As stated above, low income can result in all the other conditions. Obviously, household income isn't a cause of autism, so you need to find the cause of low income.
Could it be autism or asperger's? Affected social skills, introversion, and other "quirks" could very well result in someone being unable to hold or progress financially in a job, forcing them to stay in a low-income area. And has been suggested in the Silicon Valley, when you put a bunch of people with asperger's together, the likelihood of them pairing up increases. If that's the case, then the cause becomes genetic, not environmental. The environment is simply a symptom of the problem.
Because a company like Microsoft is a lagging indicator. 2008 profits would be largely from sales that came before the huge collapse. Some of these can be deferred to Q3/Q4 because the orders were made early with rolled-out delivery. Product lines like the X-Box and Zune would see sales boosts during the holidays, even if they were lower than expected.
But 2009 will be a year where companies and individuals decide that upgrading from XP or a previous version of Office can wait another year or two. People will buy more used games, or decide a Wii or lower-end X-Box would be a more cost-effective gift than the high-end model. In short, M$ will see a drop in revenue. Layoffs will not only trim the fat, but position the company to better retain profits while seeing reduced revenues.
That's it. First this right-wing government gets in, then Bev Oda starts pushing RIAA-like rules, and DMCA crap comes along.. and now anti-net-neutrality! I'm done. I'm moving to The USA where they don't have these prob.... oh... hrmm... Engla... no.. France? ehhh... Russia, here I come!
Oh, I don't disagree with you. There's a reason I went with the biggest CRT I could find for my widescreen HD. I avoid plasma at all costs and warn off anybody looking to buy one.
LCD is the best available at the moment in terms of size AND quality (but not value). I too am waiting for OLED to become practical, or even SED if it can ever get off the ground.
My point is that in terms of pure image quality, I have yet to see a DLP that stacks up to the other options out there. If "good-enough" is what people are willing to go with just to have a bigger screen, then that's fine... but it would drive me nuts.
It's a little-known fact that we Canadians can't help it. You see, Canadian eyes have evolved to become standard-resolution camcorders, which combined with our natural Wi-Fi transmission abilities create an environment of natural data-sharing. Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, and Canucks gotta record and distribute media via our own genetic superiority.
Other little-known facts:
- Polar bears are in fact robotic killing machines with laser eyes. - Igloos are the same as missile silos - We only have gravity 82.5% of the time - The Canadian "accent" is in fact a high-frequency encryption only understood by other Canadians - Sulfur dioxide? Breathable. - It's not cold, you're just a pansy - Poutine with a Beavertail for dessert covers all the major food groups
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a seal to hunt if I want to eat this month (seal oil being a major component in Poutine cooking).
But I have yet to see DLP that has a really good picture, and I'm talking with HD feeds. A friend of mine has a DLP (that needed a lamp replacement almost out of the box), and the HD quality is greatly inferior to my HD CRT, and we have the same feed. Similarly, I was looking at an HD display in the store the other day, with an High Def movie (not sure if it was Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) playing on the 3 major types (LCD, Plasma and DLP), the DLP looked like an analog signal being stretched to WS on an HD screen in comparison to how crisp the other two options were.
I just don't see DLP as a worthwhile technology. Sure, it's significantly cheaper than Plasma or LCD if you want a BIG screen, but eventually that difference will be minor and the tech will die.
The number on the site doesn't take into account all the pledged amounts from various auctions and donations. Mike and Jerry expect that the actual number for this year ALONE will exceed $1,000,000.
Re:Just A Variation On A Theme
on
Prey Review
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The argument could be made that every book or movie that comes out is just a variation on a theme. Heck, they have names for these themes - action, mystery, thriller, horror, romance, pr0n....
FPS was revolutionary when it first came out (Wolfenstein 3D, Ken's Labrynth, etc.), and it's definitely mature now. What it takes to make it engrossing is a strong sense of what's being aimed for. Half Life had a strong story (heck, you don't play for the first 2 or 3 levels, you just walk through the events), Serious Sam is an unapologetic shoot-em-up. Doom 3 was pretty much "look at our new engine!", so it got great reviews on its look, but poor ones on gameplay (outside of the tension).
Half Life does SO well because it combines the "Wow!" factor of engine upgrades with an engrossing plot. But a plot isn't necessary for fun, as long as you're honest about what it is. It's the halfway efforts that fall flat. All the new tricks in the world can only attract people, they won't stick around if they don't enjoy it.
- AMD needed ATI to compete with Intel's larger product line. Intel ships more graphics cards than both ATI and nVIDIA because of their bundling. - AMD has committed to maintaining ATI's entire Graphics line, including Intel products. Although word is that Intel is withdrawing ATI's license to do so - ATI also has a core logic business AMD wants - ATI has chips in consumer electronics - consoles, HD TVs, etc. AMD wants into these markets as well. - Intel makes its own chipsets, and has end-to-end motherboards. nVidia still has chips for these, why wouldn't they have them for AMD as well when AMD starts making their own? - Intel and nVidia will NOT be merging. There is too much overlap in their businesses because Intel covers such a large spectrum... which is the reason AMD is buying ATI - to compete. - It is NOT official - the offer is official, the acceptance by ATI's board is official, but the actual purchase still needs regulatory approval... which will likely not be a problem.
This isn't JUST about jamming some low-end ATI GPU on an AMD chip.
I saw it, and I'm a huge fan of both LotR and musicals. It wasn't good.
I have an overly long post on my blog, but I'm not one for blog-whoring, so no link:)
Short version:
Pros: - visually stunning - Balrog, Ents, Riders, etc... excellent. Stage direction is fantastic. - great sound - theatre with surround sound is great - Elevators in the stage - makes mountains mountains, and hills are hills, battles range over a changing landscape. - they try to cover the major points in the book - razing of the shire is there, even Tom Bombadil is mentioned - acting is okay. Some great performances (Gollum, Saruman), a few middling ones, and a couple REALLY bad ones (Galadriel comes to mind)
Cons: - long and convoluted - expected with this source material, but if you haven't at least seen the movies, you're lost. Reading the books, and The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion helps. - HORRIBLY edited. Basic edit strategy seems to be, "if everyone lives, cut it." Story jumps all over the place, and makes little sense. It's like someone skimmed the book and didn't discuss it with anybody who knows the series. They also move key scenes around, creating a domino effect that changes other scenes and in the end detracts greatly. - see: terrible performances - the couple that are really bad really detract from their scenes. One big problem is Brent Carver's Gandalf - it's a mediocre performance. Not bad per se, but not the tour de force that Gandalf needs to be. - Awful, forgettable songs. TWO songs are memorable, the rest are either terrible, out of place, or ripped off from another play (the call to battle might as well have been called "One Day More" or "Red and Black"). This isn't good for a MUSICAL - Attempts to please the fanboys actually insult - the razing of the Shire for example - Sharkey and his men are all dressed in black trenchcoats and black slacks and t-shirts... it's like a low-budget Matrix scene. - No heart whatsoever. - There's more, but I'll stop here.
If you're easily distracted, then the technical aspects could maybe hide the deficincies. But if you actually watch the thing, it's tremendously disappointing on a number of levels. They're re-editing it for London, and dropping it by half an hour. Maybe they can fix some of their flubs.
- Makes it easier to find porn - Gives very vocal approval to porn
Okay, fine, I don't have a problem with either of those... other people do though.
- Could facilitate the movement of all pornographic sites to the.xxx domain. By requirement. "You have porn? You're.xxx. Not.com, not.org, etc.." So what stops them from then moving all the stuff suitable for children to.kids? What's the definition for porn then? What's the definition for kids-only? Opens up a grey area. Also,.xxx could become a "premium service" for ISPs. It becomes the equivalent of ordering the Playboy channel or getting subscription to something that comes in a brown paper bag.
I think it's not a bad idea for.xxx, but there are potential pitfalls.
Point 1 - Umm.. no. It's possible that INSIDERS (ie.- company employees) might have a restriction on them, but 90 days seems extreme. If nobody could sell an stock for 90 days after the IPO, then the stock would do nothing. It would sit there and not trade at all. As soon as it's public, the stock is tradeable by anybody who isn't restricted by their insider (or possibly other) position.
Point 2 - Depends on your strategy. Bear in mind that most stock trades are institutional, not mom and dad buying for their personal account. Pension plans, businesses, hedge funds, etc, will hedge their trades, ie.- They'll buy the stock, but also buy a put (or sell a call) option to cover their position. That's just one example of many though. There could also be stop-loss prices put on them (buy @ $10, but if it hits $9, sell it because I don't want to lose any more than 10%). Other speculators could short sell the stock in anticipation of it dropping. In the case of Vonage, that's quite possible.
As an aside, it's not uncommon in the financial industry that brokerage firm employees have minimum hold times on ALL stock ownership (ie.- you buy a stock, you have to keep it for a minimum of 30 days). The exception to this rule is usually a major price drop (5-10%), in which case the restriction is lifted.
Point 3 - Vonage is hoping on acting like a regular phone company. They sell the service for $40 a month, and tie it to POTS. They also offer your standard package of services - voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding, etc.. They're counting on the fact that people don't change quickly. They trust their phone system as it is. Phone's on the wall in the kitchen, cordless in the den, and it pretty much always works. Saying to them "Hey! Forget that thing on your wall. Just hook up a microphone and headset to your computer!" isn't going to fly. But saying, "We have a new technology that offers you cheaper phone service, cheap long distance, and you won't know the difference from your current phone." is far more appealing. You and I know that we can use Skype for free for VOIP, but the act of talking to a computer is still strange to some people.
Once POTS dies out (which is still likely a long time coming), non-geeks will still need someone to sell them the service, hook them up, etc.. The problem for Vonage is that all the telcos and cable companies will be doing the same thing, and already have a built-in base of users.
One interesting thing I saw a few months ago was that Skype, with almost no advertising, was still being searched for far more than Vonage. Skype announcing that calls to landlines are free in Canada and the US just before the Vonage IPO was a very nice kick in the gut to Vonage.
Regardless, I still use my landline and cell phone.
Hmmm, anybody want my 2 sets of LaserDisc copies of the original trilogy? The 3 individual movies, and the collectors set with the big ol' book about the series and its production.
No, wait, I'm keeping those. Even if I do have to flip discs over and change them.
Or how about the original VHS box set? Pre-THX version?
The original trilogy DVD set with all the changes?
I might even have the "turn the page when you hear the chime" records/tapes/books from when I was a kid. Could have a sticker book kicking around as well.
Is ANYBODY surprised by this? The moment Lucas swore up and down that he'd never release the originals again, that they'd been destroyed, burned, eaten, crapped out and flushed, we all knew that they'd be out on DVD.
A Chemistry Prof of mine back in the day brought something along these lines up. His argument went something like this (I've shorthanded it for those who don't like to read paragraphs):
Pollution = Greenhouse Effect Greenhouse Effect = Increase in global temperature Increase in temperature = More water evaporating Vapourous water = Clouds More clouds = Less sunlight getting through Less sunlight = lower temperature
The point being that there is a sense of balance in place. Yes, we're messing things up, but there are some checks and balances that lessen the impact. That's not to say we should keep on polluting, but that the situation IS reversible if given time.
His other big environmental statement was that he'd wish the "Save the Rainforest" people would spend more than 5 seconds looking at their arguments. The fact is (again, according to him) that the rainforests are NOT the "lungs of the Earth." They actually do a small minority of the CO2->O2 conversion compared to what the oceans and seas do. Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3 = Limestone) in the oceans does much more. Plant life in the major bodies of waters (ie.- algae) also is a significant contributor (in relation to rainforests). But there is almost no major coverage of the damage we've done to the oceans through shipping, dumping and other pollution.
Interestingly, the tie-in between the two lies in the algae and plant life. An increase in temperature can lead to an increase of plant life that can convert the polluting gases into O2... as well as other pollutants.
The problem isn't necessarily that we're polluting the environment, it's that we're doing it faster than nature can balance it. This used to be due to ignorance, but now it's willful and due to monetary pressures and laziness.
I find it an interesting idea, albeit a somewhat unrealistic one. It requires a bit of revisualizing the universes these games take place in. The Sims takes place in a neighbourhood. GTA takes place in a city. Warcraft takes place on a continent. Sci-fi worlds tend to take place over solar systems or galaxies... you COULD combine them. You have a Sim in your neighbourhood, and the car theif from Vegas comes through. Maybe he robs your house, maybe he hides in the shrubs. Meanwhile, in a different galaxy, intergalactic war is raging. Technically, if one of those ships pointed themselves at the Sim/GTA planet, they could eventually get there... but make it take YEARS, so it isn't a very appealing prospect (hence stopping one battalion of Stormtroopers from taking over Earth).
Yes, people play different games for different reasons, but there's no reason you couldn't have multiple characters sharing the same universe, but in different areas. If GTA and The Sims was combined, it would add a new dynamic to both games. If a player of the Sims' portion is driving to work, and gets carjacked by a GTA player, then there's now a real player behind that "crime". It opens up economies for neighbourhoods (why live in LA if your're going to get carjacked?), security businesses, etc... Too keep balance, then simply make the distances between unbalanced games unreasonable to travel.
Anyway, not going to happen, but an interesting thinkpiece.
What I'd be MORE interested in is a "Drawn Together" type of idea. A game containing all the stereotypical characters under one "roof". Alien soliders, crack addicts, film noir detectives with mad kung fu skills, scientists with guns, lone marines, and the lesbian couple that lives in a house where the pool has no ladder to get out with. Obviously with the proper safeguards in place to avoid any great inbalance in abilities.
Most credit cards won't accept a transfer request from an online gambling site. Ditto with most banks. The risk of fraud, laundering, etc., is too great.
So what most sites do is offer the ability to transfer money from an online holding/escrow service (think PayPal, Firepay, etc.). I don't think this bill would affect that much. They couldn't ban you from using these services because they serve an actual purpose. Could you imagine if people were no longer allowed to transfer money from their bank/credit card to PayPal?
This MIGHT work for a smaller company (100- employees let's say). But it's not going to get a foothold in large corporations. Banks, for instance, which have 10's of thousands of employees, and therefore 10's of thousands of desktop systems, would shudder in fear. Heck, where I am, we're still on Windows 2000, I fully expect to switch to XP about 1 year after Vista comes out.
Retraining 80,000 employees on the use of a new operating system is not a pleasant thought. Throw in a whole new world of security concerns (there may be less vulnerabilities, but a bank has to audit EVERYTHING, and quadruple-check for holes) and it's not happening.
Next come the apps. No Linux Office. No Excel. WINE? Are you serious? Ask someone, who's barely able to log in, to use an emulator? And the spreadsheets made in Excel get sent to to other companies and clients who use Excel. Mix in company-wide e-mail changes, the variety of custom trading/market applications, and it's not happening.
Nope. Until Linux can offer a transparent switching experience, and 100% compatible applications, it WILL NOT CATCH ON for big businesses.
One would hope so, since Etobicoke is part of Toronto.
Although the article says the downtown core could be covered by fall, one would assume that the service would expand to the rest of the city as they continue to roll it out. Especially since they're excuse for this is that they plan on using it to monitor smart meters.
True, it's possible. However, never in the history of the Patent Office has an appeal on a final rejection resulted in the rejection being overturned. So the chance of that succeeding appear slim.
Umm... if you're in Detroit, or anywhere north of it, you could be turning SOUTH to look at Canada... takes awhile to get to Britain if you go right from there....
I think (although I'm not positive) that it's more a case of the reviews being fasttracked through the system. Usually, it could take years to get to a review because of the backlog. I'd imagine some political pressure was applied to move this to the front of the line, but not necessarily to influence the final decision.
I walk into my local big-chain record store to buy CDs, and lo! The newest stuff is often on sale! I can buy the newest CD for $16... or 2 for $30. But I go looking for a band from a few years ago, and I've seen prices as high as $40 for an old album.
Now, to me, this makes sense. It's supply and demand. New hot CD, lots of people buying, money can be made at $16. Older band, only a few CDs sold a year, price has to increase.
Why would iTunes go against that simple formula? Shouldn't the less-known/rarer music be more expensive and the popular stuff cheaper?
Slashdot Mirror
As stated above, low income can result in all the other conditions. Obviously, household income isn't a cause of autism, so you need to find the cause of low income.
Could it be autism or asperger's? Affected social skills, introversion, and other "quirks" could very well result in someone being unable to hold or progress financially in a job, forcing them to stay in a low-income area. And has been suggested in the Silicon Valley, when you put a bunch of people with asperger's together, the likelihood of them pairing up increases. If that's the case, then the cause becomes genetic, not environmental. The environment is simply a symptom of the problem.
Because a company like Microsoft is a lagging indicator. 2008 profits would be largely from sales that came before the huge collapse. Some of these can be deferred to Q3/Q4 because the orders were made early with rolled-out delivery. Product lines like the X-Box and Zune would see sales boosts during the holidays, even if they were lower than expected.
But 2009 will be a year where companies and individuals decide that upgrading from XP or a previous version of Office can wait another year or two. People will buy more used games, or decide a Wii or lower-end X-Box would be a more cost-effective gift than the high-end model. In short, M$ will see a drop in revenue. Layoffs will not only trim the fat, but position the company to better retain profits while seeing reduced revenues.
That's it. First this right-wing government gets in, then Bev Oda starts pushing RIAA-like rules, and DMCA crap comes along.. and now anti-net-neutrality! I'm done. I'm moving to The USA where they don't have these prob.... oh... hrmm... Engla... no.. France? ehhh... Russia, here I come!
Just ask Bev Oda. I'm sure they're cheap, and in Canadian dollars.
Oh, I don't disagree with you. There's a reason I went with the biggest CRT I could find for my widescreen HD. I avoid plasma at all costs and warn off anybody looking to buy one.
LCD is the best available at the moment in terms of size AND quality (but not value). I too am waiting for OLED to become practical, or even SED if it can ever get off the ground.
My point is that in terms of pure image quality, I have yet to see a DLP that stacks up to the other options out there. If "good-enough" is what people are willing to go with just to have a bigger screen, then that's fine... but it would drive me nuts.
It's a little-known fact that we Canadians can't help it. You see, Canadian eyes have evolved to become standard-resolution camcorders, which combined with our natural Wi-Fi transmission abilities create an environment of natural data-sharing. Birds gotta swim, fish gotta fly, and Canucks gotta record and distribute media via our own genetic superiority.
Other little-known facts:
- Polar bears are in fact robotic killing machines with laser eyes.
- Igloos are the same as missile silos
- We only have gravity 82.5% of the time
- The Canadian "accent" is in fact a high-frequency encryption only understood by other Canadians
- Sulfur dioxide? Breathable.
- It's not cold, you're just a pansy
- Poutine with a Beavertail for dessert covers all the major food groups
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a seal to hunt if I want to eat this month (seal oil being a major component in Poutine cooking).
"snow-back?" SNOW-BACK?
Please, the correct term is Frost-back. You insult my people.
But I have yet to see DLP that has a really good picture, and I'm talking with HD feeds. A friend of mine has a DLP (that needed a lamp replacement almost out of the box), and the HD quality is greatly inferior to my HD CRT, and we have the same feed. Similarly, I was looking at an HD display in the store the other day, with an High Def movie (not sure if it was Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) playing on the 3 major types (LCD, Plasma and DLP), the DLP looked like an analog signal being stretched to WS on an HD screen in comparison to how crisp the other two options were.
I just don't see DLP as a worthwhile technology. Sure, it's significantly cheaper than Plasma or LCD if you want a BIG screen, but eventually that difference will be minor and the tech will die.
The number on the site doesn't take into account all the pledged amounts from various auctions and donations. Mike and Jerry expect that the actual number for this year ALONE will exceed $1,000,000.
The argument could be made that every book or movie that comes out is just a variation on a theme. Heck, they have names for these themes - action, mystery, thriller, horror, romance, pr0n....
FPS was revolutionary when it first came out (Wolfenstein 3D, Ken's Labrynth, etc.), and it's definitely mature now. What it takes to make it engrossing is a strong sense of what's being aimed for. Half Life had a strong story (heck, you don't play for the first 2 or 3 levels, you just walk through the events), Serious Sam is an unapologetic shoot-em-up. Doom 3 was pretty much "look at our new engine!", so it got great reviews on its look, but poor ones on gameplay (outside of the tension).
Half Life does SO well because it combines the "Wow!" factor of engine upgrades with an engrossing plot. But a plot isn't necessary for fun, as long as you're honest about what it is. It's the halfway efforts that fall flat. All the new tricks in the world can only attract people, they won't stick around if they don't enjoy it.
I'll try and be short here:
- AMD needed ATI to compete with Intel's larger product line. Intel ships more graphics cards than both ATI and nVIDIA because of their bundling.
- AMD has committed to maintaining ATI's entire Graphics line, including Intel products. Although word is that Intel is withdrawing ATI's license to do so
- ATI also has a core logic business AMD wants
- ATI has chips in consumer electronics - consoles, HD TVs, etc. AMD wants into these markets as well.
- Intel makes its own chipsets, and has end-to-end motherboards. nVidia still has chips for these, why wouldn't they have them for AMD as well when AMD starts making their own?
- Intel and nVidia will NOT be merging. There is too much overlap in their businesses because Intel covers such a large spectrum... which is the reason AMD is buying ATI - to compete.
- It is NOT official - the offer is official, the acceptance by ATI's board is official, but the actual purchase still needs regulatory approval... which will likely not be a problem.
This isn't JUST about jamming some low-end ATI GPU on an AMD chip.
I saw it, and I'm a huge fan of both LotR and musicals. It wasn't good.
:)
I have an overly long post on my blog, but I'm not one for blog-whoring, so no link
Short version:
Pros:
- visually stunning - Balrog, Ents, Riders, etc... excellent. Stage direction is fantastic.
- great sound - theatre with surround sound is great
- Elevators in the stage - makes mountains mountains, and hills are hills, battles range over a changing landscape.
- they try to cover the major points in the book - razing of the shire is there, even Tom Bombadil is mentioned
- acting is okay. Some great performances (Gollum, Saruman), a few middling ones, and a couple REALLY bad ones (Galadriel comes to mind)
Cons:
- long and convoluted - expected with this source material, but if you haven't at least seen the movies, you're lost. Reading the books, and The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion helps.
- HORRIBLY edited. Basic edit strategy seems to be, "if everyone lives, cut it." Story jumps all over the place, and makes little sense. It's like someone skimmed the book and didn't discuss it with anybody who knows the series. They also move key scenes around, creating a domino effect that changes other scenes and in the end detracts greatly.
- see: terrible performances - the couple that are really bad really detract from their scenes. One big problem is Brent Carver's Gandalf - it's a mediocre performance. Not bad per se, but not the tour de force that Gandalf needs to be.
- Awful, forgettable songs. TWO songs are memorable, the rest are either terrible, out of place, or ripped off from another play (the call to battle might as well have been called "One Day More" or "Red and Black"). This isn't good for a MUSICAL
- Attempts to please the fanboys actually insult - the razing of the Shire for example - Sharkey and his men are all dressed in black trenchcoats and black slacks and t-shirts... it's like a low-budget Matrix scene.
- No heart whatsoever.
- There's more, but I'll stop here.
If you're easily distracted, then the technical aspects could maybe hide the deficincies. But if you actually watch the thing, it's tremendously disappointing on a number of levels. They're re-editing it for London, and dropping it by half an hour. Maybe they can fix some of their flubs.
- Makes it easier to find porn
.xxx domain. By requirement. "You have porn? You're .xxx. Not .com, not .org, etc.." So what stops them from then moving all the stuff suitable for children to .kids? What's the definition for porn then? What's the definition for kids-only? Opens up a grey area. Also, .xxx could become a "premium service" for ISPs. It becomes the equivalent of ordering the Playboy channel or getting subscription to something that comes in a brown paper bag.
.xxx, but there are potential pitfalls.
- Gives very vocal approval to porn
Okay, fine, I don't have a problem with either of those... other people do though.
- Could facilitate the movement of all pornographic sites to the
I think it's not a bad idea for
Devil's advocate, signing off.
Point 1 - Umm.. no. It's possible that INSIDERS (ie.- company employees) might have a restriction on them, but 90 days seems extreme. If nobody could sell an stock for 90 days after the IPO, then the stock would do nothing. It would sit there and not trade at all. As soon as it's public, the stock is tradeable by anybody who isn't restricted by their insider (or possibly other) position.
Point 2 - Depends on your strategy. Bear in mind that most stock trades are institutional, not mom and dad buying for their personal account. Pension plans, businesses, hedge funds, etc, will hedge their trades, ie.- They'll buy the stock, but also buy a put (or sell a call) option to cover their position. That's just one example of many though. There could also be stop-loss prices put on them (buy @ $10, but if it hits $9, sell it because I don't want to lose any more than 10%). Other speculators could short sell the stock in anticipation of it dropping. In the case of Vonage, that's quite possible.
As an aside, it's not uncommon in the financial industry that brokerage firm employees have minimum hold times on ALL stock ownership (ie.- you buy a stock, you have to keep it for a minimum of 30 days). The exception to this rule is usually a major price drop (5-10%), in which case the restriction is lifted.
Point 3 - Vonage is hoping on acting like a regular phone company. They sell the service for $40 a month, and tie it to POTS. They also offer your standard package of services - voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding, etc.. They're counting on the fact that people don't change quickly. They trust their phone system as it is. Phone's on the wall in the kitchen, cordless in the den, and it pretty much always works. Saying to them "Hey! Forget that thing on your wall. Just hook up a microphone and headset to your computer!" isn't going to fly. But saying, "We have a new technology that offers you cheaper phone service, cheap long distance, and you won't know the difference from your current phone." is far more appealing. You and I know that we can use Skype for free for VOIP, but the act of talking to a computer is still strange to some people.
Once POTS dies out (which is still likely a long time coming), non-geeks will still need someone to sell them the service, hook them up, etc.. The problem for Vonage is that all the telcos and cable companies will be doing the same thing, and already have a built-in base of users.
One interesting thing I saw a few months ago was that Skype, with almost no advertising, was still being searched for far more than Vonage. Skype announcing that calls to landlines are free in Canada and the US just before the Vonage IPO was a very nice kick in the gut to Vonage.
Regardless, I still use my landline and cell phone.
Hmmm, anybody want my 2 sets of LaserDisc copies of the original trilogy? The 3 individual movies, and the collectors set with the big ol' book about the series and its production.
No, wait, I'm keeping those. Even if I do have to flip discs over and change them.
Or how about the original VHS box set? Pre-THX version?
The original trilogy DVD set with all the changes?
I might even have the "turn the page when you hear the chime" records/tapes/books from when I was a kid. Could have a sticker book kicking around as well.
Is ANYBODY surprised by this? The moment Lucas swore up and down that he'd never release the originals again, that they'd been destroyed, burned, eaten, crapped out and flushed, we all knew that they'd be out on DVD.
With a name like Brent Kirkwood??? I think I'll assume English is his native language.
A Chemistry Prof of mine back in the day brought something along these lines up. His argument went something like this (I've shorthanded it for those who don't like to read paragraphs):
Pollution = Greenhouse Effect
Greenhouse Effect = Increase in global temperature
Increase in temperature = More water evaporating
Vapourous water = Clouds
More clouds = Less sunlight getting through
Less sunlight = lower temperature
The point being that there is a sense of balance in place. Yes, we're messing things up, but there are some checks and balances that lessen the impact. That's not to say we should keep on polluting, but that the situation IS reversible if given time.
His other big environmental statement was that he'd wish the "Save the Rainforest" people would spend more than 5 seconds looking at their arguments. The fact is (again, according to him) that the rainforests are NOT the "lungs of the Earth." They actually do a small minority of the CO2->O2 conversion compared to what the oceans and seas do. Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3 = Limestone) in the oceans does much more. Plant life in the major bodies of waters (ie.- algae) also is a significant contributor (in relation to rainforests). But there is almost no major coverage of the damage we've done to the oceans through shipping, dumping and other pollution.
Interestingly, the tie-in between the two lies in the algae and plant life. An increase in temperature can lead to an increase of plant life that can convert the polluting gases into O2... as well as other pollutants.
The problem isn't necessarily that we're polluting the environment, it's that we're doing it faster than nature can balance it. This used to be due to ignorance, but now it's willful and due to monetary pressures and laziness.
I find it an interesting idea, albeit a somewhat unrealistic one. It requires a bit of revisualizing the universes these games take place in. The Sims takes place in a neighbourhood. GTA takes place in a city. Warcraft takes place on a continent. Sci-fi worlds tend to take place over solar systems or galaxies... you COULD combine them. You have a Sim in your neighbourhood, and the car theif from Vegas comes through. Maybe he robs your house, maybe he hides in the shrubs. Meanwhile, in a different galaxy, intergalactic war is raging. Technically, if one of those ships pointed themselves at the Sim/GTA planet, they could eventually get there... but make it take YEARS, so it isn't a very appealing prospect (hence stopping one battalion of Stormtroopers from taking over Earth).
Yes, people play different games for different reasons, but there's no reason you couldn't have multiple characters sharing the same universe, but in different areas. If GTA and The Sims was combined, it would add a new dynamic to both games. If a player of the Sims' portion is driving to work, and gets carjacked by a GTA player, then there's now a real player behind that "crime". It opens up economies for neighbourhoods (why live in LA if your're going to get carjacked?), security businesses, etc... Too keep balance, then simply make the distances between unbalanced games unreasonable to travel.
Anyway, not going to happen, but an interesting thinkpiece.
What I'd be MORE interested in is a "Drawn Together" type of idea. A game containing all the stereotypical characters under one "roof". Alien soliders, crack addicts, film noir detectives with mad kung fu skills, scientists with guns, lone marines, and the lesbian couple that lives in a house where the pool has no ladder to get out with. Obviously with the proper safeguards in place to avoid any great inbalance in abilities.
Anyway... enough rambling for me.
Most credit cards won't accept a transfer request from an online gambling site. Ditto with most banks. The risk of fraud, laundering, etc., is too great.
So what most sites do is offer the ability to transfer money from an online holding/escrow service (think PayPal, Firepay, etc.). I don't think this bill would affect that much. They couldn't ban you from using these services because they serve an actual purpose. Could you imagine if people were no longer allowed to transfer money from their bank/credit card to PayPal?
This MIGHT work for a smaller company (100- employees let's say). But it's not going to get a foothold in large corporations. Banks, for instance, which have 10's of thousands of employees, and therefore 10's of thousands of desktop systems, would shudder in fear. Heck, where I am, we're still on Windows 2000, I fully expect to switch to XP about 1 year after Vista comes out.
Retraining 80,000 employees on the use of a new operating system is not a pleasant thought. Throw in a whole new world of security concerns (there may be less vulnerabilities, but a bank has to audit EVERYTHING, and quadruple-check for holes) and it's not happening.
Next come the apps. No Linux Office. No Excel. WINE? Are you serious? Ask someone, who's barely able to log in, to use an emulator? And the spreadsheets made in Excel get sent to to other companies and clients who use Excel. Mix in company-wide e-mail changes, the variety of custom trading/market applications, and it's not happening.
Nope. Until Linux can offer a transparent switching experience, and 100% compatible applications, it WILL NOT CATCH ON for big businesses.
One would hope so, since Etobicoke is part of Toronto.
Although the article says the downtown core could be covered by fall, one would assume that the service would expand to the rest of the city as they continue to roll it out. Especially since they're excuse for this is that they plan on using it to monitor smart meters.
True, it's possible. However, never in the history of the Patent Office has an appeal on a final rejection resulted in the rejection being overturned. So the chance of that succeeding appear slim.
Umm... if you're in Detroit, or anywhere north of it, you could be turning SOUTH to look at Canada... takes awhile to get to Britain if you go right from there....
I think (although I'm not positive) that it's more a case of the reviews being fasttracked through the system. Usually, it could take years to get to a review because of the backlog. I'd imagine some political pressure was applied to move this to the front of the line, but not necessarily to influence the final decision.
I walk into my local big-chain record store to buy CDs, and lo! The newest stuff is often on sale! I can buy the newest CD for $16... or 2 for $30. But I go looking for a band from a few years ago, and I've seen prices as high as $40 for an old album.
Now, to me, this makes sense. It's supply and demand. New hot CD, lots of people buying, money can be made at $16. Older band, only a few CDs sold a year, price has to increase.
Why would iTunes go against that simple formula? Shouldn't the less-known/rarer music be more expensive and the popular stuff cheaper?
I know, I'm crazy-thinking.