Exactly. Best thing I got from my years at school was the dicipline to make myself sit down and produce something, even if I would rather have screwed off.
I look at the difference it made. Before school I had a few different jobs, nothing very serious or demanding. But I look back at how completely hopeless I was at organizing my time and being productive during the hours I was being paid to work.
School was like boot camp to teach my lazy ass how to get it together. I did learn a lot about how to code, no doubt, but frankly could have learned some of it on my own. The real difference is the time management skills and work-ethic that I had to adopt to survive 4 1/2 years of demanding profs.
Well exactly. They reserve the right to not sell anything they want to anyone they choose at anytime for any reason they want. This is PR, pure and simple. Sounds really good in an election year when everybody has been crying 'protect the children, they are our future' at the national conventions.
Is this really going to stop kids from getting games behind their parent's backs that the p's wouldn't otherwise let the kid's have? No. Is it going to stop kids whose p's don't care what their kids buy. Don't think so. What does this do? Makes the Rosie O'Donnel-watching K-mart shopping soccer mom set feel good that big companies are going to do their parenting for them. Will it work? Did anything they tried to do to protect you from yourself make any difference when you were groing up? Me neither.
If this were _law_ that was being applied unilateraly to all retailers to enforce what is (I think) a voluntary industry content rating system, then I'd be yelling.
Aren't there plenty of other places to buy video games? I guess if you live in a smaller town that only had a Wal-Mart, that could be a problem.
This seems to come right on the heels of the Democrat's schpeil at the convention about parents having the right to have control over what sex/violence their children are exposed to in their own home. PR for K-mart and Wal-mart to say 'see, we support family values too. Come shop with us'. So what?
Any determined 16-yr-old is going to be able to get his hands on DOOM 2000, regardless of its content rating or controlled distribution at a couple of major retail outlets.
They've coined a new term for giving away stock options to pirates in the hopes that they will stop. Stop Options.;-)
This is BS. So these so-called 'pirates' have been granted some options in exchange for their agreement to stop distributing ISO's and to not divulge to anyone else how to do it (I would guess). Think how unlikely that is from several angles.
If that did somehow happen, I imagine the 'pirates' would have had to sign something. Something that says 'I'm taking these 1000 options in Sega at an exercise price of $$ in exchange for the promise to stop distributing unauthorized copies of Dreamcast software and to not divulge to anyone how to create these unauthorized copies. And, by the way, I won't tell anyone about this deal or I will lose the options and face prosecution.'
Can't even find what the Sega Enterprises stock ticker symbol is or what it is currently trading for. Only thing that omes close is sega.com Asia Ltd which trades on the Hong Kong exchange as 1196.HK -- is Sega's stock even publicly traded in the US?
And why would Sega not prosecute? They presumably have the real identies of these persons, you don't just leave stock options under a rock in the park at midnight.
Selling/giving stock or options is not always the same as issueing new stock. Companies keep a larder of their own stock for a lot of reasons (executive compensation, employeee options) plus it is very popular to 'buyback' your own stock when the price needs a little boost. Handing out 10,000 shares to a Sr. VP doesn't dilute the stock (create new issues without raising the capitlaization) and neither does giving 1000 options to a bunch of pirates.
Now, whether a sane company would even consider offering options in exchange for stopping pirating or if this ever happened...
or your current video card? Your video card has 160,000 Ko?
My first computer was a TRS-80 with 4K. I wouldn't use that in this comparison, though. I would go as far back as the 386 with 4Mb that was my first real PC after graduating college. I thought it was pretty ridiculous to buy a Voodoo2 a couple years back with 16Mb, but here I got a Matrox G400 this year with 32Mb. The damn video card has 8x the memory of my first system. Think the mach-8 on that system had a total of 256K of memory.
Reminds me of McDonalds in Paris. The price of a Happy Meal varies depending on where you intend to eat; inside the restaruant, out on the sidewalk or just carry out.
Although I also expect to see more of this (movie rentals, PPV, etc.) I also agree that you don't have to put up with it and can go somewhere else (for now).
But this has indeed become standard practice on arilines and in hotels. The consumer gets to shop for the lowest price he can pay given the concessions he is willing to make (2 week advance purchase-non refundable, etc.) Don't see any real issue with other products and services going this way, as long as the prices are not fixed (as they seem to be on airlines - last time I went out on business, all the major carrier's flights were all within about $10.
Well, I thought I heard that while making the original movie Lucas did try something along these lines and it wasn't workable. Dunno if it would even make sense to do something like that at this point given the crap that flew into the fan about not using Kenny Baker in favor of CG R2. Seems like having Baker and Daniels still in the series is about the only thing Lucas has left to keep fans older than 11 happy.
>Was the exhibit pretty cool, as in informative about the film making process etc. or just a bunch of props
It was just a bunch of props.
The exhibit isn't about how the film was made at all. It is about how Star Wars uses all these classic plot elements. There is a series of stations that explain all the parallels. To be honest, it was a little disjointed with all the displays and I didn't really get how this had anything to do with NASM. Just a lure to get people to bring their kids to the Museum, I guess.
Yeah, the Field Museum is the same one where the T-Rex is on exhibit. That's right on the Lake where the Planetaruim, Aquarium and the airfield are, right off Roosevelt Rd, IINM.
I think the exibit is still going to be there through September before it moves on, but you might want to check before you make the trip.
There is one currently sitting in the Chicago Field Museum 'special exhibit' section where the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum is touring their Star Wars magic of myth exhibit. I was there last week, AAMOF.
Don't know if it is a mock-up though. Lots of cool stuff like the star destroyer and x-wing are purported to be original production effects models, but some of the other stuff was mocked-up (Like the Darth Vader costume IIRC)
>It's the details like the way Artoo and Threepio moved... perfect comedy of motion, even if accidental
You've hit the nail on the head there, I think. I agree with you that the way 3po and r2 moved was part of the charm of the original series. I certainly don't give Lucas any credit for doing that intentionally though. I'm sure he would have preferred smooth-seamless motion if he could have achieved it. Now that he can, he doesn't recognize the potential loss that may result.
It will be odd as hell if R2 changes at all since this movie sits between TPM and ANH and R2 was pretty much unchanged between them. Lucas had better pull this off, or he will look dumb as hell (more than he does already, anyway).
Wonder what his motivation for this move is? Can't be economics, maybe R2 has to pull some stuff off that just won't work with Kenny operating a real prop. Wondered about that scene where R2 was scurrying outside the Naboo Cruiser if that was partially CG. Never saw R2 move that nimbly in any of the other movies.
Makes me pretty sure that they simply do not understand the meaning of the term "open source".
Trying to pin a label on a segment of the populace that think everything on the internet should be had for free must be really hard for these lawyers without clue-one.
"What are we going to say, 'Hackers'? No, that doesn't sound right."
"Oh, I know... what is that group that thinks everything should be free, even Microsoft Windows? Oh yeah, 'Open Source'. Use that."
"Good thinking. See, this is why we make the *big* bucks!"
Guess it's too much trouble to actually read the page, eh?
For one thing, you can limit the search to just your own content. You can also customize the results page (put your own banners up, etc). Granted, not everyone needs/wants that, but apparenty some do.
The answer can be found here where they take money in exchange for letting you use google on your own site through their partner programs. For $1,999 you can have 4 million hits a year and they customize it somewhat. There is an example given of a site like this at latino.com
We've looked into licensing google at our company for intra-net searches. I would imagine other companies who have large document repositories would also be interested in an efficient search engine that can be had for a fraction of the cost of something like Inktomi.
I skimmed over the article, didn't see any mention that they were about to start selling banners. It said they are making a change to actively solicit advertisers, where before they let companies come to them. Did I miss the part where they were actually going to change from text ads to banners?
"``If we wanted to sell ad banners, we could call DoubleClick and be profitable today,'' said Brin, referring to the dominant online advertising placement company. ``But we can be more successful in the long run if we grow our user base. I've been happy with our progress.'' "
Sounds like they are on the right track. They are building up the base of people who use their search, apparently getting most of their revenue from their partner program and from licensing.
Yahoo will undoubtedly continue to shag everyone with banners on their site, even though they start using google the search engine. The type (text vs graphic) of ads on google the search website is not changing apparently, only Google's stance of letting advertisers come to them vs actively pursuing them. Sounds like status quo from the end-user standpoint.
Frankly, I don't care as long as it still loads as quickly. When I start to see gif files that take long to load coming from some banner farm, then I'll be worried.
Interesting contradiction, my friend. If you care nothing at all for karma yourself, why post this anonymously? I don't expect that you will even see this, but I think I'll reply anyway.
>Do you people trade it for drugs or something?
If only it were that useful. No, I don't go out of my way to post comments to garner karma. My post history should make that obvious. No, karma is only any good to someone who uses it to keep score for their own ego. I post comments here to enjoy discussion. Look at well-known whores and you'll see a pattern of starting threads soon after a story is posted with a long diatribe that a moderator is likely to mod up if it has enough pro-linux opinions, especially if it is too long-winded to be readable or even make sense.
I don't have that kind of time. Look at my past posts and every one of them is in response to another post where I am trying to add to the discussion.
>Why would one care if they were bitchslapped?
I cared about being bitchslapped because it squelched my voice. All my previous posts were set at -1, and my default for new posts was also -1. If you actually read my page, you might have noticed a couple of things.
I didn't complain about not getting back the karma, all that really bothered me was having my posts all go to -1. That implies that I am a troll. I am not. I asked Taco about that he got it fixed.
I didn't accuse signal ll of being a karma whore. I didn't moderate his posts out of some vengeance because I thought he was whorish. I still feel that I moderated him in good faith. Rob thinks otherwise, but he gave me the benefit of the doubt and removed the -1 default post score. My karma was left at -10.
If you think me a karma whore, fine. Your reason for calling me one, though -- "since you went to all the trouble to restore your karma" -- shows that you didn't really read my page either. The only reason I went out of my way to mail Rob about this was because I felt it was wrong to set all my posts at -1 for alleged moderation abuse. I never got my karma back and I'm fine with that. I switched to a new account at the time because I figured the old one was just screwed.
Since I created this new account, you are the first to call me a KW. Interesting that you did it anonymously.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Best thing I got from my years at school was the dicipline to make myself sit down and produce something, even if I would rather have screwed off.
I look at the difference it made. Before school I had a few different jobs, nothing very serious or demanding. But I look back at how completely hopeless I was at organizing my time and being productive during the hours I was being paid to work.
School was like boot camp to teach my lazy ass how to get it together. I did learn a lot about how to code, no doubt, but frankly could have learned some of it on my own. The real difference is the time management skills and work-ethic that I had to adopt to survive 4 1/2 years of demanding profs.
Well exactly. They reserve the right to not sell anything they want to anyone they choose at anytime for any reason they want. This is PR, pure and simple. Sounds really good in an election year when everybody has been crying 'protect the children, they are our future' at the national conventions.
Is this really going to stop kids from getting games behind their parent's backs that the p's wouldn't otherwise let the kid's have? No. Is it going to stop kids whose p's don't care what their kids buy. Don't think so. What does this do? Makes the Rosie O'Donnel-watching K-mart shopping soccer mom set feel good that big companies are going to do their parenting for them. Will it work? Did anything they tried to do to protect you from yourself make any difference when you were groing up? Me neither.
Unless you live in hickville, Tennessee and K-mart is the only store in walking-distance that carries video games.
If this were _law_ that was being applied unilateraly to all retailers to enforce what is (I think) a voluntary industry content rating system, then I'd be yelling.
Aren't there plenty of other places to buy video games? I guess if you live in a smaller town that only had a Wal-Mart, that could be a problem.
This seems to come right on the heels of the Democrat's schpeil at the convention about parents having the right to have control over what sex/violence their children are exposed to in their own home. PR for K-mart and Wal-mart to say 'see, we support family values too. Come shop with us'. So what?
Any determined 16-yr-old is going to be able to get his hands on DOOM 2000, regardless of its content rating or controlled distribution at a couple of major retail outlets.
Flame away.
They've coined a new term for giving away stock options to pirates in the hopes that they will stop. Stop Options. ;-)
This is BS. So these so-called 'pirates' have been granted some options in exchange for their agreement to stop distributing ISO's and to not divulge to anyone else how to do it (I would guess). Think how unlikely that is from several angles.
If that did somehow happen, I imagine the 'pirates' would have had to sign something. Something that says 'I'm taking these 1000 options in Sega at an exercise price of $$ in exchange for the promise to stop distributing unauthorized copies of Dreamcast software and to not divulge to anyone how to create these unauthorized copies. And, by the way, I won't tell anyone about this deal or I will lose the options and face prosecution.'
Can't even find what the Sega Enterprises stock ticker symbol is or what it is currently trading for. Only thing that omes close is sega.com Asia Ltd which trades on the Hong Kong exchange as 1196.HK -- is Sega's stock even publicly traded in the US?
And why would Sega not prosecute? They presumably have the real identies of these persons, you don't just leave stock options under a rock in the park at midnight.
Whole thing is very fishy.
>Issuing stock
Selling/giving stock or options is not always the same as issueing new stock. Companies keep a larder of their own stock for a lot of reasons (executive compensation, employeee options) plus it is very popular to 'buyback' your own stock when the price needs a little boost. Handing out 10,000 shares to a Sr. VP doesn't dilute the stock (create new issues without raising the capitlaization) and neither does giving 1000 options to a bunch of pirates.
Now, whether a sane company would even consider offering options in exchange for stopping pirating or if this ever happened...
>My current computer
or your current video card? Your video card has 160,000 Ko?
My first computer was a TRS-80 with 4K. I wouldn't use that in this comparison, though. I would go as far back as the 386 with 4Mb that was my first real PC after graduating college. I thought it was pretty ridiculous to buy a Voodoo2 a couple years back with 16Mb, but here I got a Matrox G400 this year with 32Mb. The damn video card has 8x the memory of my first system. Think the mach-8 on that system had a total of 256K of memory.
Reminds me of McDonalds in Paris. The price of a Happy Meal varies depending on where you intend to eat; inside the restaruant, out on the sidewalk or just carry out.
Although I also expect to see more of this (movie rentals, PPV, etc.) I also agree that you don't have to put up with it and can go somewhere else (for now).
But this has indeed become standard practice on arilines and in hotels. The consumer gets to shop for the lowest price he can pay given the concessions he is willing to make (2 week advance purchase-non refundable, etc.) Don't see any real issue with other products and services going this way, as long as the prices are not fixed (as they seem to be on airlines - last time I went out on business, all the major carrier's flights were all within about $10.
Well, I thought I heard that while making the original movie Lucas did try something along these lines and it wasn't workable. Dunno if it would even make sense to do something like that at this point given the crap that flew into the fan about not using Kenny Baker in favor of CG R2. Seems like having Baker and Daniels still in the series is about the only thing Lucas has left to keep fans older than 11 happy.
>Was the exhibit pretty cool, as in informative about the film making process etc. or just a bunch of props
It was just a bunch of props.
The exhibit isn't about how the film was made at all. It is about how Star Wars uses all these classic plot elements. There is a series of stations that explain all the parallels. To be honest, it was a little disjointed with all the displays and I didn't really get how this had anything to do with NASM. Just a lure to get people to bring their kids to the Museum, I guess.
Yeah, the Field Museum is the same one where the T-Rex is on exhibit. That's right on the Lake where the Planetaruim, Aquarium and the airfield are, right off Roosevelt Rd, IINM.
I think the exibit is still going to be there through September before it moves on, but you might want to check before you make the trip.
(Love that movie, brilliant.)
actually, goes more like
*after monster goes berzerk*
"did you get that brain like I asked you, the brain of Hans [something]?"
"well, no. that one got trodden on."
"ah, I see... so *whose* brain did you get?"
"someone named Abby..."
"Abby?"
"yes, Abby Normal!"
*Gene Wilder now starts throttling Igor while screaming at him*
Don't know if it is a mock-up though. Lots of cool stuff like the star destroyer and x-wing are purported to be original production effects models, but some of the other stuff was mocked-up (Like the Darth Vader costume IIRC)
>It's the details like the way Artoo and Threepio moved... perfect comedy of motion, even if accidental
You've hit the nail on the head there, I think. I agree with you that the way 3po and r2 moved was part of the charm of the original series. I certainly don't give Lucas any credit for doing that intentionally though. I'm sure he would have preferred smooth-seamless motion if he could have achieved it. Now that he can, he doesn't recognize the potential loss that may result.
It will be odd as hell if R2 changes at all since this movie sits between TPM and ANH and R2 was pretty much unchanged between them. Lucas had better pull this off, or he will look dumb as hell (more than he does already, anyway).
Wonder what his motivation for this move is? Can't be economics, maybe R2 has to pull some stuff off that just won't work with Kenny operating a real prop. Wondered about that scene where R2 was scurrying outside the Naboo Cruiser if that was partially CG. Never saw R2 move that nimbly in any of the other movies.
Yeah, I know - I a sick puppy
Makes me pretty sure that they simply do not understand the meaning of the term "open source".
Trying to pin a label on a segment of the populace that think everything on the internet should be had for free must be really hard for these lawyers without clue-one.
"What are we going to say, 'Hackers'? No, that doesn't sound right."
"Oh, I know... what is that group that thinks everything should be free, even Microsoft Windows? Oh yeah, 'Open Source'. Use that."
"Good thinking. See, this is why we make the *big* bucks!"
For one thing, you can limit the search to just your own content. You can also customize the results page (put your own banners up, etc). Granted, not everyone needs/wants that, but apparenty some do.
The answer can be found here where they take money in exchange for letting you use google on your own site through their partner programs. For $1,999 you can have 4 million hits a year and they customize it somewhat. There is an example given of a site like this at latino.com
We've looked into licensing google at our company for intra-net searches. I would imagine other companies who have large document repositories would also be interested in an efficient search engine that can be had for a fraction of the cost of something like Inktomi.
I skimmed over the article, didn't see any mention that they were about to start selling banners. It said they are making a change to actively solicit advertisers, where before they let companies come to them. Did I miss the part where they were actually going to change from text ads to banners?
"``If we wanted to sell ad banners, we could call DoubleClick and be profitable today,'' said Brin, referring to the dominant online advertising placement company. ``But we can be more successful in the long run if we grow our user base. I've been happy with our progress.'' "
Sounds like they are on the right track. They are building up the base of people who use their search, apparently getting most of their revenue from their partner program and from licensing.
Yahoo will undoubtedly continue to shag everyone with banners on their site, even though they start using google the search engine. The type (text vs graphic) of ads on google the search website is not changing apparently, only Google's stance of letting advertisers come to them vs actively pursuing them. Sounds like status quo from the end-user standpoint.
Frankly, I don't care as long as it still loads as quickly. When I start to see gif files that take long to load coming from some banner farm, then I'll be worried.
c'mon, give us a break, will ya?
>Google results 1-10 of about 65,400,000 for b. Search took 0.04 seconds.
;-)
Hey! My search took *Twice* as long as your's did! Man, Google is slipping.
"Google results 1-10 of about 65,300,000 for b. Search took 0.08 seconds"
>Not when I posted anonymously, I imagine.
;-)
Doubt it since I browse at +1
Point taken. However, I no longer make .sig changes to make AC's happy.
>but you keep talking about the old one. Why?
;-)
.sig
.sig
/. comments.
Who cares? Do you?
No one is talking about it except you.
I put that page up when that happened, and linked it to my
I see nothing wrong with leaving that page out there with a link from my new account's
I have had lots of people mail me about it and make comments good and bad. You are the first to make an issue out of it on
I used to think you were funny.
Interesting contradiction, my friend. If you care nothing at all for karma yourself, why post this anonymously? I don't expect that you will even see this, but I think I'll reply anyway.
>Do you people trade it for drugs or something?
If only it were that useful. No, I don't go out of my way to post comments to garner karma. My post history should make that obvious. No, karma is only any good to someone who uses it to keep score for their own ego. I post comments here to enjoy discussion. Look at well-known whores and you'll see a pattern of starting threads soon after a story is posted with a long diatribe that a moderator is likely to mod up if it has enough pro-linux opinions, especially if it is too long-winded to be readable or even make sense.
I don't have that kind of time. Look at my past posts and every one of them is in response to another post where I am trying to add to the discussion.
>Why would one care if they were bitchslapped?
I cared about being bitchslapped because it squelched my voice. All my previous posts were set at -1, and my default for new posts was also -1. If you actually read my page, you might have noticed a couple of things.
I didn't complain about not getting back the karma, all that really bothered me was having my posts all go to -1. That implies that I am a troll. I am not. I asked Taco about that he got it fixed.
I didn't accuse signal ll of being a karma whore. I didn't moderate his posts out of some vengeance because I thought he was whorish. I still feel that I moderated him in good faith. Rob thinks otherwise, but he gave me the benefit of the doubt and removed the -1 default post score. My karma was left at -10.
If you think me a karma whore, fine. Your reason for calling me one, though -- "since you went to all the trouble to restore your karma" -- shows that you didn't really read my page either. The only reason I went out of my way to mail Rob about this was because I felt it was wrong to set all my posts at -1 for alleged moderation abuse. I never got my karma back and I'm fine with that. I switched to a new account at the time because I figured the old one was just screwed.
Since I created this new account, you are the first to call me a KW. Interesting that you did it anonymously.
fishstick@linuxstart.com