> Are you sure you are entering the dual core architecture Xeons? Are you sure you are adding the second > Xeon dual core chip, because funny enough, but I get this:
My bad, you called my booboo exactly. Add in the second Xeon and I get $5,924 for the Dell. Still a Dell win. Mind you I wouldn't be caught dead buying a Dell, but then I probably wouldn't buy an Apple either. I'd probably either roll my own or go with a GOOD smaller white box vendor that can put good stuff into a box, not the 'special' OEM squeezings Dell shits into their boxes. Any PC company that can't even put in a standard f**king ATX power supply isn't getting my business, just for starters.
I just went and speced out a hefty Mac and a Dell. Had to go with the super duper video since it was the only model both offered.
Dual 3.0Ghz Xeon 4GB Memory (4x 1GB sticks on both, ECC on both) 4X 500GB SATA drives 512MB NVidia Quadro DVD +/- everything drive No monitor on either system
Apple: $7,449 firm Dell: $5,575 before the infamous Dell discounting starts
One year warranty on the Apple, Three years Economy OnSite on the Dell
> You think that a vague desire to destroy the world muwahaha,
Not destroy the world, just Western Civilization. Find an accredited university where 25% of the faculty believe in the ideals of Western Civilization and I'd bet good money you will have found Bob Jones or Liberty University.
Sorry guys, the science related to global warming has been so politicized about all you can do at this point is ask us to take it on your word, and that ain't worth spit anymore. On every other major issue of the latter 20th century the same names associated with global warming have been on the wrong side, starting with that arrogant prick who couldn't even convince his home state to vote for him: Al Gore. But not just the politicians, the scientists as well. Scientists as a group have a long record of being on the wrong side of history, enviromentalists were among the worst of the bunch when it came to aiding and abeting the Soviets.
And I'm old enough to remember that back in the 1970's it was the Impending Ice Age that was going to kill us all, yet the proposed solution of eliminating industrial civilization (but only in the West, the 'developing world' had to be left alone) was the only way to save the world! When the science supporting an Ice Age evaporated we instantly went to Global Warming and amazingly both the cause (the wretched excesses of Western Civilization) and the solution were the same.
> Surely, the best answer to such behavior is for those who don't want more draconian government intervention > to propose better solutions, rather than simply shouting "commie" and running away.
Nope. Because it wouldn't work. The left wingnuts running the tightly knit but apparently seperate environmental movements simply won't accept any solution that doesn't solve their actual problem, namely the existence of Western Civilization.
Try it for yourself, get into a conversation with an enviro and propose some solution that allows Civilization as we understand it to continue. Perfect example: A hundred good beefy pebblebed reactors would take enough CO2 out of the air to eliminate any net contribution of the USofA to any global rise in CO2 levels. However 90+% of enviros will oppose the idea, yea they will oppose any and all nuke plants on US soil. Now note that to the same rough 90% corrolation, the same bunch of wingnuts who oppose building safe modern reactors here to prevent global warming will support Iran's "right" to persue uranium enrichment, solely on the basis that Chimpy McBushitler is on one side and Iran is on the other. And thus the circle closes and they are revealed as Watermelons.
Go dig into the numbers a bit. I'm not a Mac fanboi (see my abuse of one earlier today) but this is a non-story. The site in question is tracking Mac OS and MacIntel seperate, so of course Mac OS is dropping. Add the two together and you get a different picture. They appear not to have fixed the scripts that generate the cute graphs though, because up to now they broke out each OS variation so they could see the migration patterns in Windows versions.
> Which seems more likely to you? (a) A cabal of college professors, not standing to lose much of anything, > jeopardize their careers and their scientific credibility by conducting a widespread campaign of > disinformation to subvert the scientific process and whip the public into a panic.
Try this rewording: (a) A cabal of ivory tower dwelling socialists, knowing themselves to be immune to the consequences of their actions (it is called tenure, look it up) are spreading FUD about Global Warming in yet another attempt to destroy industrial civilization. Being in control of the national science foundation and most other funding sources for science, they ruthlessly quash all disent by simply defining any who disagree with the party line as "not a scientist" thus removing all funding and forcing the poor bastard into private industry where they can be disregarded as a corporate whore.
> Granted, the "new" equilibrium might be at a higher global-average temp and CO2 level than it was before > we started burning oil and coal, but as soon as we settle in to whatever level that is, all the Chicken > Littles out there can calm down about the "instability" of the biosphere.
Nope, wouldn't work. Because it is all a Big Lie, the average "Green" is actually what is known as a Watermelon, Green on the outside for cover but Red on the inside. Note that NO environmental problem has a suggested solution involving using technology to solve it. Sometimes they will advocate the use of tech as a shortterm mitigating factor while they get a treaty together to outlaw (but only in the West, can't deprive the "Developing world") whatever is pissing them off this week, but only as a stopgap. Each and every time their 'solution' involves A) lots more socialist government control and B) scaling back the 'excessive' consumption of Western Civilization. In actuality what they don't like is Western Civilization (i.e. individual liberty, capitialism and representitive governments) itself, the enviro whinging is just the latest thing they had success using to try and guilt trip us into rendering outselves extinct.
> These whiny irritants love imposing their feelings about smoking on business owners and everyone else.
And the same asshats are gearing up to make McD's change their menu to reflect their 'enlightened notions' of what you should be eating. Of course these same dipshits are also trying to decide what sort of unsafe at any speed piece of plastic crap car you 'want' to drive in the name of 'global warming' while THEY fly their fucking private jets to (press) conferences to announce what they want to impose on us tomorrow, for our own good of course.
And anyway, Today's Daily Hate thread points to an article in the fscking Guardian.... my what a reliable source that is, why not just link to Daily Kos guys, he is probably a more credible source!
And yes, reasonable people CAN question both A) the existence of Global Warming and B) whether any/all of any Global Warming which might exist is caused by humans. Personally I'm leaning more to the some Global Warming is happening but with the observed increase in solar output (and evidence of warming on Mars) that it is mostly natural. But if it can be shown that it is going to get bad enough we should meddle in Gaia's 'plan' and do something artifical to lower the temp a bit, perhaps a space based solar shade.
> Instead, they'll go to a certain competitor that does "Play for Sure" despite not advertising such?
No, Apple will be noticably quiet on this one, lest anyone notice their own antics. They are doing exactly the same thing.
FairPlay: Only plays stuff purchased from the iTunes store on Apple iPods (and a few rebadged units during their brief foray into rebadging)
PlaysForSure: Only plays content from a hodge podge assortment of third rate websites on a motley assortment of third rate hardware. (Microsoft's PR spin anyway, personally I like the look of some of the PlaysForSure encumbered units, and nobody sez you HAVE to use the DRM ya know.)
Zune DRM: Only plays content purchased from the Microsoft store on Microsoft branded players.
All are building walled gardens, the only twist is Microsoft backstabbing their prior 'partners' in the PlaysForSure consortium, but they ALWAYS betray their partners and those guys should have seen it coming.
> Blame mainstream consumers who are obsessed with whats hot.
Which was exactly my point. People will pay more for a product with an advertisement on it. And while the slashdot crowd will bitch when it happens, Joe average will pay more for a video games that is basically an ad. Look at every movie tie in videogame ever released for proof.
No, you guys aren't cynical enough. They will stuff in ads and raise prices.. and people will pay.
Go to your friendly neighborhood Walmart (or Target, K-Mart, etc) sometime and look around. Especially in the stuff aimed at kids. You almost can't avoid buying co-marketed merchandise. I was commenting on just that last week while in Wallyworld. They still have a few copies of Memory(tm) in the original flavor... but you can see the way the wind blows with the much larger stack of Dora the Explorer and Disney co-branded copies of Memory, selling at $2 more. Yup, people pay more to get the ad for the TV shows. Try to buy a kid a puzzle with a generic picture on it. No can do, all they have is stuff enblazoned with some franchise character or another. Almost half of the toy aisle is stuff co-branded with a TV show or movie. Now go to the clothing dept and find a childrens shirt without a franchise character or an outright product ad on it. If you look you can still find un branded stuff, but that isn't what is selling, just look at the other customers.
The question of advertising in games isn't when is it coming, the only question I have is why hasn't it happened yet? Best guess is because games get played long enough most ads would 'date' the game too much. That and they could get really burned if events hammers em between a game going gold and release. Imagine the PR nightmare if Nike inserts a set of ads with some sports star who gets busted for dope, accused of rape or overdoses yet millions of games are heading to stores too late to recall and repress.
Give em a network connection to update the ads to the current crappy movie being hyped to death or the current ad campaign and watch out.
> They had an election down there, and Edwin Edwards got 50% of the vote!
Heard that one and it is funny. But the truth of the matter is the mechanical voting machines Louisiana used up til very recently were almost never in dispute. They worked and worked well. The cheating happened anyway. Remember, to a great extent it is not who votes that counts, it is who counts the votes that determines who won and who lost. Louisiana, like most other states, has such a large infestestation of career Democrats in all of the positions of the local governments (the ones who operate the voting machines and certify results) that any fraud MUST involve Democrats. Find me a precinct where all of the elections officials are Republicans. I'm sure that such a situation exists somewhere, but I can show you thousands where the opposite is true.
And they have zero moral scrupples about taking advantage of the situation. After all, there is no good and evil, no right or wrong. Only power and those with the will to seize it. Isn't that in the Democratic platform somewhere?
I know you guys have to be tossed your daily ration of red meat nowadays so you can all post about how evil Chimpy McBushHitler is and how cheating is the only way an idiot like Bush could have won.... but I got the karma to burn tossing a clue by four at yer heads once in awhile.
There really are millions of people who did indeed vote for Bush, twice. The first time the Bush didn't quite have the absolute numbers of popular votes to win, but they did win the electoral college. And yes this is a perfectly 'legitimate' way to win since our system of government is a representive republic instead of some daft direct democracy. In 2004 Bush won both the electoral college, and although not relevant, the popular vote as well. Deal with it and stop chasing black helecopters.
No, Florida was not 'stolen'. Bush was ELECTED, not SELECTED. The press did do their own recount.... and when they were finished announced that by the election laws in effect on election day 2000, Bush won. If enough rules are bent regarding counting misvotes in select counties when the totals are already known, it is possible to get totals that give FL to Gore, but that isn't the way the game is played. So shut the hell up about 2000, if you can't get the Miami Herald on your side you don't really have a case.
As for 2004, only crackpot conspiracy theorists think enough irregularities exist to shift any state from one side to the other. Were there some suspicious events? Yup, just like in every other election. Enough to tip the result? Nope.
If you ask me it sounds like projection anyway because the only cases of election fraud in the 20th century were all cases of Democratic machines stealing elections for their side. Kennedy's win over Tricky Dick is nwo widely thought to be due to the dead in Chicago voting early and often. I'm in Louisiana and I can't count the frauds committed, all by Democrats, most recently when the dead in New Orleans put Sen Landrieu into office. Personally I, and probably most Republicans, just assume at least 1% of any national election and 5% here in Louisiana will be Democratic machine generated phantom votes and we get on with winning anyway.
Try coming up with reasons for people to vote for you and ya might be able to win some elections fair and square, with enough margin you won't have to worry about irregularities.
> Seriously, how many of the folks here running LINUX have spent a $200 bucks on a software package?
Me personally or my workplace. Personally the biggest ticket purchase has been $100 for a copy of VMWare 1.0 obtained at a special price at a trade show when it first appeared. Lots of smaller purchases though, especially when Loki was still alive and kicking.
Here at work though we will write a check if it is the only way to get the job done. Hell, we got in as a beta site on our library automation and still spent an unholy amount of money. (Not sure if I can disclose the amount, being that it was a special dealas part of being a beta site. Don't have the paperwork to hand at the moment, but lets just say that it was a fair number of kilobux.) And for the first few years after converting our patron lab we offered Win95 via VMWare. Yes we got Edu pricing but two dozen licenses weren't exactly pocket change. Nowadays we cover the IE compatibility problem with CrossOver Office. Ok, perhaps I could have got Wine to do it but time had run out on me.
But yes, if a Free product is available for a purpose I'll tend to prefer it over a commercial product, even when the commercial product is 'better.' Because the commercial product probably won't be around in five years and unless it writes to a standard format it will take all my data with it. A commercial product will also frequently require tossing additional cash at to get bug fixes. Combined with most Linux ports of commercial products being red headed stepchildren it just doesn't make sense to buy the stuff if a choice is available.
So yes commercial vendors, you can get money from me but you have to either have me over a barrel or actually show me real longterm VALUE. I think in terms of next decade not next month unless I'm just buying a game for home use.
> Although it sounds good, do people hate microsoft so much (thanks to windows) that it will not be > a success compared to the more-respected apple?
I'm still waiting for a portable player that meets my, admittedly demandinging, feature checklist. Doesn't look like Zune is in the running.
1. Must be able to run Rockbox. No vendor, especially Microsoft, is going to release a perfected firmware first try or even tenth try, and will move on to the next product long before the bugs are squashed and certainly before I am ready to buy a new unit. At least with something like Rockbox I could fix a really annoying bug myself if all else failed.
2. Must be able to support a wide range of codecs I am interested in and am able to rip to. MP3 is of course a given, but FLAC is important to me, especially on a HDD based player. OGG would be nice, but wouldn't be a deal breaker. I understand why many don't do it, nobody is doing it in a DSP yet so software only playback eats CPU and battery. AAC and WMA can exist, although I won't be using either of them. Video on a 2-3 inch screen is of zero interest for me, but if it doesn't bloat the physical size or kill battery life I'm neutral on it.
3. Must have a user replacable battery. Period, full stop.
> The dude may be too square to realize that you don't generally get rowdy and smash stuff when you toke up, > but that doesn't make him a troll.
Oh dude, like you totally need to watch Reefer Madness. Then you would know lighting up a joint will cause you to become totally out of control, perhaps even a violent killing machine or something.
Seriously though, I knew I was going to -1 Troll or -1 Flamebait if I expressed the general idea so why not have some fun with a troll post. Once you hit the cap what other use does Karma have other than burning some to piss off some overly sensitive 'progressives.'
Figured this story would quickly turn into a "Daily Hate" and I had a shot at getting one of the first posts in. Couldn't resist stirring the pot a bit. The GNAA don't know squat about how to troll.:)
> Or maybe it should be used on "real American patriots": Ask not, what your country can do to you; > ask what you can do for your country:7
Yea, volunteers could probably be found, but my idea is more fun.:)
And just the threat might be enough to make a few of em think twice before they go on a rampage again. Or heck, any potential rioters might think twice if they though they might get used as test subjects for a scary sounding weapon system. No pity from me for em, police outta be using real bullets anyway on rioters... burn yer own fscking down down because ya WIN a stupid ball game or don't like a jury verdict? About as stupid as the asshats that smash things because they don't like free trade.
Ok, ok, I'm medieval and totally un politically correct. So sue me.
Hey, I think the military has a point. If we ain't willing to use it here somebody doesn't really believe it is all that safe and 'non-lethal'.
Besides, this will give hippies a chance to do their part in the GWOT! Just stage another mass protest and do what comes natural.... toke up, get rowdy and start smashing stuff. If the bright boys have done their stuff right nobody gets permanently damaged and we have a new shiny toy to use against the barbarian hordes. If they screwed up the hippies can unleash the lawyers.
Of course if they get wind they will already be inventing the strange symptoms they will claim to suffer and even have a cute name for the syndrome.... which can only be cured with a huge cash settlement.
> It seems your main judge of a movie's success is how consistent it is with the original novel.
Yes. Otherwise what is the point of buying the rights to a book? If a filmmaker wants to tell his own story.... why not save the money and write their own?
> Most people would hate the novel Tarzan - the idea is too goofy to take seriously, plus the Hardy Boys-level prose is laughable.
Riight. Which is why it earned the author a crapload of money over run of twenty four books and made Hollywood toss cash to him and his estate for decades to buy the rights to such a famous 'brand.' Dude, there is a big audience for 'pulp fiction', which is what all of ERB's stuff was and frankly his stuff was written to just about the exact same semi-educated audience most of Hollywood's output targets.
> Most people would hate the novel "Starship Troopers," and consider the fascism off-putting. At least I did, but I thought the movie was > goofy fun. There are inevitably going to be changes between cult/niche novels and the mainstream movies they inspire.
Pull the other one. If you can find a Sci-Fi author with more heft than RAH, name him. And Starship Troopers was and is in just about every RAH fan's top three list. That is about as mainstream as it gets. Calling RAH 'niche' only indicates your lack of knowledge of 20th Century literature. That is about as ignorant as saying "who?" at the mention of J.K. Rowling's name. Saying you didn't personally like Starship Troopers is one thing, everybody is entitled to an opinion. Even saying you don't like RAH's stuff in general is ok, heck I don't like several popular authors, tastes differ. Dismissing as 'cult' one of the major products of one of the genre's guiding lights simply because you didn't like it only reflects badly upon your worthiness to debate in adult company.
Can't see any downside to them making such a pledge, so lets all be sure to be unreserved in our praise. Who knows, maybe we can encourage more of the same sort of behaviour. And not only just from Microsoft, lots of patents out there held by lots of companies, many of them potential mortal threat.
Yea Microsoft!
See, my tongue didn't burst into flames or anything.:)
> You like the 1st thing you experience, and nothing else can live up to it.
Not at all the reason. The problem is Hollywood is broken. Only talentless hacks can stand working within the studio system so almost everything that crawls out of Hollywood sucks. That and the tendency for screenwriters (ones adapting a novel to the screen, as opposed to people who write original screenplays) to confuse themselves with authors, and producers/directors who feel qualified to impose their 'artistic vision' on an author's work. Guys, if you really had the talent you could write your own material instead of blowing a wad of money optioning the rights to a successful story.
Yes, film, TV and novels are different mediums and some things must bend to fit. Lord of the Rings would have required a miniseries of massive proportions to film faithful to the books and would probably have been BORING. But the movies did a wonderful job of remaining faithful to the ideas and feel of the original material even when they made massive cuts and alterations.
David Lynch made such a turd from Dune the original author had to go on CNN on opening day and disown it, saying "I wrote a book about a man who thought himself a God. They made a movie about a man who becomes a God." It took Sci-Fi Channel, working with virtually unknown people in Europe (read as outside the Hollywood system) to produce a version worthy of the name. Yes it also had to drop a bunch of material on the floor and change stuff to stitch the story back together but what remained was recognizable as Dune.
Then you get horrors like Starship Troopers, where Hollywood allows a man who states, in the promotional documentary for the movie no less, that he took on the project to make a mockery of the novel and so poison the ground that no serious attempt would ever be made to film it. And they expected the fans to flock into theaters for that?
Or how about the most abused novel of all time, Tarzan of the Apes. How many times has that one been screwed up by Hollywood? And each attempt screws it up in totally different ways yet none even bother to even get the basic storyline even half correct. It looks like all they pay for is the name because they promptly go off and write a totally new story about a guy raised by apes. Has even one at least got the language thing right? In the book when Tarzan reaches civilization he speaks fluent French and can read and write Engish. Yet how many versions have him show up as a illiterate naked savage? The whole core concept of Tarzan is that he understands our ways perfectly well... and rejects them as debased and wicked, opting instead for a simpler existence as a 'noble savage'. A load of fetid dingos kidneys if you ask me, but if I were doing a novel of the book I would respect the original authors intent. No, the only explanation is Hollywood doesn't care. They think that it is only the brand name that sells.
> Game movies suck because of the incompetent hacks charged with writing and directing them. If novels, which > can have far more content than any game in existance, can be adapted into a good movie there's no reason > the same can't be done with games.
And most movies made from novels suck donkey nads too. Same problem that you nailed in that first sentence. Hollywood is infested with incompetent hacks, period. Nuke the site from orbit, its the only way to be sure.
90% of the time when a novel is made into a movie the people who loved the novel hate the movie and depending on just how rabid they are as fans want to do horrible things to the screenwriter responsible. However since Hollywood knows less than 1% of the teen demographic that drives ticket sales will have read the book they don't have to care. Notice that in the one case (Harry Potter) where most of the audience HAS read the books they are going to great lengths to make sure the readers are happy with the films.
They don't seem to have realized that with video games and comic books, that the two audiences do overlap quite a bit, and the talentless hacks doing screenplays that butcher the basic ideas from the original source material will cause fans to stay away in droves.
The problem is there doesn't appear to be very many people who can work in the Hollywood system that has much talent. Hollywood as we have known it is doomed, be interesting to see what replaces it. I'd guess micro studios. As digital film and effects drive production costs down we will see more great stuff done million dollar or less budgets that won't need Hollywood and the whole dream factory apparetus.
> But remember, without Pearl Harbor, we would not have had Team America World Police.
True enough.... Not sure whether that would be a good or a bad thing. Loved the point being made, but just like South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut, when Matt & Trey are turned loose with an R rating they go a little overboard. I know I could have done with the puke scene being about a minute shorter. And I'm really glad they cut the puppet sex out and have had zero urge to go in search of the unedited DVD.
A lot of A list movies currently ship on two DVDs, one with the movie and a second with bonus features. The bonus disc is often a single layer. I'll leave completing the thought as an exercise for the student.
> So, where is the market? Videophiles who have purchased HD-DVD players don't care about the DVD part.
I already posted a longer piece a bit up from here, but just had another thought. I know who will buy it.
TV shows on DVD. Put the same dual layer DVD with four episodes along with an HiDef (BD or HD-DVD) layer. One layer is more than enough for the same four episodes of a TV show using a modern codec. It IS just TV after all, even new shows shot on HiDef or on film will be just fine. TV shows ain't CinemaScope spectacles with lots of action scenes that chew through bits.
This lets you buy with confidence NOW and even once you make the HD jump you still like it because your laptop might not be HD yet and the DVD rig in your SUV almost certainly isn't going to be for a few years.
Slashdot Mirror
> Are you sure you are entering the dual core architecture Xeons? Are you sure you are adding the second
> Xeon dual core chip, because funny enough, but I get this:
My bad, you called my booboo exactly. Add in the second Xeon and I get $5,924 for the Dell. Still a Dell win. Mind you I wouldn't be caught dead buying a Dell, but then I probably wouldn't buy an Apple either. I'd probably either roll my own or go with a GOOD smaller white box vendor that can put good stuff into a box, not the 'special' OEM squeezings Dell shits into their boxes. Any PC company that can't even put in a standard f**king ATX power supply isn't getting my business, just for starters.
I just went and speced out a hefty Mac and a Dell. Had to go with the super duper video since it was the only model both offered.
Dual 3.0Ghz Xeon
4GB Memory (4x 1GB sticks on both, ECC on both)
4X 500GB SATA drives
512MB NVidia Quadro
DVD +/- everything drive
No monitor on either system
Apple: $7,449 firm
Dell: $5,575 before the infamous Dell discounting starts
One year warranty on the Apple, Three years Economy OnSite on the Dell
> You think that a vague desire to destroy the world muwahaha,
Not destroy the world, just Western Civilization. Find an accredited university where 25% of the faculty believe in the ideals of Western Civilization and I'd bet good money you will have found Bob Jones or Liberty University.
Sorry guys, the science related to global warming has been so politicized about all you can do at this point is ask us to take it on your word, and that ain't worth spit anymore. On every other major issue of the latter 20th century the same names associated with global warming have been on the wrong side, starting with that arrogant prick who couldn't even convince his home state to vote for him: Al Gore. But not just the politicians, the scientists as well. Scientists as a group have a long record of being on the wrong side of history, enviromentalists were among the worst of the bunch when it came to aiding and abeting the Soviets.
And I'm old enough to remember that back in the 1970's it was the Impending Ice Age that was going to kill us all, yet the proposed solution of eliminating industrial civilization (but only in the West, the 'developing world' had to be left alone) was the only way to save the world! When the science supporting an Ice Age evaporated we instantly went to Global Warming and amazingly both the cause (the wretched excesses of Western Civilization) and the solution were the same.
> Surely, the best answer to such behavior is for those who don't want more draconian government intervention
> to propose better solutions, rather than simply shouting "commie" and running away.
Nope. Because it wouldn't work. The left wingnuts running the tightly knit but apparently seperate environmental movements simply won't accept any solution that doesn't solve their actual problem, namely the existence of Western Civilization.
Try it for yourself, get into a conversation with an enviro and propose some solution that allows Civilization as we understand it to continue. Perfect example: A hundred good beefy pebblebed reactors would take enough CO2 out of the air to eliminate any net contribution of the USofA to any global rise in CO2 levels. However 90+% of enviros will oppose the idea, yea they will oppose any and all nuke plants on US soil. Now note that to the same rough 90% corrolation, the same bunch of wingnuts who oppose building safe modern reactors here to prevent global warming will support Iran's "right" to persue uranium enrichment, solely on the basis that Chimpy McBushitler is on one side and Iran is on the other. And thus the circle closes and they are revealed as Watermelons.
Go dig into the numbers a bit. I'm not a Mac fanboi (see my abuse of one earlier today) but this is a non-story. The site in question is tracking Mac OS and MacIntel seperate, so of course Mac OS is dropping. Add the two together and you get a different picture. They appear not to have fixed the scripts that generate the cute graphs though, because up to now they broke out each OS variation so they could see the migration patterns in Windows versions.
> Which seems more likely to you? (a) A cabal of college professors, not standing to lose much of anything,
> jeopardize their careers and their scientific credibility by conducting a widespread campaign of
> disinformation to subvert the scientific process and whip the public into a panic.
Try this rewording: (a) A cabal of ivory tower dwelling socialists, knowing themselves to be immune to the consequences of their actions (it is called tenure, look it up) are spreading FUD about Global Warming in yet another attempt to destroy industrial civilization. Being in control of the national science foundation and most other funding sources for science, they ruthlessly quash all disent by simply defining any who disagree with the party line as "not a scientist" thus removing all funding and forcing the poor bastard into private industry where they can be disregarded as a corporate whore.
Glad to clarify that for ya.
> Granted, the "new" equilibrium might be at a higher global-average temp and CO2 level than it was before
> we started burning oil and coal, but as soon as we settle in to whatever level that is, all the Chicken
> Littles out there can calm down about the "instability" of the biosphere.
Nope, wouldn't work. Because it is all a Big Lie, the average "Green" is actually what is known as a Watermelon, Green on the outside for cover but Red on the inside. Note that NO environmental problem has a suggested solution involving using technology to solve it. Sometimes they will advocate the use of tech as a shortterm mitigating factor while they get a treaty together to outlaw (but only in the West, can't deprive the "Developing world") whatever is pissing them off this week, but only as a stopgap. Each and every time their 'solution' involves A) lots more socialist government control and B) scaling back the 'excessive' consumption of Western Civilization. In actuality what they don't like is Western Civilization (i.e. individual liberty, capitialism and representitive governments) itself, the enviro whinging is just the latest thing they had success using to try and guilt trip us into rendering outselves extinct.
> These whiny irritants love imposing their feelings about smoking on business owners and everyone else.
And the same asshats are gearing up to make McD's change their menu to reflect their 'enlightened notions' of what you should be eating. Of course these same dipshits are also trying to decide what sort of unsafe at any speed piece of plastic crap car you 'want' to drive in the name of 'global warming' while THEY fly their fucking private jets to (press) conferences to announce what they want to impose on us tomorrow, for our own good of course.
And anyway, Today's Daily Hate thread points to an article in the fscking Guardian.... my what a reliable source that is, why not just link to Daily Kos guys, he is probably a more credible source!
And yes, reasonable people CAN question both A) the existence of Global Warming and B) whether any/all of any Global Warming which might exist is caused by humans. Personally I'm leaning more to the some Global Warming is happening but with the observed increase in solar output (and evidence of warming on Mars) that it is mostly natural. But if it can be shown that it is going to get bad enough we should meddle in Gaia's 'plan' and do something artifical to lower the temp a bit, perhaps a space based solar shade.
> Instead, they'll go to a certain competitor that does "Play for Sure" despite not advertising such?
No, Apple will be noticably quiet on this one, lest anyone notice their own antics. They are doing exactly the same thing.
FairPlay: Only plays stuff purchased from the iTunes store on Apple iPods (and a few rebadged units during their brief foray into rebadging)
PlaysForSure: Only plays content from a hodge podge assortment of third rate websites on a motley assortment of third rate hardware. (Microsoft's PR spin anyway, personally I like the look of some of the PlaysForSure encumbered units, and nobody sez you HAVE to use the DRM ya know.)
Zune DRM: Only plays content purchased from the Microsoft store on Microsoft branded players.
All are building walled gardens, the only twist is Microsoft backstabbing their prior 'partners' in the PlaysForSure consortium, but they ALWAYS betray their partners and those guys should have seen it coming.
> Blame mainstream consumers who are obsessed with whats hot.
Which was exactly my point. People will pay more for a product with an advertisement on it. And while the slashdot crowd will bitch when it happens, Joe average will pay more for a video games that is basically an ad. Look at every movie tie in videogame ever released for proof.
No, you guys aren't cynical enough. They will stuff in ads and raise prices.. and people will pay.
Go to your friendly neighborhood Walmart (or Target, K-Mart, etc) sometime and look around. Especially in the stuff aimed at kids. You almost can't avoid buying co-marketed merchandise. I was commenting on just that last week while in Wallyworld. They still have a few copies of Memory(tm) in the original flavor... but you can see the way the wind blows with the much larger stack of Dora the Explorer and Disney co-branded copies of Memory, selling at $2 more. Yup, people pay more to get the ad for the TV shows. Try to buy a kid a puzzle with a generic picture on it. No can do, all they have is stuff enblazoned with some franchise character or another. Almost half of the toy aisle is stuff co-branded with a TV show or movie. Now go to the clothing dept and find a childrens shirt without a franchise character or an outright product ad on it. If you look you can still find un branded stuff, but that isn't what is selling, just look at the other customers.
The question of advertising in games isn't when is it coming, the only question I have is why hasn't it happened yet? Best guess is because games get played long enough most ads would 'date' the game too much. That and they could get really burned if events hammers em between a game going gold and release. Imagine the PR nightmare if Nike inserts a set of ads with some sports star who gets busted for dope, accused of rape or overdoses yet millions of games are heading to stores too late to recall and repress.
Give em a network connection to update the ads to the current crappy movie being hyped to death or the current ad campaign and watch out.
> They had an election down there, and Edwin Edwards got 50% of the vote!
Heard that one and it is funny. But the truth of the matter is the mechanical voting machines Louisiana used up til very recently were almost never in dispute. They worked and worked well. The cheating happened anyway. Remember, to a great extent it is not who votes that counts, it is who counts the votes that determines who won and who lost. Louisiana, like most other states, has such a large infestestation of career Democrats in all of the positions of the local governments (the ones who operate the voting machines and certify results) that any fraud MUST involve Democrats. Find me a precinct where all of the elections officials are Republicans. I'm sure that such a situation exists somewhere, but I can show you thousands where the opposite is true.
And they have zero moral scrupples about taking advantage of the situation. After all, there is no good and evil, no right or wrong. Only power and those with the will to seize it. Isn't that in the Democratic platform somewhere?
I know you guys have to be tossed your daily ration of red meat nowadays so you can all post about how evil Chimpy McBushHitler is and how cheating is the only way an idiot like Bush could have won.... but I got the karma to burn tossing a clue by four at yer heads once in awhile.
There really are millions of people who did indeed vote for Bush, twice. The first time the Bush didn't quite have the absolute numbers of popular votes to win, but they did win the electoral college. And yes this is a perfectly 'legitimate' way to win since our system of government is a representive republic instead of some daft direct democracy. In 2004 Bush won both the electoral college, and although not relevant, the popular vote as well. Deal with it and stop chasing black helecopters.
No, Florida was not 'stolen'. Bush was ELECTED, not SELECTED. The press did do their own recount.... and when they were finished announced that by the election laws in effect on election day 2000, Bush won. If enough rules are bent regarding counting misvotes in select counties when the totals are already known, it is possible to get totals that give FL to Gore, but that isn't the way the game is played. So shut the hell up about 2000, if you can't get the Miami Herald on your side you don't really have a case.
As for 2004, only crackpot conspiracy theorists think enough irregularities exist to shift any state from one side to the other. Were there some suspicious events? Yup, just like in every other election. Enough to tip the result? Nope.
If you ask me it sounds like projection anyway because the only cases of election fraud in the 20th century were all cases of Democratic machines stealing elections for their side. Kennedy's win over Tricky Dick is nwo widely thought to be due to the dead in Chicago voting early and often. I'm in Louisiana and I can't count the frauds committed, all by Democrats, most recently when the dead in New Orleans put Sen Landrieu into office. Personally I, and probably most Republicans, just assume at least 1% of any national election and 5% here in Louisiana will be Democratic machine generated phantom votes and we get on with winning anyway.
Try coming up with reasons for people to vote for you and ya might be able to win some elections fair and square, with enough margin you won't have to worry about irregularities.
> Seriously, how many of the folks here running LINUX have spent a $200 bucks on a software package?
Me personally or my workplace. Personally the biggest ticket purchase has been $100 for a copy of VMWare 1.0 obtained at a special price at a trade show when it first appeared. Lots of smaller purchases though, especially when Loki was still alive and kicking.
Here at work though we will write a check if it is the only way to get the job done. Hell, we got in as a beta site on our library automation and still spent an unholy amount of money. (Not sure if I can disclose the amount, being that it was a special dealas part of being a beta site. Don't have the paperwork to hand at the moment, but lets just say that it was a fair number of kilobux.) And for the first few years after converting our patron lab we offered Win95 via VMWare. Yes we got Edu pricing but two dozen licenses weren't exactly pocket change. Nowadays we cover the IE compatibility problem with CrossOver Office. Ok, perhaps I could have got Wine to do it but time had run out on me.
But yes, if a Free product is available for a purpose I'll tend to prefer it over a commercial product, even when the commercial product is 'better.' Because the commercial product probably won't be around in five years and unless it writes to a standard format it will take all my data with it. A commercial product will also frequently require tossing additional cash at to get bug fixes. Combined with most Linux ports of commercial products being red headed stepchildren it just doesn't make sense to buy the stuff if a choice is available.
So yes commercial vendors, you can get money from me but you have to either have me over a barrel or actually show me real longterm VALUE. I think in terms of next decade not next month unless I'm just buying a game for home use.
> Although it sounds good, do people hate microsoft so much (thanks to windows) that it will not be
> a success compared to the more-respected apple?
I'm still waiting for a portable player that meets my, admittedly demandinging, feature checklist. Doesn't look like Zune is in the running.
1. Must be able to run Rockbox. No vendor, especially Microsoft, is going to release a perfected firmware first try or even tenth try, and will move on to the next product long before the bugs are squashed and certainly before I am ready to buy a new unit. At least with something like Rockbox I could fix a really annoying bug myself if all else failed.
2. Must be able to support a wide range of codecs I am interested in and am able to rip to. MP3 is of course a given, but FLAC is important to me, especially on a HDD based player. OGG would be nice, but wouldn't be a deal breaker. I understand why many don't do it, nobody is doing it in a DSP yet so software only playback eats CPU and battery. AAC and WMA can exist, although I won't be using either of them. Video on a 2-3 inch screen is of zero interest for me, but if it doesn't bloat the physical size or kill battery life I'm neutral on it.
3. Must have a user replacable battery. Period, full stop.
> The dude may be too square to realize that you don't generally get rowdy and smash stuff when you toke up,
:)
> but that doesn't make him a troll.
Oh dude, like you totally need to watch Reefer Madness. Then you would know lighting up a joint will cause you to become totally out of control, perhaps even a violent killing machine or something.
Seriously though, I knew I was going to -1 Troll or -1 Flamebait if I expressed the general idea so why not have some fun with a troll post. Once you hit the cap what other use does Karma have other than burning some to piss off some overly sensitive 'progressives.'
Figured this story would quickly turn into a "Daily Hate" and I had a shot at getting one of the first posts in. Couldn't resist stirring the pot a bit. The GNAA don't know squat about how to troll.
> Or maybe it should be used on "real American patriots": Ask not, what your country can do to you; :7
:)
> ask what you can do for your country
Yea, volunteers could probably be found, but my idea is more fun.
And just the threat might be enough to make a few of em think twice before they go on a rampage again. Or heck, any potential rioters might think twice if they though they might get used as test subjects for a scary sounding weapon system. No pity from me for em, police outta be using real bullets anyway on rioters... burn yer own fscking down down because ya WIN a stupid ball game or don't like a jury verdict? About as stupid as the asshats that smash things because they don't like free trade.
Ok, ok, I'm medieval and totally un politically correct. So sue me.
Hey, I think the military has a point. If we ain't willing to use it here somebody doesn't really believe it is all that safe and 'non-lethal'.
Besides, this will give hippies a chance to do their part in the GWOT! Just stage another mass protest and do what comes natural.... toke up, get rowdy and start smashing stuff. If the bright boys have done their stuff right nobody gets permanently damaged and we have a new shiny toy to use against the barbarian hordes. If they screwed up the hippies can unleash the lawyers.
Of course if they get wind they will already be inventing the strange symptoms they will claim to suffer and even have a cute name for the syndrome.... which can only be cured with a huge cash settlement.
> It seems your main judge of a movie's success is how consistent it is with the original novel.
Yes. Otherwise what is the point of buying the rights to a book? If a filmmaker wants to tell his own story.... why not save the money and write their own?
> Most people would hate the novel Tarzan - the idea is too goofy to take seriously, plus the Hardy Boys-level prose is laughable.
Riight. Which is why it earned the author a crapload of money over run of twenty four books and made Hollywood toss cash to him and his estate for decades to buy the rights to such a famous 'brand.' Dude, there is a big audience for 'pulp fiction', which is what all of ERB's stuff was and frankly his stuff was written to just about the exact same semi-educated audience most of Hollywood's output targets.
> Most people would hate the novel "Starship Troopers," and consider the fascism off-putting. At least I did, but I thought the movie was
> goofy fun. There are inevitably going to be changes between cult/niche novels and the mainstream movies they inspire.
Pull the other one. If you can find a Sci-Fi author with more heft than RAH, name him. And Starship Troopers was and is in just about every RAH fan's top three list. That is about as mainstream as it gets. Calling RAH 'niche' only indicates your lack of knowledge of 20th Century literature. That is about as ignorant as saying "who?" at the mention of J.K. Rowling's name. Saying you didn't personally like Starship Troopers is one thing, everybody is entitled to an opinion. Even saying you don't like RAH's stuff in general is ok, heck I don't like several popular authors, tastes differ. Dismissing as 'cult' one of the major products of one of the genre's guiding lights simply because you didn't like it only reflects badly upon your worthiness to debate in adult company.
Can't see any downside to them making such a pledge, so lets all be sure to be unreserved in our praise. Who knows, maybe we can encourage more of the same sort of behaviour. And not only just from Microsoft, lots of patents out there held by lots of companies, many of them potential mortal threat.
:)
Yea Microsoft!
See, my tongue didn't burst into flames or anything.
> You like the 1st thing you experience, and nothing else can live up to it.
Not at all the reason. The problem is Hollywood is broken. Only talentless hacks can stand working within the studio system so almost everything that crawls out of Hollywood sucks. That and the tendency for screenwriters (ones adapting a novel to the screen, as opposed to people who write original screenplays) to confuse themselves with authors, and producers/directors who feel qualified to impose their 'artistic vision' on an author's work. Guys, if you really had the talent you could write your own material instead of blowing a wad of money optioning the rights to a successful story.
Yes, film, TV and novels are different mediums and some things must bend to fit. Lord of the Rings would have required a miniseries of massive proportions to film faithful to the books and would probably have been BORING. But the movies did a wonderful job of remaining faithful to the ideas and feel of the original material even when they made massive cuts and alterations.
David Lynch made such a turd from Dune the original author had to go on CNN on opening day and disown it, saying "I wrote a book about a man who thought himself a God. They made a movie about a man who becomes a God." It took Sci-Fi Channel, working with virtually unknown people in Europe (read as outside the Hollywood system) to produce a version worthy of the name. Yes it also had to drop a bunch of material on the floor and change stuff to stitch the story back together but what remained was recognizable as Dune.
Then you get horrors like Starship Troopers, where Hollywood allows a man who states, in the promotional documentary for the movie no less, that he took on the project to make a mockery of the novel and so poison the ground that no serious attempt would ever be made to film it. And they expected the fans to flock into theaters for that?
Or how about the most abused novel of all time, Tarzan of the Apes. How many times has that one been screwed up by Hollywood? And each attempt screws it up in totally different ways yet none even bother to even get the basic storyline even half correct. It looks like all they pay for is the name because they promptly go off and write a totally new story about a guy raised by apes. Has even one at least got the language thing right? In the book when Tarzan reaches civilization he speaks fluent French and can read and write Engish. Yet how many versions have him show up as a illiterate naked savage? The whole core concept of Tarzan is that he understands our ways perfectly well... and rejects them as debased and wicked, opting instead for a simpler existence as a 'noble savage'. A load of fetid dingos kidneys if you ask me, but if I were doing a novel of the book I would respect the original authors intent. No, the only explanation is Hollywood doesn't care. They think that it is only the brand name that sells.
> Game movies suck because of the incompetent hacks charged with writing and directing them. If novels, which
> can have far more content than any game in existance, can be adapted into a good movie there's no reason
> the same can't be done with games.
And most movies made from novels suck donkey nads too. Same problem that you nailed in that first sentence. Hollywood is infested with incompetent hacks, period. Nuke the site from orbit, its the only way to be sure.
90% of the time when a novel is made into a movie the people who loved the novel hate the movie and depending on just how rabid they are as fans want to do horrible things to the screenwriter responsible. However since Hollywood knows less than 1% of the teen demographic that drives ticket sales will have read the book they don't have to care. Notice that in the one case (Harry Potter) where most of the audience HAS read the books they are going to great lengths to make sure the readers are happy with the films.
They don't seem to have realized that with video games and comic books, that the two audiences do overlap quite a bit, and the talentless hacks doing screenplays that butcher the basic ideas from the original source material will cause fans to stay away in droves.
The problem is there doesn't appear to be very many people who can work in the Hollywood system that has much talent. Hollywood as we have known it is doomed, be interesting to see what replaces it. I'd guess micro studios. As digital film and effects drive production costs down we will see more great stuff done million dollar or less budgets that won't need Hollywood and the whole dream factory apparetus.
> But remember, without Pearl Harbor, we would not have had Team America World Police.
True enough.... Not sure whether that would be a good or a bad thing. Loved the point being made, but just like South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut, when Matt & Trey are turned loose with an R rating they go a little overboard. I know I could have done with the puke scene being about a minute shorter. And I'm really glad they cut the puppet sex out and have had zero urge to go in search of the unedited DVD.
> It's not really that great of a solution.
Think.
A lot of A list movies currently ship on two DVDs, one with the movie and a second with bonus features. The bonus disc is often a single layer. I'll leave completing the thought as an exercise for the student.
> So, where is the market? Videophiles who have purchased HD-DVD players don't care about the DVD part.
I already posted a longer piece a bit up from here, but just had another thought. I know who will buy it.
TV shows on DVD. Put the same dual layer DVD with four episodes along with an HiDef (BD or HD-DVD) layer. One layer is more than enough for the same four episodes of a TV show using a modern codec. It IS just TV after all, even new shows shot on HiDef or on film will be just fine. TV shows ain't CinemaScope spectacles with lots of action scenes that chew through bits.
This lets you buy with confidence NOW and even once you make the HD jump you still like it because your laptop might not be HD yet and the DVD rig in your SUV almost certainly isn't going to be for a few years.