> tell the difference between an upscaled > DVD and a Blu-ray disc
Really? I'm not knocking you, I'm asking seriously? Can you do the following? I like to travel, and when I can I love movies that are in places not in bailiwick, i.e., NYC, east coast, or the USA. So I will check out the _on-location_ scenery in Sweden's GirlWDT/Stig Larson's trilogy---CLOSELY. I'll zoom in 4X, try to read street signs, store names, and Google Maps my ass off!!! I'll check out sat views, Street View images, photos, their plain street maps, their topographical maps, overlaid Wikipedia entries---and prior to Google Maps discontinuing real estate sell/rental ad overlays several years ago, I'd check out how affordable living there was, more atomically, you know---etc. All on my TV and plain non-upscale DVD player. But you know what? 75%+ of those DVDs did not allow me to, were not highly defining the background enough in their scenes that I could not determine street sign names! It typically was/is a blur at best. Oh and God Save the Queen on BBC, Dr Who, Torchwood, etc. productions. Their resolution, frame rate is gad awful that a simple disc pause will readily show smeared scenes.
How can an upscaled DVD improve/greater define data that is not there? Seriously, I am asking, can it?
I would expect Blueray discs to 100% of the time show legibly background street signs, am I wrong? Seriously, I am asking, can it?
> each of the products you cite had competition, until > Microsoft used their monopolistic advantages to squash > that competition.
WP vs MSOffice notwithstanding. WP was a monster, it was stratospherically near `hand me that Puffs kleenex to wipe my nose after I xerox a copy on my cool Fujitsu. Monster: Hulk, arrrrggghhh.
WP, everyone else thought WP was invulnerable; they would charge like USD$800.00 per box copy at computer stores. And that was in 1980s dolares, d00d! They thought that they owned the market, office workers, businesses, corporations, home office peons were their bitches. Bend over! Then MS came in with a novel idea, they charged a vastly LESS usurious price, not economical, just not as much an overt rape. And they packaged all their shiz in a bundle too; WTF, said WP; thus whilst cosmically aware and disabled, MS fucked WP up their ass. Just desserts?
Mean time Bill Joy was coding BSD solo. That was the cosmic monopolists perspective.
> a disable button for this feature for stuff like winter driving.
I doubt it'd be needed. If it can't detect a clear scenario I doubt it'd activate at all. If anyone can name a gravel/snow/sand ABS analog, let's hear it.
> If you're worried about leaving the signal on afterwards
*jijiji* That reminds me of an !old! George Carlin diddy, that I use to this day: ``Hey! That d00d is going left around the world! Alllriiighttt.''
> If you have this solid habit of using your turn signals > every time,
Dood, you are the m-a-n! I say this ^ to my gf (that I have to teach to drive) regularly. My quote is: Those fucking guys don't have to calculate every unperceived permutation variation on blinking, just follow the fucking rules---blink when turning, or changing lanes. No complicated logic analyses required.
In NYC, I have self immolated too. So. Beginning to pull out of a parking space, I did not blink so as to warn, I did not take a second's pause to look carefully for non vehicular traffic, I did not calculate for my nighttime reduced visibility, I did not want to get beat by rushing Myrtle Avenue traffic, I did not cool my heels for an _extra_ second, I am gunning out of my parking spot when I hear a yell, I noticed a blinking white light, I register a blur past my window, I register a chiding maybe insult, I am grateful that the yipster cyclist is OK! I curse mine own stupidity. I blush at disobeying my own law. I am not perfect. Follow the fucking rules, man.
In NYC less than 50% of drivers use their turn signals! It's dangerous, causes traffic jams, pisses me off.
OTOH, say, any automobile engineers here?! Why haven't car manufacturers installed a circuit to _turn on headlights when windshield wipers are activated?_ It's the law in most places, I'd dare, if not BCP. In NYC, again less than 50%, shieeet, I'd say, less than 33% of drivers follow this rule. to their danger.
To disallow unneeded activation whislt
a Washer fluid pump cleaning your windows in traffico (=) b Not mass startling/blinding motorists c Non-automatically (i.e., semi-manually) episodically wiping rain
add circuit logic.
- a: disallow, save for concurrent rain use - b: add circuit randomness - c: add minimum wiping period requirement (i.e., clear intent)
It seems simple to design cars to automatically turn on headlights when it's clear that the wipers are being used for wiping rain for a non trivial period of time. Am I crazy?
Is the proverbial `it'll cost one or two cents times a million cars, that's real money' car maker myth still applicable?
~If you're not voting third party you're throwing your vote away.~
This paraphrase was from a great quote on/. about a decade or so ago. It made me stop, and think. O, and you get what you vote for. W, HW, WJC, all those copyright-mafiaa-bought-elect-me-bllodworth-thomason ilk fuckers.
>> youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone >> [and their Grandma] has the iPhone," he said.
*sigh* Fix it for you. In 2004/5(?) I was mobile phone browsing when the salesman rolled out the: "oooh! You want the Motorola Razor!" I laughed chidingly, and he was perplexed, I said: No way! Everybody and their Grandma has that phone, it's fad had escaped me. What do you have from Hong Kong, Taiwan?
When you're in the midst of a fad it's hard to notice it, unless you are dispassionate. I was too busy with other things to even bother owning a cellphone, that when I was shown/used the !flat! FLAT! keypad I was left with pained nail beds, and thought, "WTF's the fuzz about?! This shiz's gotta be a fad." Within a couple of years I was proven right, the floor dropped off for "Hello Motto."
I am not a "killer" I'm a `fighter.' Why? I don't haz to. -Google Docs/Kindle Fire/Apple/MS/Linux/Red Hat/Android/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Fiat cinquecento/MINI/Mini/etc.
> The students are downloading illegal copies of books.
I've been reading the multitudes of these 'edifying' "5" comments whilst none clarify the repeated point. Are these copies DIY-scans, or crackedz??? We did articles on/. years ago on DIY scanning rigs, attendant free software, fora, etc. When I go back to school this is the route I intend to follow. Resistance, budget, OWS---Umbawa. =)
``Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld, the one-time weekly computer trade newspaper published by IDG.''*
> he's talking about [everything besides] Gmail, Docs, Google+, Maps... [that Google does NOT even know it could have] All those other > products that you could do really neat things with __if they had real APIs__ [aka A Platform]
> Amazon doesn't care where the money goes, nor do they > really care about the rate
I care! Big time. I live in NY, Amazon has offices in NY, therefore it charges me sales tax! I hate it. They have a great selection, great prices, great CS and some fucking offices in NY, therefore I have to pay tax? Fuck. Why could they not build their offices in freaking Hoboken, like good little Indians. Don't give me that 'you cheap bastard' schtick; local government is not entitled to tax everything, everywhere. It's a fucking catalog company---catalog companies do not have to pay local taxes---it's a revenue enhancement grab---live within your fucking means local government---use gasoline taxes for fucking road use, it;s intended purpose---pension payments collected for gasp funding pensions now. etc. IOW, spare me the violins, keep your alecky spoutfuls, or quote me the SCOTUS ruling that transformed Net companies into not catalog companies.
And you probably forgot, if you ever new/heard it/read it/researched it, but, Amazon rolled over for this shiz about ten years ago. 'Fine we'll collect local taxes they began saying,' till customers rose in anger, saying, 'How the fuck will your loss or price advantage entice me to buy from you long distance, sight unseen, etc? I/we'll shop elsewhere if you roll over.'
Behold, Amazon changed their tune rapidly once they saw the tide against them. Apparently they've forgotten---if they aid in this change and/or win I will hate them for a long time to come. But they, that's just me, or is it?
> [If] anything EVER said on here was used for stock > decisions then the moron [...]
was you, babe. Groupon was critiqued here about 8 months ago. The leaders', not the artsy theatrical founder hipsters types, but the 2 guys calling the shots, past were analyzed, and lo and behold their serial-invariant-pump-and-dump behavior over the past _decade_ was exposed.
I heard of Groupon through the NY Times 2 summers ago, at any rate it was then that I stopped and said, WTF is this site about? Honestly, I was underwhelmed. I said WTF? Am I doing this wrong? I enter my location in NYC; WTF, why can't I just enter my fucking Zip Code for deals? And, Manhattan is not NYC, yet all deals are in fucking Manhattan (dood, I'm not from fucking Nebraska or Staten Island, and my name isn't "Sha"(ron), nor am I a goofy chick, The City is not Manhattan).
And those deals are like one or two deals when I checked. 1, TWO---WTF! I was expecting deals left and right for Ferrari sized guys (5'10"), who love sashimi, in Kensington, Brooklyn, who are left handed, with thick hair, who love 356 Porsches, who love natural blondes, hate dye jobs, like big boobs, curvaceously assed women, BMW mechanic fanatic, is a motorcycle rider, a reader, multilingual, internationalist, and on and on. TWO fucking deals!
Groupon is a fad, I thought, then and there, when I researched them two summers ago. But then I thought, what am I missing, maybe it's me! This kind of shiz happens, one does get myopic. "It's gots to be mes."
Then the/. article from ~8 months ago, and I thought hold on. It's not just me, there's something there. Thanks/.! A lot!
Guess what?: That NY Time's article from two summers ago was breathy, alluring, hyperbolic---yes no one's immune, not even the Times. But on 1 Oct 2011 The New York Times tone has changed severely.
* ``the Internet coupon fad is shrinking faster than fat from a weight-loss laser.''
* ``Just a few months ago, daily deal coupons were the new big thing. The biggest deal maker, Groupon, was preparing to go public at a valuation as high as $30 billion, which would have been a record amount for a start-up less than three years old. Hundreds of copycat coupon sites sprung up in Grouponâ(TM)s wake, including DoubleTakeDeals, YourBestDeals, DealFind, DoodleDeals, DealOn, DealSwarm and GoDailyDeals. Deal sites were widely praised as a replacement for local advertising. ''
* ``Now coupon fatigue is setting in. Grouponâ(TM)s public offering has repeatedly been put off amid stock market turmoil and internal missteps; the company says it is back on track, but some analysts say it may never happen. Dozens of copycats are closing, reformulating or merging, including Local Twist in San Diego, RelishNYC and Crowd Cut in Atlanta. Facebook and Yelp, two powerhouse Internet firms that had big plans for deals, quickly backed off. ''
* ``Some entrepreneurs are questioning the entire premise of the industry. Jasper Malcolmson, co-founder of the deal site Bloomspot, compares the basic deal offer with lendersâ(TM) marketing subprime loans during the housing boom. ''
* ``Last December, Google offered $6 billion for Groupon. That was astonishing enough, but then Groupon snubbed the search giant, a declaration that it was really worth much more. Its valuation began to rise by about a billion dollars a week. Deal mania commenced, a boom within the larger Internet boom. If a bunch of part-time artists could do it, so could everyone. All you needed was a desk and a deal to present to the world.
âoeA lot of people saw an opportunity to get rich quickly,â said the Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru. âoeIt was a very 1999 mentality.â ''
* ``Thirty billion dollars suddenly seemed a stretch. âoeTheyâ(TM)re in over their heads,â Ms. Mulpuru said.''
* ``Deal mania commenced, a boom within the larger Internet boom. If a bunch of part-time artists could do it, so could everyone. All you needed was a desk and a deal to present to the world. ''
In you, a healthy skepticism has been transformed into a corrosive cynicism. Get it together.
Wao! I stopped moderating 6+ years ago, maybe I did do so for a few months in 2006, I think. I was under the impression that any positive karmaist could moderate. I always could moderate, last I cared to, years ago but I stopped caring as I was sick of the low quality resulting Score:5 mods I saw when I tried to read rapidly.
Anyway, I posted this to the survey:
##########
Q: What would you change on/.?
Moderation. My time is valuable; I read Score:5 posts only. However, there are too many Score:5 posts! What do I mean? 6 to 9 years ago you changed moderation from the old way to what we have now. *sigh*
OLD WAY: When you were moderated up, thusly you gained moderation points, and they expired too. Score:5 posts were incisive (you know, like "Wao! this shit is illuminating, brilliant, why didn't I think of it like that"), and just a _handful_ of them (like five of them! If that many). Bang! One got the creme de la creme, you know like Seal Team Six, oops excuse me, DEVGRU, elite thought.
I remember when I got mod points back then,
* I was extremely judicious in moderating, mod points were a rarity, man! * I moderated (now I am so displeased that I don't give a shit) * I was fair, thoughtful, moderate in my scoring: I had to make my gift count!
That last line highlights what made, I believe (I remember the excellent resulting comments), Score:5 comments gold AND rare. My time was not wasted. But you guys wont change, I've been here since the '90s. But I keep hoping you'll set a limit for what is a Score:5 and keep it to a handful. Why? Every day I read 30 to 40 of your articles, and I want cogent incisive comments, to my mind only 2 to 3 people should fit that description. I DON"T have more time.
> I can strongly recommend some excellent hospitals in > Thailand.
What you say is absolutely true. For further information, clarifying the issue, quite reassuring, search the NY Times on this issue in the past 2-4 years. It's not just Thailand, but Malaysia, and or Indonesia, perhaps Singapore that provide A1 quality medical surgery, and cosmetic surgery economically and as part of tour, sightseeing packages.
What I am curious is whether they offer analogous dental services? I do not recollect reading above on such procedures as veneers, caps, implants; these can cost tens of thousands of USD in the USA, braces for example! A relative could have made use of some of that last week! And I love East Asia, periodic travel from the USA would be part of regular vacationing.
> older guy speaks everyone just shuts the hell up and > does what he says.
And that is why Japan is doomed. It is squandering its future now, paying the past with the present. Says I? No! Says young Japanese themselves! The NY Times covered this issue succinctly in January.
[quote] TOKYO -- Kenichi Horie was a promising auto engineer, exactly the sort of youthful talent Japan needs to maintain its edge over hungry Korean and Chinese rivals. As a worker in his early 30s at a major carmaker, Mr. Horie won praise for his design work on advanced biofuel systems.
But like many young Japanese, he was a so-called irregular worker, kept on a temporary staff contract with little of the job security and half the salary of the "regular" employees, most of them workers in their late 40s or older. After more than a decade of trying to gain regular status, Mr. Horie finally quit -- not just the temporary jobs, but Japan altogether.
> (tax) on fuel would be a more reliable compensation for > your impact than GPS.
I can tell from this response you didn't read the article. Your point is negated by one fact: alternative-fuel vehicles.
Petroleum-based fuel tax revenue, which is used to maintain Dutch roads, is DECLINING as gasoline, oops petrol, oops Benzine, consumption is displaced by electrical energy usage. Nations do not have a universal way to tax vehicular electrical energy usage, e.g., gasoline hybrids, plug in-gasoline hybrids, electrical vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, etc. which make the rising majority of new vehicles in Europe.
I give more credence to this Dutch argument that high gasoline taxes, high emissions standards, small vehicle sizes for small city roads, high mass transit penetration still has not caused a regression in new vehicles registrations, which are increasingly clogging roads into the projected future. Assuming that all those fuel taxes, registration taxes, congestion taxes are used for their intended purpose of road infrastructure maintenance.
Here in the USA, all that revenue is shifted to other uses to mask our budgetary shortfalls, and buy votes. Till the governors of NY and NJ decide to raise inter-NY-NJ bride and tunnel rates up to 65% in one shot. Fuckers.
Within my 90 days let-the-suckers-go-first-buffer period FF4.x was eol'ed, right. It was said that FF5.x was the "security update to 4.x. And now, again, 5.x is to be supplanted by 6.x? Why bother updating, concordantlly I'll upgrade when shit breaks. Nice going Mozilla. *sigh* Or get on a periodic release schedule and stick to it.
Slashdot Mirror
> tell the difference between an upscaled
> DVD and a Blu-ray disc
Really? I'm not knocking you, I'm asking seriously? Can you do the following? I like to travel, and when I can I love movies that are in places not in bailiwick, i.e., NYC, east coast, or the USA. So I will check out the _on-location_ scenery in Sweden's GirlWDT/Stig Larson's trilogy---CLOSELY. I'll zoom in 4X, try to read street signs, store names, and Google Maps my ass off!!! I'll check out sat views, Street View images, photos, their plain street maps, their topographical maps, overlaid Wikipedia entries---and prior to Google Maps discontinuing real estate sell/rental ad overlays several years ago, I'd check out how affordable living there was, more atomically, you know---etc. All on my TV and plain non-upscale DVD player. But you know what? 75%+ of those DVDs did not allow me to, were not highly defining the background enough in their scenes that I could not determine street sign names! It typically was/is a blur at best. Oh and God Save the Queen on BBC, Dr Who, Torchwood, etc. productions. Their resolution, frame rate is gad awful that a simple disc pause will readily show smeared scenes.
How can an upscaled DVD improve/greater define data that is not there? Seriously, I am asking, can it?
I would expect Blueray discs to 100% of the time show legibly background street signs, am I wrong? Seriously, I am asking, can it?
> each of the products you cite had competition, until
> Microsoft used their monopolistic advantages to squash
> that competition.
WP vs MSOffice notwithstanding. WP was a monster, it was stratospherically near `hand me that Puffs kleenex to wipe my nose after I xerox a copy on my cool Fujitsu. Monster: Hulk, arrrrggghhh.
WP, everyone else thought WP was invulnerable; they would charge like USD$800.00 per box copy at computer stores. And that was in 1980s dolares, d00d! They thought that they owned the market, office workers, businesses, corporations, home office peons were their bitches. Bend over! Then MS came in with a novel idea, they charged a vastly LESS usurious price, not economical, just not as much an overt rape. And they packaged all their shiz in a bundle too; WTF, said WP; thus whilst cosmically aware and disabled, MS fucked WP up their ass. Just desserts?
Mean time Bill Joy was coding BSD solo. That was the cosmic monopolists perspective.
> a disable button for this feature for stuff like winter driving.
I doubt it'd be needed. If it can't detect a clear scenario I doubt it'd activate at all. If anyone can name a gravel/snow/sand ABS analog, let's hear it.
> If you're worried about leaving the signal on afterwards
*jijiji* That reminds me of an !old! George Carlin diddy, that I use to this day: ``Hey! That d00d is going left around the world! Alllriiighttt.''
> If you have this solid habit of using your turn signals
> every time,
Dood, you are the m-a-n! I say this ^ to my gf (that I have to teach to drive) regularly. My quote is: Those fucking guys don't have to calculate every unperceived permutation variation on blinking, just follow the fucking rules---blink when turning, or changing lanes. No complicated logic analyses required.
In NYC, I have self immolated too. So. Beginning to pull out of a parking space, I did not blink so as to warn, I did not take a second's pause to look carefully for non vehicular traffic, I did not calculate for my nighttime reduced visibility, I did not want to get beat by rushing Myrtle Avenue traffic, I did not cool my heels for an _extra_ second, I am gunning out of my parking spot when I hear a yell, I noticed a blinking white light, I register a blur past my window, I register a chiding maybe insult, I am grateful that the yipster cyclist is OK! I curse mine own stupidity. I blush at disobeying my own law. I am not perfect. Follow the fucking rules, man.
In NYC less than 50% of drivers use their turn signals! It's dangerous, causes traffic jams, pisses me off.
OTOH, say, any automobile engineers here?! Why haven't car manufacturers installed a circuit to _turn on headlights when windshield wipers are activated?_ It's the law in most places, I'd dare, if not BCP. In NYC, again less than 50%, shieeet, I'd say, less than 33% of drivers follow this rule. to their danger.
To disallow unneeded activation whislt
a Washer fluid pump cleaning your windows in traffico (=)
b Not mass startling/blinding motorists
c Non-automatically (i.e., semi-manually) episodically wiping rain
add circuit logic.
- a: disallow, save for concurrent rain use
- b: add circuit randomness
- c: add minimum wiping period requirement (i.e., clear intent)
It seems simple to design cars to automatically turn on headlights when it's clear that the wipers are being used for wiping rain for a non trivial period of time. Am I crazy?
Is the proverbial `it'll cost one or two cents times a million cars, that's real money' car maker myth still applicable?
~If you're not voting third party you're throwing your vote away.~
This paraphrase was from a great quote on /. about a decade or so ago. It made me stop, and think. O, and you get what you vote for. W, HW, WJC, all those copyright-mafiaa-bought-elect-me-bllodworth-thomason ilk fuckers.
> xbiotech xscience xhealth xcollapse xstrawman story
Missing? xmonoculture (!)
>> youth are pretty much fed up with iPhones. Everyone
>> [and their Grandma] has the iPhone," he said.
*sigh* Fix it for you. In 2004/5(?) I was mobile phone browsing when the salesman rolled out the: "oooh! You want the Motorola Razor!" I laughed chidingly, and he was perplexed, I said: No way! Everybody and their Grandma has that phone, it's fad had escaped me. What do you have from Hong Kong, Taiwan?
When you're in the midst of a fad it's hard to notice it, unless you are dispassionate. I was too busy with other things to even bother owning a cellphone, that when I was shown/used the !flat! FLAT! keypad I was left with pained nail beds, and thought, "WTF's the fuzz about?! This shiz's gotta be a fad." Within a couple of years I was proven right, the floor dropped off for "Hello Motto."
> "iPad killer"
I am not a "killer" I'm a `fighter.' Why? I don't haz to. -Google Docs/Kindle Fire/Apple/MS/Linux/Red Hat/Android/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Fiat cinquecento/MINI/Mini/etc.
> The students are downloading illegal copies of books.
I've been reading the multitudes of these 'edifying' "5" comments whilst none clarify the repeated point. Are these copies DIY-scans, or crackedz??? We did articles on /. years ago on DIY scanning rigs, attendant free software, fora, etc. When I go back to school this is the route I intend to follow. Resistance, budget, OWS---Umbawa. =)
``Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld, the one-time weekly computer trade newspaper published by IDG.''*
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cringely
> he's talking about [everything besides] Gmail, Docs, Google+, Maps... [that Google does NOT even know it could have] All those other
> products that you could do really neat things with __if they had real APIs__ [aka A Platform]
Almost right.
> Apple / Android owners should have thought about the
> ability of the government/whoever to eavesdrop on their
> phone / text messaging
You weren't trying to be funny, but, you are. Where were you the past 24 months?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry#Government_regulation
> It's mostly a problem of identification. The real power-
> brokers love to be behind the scenes
He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing. When all spice mining ceases the empire will look toward Arrakis, and will be forced to deal with us.
> Amazon doesn't care where the money goes, nor do they
> really care about the rate
I care! Big time. I live in NY, Amazon has offices in NY, therefore it charges me sales tax! I hate it. They have a great selection, great prices, great CS and some fucking offices in NY, therefore I have to pay tax? Fuck. Why could they not build their offices in freaking Hoboken, like good little Indians. Don't give me that 'you cheap bastard' schtick; local government is not entitled to tax everything, everywhere. It's a fucking catalog company---catalog companies do not have to pay local taxes---it's a revenue enhancement grab---live within your fucking means local government---use gasoline taxes for fucking road use, it;s intended purpose---pension payments collected for gasp funding pensions now. etc. IOW, spare me the violins, keep your alecky spoutfuls, or quote me the SCOTUS ruling that transformed Net companies into not catalog companies.
And you probably forgot, if you ever new/heard it/read it/researched it, but, Amazon rolled over for this shiz about ten years ago. 'Fine we'll collect local taxes they began saying,' till customers rose in anger, saying, 'How the fuck will your loss or price advantage entice me to buy from you long distance, sight unseen, etc? I/we'll shop elsewhere if you roll over.'
Behold, Amazon changed their tune rapidly once they saw the tide against them. Apparently they've forgotten---if they aid in this change and/or win I will hate them for a long time to come. But they, that's just me, or is it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/business/deal-sites-have-fading-allure-for-merchants.html?_r=1
> [If] anything EVER said on here was used for stock
> decisions then the moron [...]
was you, babe. Groupon was critiqued here about 8 months ago. The leaders', not the artsy theatrical founder hipsters types, but the 2 guys calling the shots, past were analyzed, and lo and behold their serial-invariant-pump-and-dump behavior over the past _decade_ was exposed.
I heard of Groupon through the NY Times 2 summers ago, at any rate it was then that I stopped and said, WTF is this site about? Honestly, I was underwhelmed. I said WTF? Am I doing this wrong? I enter my location in NYC; WTF, why can't I just enter my fucking Zip Code for deals? And, Manhattan is not NYC, yet all deals are in fucking Manhattan (dood, I'm not from fucking Nebraska or Staten Island, and my name isn't "Sha"(ron), nor am I a goofy chick, The City is not Manhattan).
And those deals are like one or two deals when I checked. 1, TWO---WTF! I was expecting deals left and right for Ferrari sized guys (5'10"), who love sashimi, in Kensington, Brooklyn, who are left handed, with thick hair, who love 356 Porsches, who love natural blondes, hate dye jobs, like big boobs, curvaceously assed women, BMW mechanic fanatic, is a motorcycle rider, a reader, multilingual, internationalist, and on and on. TWO fucking deals!
Groupon is a fad, I thought, then and there, when I researched them two summers ago. But then I thought, what am I missing, maybe it's me! This kind of shiz happens, one does get myopic. "It's gots to be mes."
Then the /. article from ~8 months ago, and I thought hold on. It's not just me, there's something there. Thanks /.! A lot!
Guess what?: That NY Time's article from two summers ago was breathy, alluring, hyperbolic---yes no one's immune, not even the Times. But on 1 Oct 2011 The New York Times tone has changed severely.
* ``the Internet coupon fad is shrinking faster than fat from a weight-loss laser.''
* ``Just a few months ago, daily deal coupons were the new big thing. The biggest deal maker, Groupon, was preparing to go public at a valuation as high as $30 billion, which would have been a record amount for a start-up less than three years old. Hundreds of copycat coupon sites sprung up in Grouponâ(TM)s wake, including DoubleTakeDeals, YourBestDeals, DealFind, DoodleDeals, DealOn, DealSwarm and GoDailyDeals. Deal sites were widely praised as a replacement for local advertising. ''
* ``Now coupon fatigue is setting in. Grouponâ(TM)s public offering has repeatedly been put off amid stock market turmoil and internal missteps; the company says it is back on track, but some analysts say it may never happen. Dozens of copycats are closing, reformulating or merging, including Local Twist in San Diego, RelishNYC and Crowd Cut in Atlanta. Facebook and Yelp, two powerhouse Internet firms that had big plans for deals, quickly backed off. ''
* ``Some entrepreneurs are questioning the entire premise of the industry. Jasper Malcolmson, co-founder of the deal site Bloomspot, compares the basic deal offer with lendersâ(TM) marketing subprime loans during the housing boom. ''
* ``Last December, Google offered $6 billion for Groupon. That was astonishing enough, but then Groupon snubbed the search giant, a declaration that it was really worth much more. Its valuation began to rise by about a billion dollars a week. Deal mania commenced, a boom within the larger Internet boom. If a bunch of part-time artists could do it, so could everyone. All you needed was a desk and a deal to present to the world.
âoeA lot of people saw an opportunity to get rich quickly,â said the Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru. âoeIt was a very 1999 mentality.â ''
* ``Thirty billion dollars suddenly seemed a stretch. âoeTheyâ(TM)re in over their heads,â Ms. Mulpuru said.''
* ``Deal mania commenced, a boom within the larger Internet boom. If a bunch of part-time artists could do it, so could everyone. All you needed was a desk and a deal to present to the world. ''
In you, a healthy skepticism has been transformed into a corrosive cynicism. Get it together.
> In Slashdot, you can't always moderate,
Wao! I stopped moderating 6+ years ago, maybe I did do so for a few months in 2006, I think. I was under the impression that any positive karmaist could moderate. I always could moderate, last I cared to, years ago but I stopped caring as I was sick of the low quality resulting Score:5 mods I saw when I tried to read rapidly.
Anyway, I posted this to the survey:
##########
Q: What would you change on /.?
Moderation. My time is valuable; I read Score:5 posts only. However, there are too many Score:5 posts! What do I mean? 6 to 9 years ago you changed moderation from the old way to what we have now. *sigh*
OLD WAY: When you were moderated up, thusly you gained moderation points, and they expired too. Score:5 posts were incisive (you know, like "Wao! this shit is illuminating, brilliant, why didn't I think of it like that"), and just a _handful_ of them (like five of them! If that many). Bang! One got the creme de la creme, you know like Seal Team Six, oops excuse me, DEVGRU, elite thought.
I remember when I got mod points back then,
* I was extremely judicious in moderating, mod points were a rarity, man!
* I moderated (now I am so displeased that I don't give a shit)
* I was fair, thoughtful, moderate in my scoring: I had to make my gift count!
That last line highlights what made, I believe (I remember the excellent resulting comments), Score:5 comments gold AND rare. My time was not wasted. But you guys wont change, I've been here since the '90s. But I keep hoping you'll set a limit for what is a Score:5 and keep it to a handful. Why? Every day I read 30 to 40 of your articles, and I want cogent incisive comments, to my mind only 2 to 3 people should fit that description. I DON"T have more time.
> I can strongly recommend some excellent hospitals in
> Thailand.
What you say is absolutely true. For further information, clarifying the issue, quite reassuring, search the NY Times on this issue in the past 2-4 years. It's not just Thailand, but Malaysia, and or Indonesia, perhaps Singapore that provide A1 quality medical surgery, and cosmetic surgery economically and as part of tour, sightseeing packages.
What I am curious is whether they offer analogous dental services? I do not recollect reading above on such procedures as veneers, caps, implants; these can cost tens of thousands of USD in the USA, braces for example! A relative could have made use of some of that last week! And I love East Asia, periodic travel from the USA would be part of regular vacationing.
> purported advantage of the new way is that it's a lot
> easier to prove having filed first than to prove having
> reduced it to practice first.
I thought the advantage was to eliminate submarine/ambush patent lotteries.
> Sun Tzu
Pulleeze. How 1980s, blase. A little more esoteria.
He who strikes first is off balance. --Miyamoto Musashi, Go Rin No Sho. That's a badass work.
> older guy speaks everyone just shuts the hell up and
> does what he says.
And that is why Japan is doomed. It is squandering its future now, paying the past with the present. Says I? No! Says young Japanese themselves! The NY Times covered this issue succinctly in January.
[quote]
TOKYO -- Kenichi Horie was a promising auto engineer, exactly the sort of youthful talent Japan needs to maintain its edge over hungry Korean and Chinese rivals. As a worker in his early 30s at a major carmaker, Mr. Horie won praise for his design work on advanced biofuel systems.
But like many young Japanese, he was a so-called irregular worker, kept on a temporary staff contract with little of the job security and half the salary of the "regular" employees, most of them workers in their late 40s or older. After more than a decade of trying to gain regular status, Mr. Horie finally quit -- not just the temporary jobs, but Japan altogether.
He moved to Taiwan two years ago
{end quote]
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/asia/28generation.html?pagewanted=all
> . It's a goddamned meme.
Haaa?! Someone said Big Tits? Ahhh, someone just took a college course; mores---there---bang!
> (tax) on fuel would be a more reliable compensation for
> your impact than GPS.
I can tell from this response you didn't read the article. Your point is negated by one fact: alternative-fuel vehicles.
Petroleum-based fuel tax revenue, which is used to maintain Dutch roads, is DECLINING as gasoline, oops petrol, oops Benzine, consumption is displaced by electrical energy usage. Nations do not have a universal way to tax vehicular electrical energy usage, e.g., gasoline hybrids, plug in-gasoline hybrids, electrical vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, etc. which make the rising majority of new vehicles in Europe.
I give more credence to this Dutch argument that high gasoline taxes, high emissions standards, small vehicle sizes for small city roads, high mass transit penetration still has not caused a regression in new vehicles registrations, which are increasingly clogging roads into the projected future. Assuming that all those fuel taxes, registration taxes, congestion taxes are used for their intended purpose of road infrastructure maintenance.
Here in the USA, all that revenue is shifted to other uses to mask our budgetary shortfalls, and buy votes. Till the governors of NY and NJ decide to raise inter-NY-NJ bride and tunnel rates up to 65% in one shot. Fuckers.
WTF. I'm still on FF3.x, yo!
***What's with the rash of major updates?!***
Within my 90 days let-the-suckers-go-first-buffer period FF4.x was eol'ed, right. It was said that FF5.x was the "security update to 4.x. And now, again, 5.x is to be supplanted by 6.x? Why bother updating, concordantlly I'll upgrade when shit breaks. Nice going Mozilla. *sigh* Or get on a periodic release schedule and stick to it.