Why go through all of the trouble of flipping your whole world upside down, especially when you've already worked out a sweet deal for yourself when you can just electrocute, blow up, trap in an elevator, or frame/blackmail the boss for surfing porn while at work.
Blogging is still pretty niche and dominated by techie talk, and a LOT of meta-blogging.
Thats kinda funny--my personal experience is the exact opposite. Of my friends/acquaintances who blog, they are very much not technically oriented--and none of my friends friends who are into computers & technology blog. Obviously too small of a sample size for any real meaning. My friends who blog are bigger into keeping in touch with their friends and might even write actual letters to their friends were it not for blogging/email. Meanwhile my programmer friends aren't exactly into the keeping in touch thing regardless of the medium.
Might have something to do with a desire to compile the kernel taking up their time.
MSFT went public in 1986. It is only a very recent happening that Gates has been diversifying. All along, I kinda thought he was crazy for keeping almost every penny of his wealth in MSFT and not diversifying (like Paul Allen did). Of course history certainly proves Gates right and me wrong--his wealth accelerated much faster than Allen's all the way to making him the richest man in the world. Anyway, you have to admit that it's at least interesting that he didn't diversify his holdings for well over a decade and now over the last few years has begun doing so about as fast as possible without shocking the price or the market. There's lots of possible reasons, among them that he suddenly has become a much more conservative investor. But a less optimistic viewpoint on the future of MSFT seems at least as likely as him drastically changing his personal/financial philsophies. Then again, he didn't give hardly any money to charity (relatively speaking) until fairly recently and is a major donor now so that was a drastic change of philosphy too. OK I'd like to strike that previous line but in all fairness I guess I gotta give devil his due.
This is a perfect example of why geeks (and really anyone generating IP) should know what source code escrow is. Anyone starting their own company definitely needs to understand this--basically the rights to code a company generates are held in escrow by a company that does this sort of thing. A document is drawn up that outlines exactly what happens to the source code under specific circumstances for example if the company is about to go bankrupt, the source code is released to the public domain or back to the individual authors or whatever.
As others have pointed out, without such provisions, the ownership of the source code can become very mucky--generally any creditors have claim to the company's assets. You might be able to buy the rights to the code for pennies on the dollar, but then again, the code might disappear forever if the owner doesn't care or won't sell. The legal thing to do would be to look up the bankruptcy documents and find out exactly what happened to the company's assets & then try to work something out with them. Any other actions will depend on your feelings about the risks, punishments & likelihood of getting caught. The right thing and the legal thing aren't necessarly the same thing.
Disputable because it's too vague not because it's incorrect. Certainly heavily regulated industries can hamper the big guys but it is just as true that excessive regulation hurts smaller companies as much and often more. Consider the volumes of regulations on hiring/firing/employment practices as an example. It's pretty trivial for big companies to hire specialists whose only job is to keep up on the regs. Meanwhile, the guy who runs a landscaping business and hires 5 or 6 employees cannot possibly afford it. While big companies are hampered by excessive regulation aimed at them, small companies are hampered by all excessive regulation because they don't have the resources to dedicate to compliance.
This is my biggest concern as well--US companies have most certainly not earned the benefitof the doubt when it comes to acting morally and/or legally. Under ideal circumstances, variable pricing that is cool with me--unfortunately in addition to the above mentioned situations where a company could take advantage of consumers, I don't believe for a second that big companies wouldn't:
collude by sharing their databases & personal info
find a way to make it illegal for people to share with each other what they paid
use DMCA-like tactics to kill reselling of their products. Sure it's all fair open market that they could charge consumer A $50 and consumer B $150, but they would certainly find a way to make it illegal for consumer A to turn around & sell the product to consumer B for $100.
Not to mention that the bartering systems have gone away (with somes exceptions) for good reason. People don't want to bother taking the time & effort to negotiate for most things--just give me a price & I'll either buy something or I won't.
Not doubt the general gist of your comment is correct--there are definitely major double standards when it comes to the US vs the rest of the world. There are double standards in everything--whether or not it's fair is a completely separate issue. But, and I'm taking a wild guess here--you're in the US and are getting the vast majority of your info from US news sources. Despite the "free press" moniker or rather because of it, journalists filter their reporting through their own biases & self interests. Suprisingly enough, has actually been one of them over the past year or so. Write an article that everyone hates and you won't be published for very long. US people, like those of every other country in the world, have their own biases in the form of patriotism, nationalism, regionalism or whatever else you want to call it.
1. When France or Russia want to use their UN Security Council veto then it's treasonous. When the US uses its veto then it's OK.
I'm quite curious what your definition of treasonous is. Last I checked, an individual, much less a whole country couldn't commit treason on another country. Words mean something.
2. When the US interferes in Iraq it's OK, when anyone else does the it's not.
Gee there wouldn't happen to be any context that you too the quote from now would there? The truth is a lot of the countries that were so morally opposed to getting involved in a war in Iraq are now looking to have a say in the rebuilding & more importantly cash in financially with contracts. They're the ones who should stop interfearing.
I have to say that I'm more in favor of comfortable attire on an airplane than anywhere else. You're packed in close proximaty to a bunch of people, breathing recirculated air, and then (no disrespect to aerospace engineers) throw in the fact that you're miles above the ground in something that weights hundreds of thousands of pounds. I say anything that can help people relax is a good thing. I suppose though, bathing suits are a bit over the top. I recently discovered how much more relaxing a flight is with your shoes off--it's unbelievable how much difference it makes.
Except that that was how many years ago? Many more people are on line, a ton more have broadband and tons more are generally pissed at the RIAA not to mention that a lot more people are sick of the same packaged pop crap and would love to support a system that fosters new and different artists. All things condsidered, I think that the 60 million Napster users is a perfectly acceptable number to use when presenting what is as much a thought experiment as business plan. And he is very clear in the first two paragraphs that the biggest goal of the article was to get people to do some lateral thinking of problems.
I agree completely that many of these discussions forget the artist - but not all of them. Certainly any plan for a new way must solve the questions of how to reward the artists fairly and provide incentive for them to create. This is where there's the most opportunity to squash the current system--currently record companies make boatloads of money, established musicians make a bunch of money and new artists are majorly taken advantage of.
There is nothing in this plan that precludes making sure artists get paid--I've read Cringely long enough to know that he's most certainly in favor of anyone being fairly rewarded for their creations regardless of the field. The fact that he left out options for that piece is certainly disappointing but I'd guess he'll present them in next weeks column. This system very easily lends itself to much more fair profits from their work for the artists. It's almost comically trivial to set it up so the artists gets a certain percentage for every download, sort of similar to the way songwriters get their royalties. If a song gets downloaded a million times, the artist gets their rate times one million. What rates to set are just details to be worked out, but by eliminating the recording & distribution companies and their huge profits, the artists & consumers should be able to split the difference and both be much better off.
I guess the current politicians figure their only shot at getting re-elected is to disenfranchise the Napster generation before the kids who grew up filesharing start replacing them with copyright-reform candidates.
Great comment--unfortunately you should have stopped there.
Not that it would work -- what jury in the world would convict someone of a felony for sharing and listening to music? How could it not be cruel and unusual punishment to take away someone's voting rights for the copyright equivalent of going ten miles over the speed limit?
Aren't juries supposed to decide whether a person is guilty or innoscent of breaking a law not pass judgement on the law itself? Though I tend to agree that it can be a great place for citizens to send a message about terrible laws, it really doesn't matter because judges can set aside verdicts if the jury ruling is counter to existing laws whether just or not.
I'm not worried about this law passing--it would be political suicide (I hope) to support something so broadly unpopular
Could have said the same thing about the DMCA, Patriot, Sonny Bono and countless other acts. People don't get riled up until after the fact (if at all), and congressmen are rarely (if ever) held responsible for their legislation.
Right for the most part, but one glaring mistake--when you said "the fact that these corporations pay the most taxes and gives the most contribution." The contributions part is certainly true and the only solution is campaign finance reform which looks like it won't happen because the Supreme Court believes bribery...er campaign contributions is protected speech. But many corporations don't pay taxes. For example, Microsoft & Cisco, two of the richest companies on the planet generally don't pay taxes because they've been able to expense all the stock options they grant. And Hollywood accounting almost always has even the largest block buster movies not making a profits. Look at the dispute between Marvel & Sony. Stan Lee was supposed to get 10% so with a gross of over $400 million, that should be a nice chunk of change right, $40 million. But Sony (shrewdly enough, that's their right) made the contract 10% of net and through their bookkeeping methods show they movie hadn't made a profit.
It's funny because it's verbatim the text posted in the past only referring to Stephen King--it was a rumor that had some teeth & spread beyond slashdot.
Certainly not a bad point--but I'm a pretty firm believer that long term, this would take care of itself. The Bayesian filters are extremely effective--like 98% or better. If everyone uses them--sure, for awhile it will still waste all the bandwidth but the response rates that are currently high enough to justify it will be so low no company would pay the money to spam and the bandwidth issue will go away. At least that's what I hope will happen. I just think that this approach will be more effective than trying to get a bunch of non-technical politicians to craft effective legislation which can't really touch the offshore companies anyway.
All very good points--in many ways, Apple is certainly acting like a monopoly. But perceptions matter too regardless of whether they're right or not--and the perception is that Apple is a competitor to MS and is the David to Redmond's Goliath so no antitrust charges will ever be presented against Apple.
The other thing is that if you look at it from Apple's perspective the actions which you're giving malicious intent are more likely to be self preservation. If they don't provide extremely compelling reasons for people to buy their more expensive machines, they will go out of business plan and simple. Being dependant on third party developers for a large part of the user experience & productivity they claim as a competitive advantage is extremely dangerous. If they feel they can create better apps than third parties then more power to them - and if they succeed and the ISV's go under well too bad for them. (Assuming they're competing fairly and not using undocumented APIs which may or may not be the case, I have no idea).
Of course the irony is that this puts Apple in an entirely different dangerous position--even if they create much better apps, putting ISVs out of business could have dramatic consequences.
Re:I'm sure it will do wonders for..
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Swiping Out Cancer
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Look up the economics term "externality." Whether you do or do not submit to a drug test does not directly have an impact on whether companies test--it only directly affects whether you get the job or not. Yes if enough other people refuse at some point companies would stop doing it but each individual has to make the decision for themselves first & others second. It's easy to be flippant about this but in an terrible job market, if the question is whether to pee in a cup & feed one's family or protest on principle and go hungry the decision is pretty obvious. And at least in American, many of the jobs that require drug testing are in manufacturing which tend to employ people who have few other options.
If you're some one who's afraid of flying and/or have had an really awful experience on a flight, this might actually be an attractive option! Plus it would keep prices down because they wouldn't have to the huge costs of those exquisite meals.
But a lot of us don't hold ourselves up as he does either. When you portray yourself as this once in a generation visionary, getting something so wrong as missing the Internet should be a major slam on your credibility.
At one point it only would have been a matter of him losing credibility and people just disregarding his message but now the fact of the matter is that he & his company control the future of the industry at least to a larger part than anyone has before and it's not by providing the best products & services but because they are so entrenched - just like IBM, Ma Bell, etc were.
As a huge fan of the franchise I'll respectfully disagree. Though I hated Roger Moore for playing it too cartoonish, I did like Daulton--though certainly lacking the charisma of Connery I found his playing the role as much more serious, darker and ruthless to be interesting as well and more like the 007 from Fleming's books. Of course the box office numbers show that just about everyone else disagrees with me. I do find Brosnan to be nearly up to par with Connery in terms of charisma (especially considering many of Connery's best lines would never fly today because they'd be too offensive). All he really is lacking is the physical presence that Connery had.
While the same could be said for the Indy series, the reason that the Bond series has been able to continue as long as it has is in large part due to the consistency of the behind the scenes producers. Cubby Broccoli produced everything through License to Kill with his daughter Barabara and step-son Michael Wilson taking over for the rest after years of on-the-job training from their father.
I gotta disagree with one thing--Rocky III was an excellent movie. The whole thing with him running into some one who's tougher & hungrier and actually getting beat, then having to adapt his style and learn a whole new way to fight, with the whole world against him again I thought was great. I thought II was unnecessary and everything after III stunk but Rocky III was almost as good as the original.
Yes--though I see people here griping about their wireless plan, at least in my experience there's a ton more competition & as a result better value for wireless than for land lines. It's obscene what SBC charges us just to have our landline available - once number portability happens, the biggest and last remaining reason to not go wireless exclusively goes away.
Re:Reputations of people, specifically teachers
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NYT On Online Reputations
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I haven't checked out TeacherReview either but my reaction to your comment would be the same reason I like ePinions and really any review/comment system so much--I don't pay much weight to the average ranking or anything like that, what I find terribly useful is the content of the comments. I don't really care whether some one says "this is the best digital camera ever" or "it's the worst ever." Utterly useless--but when they say that the it uses a proprietary battery and extras are very expensive, or it takes amazing outdoor photos but not great indoor ones or things like that then I'm interested. It's the little details that aren't part of marketing or products specs, the things that real people discover about something during real use that is more helpful. And you can apply the content of the feedback to how you uses something or what your values and priorities are.
With a teacher, it's no different--the more info you can have about teacher the better decision you can make based on whever your goals are. Whether you want an easy A and don't care if you learn anything or don't mind a lower grade but having a much better understanding of the material--it should be your choice. And obviously that's more extreme--there's a lot of gray that is just a matter of philosophy. Some teachers believe a lot of memorization is a good thing while others go for more of a higher-level, big-picture approach. Either can work but learning styles are just as varied as teaching styles (actually much more varied but that's another story) so picking the one that best fits you is better for everybody.
Also, I think the main use of TeacherReview wouldn't be as much choosing what University to got to (because that's bast on a lot of other things like $$$) but once you're there, what teachers do you want to have.
Bingo. It's all about power, control & Richie's ego. His union is a shining example of the absolute worst things about unions in general.
I think my favorite was:
"Even if (the computer operators) were experienced umpires, this system would not work because it's based on a single frontal photograph in comparison with the 3-D, real-time view of the umpire," Gibson said.
In addition, many batters move during the course of the pitch, which an umpire sees and weighs in determining the strike zone, he said.
Of course this is from Larry Gibson, not an umpire but the "attorney representing the World Umpires Association."
This of course puzzled me because I'm trying to think about how the player could move during the course of the pitch that could possibly change the strikezone--unless he's a contortionist or something. A 2-d photo is perfectly adequate in determining the top & bottom boundaries of the strikezone--last I checked, the plate didn't move and no matter where the batter's standing, the ball should be over the damn plate.
I applaud the effort at being critical of the statistics but you're looking in the wrong place on this one. It's not a matter of the percentage of strikes the umpires called versus the percentage of strikes the machine called. In both cases, the percentage in both cases is for the umpires--32.1% in parks with the machine versus 31.4% in parks without it. I agree with you that a machine is or at least can be made much better at judging spacial positioning, at least for now the real reason for the machines (and the reason the umpires are fighting it) isn't because it will replace them but rather because it is critiquing them--ultimately to help them adjust their strike zones. MLB has been trying to get the umps to more closely reflect the strikezone in the rulebook. Comparing % of called strikes at QuesTec vs. non-QuesTec parks indicates whether they are changing their calls to what they think they should be calling.
I was a catcher for most of the years I played baseball--as a catcher you get more time than anyone viewing balls & strikes from the same perspective (physically not figuratively) as the umpire. I caught games with exceptional umpire, ones who were absolutely clueless and worst of all, some that actually behaved with both bias and malice. But my biggest gripe of all is that even the best umpires change their strikezone depending on the situation. A 3-0 count means that pitches not even close to the strikezone with a 1-1 count are called strikes. As a player you certainly know this and deal with it but that doesn't make it right. It's only a shade of gray away from calling a baserunner save when he's obviously out if batting team is losing. A strike should always be a strike and unfortunately the human ups don't act that way. Yes it's all part of the game and all that--BUT at some point there's no reason a flawless non-human system for judging balls and strikes cannot be created. Whether QuesTec is there or not, the real issue: when (not if) some one comes up with a flawless system which gets every pitch right, should it be adopted? Personally I think yes. Competitive sports are about...competition. You play to win and anything that can be done to ensure that the competition is fair and honest for both sides needs to be done.
Slashdot Mirror
Why go through all of the trouble of flipping your whole world upside down, especially when you've already worked out a sweet deal for yourself when you can just electrocute, blow up, trap in an elevator, or frame/blackmail the boss for surfing porn while at work.
Thats kinda funny--my personal experience is the exact opposite. Of my friends/acquaintances who blog, they are very much not technically oriented--and none of my friends friends who are into computers & technology blog. Obviously too small of a sample size for any real meaning. My friends who blog are bigger into keeping in touch with their friends and might even write actual letters to their friends were it not for blogging/email. Meanwhile my programmer friends aren't exactly into the keeping in touch thing regardless of the medium.
Might have something to do with a desire to compile the kernel taking up their time.
MSFT went public in 1986. It is only a very recent happening that Gates has been diversifying. All along, I kinda thought he was crazy for keeping almost every penny of his wealth in MSFT and not diversifying (like Paul Allen did). Of course history certainly proves Gates right and me wrong--his wealth accelerated much faster than Allen's all the way to making him the richest man in the world. Anyway, you have to admit that it's at least interesting that he didn't diversify his holdings for well over a decade and now over the last few years has begun doing so about as fast as possible without shocking the price or the market. There's lots of possible reasons, among them that he suddenly has become a much more conservative investor. But a less optimistic viewpoint on the future of MSFT seems at least as likely as him drastically changing his personal/financial philsophies. Then again, he didn't give hardly any money to charity (relatively speaking) until fairly recently and is a major donor now so that was a drastic change of philosphy too. OK I'd like to strike that previous line but in all fairness I guess I gotta give devil his due.
As others have pointed out, without such provisions, the ownership of the source code can become very mucky--generally any creditors have claim to the company's assets. You might be able to buy the rights to the code for pennies on the dollar, but then again, the code might disappear forever if the owner doesn't care or won't sell. The legal thing to do would be to look up the bankruptcy documents and find out exactly what happened to the company's assets & then try to work something out with them. Any other actions will depend on your feelings about the risks, punishments & likelihood of getting caught. The right thing and the legal thing aren't necessarly the same thing.
Disputable because it's too vague not because it's incorrect. Certainly heavily regulated industries can hamper the big guys but it is just as true that excessive regulation hurts smaller companies as much and often more. Consider the volumes of regulations on hiring/firing/employment practices as an example. It's pretty trivial for big companies to hire specialists whose only job is to keep up on the regs. Meanwhile, the guy who runs a landscaping business and hires 5 or 6 employees cannot possibly afford it. While big companies are hampered by excessive regulation aimed at them, small companies are hampered by all excessive regulation because they don't have the resources to dedicate to compliance.
- collude by sharing their databases & personal info
- find a way to make it illegal for people to share with each other what they paid
- use DMCA-like tactics to kill reselling of their products. Sure it's all fair open market that they could charge consumer A $50 and consumer B $150, but they would certainly find a way to make it illegal for consumer A to turn around & sell the product to consumer B for $100.
Not to mention that the bartering systems have gone away (with somes exceptions) for good reason. People don't want to bother taking the time & effort to negotiate for most things--just give me a price & I'll either buy something or I won't.1. When France or Russia want to use their UN Security Council veto then it's treasonous. When the US uses its veto then it's OK.
I'm quite curious what your definition of treasonous is. Last I checked, an individual, much less a whole country couldn't commit treason on another country. Words mean something.
2. When the US interferes in Iraq it's OK, when anyone else does the it's not.
Gee there wouldn't happen to be any context that you too the quote from now would there? The truth is a lot of the countries that were so morally opposed to getting involved in a war in Iraq are now looking to have a say in the rebuilding & more importantly cash in financially with contracts. They're the ones who should stop interfearing.
I have to say that I'm more in favor of comfortable attire on an airplane than anywhere else. You're packed in close proximaty to a bunch of people, breathing recirculated air, and then (no disrespect to aerospace engineers) throw in the fact that you're miles above the ground in something that weights hundreds of thousands of pounds. I say anything that can help people relax is a good thing. I suppose though, bathing suits are a bit over the top. I recently discovered how much more relaxing a flight is with your shoes off--it's unbelievable how much difference it makes.
Except that that was how many years ago? Many more people are on line, a ton more have broadband and tons more are generally pissed at the RIAA not to mention that a lot more people are sick of the same packaged pop crap and would love to support a system that fosters new and different artists. All things condsidered, I think that the 60 million Napster users is a perfectly acceptable number to use when presenting what is as much a thought experiment as business plan. And he is very clear in the first two paragraphs that the biggest goal of the article was to get people to do some lateral thinking of problems.
There is nothing in this plan that precludes making sure artists get paid--I've read Cringely long enough to know that he's most certainly in favor of anyone being fairly rewarded for their creations regardless of the field. The fact that he left out options for that piece is certainly disappointing but I'd guess he'll present them in next weeks column. This system very easily lends itself to much more fair profits from their work for the artists. It's almost comically trivial to set it up so the artists gets a certain percentage for every download, sort of similar to the way songwriters get their royalties. If a song gets downloaded a million times, the artist gets their rate times one million. What rates to set are just details to be worked out, but by eliminating the recording & distribution companies and their huge profits, the artists & consumers should be able to split the difference and both be much better off.
Great comment--unfortunately you should have stopped there.
Not that it would work -- what jury in the world would convict someone of a felony for sharing and listening to music? How could it not be cruel and unusual punishment to take away someone's voting rights for the copyright equivalent of going ten miles over the speed limit?
Aren't juries supposed to decide whether a person is guilty or innoscent of breaking a law not pass judgement on the law itself? Though I tend to agree that it can be a great place for citizens to send a message about terrible laws, it really doesn't matter because judges can set aside verdicts if the jury ruling is counter to existing laws whether just or not.
I'm not worried about this law passing--it would be political suicide (I hope) to support something so broadly unpopular
Could have said the same thing about the DMCA, Patriot, Sonny Bono and countless other acts. People don't get riled up until after the fact (if at all), and congressmen are rarely (if ever) held responsible for their legislation.
Right for the most part, but one glaring mistake--when you said "the fact that these corporations pay the most taxes and gives the most contribution." The contributions part is certainly true and the only solution is campaign finance reform which looks like it won't happen because the Supreme Court believes bribery...er campaign contributions is protected speech. But many corporations don't pay taxes. For example, Microsoft & Cisco, two of the richest companies on the planet generally don't pay taxes because they've been able to expense all the stock options they grant. And Hollywood accounting almost always has even the largest block buster movies not making a profits. Look at the dispute between Marvel & Sony. Stan Lee was supposed to get 10% so with a gross of over $400 million, that should be a nice chunk of change right, $40 million. But Sony (shrewdly enough, that's their right) made the contract 10% of net and through their bookkeeping methods show they movie hadn't made a profit.
It's funny because it's verbatim the text posted in the past only referring to Stephen King--it was a rumor that had some teeth & spread beyond slashdot.
Certainly not a bad point--but I'm a pretty firm believer that long term, this would take care of itself. The Bayesian filters are extremely effective--like 98% or better. If everyone uses them--sure, for awhile it will still waste all the bandwidth but the response rates that are currently high enough to justify it will be so low no company would pay the money to spam and the bandwidth issue will go away. At least that's what I hope will happen. I just think that this approach will be more effective than trying to get a bunch of non-technical politicians to craft effective legislation which can't really touch the offshore companies anyway.
The other thing is that if you look at it from Apple's perspective the actions which you're giving malicious intent are more likely to be self preservation. If they don't provide extremely compelling reasons for people to buy their more expensive machines, they will go out of business plan and simple. Being dependant on third party developers for a large part of the user experience & productivity they claim as a competitive advantage is extremely dangerous. If they feel they can create better apps than third parties then more power to them - and if they succeed and the ISV's go under well too bad for them. (Assuming they're competing fairly and not using undocumented APIs which may or may not be the case, I have no idea).
Of course the irony is that this puts Apple in an entirely different dangerous position--even if they create much better apps, putting ISVs out of business could have dramatic consequences.
Look up the economics term "externality." Whether you do or do not submit to a drug test does not directly have an impact on whether companies test--it only directly affects whether you get the job or not. Yes if enough other people refuse at some point companies would stop doing it but each individual has to make the decision for themselves first & others second. It's easy to be flippant about this but in an terrible job market, if the question is whether to pee in a cup & feed one's family or protest on principle and go hungry the decision is pretty obvious. And at least in American, many of the jobs that require drug testing are in manufacturing which tend to employ people who have few other options.
If you're some one who's afraid of flying and/or have had an really awful experience on a flight, this might actually be an attractive option! Plus it would keep prices down because they wouldn't have to the huge costs of those exquisite meals.
At one point it only would have been a matter of him losing credibility and people just disregarding his message but now the fact of the matter is that he & his company control the future of the industry at least to a larger part than anyone has before and it's not by providing the best products & services but because they are so entrenched - just like IBM, Ma Bell, etc were.
While the same could be said for the Indy series, the reason that the Bond series has been able to continue as long as it has is in large part due to the consistency of the behind the scenes producers. Cubby Broccoli produced everything through License to Kill with his daughter Barabara and step-son Michael Wilson taking over for the rest after years of on-the-job training from their father.
I gotta disagree with one thing--Rocky III was an excellent movie. The whole thing with him running into some one who's tougher & hungrier and actually getting beat, then having to adapt his style and learn a whole new way to fight, with the whole world against him again I thought was great. I thought II was unnecessary and everything after III stunk but Rocky III was almost as good as the original.
Yes--though I see people here griping about their wireless plan, at least in my experience there's a ton more competition & as a result better value for wireless than for land lines. It's obscene what SBC charges us just to have our landline available - once number portability happens, the biggest and last remaining reason to not go wireless exclusively goes away.
With a teacher, it's no different--the more info you can have about teacher the better decision you can make based on whever your goals are. Whether you want an easy A and don't care if you learn anything or don't mind a lower grade but having a much better understanding of the material--it should be your choice. And obviously that's more extreme--there's a lot of gray that is just a matter of philosophy. Some teachers believe a lot of memorization is a good thing while others go for more of a higher-level, big-picture approach. Either can work but learning styles are just as varied as teaching styles (actually much more varied but that's another story) so picking the one that best fits you is better for everybody.
Also, I think the main use of TeacherReview wouldn't be as much choosing what University to got to (because that's bast on a lot of other things like $$$) but once you're there, what teachers do you want to have.
I think my favorite was:
Of course this is from Larry Gibson, not an umpire but the "attorney representing the World Umpires Association."This of course puzzled me because I'm trying to think about how the player could move during the course of the pitch that could possibly change the strikezone--unless he's a contortionist or something. A 2-d photo is perfectly adequate in determining the top & bottom boundaries of the strikezone--last I checked, the plate didn't move and no matter where the batter's standing, the ball should be over the damn plate.
I applaud the effort at being critical of the statistics but you're looking in the wrong place on this one. It's not a matter of the percentage of strikes the umpires called versus the percentage of strikes the machine called. In both cases, the percentage in both cases is for the umpires--32.1% in parks with the machine versus 31.4% in parks without it. I agree with you that a machine is or at least can be made much better at judging spacial positioning, at least for now the real reason for the machines (and the reason the umpires are fighting it) isn't because it will replace them but rather because it is critiquing them--ultimately to help them adjust their strike zones. MLB has been trying to get the umps to more closely reflect the strikezone in the rulebook. Comparing % of called strikes at QuesTec vs. non-QuesTec parks indicates whether they are changing their calls to what they think they should be calling.
I was a catcher for most of the years I played baseball--as a catcher you get more time than anyone viewing balls & strikes from the same perspective (physically not figuratively) as the umpire. I caught games with exceptional umpire, ones who were absolutely clueless and worst of all, some that actually behaved with both bias and malice. But my biggest gripe of all is that even the best umpires change their strikezone depending on the situation. A 3-0 count means that pitches not even close to the strikezone with a 1-1 count are called strikes. As a player you certainly know this and deal with it but that doesn't make it right. It's only a shade of gray away from calling a baserunner save when he's obviously out if batting team is losing. A strike should always be a strike and unfortunately the human ups don't act that way. Yes it's all part of the game and all that--BUT at some point there's no reason a flawless non-human system for judging balls and strikes cannot be created. Whether QuesTec is there or not, the real issue: when (not if) some one comes up with a flawless system which gets every pitch right, should it be adopted? Personally I think yes. Competitive sports are about...competition. You play to win and anything that can be done to ensure that the competition is fair and honest for both sides needs to be done.