Dude, I had posted three thousand times before the episode in question.
But it was worse than that. In my submission, I linked fireflyfans.net. A lot of people had "proof" that this was a sockpuppet site (mainly, the fact that the site is well-designed!). Which of course was further proof that I was a sock puppet. What made this laughable was the state of the official Firefly web site, which had obviously been done by some flunky with a sketchy knowledge of web design. So Fox has the resources to hire me to spam online discussions, and to have a pro design fireflyfans.net, but can't even get it together to provide an official site that isn't a joke?
I had forgotten about Egghead. Used to love to browse there when they had a lot of little stores in strip malls, before they became online only. I was under the impression that they'd just gone out of business. But I think you're right in some sense, there has to be some connection between Egghead and Newegg.
You can tell the age of internet companies by their names. All the ones started after the good domain names were taken have strange names like "Newegg".
Businesses have always trolled for fluffy, friendly journalism. Doesn't make it an advertisement.
When Firefly premiered, I submitted a gushing story to Slashdot. (I had seen a bootleg of the pilot, and had been blow away by it; the actual series was rather less exciting.) There must have been 20 posts by people who were convinced that I was a sock puppet in the employ of Fox. None of them bothered to check my post history.
Sock puppets do exist. I've even been fooled by them. But in a consumer culture where people where company logos as a "personal statement", you shouldn't be suprised to see a little uncritical praise now and then.
Norman Spinrad once wrote a novel called The Iron Dream. The basic idea is that instead of going into politics, Adolf Hitler emigrated to the U.S. and became an SF writer. Now understand: the novel is not set in this alternative universe; it's supposedly written in the alternative universe by "one of the great 20th-century science fiction writers, Adolf Hitler". A cool idea, that would have worked better if the plot weren't just a retelling of the rise and fall of the Nazi party!
I once sent a copy of TID to a friend who had been reading Spinrad and has a childish fascination with all things Nazi. The cover of that particular edition did nothing to indicate that it wasn't for real, and she anxiously IMed me, afraid that her entire understanding of 20th-century history was bogus! Though now she will not admit under any circumstances, that she was taken in.
I suspect that part of the appeal of ARG is playing that kind of game with outsiders.
I have to point out that even if you had been a DEC person, screaming at you for 45 minutes still wouldn't have accomplished anything. But then, self-righteous anger is its own justification, as Fox News and a whole generation of brain-dead radio pundits have learned.
OK, I accept that your version of techno-history is correct and mine is wrong. But unless you've never posted anything on Slashdot that turned out to be wrong, you can GFY.
You're right about not mourning, since the current Atari has no connection at all with the original company. But I doubt if anybody will buy a brand that's crashed and burned twice.
What humans did invent is a long series of devices for generating fire. All of which required a lot of insight, careful thought, and patient experimentation.
Accident certainly plays a role in invention, but no real invention is pure accident.
Pong is not exactly a great technological accomplishment. Actually something of an accident. If I remember the story correctly, Atari was working on implementation of spacewar that could run on reasonably priced hardware. They built Pong just to test a particular circuit. Then they discovered how addictive it was....
Sure, you can sanction your employees for misusing company resources. But the sanctions ought to be proportional to the offense. A proportional response is not required by law, but common sense is another matter.
What Bloomberg did costs NYC. And not a small amount. They'll have to find, hire, and train a replacement. They'll lose whatever undocumented knowledge is in the fired guy's brain. And Hizonner lost the goodwill of any co-workers who thought they guy got a bum deal.
"Zero tolerance" is by and for idiots. You catch somebody in a minor infraction, you take them aside and give them a talking to. You don't get really nasty until it becomes obvious that an employee doesn't give a shit for the rules. Any other approach makes you feel good, but runs your operation into the ground.
One day Henry Ford was walking through his factory, when he saw a worker slouched on a crate, trimming a wire in what Ford considered to be a clumsy manner. Ford kicked the crate out from under the worker and yelled, "Get out of my factory! You're fired."
"But Mr. Ford! You can't fire me!"
"Why the hell not?"
"I don't work for you! I work for the phone company!"
OK, I stand corrected. But only partially. It's true that a chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy means the end of a company. Obviously, no company is going to do that voluntarily — they'll wait until their creditors force them into it. When a company like SGI says, "We're probably going to declare bankruptcy this year", it's a safe bet they don't mean chapter 7.
When a company decides to shut down, they don't have to declare bankruptcy. They just dissolve themselves, sell off their assets, pay off their debts, and distribute their remaining funds to their shareholders. That's actually more likely to happen to a company that has lots of cash, because their investors might decide that it makes more sense to cash out than to try to continue operations.
I never said it was. The point is that bankruptcy is not a way of shutting down a company. It's a strategy for turning the company around. As you point out, that strategy doesn't work most of the time — but that's true for a lot of business strategies. When management says, "Time to declare bankruptcy" they are definitely thinking in terms of keeping things afloat. If that weren't their plan, they'd just dissolve the company.
Corporate bankruptcy is comparable to personal bankruptcy. Some people commit suicide after declaring bankruptcy — but it's not required. Same goes for companies that declare bankruptcy. With the difference that with personal bankruptcy, the same fiscally inept person is making the decisions and might well screw up all over again. Whereas a big company that emerges from bankruptcy will probably not have the same inept management in charge.
I see that, as usual, a lot of people are reading "bankruptcy" as "going out of business". Incorrect. Bankruptcy is just a legal device for walking away from your debts. Companies do it in order to survive.
SGI will certainly be around for a while, though probably with fewer employees and products. Of course, they're already way past being an important player in the marketplace.
Re:Oooh look who though he made a point!
on
Africa, The MMOG
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· Score: 1
Before the US was formed, the area currently occupied by the fifty states was not known collectively as 'America', that word referred to the whole continent.
No, the continent was and is called "North America".
I've seen some lame flame wars in my time, but one over a fact that can be checked by looking at a map?
Re:Oooh look who though he made a point!
on
Africa, The MMOG
·
· Score: 1
Why is it that naive, idealistic comments get modded up, but harsh realistic comments get modded down?
Because they're not as realistic as they pretend to be?
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft will not do anything to help Linux. It's the closest thing they have to actual competition.
You're just saying that because you hate George W. Bush!
I can only quote Albert Einstein: "God is subtle, not malicious."
...this particular ecological crisis has inspired a great video game.
Jeez, read a post before you reply to it. I never said that it didn't happen.
But it was worse than that. In my submission, I linked fireflyfans.net. A lot of people had "proof" that this was a sockpuppet site (mainly, the fact that the site is well-designed!). Which of course was further proof that I was a sock puppet. What made this laughable was the state of the official Firefly web site, which had obviously been done by some flunky with a sketchy knowledge of web design. So Fox has the resources to hire me to spam online discussions, and to have a pro design fireflyfans.net, but can't even get it together to provide an official site that isn't a joke?
I had forgotten about Egghead. Used to love to browse there when they had a lot of little stores in strip malls, before they became online only. I was under the impression that they'd just gone out of business. But I think you're right in some sense, there has to be some connection between Egghead and Newegg.
You can tell the age of internet companies by their names. All the ones started after the good domain names were taken have strange names like "Newegg".
When Firefly premiered, I submitted a gushing story to Slashdot. (I had seen a bootleg of the pilot, and had been blow away by it; the actual series was rather less exciting.) There must have been 20 posts by people who were convinced that I was a sock puppet in the employ of Fox. None of them bothered to check my post history.
Sock puppets do exist. I've even been fooled by them. But in a consumer culture where people where company logos as a "personal statement", you shouldn't be suprised to see a little uncritical praise now and then.
I once sent a copy of TID to a friend who had been reading Spinrad and has a childish fascination with all things Nazi. The cover of that particular edition did nothing to indicate that it wasn't for real, and she anxiously IMed me, afraid that her entire understanding of 20th-century history was bogus! Though now she will not admit under any circumstances, that she was taken in.
I suspect that part of the appeal of ARG is playing that kind of game with outsiders.
I have to point out that even if you had been a DEC person, screaming at you for 45 minutes still wouldn't have accomplished anything. But then, self-righteous anger is its own justification, as Fox News and a whole generation of brain-dead radio pundits have learned.
OK, I accept that your version of techno-history is correct and mine is wrong. But unless you've never posted anything on Slashdot that turned out to be wrong, you can GFY.
Have you ever actually made a fire using a flint? Not that easy.
You're right about not mourning, since the current Atari has no connection at all with the original company. But I doubt if anybody will buy a brand that's crashed and burned twice.
What humans did invent is a long series of devices for generating fire. All of which required a lot of insight, careful thought, and patient experimentation.
Accident certainly plays a role in invention, but no real invention is pure accident.
Pong is not exactly a great technological accomplishment. Actually something of an accident. If I remember the story correctly, Atari was working on implementation of spacewar that could run on reasonably priced hardware. They built Pong just to test a particular circuit. Then they discovered how addictive it was....
Dude, they have labor unions in Japan, Korea, and Germany too. In Germany, the unions are actually a lot stronger than they are in the U.S.
What Bloomberg did costs NYC. And not a small amount. They'll have to find, hire, and train a replacement. They'll lose whatever undocumented knowledge is in the fired guy's brain. And Hizonner lost the goodwill of any co-workers who thought they guy got a bum deal.
"Zero tolerance" is by and for idiots. You catch somebody in a minor infraction, you take them aside and give them a talking to. You don't get really nasty until it becomes obvious that an employee doesn't give a shit for the rules. Any other approach makes you feel good, but runs your operation into the ground.
"But Mr. Ford! You can't fire me!"
"Why the hell not?"
"I don't work for you! I work for the phone company!"
When a company decides to shut down, they don't have to declare bankruptcy. They just dissolve themselves, sell off their assets, pay off their debts, and distribute their remaining funds to their shareholders. That's actually more likely to happen to a company that has lots of cash, because their investors might decide that it makes more sense to cash out than to try to continue operations.
Corporate bankruptcy is comparable to personal bankruptcy. Some people commit suicide after declaring bankruptcy — but it's not required. Same goes for companies that declare bankruptcy. With the difference that with personal bankruptcy, the same fiscally inept person is making the decisions and might well screw up all over again. Whereas a big company that emerges from bankruptcy will probably not have the same inept management in charge.
SGI will certainly be around for a while, though probably with fewer employees and products. Of course, they're already way past being an important player in the marketplace.
...from the Vulcan Science Directorate!
I've seen some lame flame wars in my time, but one over a fact that can be checked by looking at a map?