For Futurama to return, the studio would need to re-sign the show's production team, as well as voice stars Billy West, Katey Sagal and John DiMaggio.
Quite honestly, who cares so much about the voice talent? I mean, it would be nice to have them back too, but it's the writers that matter. Family Guy had some voice changes in the early years and it wasn't a big deal... but they brought the show back from cancelation with sub-par writing and now it's really just fan service. The straight-to-DVD "movie" was especially bad. What made Futurama good more than anything was that it was smart and funny. The first season shows were the best by far.
If they're just going to bring the voices and art back to milk a few more dollars out of the brand, I say don't bother. Either do it right, or don't do it at all.
You've obviously never used either a Dell or a Mac./me looks at his Dell./me looks at his Powerbook, and PowerMac/me blinks...
You're right, Dell was a poor choice for an example, since they essentially represent the worst the PC laptop world has to offer. All other things being equal though, it's really the software that makes a Mac stand out. I've got a Sony Vaio and an Acer Ferrari (the Athlon 64 version, not the crappy original that was featured/made fun of on slashdot a while back), and hardware quality/durability/shiny factor wise they're just as impressive as my Powerbook. Software wise (especially with the Vaio) they're a nightmare though. It's like they got 90% of the way to a good user experience, and gave up.
You've got it all wrong. Congressional candidates spend close to $2 billion dollars every election cycle. To them, not only is $1.5billion just chump change, but if they don't do this people won't be able to see their campaign ads.
Re:Who cares about the pro users?
on
The Odds at Macworld
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
So, given that these customers are ogoing to be waiting either way, why shouldn't Apple get hardware on the market to serve the customers who *can* buy now?
Because unlike every other laptop vendor out there, Apple is all about the full experience, not just the box. If Apple did what you're describing, why wouldn't people just go buy a Dell, or a Sony instead? It's the same hardware for the most part now...
If they want to keep their premium rep, they can't ship the new hardware until *all* of the new software is ready.
The answer is that the number of games that people are willing to subscribe to at once is limited. World of Warcraft is hugely profitable. You don't think that right now there's somebody thinking that they can make some money by providing a good online game at a lower cost to the player in order to steal away a little bit of that player base?
How does this say that Sony may have free online gaming to compete with MS's pay service?
This part right here:
[...] In-Stat analysts believe that Sony deciding on a pay-to-play service or free gaming is crucial to [...]
What they're saying is that game developers won't start moving their cross platform content online in a signifigant way until Sony makes a decision on whether they're going to have a for-fee Live style service, or something free and less cohesive.
Quick, name withc console it was available for... Which for-pay integrated online service it works with... How it relates to this article in any way whatsoever...
Oh, wait.
World of Warcraft is a great example though. It's a great example of why it doesn't matter if you have a Live style integrated offering or not.
Yes, please Captain Obvious, show Red Flayer how to read the article. Also, perhaps how to read a business report.
Here's a hint for you. There is only one console player that is/has been steadily losing money, most gamers don't care to play online, and this article is talking about how Sony may decide on a free service to compete with Microsoft's for pay service.
I hate to say it, but the days of the super-inventor working in his garden shed are over.
Right, they're more likely to work in their home office where they have electricity and a computer.
Just because today's technology seems too complicated for you to imagine being able to invent something yourself doesn't mean the rest of us are so handicapped. The goal should be to protect the individual inventor more, not less. For example, the tools of nanotechnology, devices that can manipulate matter on a molecular level, can be built at home for a few hundred dollars. It's just as likely that some guy with a homemade scanning tunneling electron microscope will invent some big nanotech product as somebody in a billion dollar lab somewhere. Some of the best insights into new technologies have come from industry/academic outsiders, and there's no reason to believe that this won't continue to be true.
I agree with you about compulsory licensing though, especially for pharmaceutical products.
You would have to assume that all of those people would both vote (probably a stretch) and would pick a party that only expressed an opinion on a single issue (maybe not a stretch for that particular issue...). We don't get to vote on ideas in this country, instead we pick representatives that should share a wide variety of our beliefs. A party that only stood for one thing, and didn't express a position on the thousands of other things that need to be decided over the course of a term wouldn't stand a chance.
How many times have you heard a brain-dead recruiter spell out acronyms that are usually pronounced or pronounce acronyms that are usually spelled out?
Many. It's one of the ways you know not to do business with that recruiter (if they're an independant headhunter) or that you don't want to work for that company (if they're a private recruiter).
Similarly, if a hiring manager asks for more experience than technically possible you know that you either don't want to work there, or if you're desperate for a job that you can lie your ass off, and the manager won't know the difference. Don't like lying? Well come up with some rationalization or redefinition such that you're not technically lying.... Do you work 70 hour weeks? Well then every year you work is effectively 1.75 man years of experience. Take the months off the dates on your resume, and only list years. Then the manager will round up and count the calendar years instead...
How do you read that and think that all he did was leave the wrong house at the wrong time? He was innocent, sure, but there are plenty of things he could have done that would have led to a different result.
If you have a really good charger you can float your NiMH batteries essentially forever. If you have good batteries they won't discharge much faster than the crappy LiIon cells you'll find in kid-grade devices. My PSP battery, for example, will be most of the way empty in the the time that it takes to compeletely drain some good quality NiMH AAs (about a month).
Only one of those two options lets you carry a spare set of alkaline AAs for when your unexpectedly run out of charge.
Being too cheap to buy the magazine, are you sure they aren't talking about just OEM PCs? If not, I wonder if they have a big electromagnet in their lab or something...
I was looking forward to seeing it, since I liked the pictures of the droopy clocks I'd seen in photographs of his art in books and magazines, but I was very disappointed in the actual painting when I saw it. The painting wasn't a picture of anything, just your typical "modern art" type paint smears.
You're lucky. My family has some original Dali work, and rather than being 'typical' some of it is actually disturbing and disgusting. You should be glad you walked away unimpressed rather than wishing you could stab our your mind's eye.
I don't know which would be more troubling; to think that somebody I know acquired art as an investment, or that somebody I know actually liked that stuff... Actually, I know exactly which would be worse, and I won't be investigating any further.
Care to elaborate? We're not talking about general purpose use here, we're talking about in this device, so when you answer, please be sure to mention how they suck for this particular purpose.
Regardless, in general I've found that it's the chargers that typically suck, not the batteries. If you have a good charger all you need to worry about is the few devices made these days that can't deal with the lower voltage. Chances are that every non-voltage issue you have with NiMH batteries is caused by a crappy charger.
What? The answer is what all quality optical drives do already... One of two things. Either the disc is lifted off the tray and pushed against a bearing on the top of the drive case sufficiently far from other parts that vibrations and shock don't cause impact (most PC sized drives, standalone CD/DVD players, slot loaders, etc...), or the disc is held suspended away from the components with axial pressure exerted by a series of spring loaded ball berrings (most slim drives, portables, and toploaders). What has probably happened here is one of two things: that the 360 uses cheap DVD drives with a plastic top bearing, and the inexpensive materials required extra thickness, thus keeping the disc too close to some other component rather than properly suspended, *or* that the packaging materials are insufficient, and the device gets squeezed during shipping. A third, but less likely possibility is that the discs are made out of a more flexable polycarbonate than other DVDs (maybe they left a layer off to cut costs?), and thus flex more when the unit is rotated.
Not cutting corners is the answer. Either way, even if you accidentally knock the thing over while playing your disc should not be damaged.
Consumer electronics has a failure rate between 3-5% (once in customer hands.)
I'm not sure what study you pulled that from, but those sound to me like the failure rates in the first year, not the number that are defective out of the box.
Windows isn't known for being user friendly either... Just user-familiar. The average user will never figure out how to do something there isn't a wizard for without help from an expert.
More likely, if this stuff works they're use the computer analysis to make a better tasting wine, and then not tell anybody they did it. Then the wine snobs of the world who would never touch a wine that was made with the aid of computer analysis will judge it on it's taste alone and there will be the best of both worlds.
I'll be darned if I'm going to live my life in fear that some TLA will mistake some perfectly innocent activity for terroristic proclivities.
Forgive me for adding a hint of rationality to this discussion, but really... Just don't live in fear. Sure, there may be some reprehensible things going on that you should oppose, but you shouldn't be afraid. How many people have been investigated? Give it your best bet. Hundreds perhaps? Divide that by the number of people out there and then compare it to the posibility that your house will get hit by a meteor, or better, that you'll be killed by a drunk driver on the way to work. Oppose what you disapprove of, but don't live in fear of somthing that there's no rational need to be afraid of. It's likely that opposition will put an end to the spying well before there's any reasonable chance that it will happen to you.
Slashdot Mirror
For Futurama to return, the studio would need to re-sign the show's production team, as well as voice stars Billy West, Katey Sagal and John DiMaggio.
Quite honestly, who cares so much about the voice talent? I mean, it would be nice to have them back too, but it's the writers that matter. Family Guy had some voice changes in the early years and it wasn't a big deal... but they brought the show back from cancelation with sub-par writing and now it's really just fan service. The straight-to-DVD "movie" was especially bad. What made Futurama good more than anything was that it was smart and funny. The first season shows were the best by far.
If they're just going to bring the voices and art back to milk a few more dollars out of the brand, I say don't bother. Either do it right, or don't do it at all.
So what you're saying is that we're coming to the point where style wins over substance...
Wonderful. Gaming has made it to pop-culture status. The signal to noise ratio is about to get a lot worse.
Of course I guess this also means that Madden games are now essentially the equivalent of a Brittney Spears album.
You've obviously never used either a Dell or a Mac. /me looks at his Dell. /me looks at his Powerbook, and PowerMac /me blinks...
You're right, Dell was a poor choice for an example, since they essentially represent the worst the PC laptop world has to offer. All other things being equal though, it's really the software that makes a Mac stand out. I've got a Sony Vaio and an Acer Ferrari (the Athlon 64 version, not the crappy original that was featured/made fun of on slashdot a while back), and hardware quality/durability/shiny factor wise they're just as impressive as my Powerbook. Software wise (especially with the Vaio) they're a nightmare though. It's like they got 90% of the way to a good user experience, and gave up.
You've got it all wrong. Congressional candidates spend close to $2 billion dollars every election cycle. To them, not only is $1.5billion just chump change, but if they don't do this people won't be able to see their campaign ads.
So, given that these customers are ogoing to be waiting either way, why shouldn't Apple get hardware on the market to serve the customers who *can* buy now?
Because unlike every other laptop vendor out there, Apple is all about the full experience, not just the box. If Apple did what you're describing, why wouldn't people just go buy a Dell, or a Sony instead? It's the same hardware for the most part now...
If they want to keep their premium rep, they can't ship the new hardware until *all* of the new software is ready.
Since I specifically said "on a shared system" I'd say "no." He shouldn't be doing that. Go reproduce your error on a development system.
Why give it away when people will pay?
We're way off topic now, but what the hell...
The answer is that the number of games that people are willing to subscribe to at once is limited. World of Warcraft is hugely profitable. You don't think that right now there's somebody thinking that they can make some money by providing a good online game at a lower cost to the player in order to steal away a little bit of that player base?
How does this say that Sony may have free online gaming to compete with MS's pay service?
This part right here:
[...] In-Stat analysts believe that Sony deciding on a pay-to-play service or free gaming is crucial to [...]
What they're saying is that game developers won't start moving their cross platform content online in a signifigant way until Sony makes a decision on whether they're going to have a for-fee Live style service, or something free and less cohesive.
Make sense to you now?
Quick, name withc console it was available for... Which for-pay integrated online service it works with... How it relates to this article in any way whatsoever...
Oh, wait.
World of Warcraft is a great example though. It's a great example of why it doesn't matter if you have a Live style integrated offering or not.
Yes, please Captain Obvious, show Red Flayer how to read the article. Also, perhaps how to read a business report.
Here's a hint for you. There is only one console player that is/has been steadily losing money, most gamers don't care to play online, and this article is talking about how Sony may decide on a free service to compete with Microsoft's for pay service.
Read, think, comment. In that order, please.
I hate to say it, but the days of the super-inventor working in his garden shed are over.
Right, they're more likely to work in their home office where they have electricity and a computer.
Just because today's technology seems too complicated for you to imagine being able to invent something yourself doesn't mean the rest of us are so handicapped. The goal should be to protect the individual inventor more, not less. For example, the tools of nanotechnology, devices that can manipulate matter on a molecular level, can be built at home for a few hundred dollars. It's just as likely that some guy with a homemade scanning tunneling electron microscope will invent some big nanotech product as somebody in a billion dollar lab somewhere. Some of the best insights into new technologies have come from industry/academic outsiders, and there's no reason to believe that this won't continue to be true.
I agree with you about compulsory licensing though, especially for pharmaceutical products.
You would have to assume that all of those people would both vote (probably a stretch) and would pick a party that only expressed an opinion on a single issue (maybe not a stretch for that particular issue...). We don't get to vote on ideas in this country, instead we pick representatives that should share a wide variety of our beliefs. A party that only stood for one thing, and didn't express a position on the thousands of other things that need to be decided over the course of a term wouldn't stand a chance.
How many times have you heard a brain-dead recruiter spell out acronyms that are usually pronounced or pronounce acronyms that are usually spelled out?
Many. It's one of the ways you know not to do business with that recruiter (if they're an independant headhunter) or that you don't want to work for that company (if they're a private recruiter).
Similarly, if a hiring manager asks for more experience than technically possible you know that you either don't want to work there, or if you're desperate for a job that you can lie your ass off, and the manager won't know the difference. Don't like lying? Well come up with some rationalization or redefinition such that you're not technically lying.... Do you work 70 hour weeks? Well then every year you work is effectively 1.75 man years of experience. Take the months off the dates on your resume, and only list years. Then the manager will round up and count the calendar years instead...
What about when the shortage is artificial due to government granted spectrum monopoly?
How do you read that and think that all he did was leave the wrong house at the wrong time? He was innocent, sure, but there are plenty of things he could have done that would have led to a different result.
If you have a really good charger you can float your NiMH batteries essentially forever. If you have good batteries they won't discharge much faster than the crappy LiIon cells you'll find in kid-grade devices. My PSP battery, for example, will be most of the way empty in the the time that it takes to compeletely drain some good quality NiMH AAs (about a month).
Only one of those two options lets you carry a spare set of alkaline AAs for when your unexpectedly run out of charge.
Being too cheap to buy the magazine, are you sure they aren't talking about just OEM PCs? If not, I wonder if they have a big electromagnet in their lab or something...
I was looking forward to seeing it, since I liked the pictures of the droopy clocks I'd seen in photographs of his art in books and magazines, but I was very disappointed in the actual painting when I saw it. The painting wasn't a picture of anything, just your typical "modern art" type paint smears.
You're lucky. My family has some original Dali work, and rather than being 'typical' some of it is actually disturbing and disgusting. You should be glad you walked away unimpressed rather than wishing you could stab our your mind's eye.
I don't know which would be more troubling; to think that somebody I know acquired art as an investment, or that somebody I know actually liked that stuff... Actually, I know exactly which would be worse, and I won't be investigating any further.
NiMH batteries suck.
Care to elaborate? We're not talking about general purpose use here, we're talking about in this device, so when you answer, please be sure to mention how they suck for this particular purpose.
Regardless, in general I've found that it's the chargers that typically suck, not the batteries. If you have a good charger all you need to worry about is the few devices made these days that can't deal with the lower voltage. Chances are that every non-voltage issue you have with NiMH batteries is caused by a crappy charger.
That depends... How much money are you willing to part with? Per month, I mean.
What? The answer is what all quality optical drives do already... One of two things. Either the disc is lifted off the tray and pushed against a bearing on the top of the drive case sufficiently far from other parts that vibrations and shock don't cause impact (most PC sized drives, standalone CD/DVD players, slot loaders, etc...), or the disc is held suspended away from the components with axial pressure exerted by a series of spring loaded ball berrings (most slim drives, portables, and toploaders). What has probably happened here is one of two things: that the 360 uses cheap DVD drives with a plastic top bearing, and the inexpensive materials required extra thickness, thus keeping the disc too close to some other component rather than properly suspended, *or* that the packaging materials are insufficient, and the device gets squeezed during shipping. A third, but less likely possibility is that the discs are made out of a more flexable polycarbonate than other DVDs (maybe they left a layer off to cut costs?), and thus flex more when the unit is rotated.
Not cutting corners is the answer. Either way, even if you accidentally knock the thing over while playing your disc should not be damaged.
Consumer electronics has a failure rate between 3-5% (once in customer hands.)
I'm not sure what study you pulled that from, but those sound to me like the failure rates in the first year, not the number that are defective out of the box.
Windows isn't known for being user friendly either... Just user-familiar. The average user will never figure out how to do something there isn't a wizard for without help from an expert.
More likely, if this stuff works they're use the computer analysis to make a better tasting wine, and then not tell anybody they did it. Then the wine snobs of the world who would never touch a wine that was made with the aid of computer analysis will judge it on it's taste alone and there will be the best of both worlds.
I'll be darned if I'm going to live my life in fear that some TLA will mistake some perfectly innocent activity for terroristic proclivities.
Forgive me for adding a hint of rationality to this discussion, but really... Just don't live in fear. Sure, there may be some reprehensible things going on that you should oppose, but you shouldn't be afraid. How many people have been investigated? Give it your best bet. Hundreds perhaps? Divide that by the number of people out there and then compare it to the posibility that your house will get hit by a meteor, or better, that you'll be killed by a drunk driver on the way to work. Oppose what you disapprove of, but don't live in fear of somthing that there's no rational need to be afraid of. It's likely that opposition will put an end to the spying well before there's any reasonable chance that it will happen to you.