How the hell do you people come up with songs like that?
Used to be you sent $20 to a post office box in Schenectady and they mailed you a song back. Now you PayPal 'em $100 (inflation) and they email you one.
You don't teach MBAs relativity. You do your best to teach them to tie their shoes (for which, yes, you'll probably need the holographic spinning bar graph), buy them some Velcro(tm)sneakers and tell them it's relativity.
That way they go away happy, better educated and at least able to take their shoes on and off without assistence (unless someone hides the Velcro(tm) sneakers).
And a telephone. Honestly, that about covers it. For goodness' sake, I can teach relativity with nothing more than a chalkboard (and you can paint an entire wall with chalkboard paint, which has the benefit of being nonflective, and you get to watch the interns fight over who gets to clean the erasers). If you can't understand your business without resorting to something more it means you don't understand your business.
I don't need a holographic spinning bar graph to tell me quarterly earnings are down. I already know that. That's why I called this frickin' meeting. Let's talk about what we're going to do about it.
I believe you have formed a premise and are interpreting the data to favor it.
Were the first four decades of movie-making so great that they produced more "top" movies than the most recent four?
No. That's why the entire four decades didn't produce a single title on the list, which only begins after the movie industry was so far advanced as to have major studios in the modern sense, who had already formed "The Oscars."
Were the '50's really the golden age of cinema? Were the '70's through '90's really worse than the '40's through '60's?
When statistical significance is taken into account the 30's through 60's graph out as a stright line.
Yes, there was a dip of quantity of quality in the 70's, in part simply because there was a dip in quantity. The studios were no longer cranking out a title a week. It's quite possible that the quality/quantity ratio went up quite a bit.
In that light the 80's and 90's also seem to hold even or outperform earlier decades, only showing a miniscule (statistically speaking) drop, but with a much smaller pool to draw from.
For all practical purposes the entire graph from the 30's on is a straight, level line, with a little blip in the very socially troubled 70's, when, among other things, the studio system collapsed.
The whole movie would have been over in ten minutes if someone had just bitch slapped the hell out of Scarlett and sent her to her room until she learned how to behave. It's on my Top 10 Most Annoying Movies of all Time list.
From time to time I've considered giving the book a go to see if the movie had just ruined it. I think you've just saved me the time and trouble.
The film has a accorded me a twice removed "Brush With Greatness" though. My oldest friend was once being entertained in a London flat and the resident had the bad judgement to him leave alone in the sitting room for a few minutes. He was intrigued by the items displayed on a mantlepiece, particularly what appeared to be an Oscar repro, so as is his wont he went over and picked it up.
Just then the flat owner walked back into the room and my friend enquired if it was a repro:
"No. That's my grandmother's."
It was Vivien Leigh's Best Actress Oscar.
I've been known to shake my friend's hand, but I always make sure to wash and disinfect afterwards. . ..especially since that time.
Yes, most of my use of pen and paper is as an engineer, making sketches of concepts, and even working drawings. Most of my use of portable devices is for typing text and reading ASCII ebooks, currently handled by a 486 laptop. Just the right kind of tablet would fit both uses quite well. A current Toshiba offering comes sooooooo close, but not quite. And it's expensive.
I keep threatening to just build my own, but the need just isn't that pressing. That still leaves the cost of the Twiddler, which impresses me as the ideal primary input tool for such a machine and the story is about low cost devices.
My ideal device would be about 4 1/4"x7"x3/4", the size of a 300 page "Pocket Book." All the buttons would be on the top edge of the device, leaving the entire face free to be used for the glass stylus activated touch screen, perfectly workable by wrapping your fingers over the top of the case, but unpressed by just sticking it in your pocket. Just enough flash memory to support the Linux/BSD operating system and relevant apps, a 4GB flashcard should do, data storage being handled by the recessed flash key drive. It would have a couple of USB ports free for external devices so you could use a standard keyboard, Twiddler, mouse, printer, whatever. Don't bother wasting space on the device itself for some brain dead, nonfunctional, mechanical input device. If I want to type slowly and painfully I'll just use the touch screen.
Nice features would include color, a mini CD drive, GPS and sound, but these would be subservient to the form factor and getting 8 hours of use from a couple of standard AA batteries.
Wrap it all up for $100 less i/o devices and I'll take one.
I really understand what you're saying, but you are not entirely correct. The phone company doesn't do much to vet the listings. You tell them a name you want your home number listed under and they'll print it. Haywood Jablome, for instance, lasted for some years in my local phone book.
More pertinent to your premise a local chain competing with Radio Shack operated for 10 years or so selling drugs over the counter at retail.
There are these things called "code words", which, as it happens, were included in their Yellow Pages ad. People were, indeed, able to look them up in the phone book and determine that they purported to be a source for illegal drugs.
Massage parlors, the already mentioned escort services and a small host of other businesses that are known to, occasionally, offer illegal goods and services, use the phone book in a like manner and if you know the local lingo you can often determine which ones actually offer such services from their phone book ads. Once one goes deep into the dark side certain unusal names attached to home phone numbers function as code words. Hermine Xenophone, just to make up a possible example on the spot.
There are all sorts of goods that are legal in one context but illegal in another, kinda like some content files (it's perfectly legal to download it for free from this site, but not from that one), and these businesses operate right out in the open in the phone book using "code words" like "Guns," or "Supermarket."
More relevant to the current discussion, the phone numbers you can look up to acquire tools and goods to commit copyright infringement are legion. Your local library, prominantly listed, will not only supply you with the copyrighted goods, but the machinery with which to infringe at only ten cents a page. They don't even monitor whether you are using their services for illegal useses or not (and there is "abandonware" in the book trade. You can buy a legitmate used copy for $200, or copy it for $10)
Nobody's busting them, or the phone company, even after illegal activity has been proven.
For some reason I'm drawing an almost complete blank on the web. The race was the 98-99 Around Alone and the official website seems to be dead.
There's a video documentary of the race available and on the web ad you can find a picture of the capsized boat (the skipper was trapped inside the upsidedown hull at the time. The rescuer, who did not receive the email until he woke up on schedule, had to alert her to his presence by banging on the hull.):
Discovery (or it might have been Nat Graph) did a "magazine" piece on it about 2000 or so.
Sorry, best I can do at the moment. I'd like to take a crack at the Great Southern Ocean myself someday (or The Bottom of the World as it's sometimes called), but I'll have to wait until my cat dies and my finances come a bit more alive.
Turn the globe up a bit and rotate it just right and you can get it so you can see nothing but blue. Those are the south seas of the Pacific. There's no reason to go there at all unless you're whaling. ..or in the 'Round the World single hand race.
It's nasty "country" where the wind has thousands of miles of scope to build up waves. Some years ago one of the competitors in the race capsized in those seas. She got an emergency signal out to the orginizers, but with no shipping lanes within a thousand miles or so the only one around to attempt a rescue was one of the other competitors, who, as it happened, was sleeping at the time.
How did they get in touch with him to alert him to the situation?
Keep it there and only read from the chepo device?
Useless.
Do more editing on cheapo device? grep text on cheapo device?
Yes, please.
transfer text to some other device?
As per the above 'Useless" comment.
via what means?
vim, grep and a flash key drive.
how much text?
Well, lesse, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire comes out at 1.6 megs. I think that 2 megs should cover it with a bit of overhead. I can't imagine typing more than that even while sailing from Marblehead to Plymouth (that would be the one in England, not just down the coast a hop).Appears to be a nonissue with todays flash key drives.I suspect that 640k is all anyone would really need.
I do not have a PDA. I have a little notebook. Frankly I think if you need a PDA to be "more productive" with keeping a phone list and showing up where and when you're supposed to be there is something wrong with you.
On the other hand, I know for a fact that there is something wrong with me. I am disgraphic. I cannot handle paper and pencil beyond a very crude level, and only for short periods of time.
Different lack of strokes for different folks I guess.
I need to type. It's neuro-physical thing that nothing can be done about. Sounds like a job for a Z80/6800, a bit of flash mem and a Twiddler to me, if Twiddlers didn't go for a couple of hundred.
are they trying to teach people concepts and theory.
They are training NOC monkeys. People who are trained not to think,to perform a specified business task, mechanically and interchangably. Parts is parts.
The above is expressed somewhat cynically, but it is not a troll. It really is what they are up to, and they not only know it, it is a codified business practice. Never stake your business on that which cannot be replaced, since the business fails with the failure of the irreplacable. People are guarunteed to fail. Mediocrity, by definition, can be easily replaced.
Of course this is why a small outfit comprised of a few exceptional people can come out of nowhere and eat the lunch of some big establishment, but in doing to they become a big establishment. ..
Rinse and repeat.
Besides, we both know this is more marketing than anything else, to make sure the future NOC monkeys jabber for IBM and Red Hat kit. Gentoo on a beowulf cluster of old PIIIs need not apply.
Slashdot Mirror
What if this means we won't be padded down anymore?!
Pray the airplane doesn't crash, just like always.
KFG
How the hell do you people come up with songs like that?
Used to be you sent $20 to a post office box in Schenectady and they mailed you a song back. Now you PayPal 'em $100 (inflation) and they email you one.
KFG
You don't teach MBAs relativity. You do your best to teach them to tie their shoes (for which, yes, you'll probably need the holographic spinning bar graph), buy them some Velcro(tm)sneakers and tell them it's relativity.
That way they go away happy, better educated and at least able to take their shoes on and off without assistence (unless someone hides the Velcro(tm) sneakers).
KFG
Just get a big whiteboard.
And a telephone. Honestly, that about covers it. For goodness' sake, I can teach relativity with nothing more than a chalkboard (and you can paint an entire wall with chalkboard paint, which has the benefit of being nonflective, and you get to watch the interns fight over who gets to clean the erasers). If you can't understand your business without resorting to something more it means you don't understand your business.
I don't need a holographic spinning bar graph to tell me quarterly earnings are down. I already know that. That's why I called this frickin' meeting. Let's talk about what we're going to do about it.
KFG
How fortunate that there is no Sanaty Claus.
KFG
Dude, if you're not with us you're against us. It's, like, in The Bible and everything.
KFG
Nice idea dude, but you have to go through "Digital Okinawa" first.
KFG
I notice that means you hung on through the shooting 'em part. :)
KFG
I believe you have formed a premise and are interpreting the data to favor it.
Were the first four decades of movie-making so great that they produced more "top" movies than the most recent four?
No. That's why the entire four decades didn't produce a single title on the list, which only begins after the movie industry was so far advanced as to have major studios in the modern sense, who had already formed "The Oscars."
Were the '50's really the golden age of cinema? Were the '70's through '90's really worse than the '40's through '60's?
When statistical significance is taken into account the 30's through 60's graph out as a stright line.
Yes, there was a dip of quantity of quality in the 70's, in part simply because there was a dip in quantity. The studios were no longer cranking out a title a week. It's quite possible that the quality/quantity ratio went up quite a bit.
In that light the 80's and 90's also seem to hold even or outperform earlier decades, only showing a miniscule (statistically speaking) drop, but with a much smaller pool to draw from.
For all practical purposes the entire graph from the 30's on is a straight, level line, with a little blip in the very socially troubled 70's, when, among other things, the studio system collapsed.
KFG
The whole movie would have been over in ten minutes if someone had just bitch slapped the hell out of Scarlett and sent her to her room until she learned how to behave. It's on my Top 10 Most Annoying Movies of all Time list.
.especially since that time.
From time to time I've considered giving the book a go to see if the movie had just ruined it. I think you've just saved me the time and trouble.
The film has a accorded me a twice removed "Brush With Greatness" though. My oldest friend was once being entertained in a London flat and the resident had the bad judgement to him leave alone in the sitting room for a few minutes. He was intrigued by the items displayed on a mantlepiece, particularly what appeared to be an Oscar repro, so as is his wont he went over and picked it up.
Just then the flat owner walked back into the room and my friend enquired if it was a repro:
"No. That's my grandmother's."
It was Vivien Leigh's Best Actress Oscar.
I've been known to shake my friend's hand, but I always make sure to wash and disinfect afterwards. . .
KFG
Then go read the book, of course, only you'll have to look it up under the title "Heart of Darkness."
Then go try and track down copy of the Tim Roth/John Malkovich TV film (only available on video as a very expensive, used import).
Compare and contrast.
KFG
Yes, most of my use of pen and paper is as an engineer, making sketches of concepts, and even working drawings. Most of my use of portable devices is for typing text and reading ASCII ebooks, currently handled by a 486 laptop. Just the right kind of tablet would fit both uses quite well. A current Toshiba offering comes sooooooo close, but not quite. And it's expensive.
I keep threatening to just build my own, but the need just isn't that pressing. That still leaves the cost of the Twiddler, which impresses me as the ideal primary input tool for such a machine and the story is about low cost devices.
My ideal device would be about 4 1/4"x7"x3/4", the size of a 300 page "Pocket Book." All the buttons would be on the top edge of the device, leaving the entire face free to be used for the glass stylus activated touch screen, perfectly workable by wrapping your fingers over the top of the case, but unpressed by just sticking it in your pocket. Just enough flash memory to support the Linux/BSD operating system and relevant apps, a 4GB flashcard should do, data storage being handled by the recessed flash key drive. It would have a couple of USB ports free for external devices so you could use a standard keyboard, Twiddler, mouse, printer, whatever. Don't bother wasting space on the device itself for some brain dead, nonfunctional, mechanical input device. If I want to type slowly and painfully I'll just use the touch screen.
Nice features would include color, a mini CD drive, GPS and sound, but these would be subservient to the form factor and getting 8 hours of use from a couple of standard AA batteries.
Wrap it all up for $100 less i/o devices and I'll take one.
KFG
I really understand what you're saying, but you are not entirely correct. The phone company doesn't do much to vet the listings. You tell them a name you want your home number listed under and they'll print it. Haywood Jablome, for instance, lasted for some years in my local phone book.
More pertinent to your premise a local chain competing with Radio Shack operated for 10 years or so selling drugs over the counter at retail.
There are these things called "code words", which, as it happens, were included in their Yellow Pages ad. People were, indeed, able to look them up in the phone book and determine that they purported to be a source for illegal drugs.
Massage parlors, the already mentioned escort services and a small host of other businesses that are known to, occasionally, offer illegal goods and services, use the phone book in a like manner and if you know the local lingo you can often determine which ones actually offer such services from their phone book ads. Once one goes deep into the dark side certain unusal names attached to home phone numbers function as code words. Hermine Xenophone, just to make up a possible example on the spot.
There are all sorts of goods that are legal in one context but illegal in another, kinda like some content files (it's perfectly legal to download it for free from this site, but not from that one), and these businesses operate right out in the open in the phone book using "code words" like "Guns," or "Supermarket."
More relevant to the current discussion, the phone numbers you can look up to acquire tools and goods to commit copyright infringement are legion. Your local library, prominantly listed, will not only supply you with the copyrighted goods, but the machinery with which to infringe at only ten cents a page. They don't even monitor whether you are using their services for illegal useses or not (and there is "abandonware" in the book trade. You can buy a legitmate used copy for $200, or copy it for $10)
Nobody's busting them, or the phone company, even after illegal activity has been proven.
KFG
I didn't hold a gun to the editors' heads, you know.
Wouldn't be any point. You need to target a vital organ.
KFG
So now they have to bribe Windows users for positive reviews, eh?
So I guess my essay on how I use Windows to pursue my passion because I can't get the shit to run right under WINE yet is right out?
KFG
The future appears to remain in being an Elvis impersonator.
KFG
Yeah, that one bugs me too, but the ones that really get me is when they refer to speed in Mach numbers where there's no frickin' air.
KFG
For some reason I'm drawing an almost complete blank on the web. The race was the 98-99 Around Alone and the official website seems to be dead.
There's a video documentary of the race available and on the web ad you can find a picture of the capsized boat (the skipper was trapped inside the upsidedown hull at the time. The rescuer, who did not receive the email until he woke up on schedule, had to alert her to his presence by banging on the hull.):
http://www.paladventurevideos.com/BTTW.htm
Discovery (or it might have been Nat Graph) did a "magazine" piece on it about 2000 or so.
Sorry, best I can do at the moment. I'd like to take a crack at the Great Southern Ocean myself someday (or The Bottom of the World as it's sometimes called), but I'll have to wait until my cat dies and my finances come a bit more alive.
Oh, I'm figuring on doing it in a 20 footer.
KFG
Turn the globe up a bit and rotate it just right and you can get it so you can see nothing but blue. Those are the south seas of the Pacific. There's no reason to go there at all unless you're whaling. . .or in the 'Round the World single hand race.
It's nasty "country" where the wind has thousands of miles of scope to build up waves. Some years ago one of the competitors in the race capsized in those seas. She got an emergency signal out to the orginizers, but with no shipping lanes within a thousand miles or so the only one around to attempt a rescue was one of the other competitors, who, as it happened, was sleeping at the time.
How did they get in touch with him to alert him to the situation?
They emailed him.
KFG
Keep it there and only read from the chepo device?
Useless.
Do more editing on cheapo device? grep text on cheapo device?
Yes, please.
transfer text to some other device?
As per the above 'Useless" comment.
via what means?
vim, grep and a flash key drive.
how much text?
Well, lesse, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire comes out at 1.6 megs. I think that 2 megs should cover it with a bit of overhead. I can't imagine typing more than that even while sailing from Marblehead to Plymouth (that would be the one in England, not just down the coast a hop).Appears to be a nonissue with todays flash key drives.I suspect that 640k is all anyone would really need.
KFG
I do not have a PDA. I have a little notebook. Frankly I think if you need a PDA to be "more productive" with keeping a phone list and showing up where and when you're supposed to be there is something wrong with you.
On the other hand, I know for a fact that there is something wrong with me. I am disgraphic. I cannot handle paper and pencil beyond a very crude level, and only for short periods of time.
Different lack of strokes for different folks I guess.
I need to type. It's neuro-physical thing that nothing can be done about. Sounds like a job for a Z80/6800, a bit of flash mem and a Twiddler to me, if Twiddlers didn't go for a couple of hundred.
KFG
are they trying to teach people concepts and theory.
.
They are training NOC monkeys. People who are trained not to think,to perform a specified business task, mechanically and interchangably. Parts is parts.
The above is expressed somewhat cynically, but it is not a troll. It really is what they are up to, and they not only know it, it is a codified business practice. Never stake your business on that which cannot be replaced, since the business fails with the failure of the irreplacable. People are guarunteed to fail. Mediocrity, by definition, can be easily replaced.
Of course this is why a small outfit comprised of a few exceptional people can come out of nowhere and eat the lunch of some big establishment, but in doing to they become a big establishment. .
Rinse and repeat.
Besides, we both know this is more marketing than anything else, to make sure the future NOC monkeys jabber for IBM and Red Hat kit. Gentoo on a beowulf cluster of old PIIIs need not apply.
KFG
Although how he came to that conclusion after four pages of rambling along over half formed ideas is beyond me.
The theorists have been demonstrating that for decades in no more than a few paragraphs of plain English and a little logic.
KFG
Funny how they never are, eh?
KFG
. . .you're reading "Learn XML in 24 Hours" and just had to showoff your l337 skills?
He seems to be up to the chapter on ridiculing it, and doing at least B level work at that.
KFG