers, say 1 per classroom at most. If it were up to me I wouldn't have any computers in school outside of a designated "computer lab" as I think they interfere with learning. They are a tool, but they are mostly applied the incorrect way.
I would hope that for the severely impoverished we would worry about other things first, then the laptop. Although certainly it is worthwhile* $100 can buy a lot of books and learning materials.
Negroponte says: "In China they spend $17 per child per year on textbooks. That's for five or six years, so if we can distribute and sell laptops in quantities of one million or more to ministries of education that's cheaper and the marketing overheads go away."
Laptops certainly will have information more current, but laptops also need to be replaced every five or six years, or even less. A broken laptop is more expensive to fix than a broken book.
I would say a better solution is to give each classroom a laptop, say, for every five kids. Then one kid can take it home each night and use it if they wish. But back to my original point, the teacher is the best tool, not the laptop.
* I say worthwhile because the developing world can use more cheap tech. Read "Africa Rising" or look at Ubuntu for example.
People said the same thing about "comic book" movies and yet we've seen a good Batman film or two, some decent X-Men material, okay Spider-man movies (to others, I don't like them), and even a good Tom Hanks vehicle.
Wait until the first really good video game movie comes out and makes $200m. Then they will pay attention.
Keep in mind, Batman made over $350m*, X2 made over $200m, Spider-man over $451m. Sure these are "comic book" movies and not "video game" movies but the are similar in many ways: key audience is young males, medium not "understood" by the mainstream, generally flimsy writing for both. And what happens? Some (Tim Burton) makes a decent movie and the movie makes a LOT of money.
Tomb Raider is the most succesful video game movie and it barely scratched $130m. Mortal Kombat? Barely $85m. Super Mario Brothers? About $25m. Even Resident Evil: Apocalypse which was at least somewhat watchable (compared to the previous two on my list) only made about $50m, barely breaking even.
Alone in the Dark only cost $20m, but it hasn't even picked up $4.5m and it dropped 72% off it'a first frame. They'll be lucky if they make the money back after home video and international.
My point? Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson are easily acquired and are test runs into the market. We will be seeing a good video game movie come out in the next decade. A really good one. Might not be Halo, probably won't be Doom, but we'll see it.
* All figures are U.S. box office gross estimated to today's dollars with inflation.
I don't remember the last time the Economist attacked anything as "communistic excess" -- and they're not a "tool of international corporatism" because they actually like true free markets without competition. Notice their articles on excessive executive pay, underperforming corporations, etc.
I think that you probably haven't really read too much of it.
I unfortunately paid for a 6-month subscription a few weeks before things got really busy and I haven't played since. The game was really fun although you still get sort of level-grinding happening, except you do puzzles. It's OK, and that's that I'm not a fan of MMORPGOSOs or whatever.
A number of issues, which I will list but not enumerate.
What does a regular player of The Sims consider herself? Surely not a "Gamer" -- but that gaming title can be a nice "gateway drug" to other types of gaming in a similar genre. Just because you like Simming does not mean you want to play Halo 2.
Advertising. I don't think I've seen games being advertised in "mainstream" magazines. Of course the advertisements that do run in Maxim and FHM and GamePro and GameBizMonthlyTech or whatever they are called are well, male-oriented. I've seen a lot of TV advertisement but you could very easily buy print ads for that same amount of money.
Retail outlets. Where can you buy video games? In Best Buy, EBX, GameStop... Not extremely "female-friendly" places, or "mom-friendly" places. Even the games section at Wal-Mart always seems really cramped. Where's a video game Apple Store?
A bit more PR? We need some more positive news or less negative news in media. A million bucks will go a long way with a good PR agency, one that doesn't send "Press Releases" to GameSpot.
Mainstream audiences already exist, but they are not all tied together. Where's the focus on non-Gamers?
10 years ago, not many of us Americans would know so many European brands, but now that we see ads for european products (even if they aren't available in the US), articles, etc. etc...
Balderdash!
I think ten years ago plenty of people knew Mercedes-Benz, Saab, BMW, Country Crock, Lipton, Knorr, Dove, Guiness, Michelin, Gucci, Chanel, Doc Marten's, Nestle, Ferrari, Absolut, BP, British Airways, Lufthansa, Ikea, Evian, Cadbury, Adidas, Lacoste, Perrier, Peugeot, Bennetton (what happened to them?), and of course, "conutry" brands, like German Engineering, French Food & Wine, and British Humour*.
It would be literally exhausting to name all the European brands here. I think there's been some inroads from retailers like H&M which did not have too big of an American presence here, but overall, the net has not had a "net effect"** on anything. Not in favor of any specific country at least.
* We all know the joke don't we? Heaven is German engineering, French food, and British humor. Hell is British food, German humor, and French engineering. ** Bad pun!
"It's like these sci-fi nerds can't handle the real world, so they hide in a fake one," says sports fanatic Scott Moreland, whose online fantasy-football team, DaJerseyJintz, was 4-1 at press time.
From "Walking Sports Database Scorns Walking Sci-Fi Database" in The Onion
Slashdot Mirror
Just because it doesn't make sense doesn't mean they don't do it --- and here I'm Going to Make a Generalization(TM) and say that females are worse at this than males. I can't even begin to tell you how many girls/women would just sit and watch whatever crap was on TV when I was in school. During the day, at night, on weekends. And this wasn't just fat girls, this was pretty much across the board.
I never understood what was so exciting about turning on the TV. Certainly there's worthwhile stuff on there, but just to turn it on to "see what's on"? I only ever do that if I am ironing because I have no other choice.
Actually, it's quite the opposite. It's much harder to tip the balance out of equilibrium. MUCH harder. Even an ice age is an equlibrium since the temperatures are within a pretty narrow range from the norm. When there's an equilibrium, it is there for a reason - systems already exist to make something a certain way. Following your logic, it is easier to make Earth's mean temperature 0 Fahrenheit than to keep the mean temperature where it is right now. I think we're being extremely arrogant to think that we can actually make these changes and have absolute control over them, both on Mars and here on Earth.
was with prices dropping from the "insane" level to the "almost reasonable" level, do any college students have plasma/LCD televisions? That's one place where it would actually make sense, space-wise, to have a slim TV. I would imagine that the risk of it being stolen would be extremely high. I would find a way to bolt that sucker in, somehow.
Anyone in college or dealing with college students in dorms know what the popularity of the LCD/plasma TVs is? From the smaller 13" ones to the 40- and 50-inchers?
One of the reasons I stopped even wandering towards DailyKOS daily is that it was getting to be very irritating to listen to all these people talk about how important they are, or how important blogging is. And then they talk about it like it is a year old.
Blogging is, at the base level, still posting news on a webpage. With links. Why wasn't blogging around in a big way in 1996? Is it because a lot of people didn't have internet access? Because now "having a web page" is now known as "blogging" when "blogging" is not any different, mechanically, from what has existed before.
I mean, if the internet didn't exist, and then suddenly it appeared, and suddenly blogging appeared too, then yes -- but what makes blogging so special? I ran a news site for the (original, shoddy) Unreal multiplayer "scene" (and I use that in quotes because it was probably under 5,000 people worldwide that cared).
Blogging, in essence, is a LOT of people sharing their opinions. Except there's no way for any person to "take in" more opinions now than 5 years ago. If anything, now with blogging, you have to deal with a lot of crap. Think of doing science research by looking at Slashdot comments in the Science section as opposed to reading journals. Both have strengths and weaknesses, but without the regular media, blogging doesn't exist. It's just a sub-group. In politics, they've "given" back twice -- the Rather story, and now this. Yet, day to day, they exist and rely based on information that the media gives them.
They're sort of like the little fish that clean up whales and larger fish. It's a symbiotic relationship, but the little fish is still just sucking up all the crap from the big fish. It's not a partnership.
You're begging the question here, but the argument you raise vis-a-vis spyware is very cromulent pro bono.
That's correct. You get trained on computers, or you train yourself.
This is an endless circular argument. The "Death of the Album" has been talked about for the past fifteen years at least, and it doesn't happen.
Even if you look at Billboard's Top 200 chart you're going to see a lot of, well, albums.
If anything, I would imagine the re-birth of the album. As single tracks are easier to get and download (and not pay $7 for a CDS with four tracks), artists will focus on the album.
But we'll have the same mix we've always had. About twenty percent of good and great stuff, twenty percent of really awful stuff, and sixty percent of material that might have a good song or two but is ultimately forgettable.
That's because none of us want to go to Jersey City.
Not here at least.
...will unfortunately be so expensive it would've been the same price to buy a new company. That and they have to replace ALL the Chief-level executives, you can't just change one.
It seems their printer business affected them more than they realized.
If you really live in New York City, you've got over a million households that bring in over $75,000 a year. I'm sure charging $150 for a house visit and $70 for each additional hour would not be out of the realm of what they can do.
Why not have that rate out there? If no one wants to pay it, you're in the same boat. If people pay it, now you're making more money than before. Hell, charge 10% more than the Geek Squad with people knowing they will get some good service. Now your visits are 3 to 4x what they were before...
Still not worth it?
If I was in your position, I would do the following:
First off, don't charge anything to anyone in your immediate family or friends. This ideally should be a group of at most about five people.
Second, think about the possibility of trading and/or bartering services, whether formally or informally. Surely at some point it will be beneficial if you can count on free/reduced services from, say, a plumber, or a real estate agent, or an attorney, or any number of people.
Then charge everyone else. I would do it officially and get a business license which is probably not too expensive and you can recoup the costs after 25 hours of work, I would guess. (Again, maybe an accountant or attorney can help you incorporate in this case). Then charge something like $25 per visit plus $15 per hour, or whatever you feel your time is worth. The people you are charging are customers, and you are legitimately providing services to help them. I would certainly "fix it right" the first time and maybe offer a sheet or two of common traps so that they don't have this problem in the future.
There's franchises that already do this, like Geeks on Call (disclaimer: I have no ties with them whatsoever). More than likely you will want to do something smaller.
I suggest creating a company or getting a license (plus listing any certs you have helps) because eventually you might be the guy to help a small business at which you can easily make a lot of money. Also, when its a company (and not "my brother-in-law Steve, he's great") it's OK to charge more because people expect overhead, etc.
I would only do this final step if you're really interested and if it seems worthwhile. You can always have a very high rate that is charged to businesses but you help residential customers for less on the side.
Basically, do it right and all the way or don't do it at all and stick to helping close family members and those whose services you might use in the future. The third step is what can easily cause you to go from a casual helper to someone who can make a decent chunk of change.
Far be it from me to judge a book by its cover but judge I will. The graphics are not all bad, some of it seems really good, but is this really a "platformer"? Some of it looks like an RPG with lists of items you have and occasional reminders of the Zelda series on the NES/Famicom.
Anyone play it yet? Is it too RPGish or are we looking at a regular "fun" platformer without tedious RPG elements?
I sincerely hope the plan is not to outfit each student with one of these ridiculous things. Certainly I learned how to do everything without a computer, and had the honor of seeing computers/internet introduced into the classroom gradually through my education and can tell you that for the most part, they didn't do much.
Most of the uses were for Power Point slides and other useless replacements of existing technology: a blackboard, an eraser, chalk, paper, pencil, etc. It has made research a lot easier, but not necessarily better. You can find stuff faster but is the time savings used to put together more convincing arguments or properly written materials?
I think the $100 laptop is a good idea for schools to have in small numbers, say 1 per classroom at most. If it were up to me I wouldn't have any computers in school outside of a designated "computer lab" as I think they interfere with learning. They are a tool, but they are mostly applied the incorrect way.
I would hope that for the severely impoverished we would worry about other things first, then the laptop. Although certainly it is worthwhile* $100 can buy a lot of books and learning materials.
Negroponte says: "In China they spend $17 per child per year on textbooks. That's for five or six years, so if we can distribute and sell laptops in quantities of one million or more to ministries of education that's cheaper and the marketing overheads go away."
Laptops certainly will have information more current, but laptops also need to be replaced every five or six years, or even less. A broken laptop is more expensive to fix than a broken book.
I would say a better solution is to give each classroom a laptop, say, for every five kids. Then one kid can take it home each night and use it if they wish. But back to my original point, the teacher is the best tool, not the laptop.
* I say worthwhile because the developing world can use more cheap tech. Read "Africa Rising" or look at Ubuntu for example.
People said the same thing about "comic book" movies and yet we've seen a good Batman film or two, some decent X-Men material, okay Spider-man movies (to others, I don't like them), and even a good Tom Hanks vehicle.
Wait until the first really good video game movie comes out and makes $200m. Then they will pay attention.
Keep in mind, Batman made over $350m*, X2 made over $200m, Spider-man over $451m. Sure these are "comic book" movies and not "video game" movies but the are similar in many ways: key audience is young males, medium not "understood" by the mainstream, generally flimsy writing for both. And what happens? Some (Tim Burton) makes a decent movie and the movie makes a LOT of money.
Tomb Raider is the most succesful video game movie and it barely scratched $130m.
Mortal Kombat? Barely $85m.
Super Mario Brothers? About $25m.
Even Resident Evil: Apocalypse which was at least somewhat watchable (compared to the previous two on my list) only made about $50m, barely breaking even.
Alone in the Dark only cost $20m, but it hasn't even picked up $4.5m and it dropped 72% off it'a first frame. They'll be lucky if they make the money back after home video and international.
My point? Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson are easily acquired and are test runs into the market. We will be seeing a good video game movie come out in the next decade. A really good one. Might not be Halo, probably won't be Doom, but we'll see it.
* All figures are U.S. box office gross estimated to today's dollars with inflation.
I don't remember the last time the Economist attacked anything as "communistic excess" -- and they're not a "tool of international corporatism" because they actually like true free markets without competition. Notice their articles on excessive executive pay, underperforming corporations, etc.
I think that you probably haven't really read too much of it.
That's quite a mark-up on those urinals...
Not necessarily. Some of the ads a friend of mine has run appear randomly as white or colored ads.
What's a women?
And what level do I have to be before I get one? Is it like a mount?
If "most hype" truly determined winners, we'd see a lot more of Doom 3, Driv3r, and Fable.
I unfortunately paid for a 6-month subscription a few weeks before things got really busy and I haven't played since. The game was really fun although you still get sort of level-grinding happening, except you do puzzles. It's OK, and that's that I'm not a fan of MMORPGOSOs or whatever.
So what are your specific qualms against the No Child Left Behind Act?
Balderdash!
I think ten years ago plenty of people knew Mercedes-Benz, Saab, BMW, Country Crock, Lipton, Knorr, Dove, Guiness, Michelin, Gucci, Chanel, Doc Marten's, Nestle, Ferrari, Absolut, BP, British Airways, Lufthansa, Ikea, Evian, Cadbury, Adidas, Lacoste, Perrier, Peugeot, Bennetton (what happened to them?), and of course, "conutry" brands, like German Engineering, French Food & Wine, and British Humour*.
It would be literally exhausting to name all the European brands here. I think there's been some inroads from retailers like H&M which did not have too big of an American presence here, but overall, the net has not had a "net effect"** on anything. Not in favor of any specific country at least.
* We all know the joke don't we? Heaven is German engineering, French food, and British humor. Hell is British food, German humor, and French engineering.
** Bad pun!
From "Walking Sports Database Scorns Walking Sci-Fi Database" in The Onion