I'm not sure about the past few years, but I've certainly noticed a deterioration of results in certain areas. As a random example, do a search for a celebrity, chances are that most of the top results will be for shite 'celebrity directories' that do little more than link to eachother and eBay.
However, the BBC are in an excellent position to drive change. If they adopted Ogg Vorbis, the public awareness of the format would shoot through the roof overnight.
It wouldn't be the first time they used their power to promote new formats either. Much of the success of Freeview (digital terrestrial television, for the uninitiated) was driven by the BBC.
The idea that the Nazis achieved power through democratic means is something of a myth. Like most myths it does have elements of truth, but it's a myth all the same.
While they did participate in the mechanism of democracy, i.e. standing in elections, they also used violence and 'political terror' against opposition activists and candidates and electoral fraud was rife.
Hitler himself wasn't elected as Chancellor. The Nazis actually lost about 20% of their Reichstag seats in the elections of 1932, but backroom dealing and a false rumour that Chancellor Schleicher was attempting a coup sent the aging, partially senile President Hindenburg into a panic. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the President appointed Hitler as Chancellor in a bid to preserve democracy.
Even if Moore wanted to release the film for free online it's by no means certain that he could, given that it's owned by Miramax, not Moore himself.
While it's made by Moore's company, Dog Eat Dog Productions, the actual copyright resides with Miramax who are effectively paying Moore to produce a film for them.
This has nothing at all to do with the European elections. 99.99% of the electorate probably don't even know what software patents are, let alone give a damn.
"The picture shows a female figure watching as three shepherds gather around a tomb and point at letters within an inscription carved upon it, which read: Et in Arcadia Ego! (And I am in Arcadia too.) Beneath it the letters O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V. are carved, and underneath them a D and an M.
The current Lord Lichfield's great-grandmother believed the letters represented the lines of a poem from Roman mythology about a shepherdess: "Out of your own sweet vale Alicia vanish vanity twixt Deity and man, thou shepherdess the way.""
This really sickens me, people are willing to waste millions and millions of pounds on an ID card which I expect will run over-budget (because the government couldn't implement an IT solution if all our lives depended on it)
Actually, I think you will find it's the IT companies who couldn't implement an IT solution if all their lives depended on it.
The government always seems to get blamed for the long line of IT disasters, but more often than not teh fault really lies with companies who promise to deliver double what they are capable of for half the price they can realistically do it for.
While much attention has been drawn to David Koepp's work on the first two Jurassic Park films, not much has been mentioned of his other work. Among his other credits are the likes of Carlito's Way and Panic Room, which demonstrate he can take things a bit darker when required and Spider-Man shows he can tell a story true to the spirit of it's source material.
One other observation I would make is that Paramount has a history (and indeed, policy) of making films with comparatively low budgets that go on to do reasonable, if not spectacular, box office.
Last week, Sumner Redstone announced that he thought Paramount would have to start taking bigger risks by producing more big budget fare. It would be interesting to see what side of that statement this film falls on...
The film will be made, it will rake in at leasta couple of hundred million at the box office, millions more on DVD and many, many people will enjoy it.
You have your book, these people will have their movie. Let them enjoy it.
Isn't it about time we dispelled this notion that actors 'way back in the day' were any good?
Let's face it, virtually every movie made before WW2 is saddled with the most wooden acting conceivable. I don't blame those actors for this, cinema wasn't very old at that time and most actors just thought they could transfer what were effectively stage performances to the big screen. Times have changed, cinema has evolved and over the decades actors have developed the skills for far more realistic portrayals of their characters.
To say that actors and actresses today 'CAN NOT ACT' is just plain ridiculous. Sure, there are plenty who can't but there are many more who can and who are consistenly providing some of the finest performances we've ever seen on screen.
"Would you really say that 95% of people have never heard of Mac?"
No, not at all. I would say though that it doesn't occur to 95% of people to even consider one when it comes to buying a new computer. I guess an analogy would be to say that most people have heard of Mozart, but when they go shopping for CDs they're only going to be browsing the Top 40.
I take your point about people not being able to afford new machines and therefore opting for Linux on their existing boxes, but there are a couple of observations to make on that.
Firstly, many people (and a majority of home users) only change/update their OS when they get a new computer. There are tens of millions of people out there still running Win95/98 and they will continue to do so until their HDs die. I find it unlikely that these people will stray from what they know, especially considering their only real alternative on their existing hardware is an OS the vast majority of them will never have heard of and which (and this will no doubt annoy many) is still nowhere near as user friendly for them as Windows.
I can accept though that the situation may well be different in business, mainly medium and large enterprises where (generally speaking) more importance is placed on heeping up to date and where resources to help staff get to grips with Linux would be more readily available.
"I mean, if I go out to a Honda dealership, while I'm looking at an Accord, they don't tell me the specs of a Camry. They sell me a Honda product with Honda accessories."
You are, however, making the choice to buy Honda. It wouldn't even occur to 95% of people to choose anything other than a Windows PC such is their effective and pervasive monopoly on consumer computing.
"IMHO, if Microsoft is forced to open their source to the European market, they should just pull the plug. Don't sell it anymore, revoke all European lisences, and tell them to install Linux. You know for a fact that the general populus would flip. Most of them would flip at the idea."
Well, they wouldn't go for Linux, they would go for Apple instead because Apple have the muscle to market themselves as a Windows alternative in such a situation, the Linux distros do not. This has obvious consequences for major US tech companies such as Dell and Intel who would see a market of 400 million people disappear over the course of a year.
"OK, last thing. I also don't understand what jurisdiction the European market has over MS. If they are an American based company, how can they order MS to open their source and include other versions of Web Browsers and Media Players."
If I went and murdered some poor sap in Wisconsin, could I claim that the US courts didn't have authority because I'm a European based human?
The reality wouldn't be quite so simple of course.
The main beneficiary of such a move is likely to be Apple. Linux wouldn't stand a chance of filling the void simply because Linux has no marketing muscle to unleash on the public. Apple can easily promote it's products as not being all that different from Windows for Mr Joe Public. Upshot of this is that eventually, Europeans stop buying PC hardware and this affects Dell, Intel et al.
But even before that, soon after the MS announcement, Europeans would dump their tech stock and the share price would fall. This would prompt US institutional investors to get the jitters and dump their stock too, potentially leading to a crash in tech stocks and a major slump in stocks across the board.
Further down the line, money would flow back into stocks with Apple becoming a major beneficiary on the back of it's lucrative new market of 400 million people. At this point they open up the market in Mac clones, the price is driven down worldwide and MS starts to see shrinkage in the PC platform in the US, far east and elsewhere aided by a surge in the amount of software available to users thanks to all those re-tooled European software houses...
Of course things would never get that far. Simple pressure from the US tech industry would prevent MS doing anything rash long before then.
You may not be kidding about the price of a G5, but you're certainly mistaken.
A dual 2GHz G5 costs around $4,400 in the UK and while this is certainly much higher than the $3,000 paid in the US it's nowhere near what you claim.
As for the price of generic x86s, all that you can hope to get for $300 is a barebones PC without useful 'extras' like a hard drive, RAM etc. You'll pick up something useable for $500, but you'll still need a monitor on top of that.
Surely not the same, tragic, Jemini that scored zero points in last year's Eurovision Song Contest?
Re:Press release is kind of funny...
on
News from Mars
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· Score: 2, Funny
A bar in London? They were probably Australians;)
Re:Press release is kind of funny...
on
News from Mars
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· Score: 1
Well, hell... the Brits still call the USA "the Colonies"
Maybe we do, in that strange twilight world where we all wander round wearing bowler hats, drink tea at 4pm and where Daphne from Frasier actually has a Manchester accent;)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure about the past few years, but I've certainly noticed a deterioration of results in certain areas. As a random example, do a search for a celebrity, chances are that most of the top results will be for shite 'celebrity directories' that do little more than link to eachother and eBay.
However, the BBC are in an excellent position to drive change. If they adopted Ogg Vorbis, the public awareness of the format would shoot through the roof overnight.
It wouldn't be the first time they used their power to promote new formats either. Much of the success of Freeview (digital terrestrial television, for the uninitiated) was driven by the BBC.
They're probably all lady-boys...
At least they left something to the imagination.
;)
Actually, no, leaving stuff to the imagination sucks. Why do that when you can have them right in your face, so to speak?
The idea that the Nazis achieved power through democratic means is something of a myth. Like most myths it does have elements of truth, but it's a myth all the same.
While they did participate in the mechanism of democracy, i.e. standing in elections, they also used violence and 'political terror' against opposition activists and candidates and electoral fraud was rife.
Hitler himself wasn't elected as Chancellor. The Nazis actually lost about 20% of their Reichstag seats in the elections of 1932, but backroom dealing and a false rumour that Chancellor Schleicher was attempting a coup sent the aging, partially senile President Hindenburg into a panic. In one of the great ironies of modern history, the President appointed Hitler as Chancellor in a bid to preserve democracy.
Indeed, you can download 1,432 Grateful Dead concerts from archive.org.
Even if Moore wanted to release the film for free online it's by no means certain that he could, given that it's owned by Miramax, not Moore himself.
While it's made by Moore's company, Dog Eat Dog Productions, the actual copyright resides with Miramax who are effectively paying Moore to produce a film for them.
This has nothing at all to do with the European elections. 99.99% of the electorate probably don't even know what software patents are, let alone give a damn.
From an article in The Guardian
"The picture shows a female figure watching as three shepherds gather around a tomb and point at letters within an inscription carved upon it, which read: Et in Arcadia Ego! (And I am in Arcadia too.) Beneath it the letters O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V. are carved, and underneath them a D and an M.
The current Lord Lichfield's great-grandmother believed the letters represented the lines of a poem from Roman mythology about a shepherdess: "Out of your own sweet vale Alicia vanish vanity twixt Deity and man, thou shepherdess the way.""
Job done, move along.
I never said it was ;)
This really sickens me, people are willing to waste millions and millions of pounds on an ID card which I expect will run over-budget (because the government couldn't implement an IT solution if all our lives depended on it)
Actually, I think you will find it's the IT companies who couldn't implement an IT solution if all their lives depended on it.
The government always seems to get blamed for the long line of IT disasters, but more often than not teh fault really lies with companies who promise to deliver double what they are capable of for half the price they can realistically do it for.
Exactly what aspects of your life do you think the government will be interested in poking around in?
While much attention has been drawn to David Koepp's work on the first two Jurassic Park films, not much has been mentioned of his other work. Among his other credits are the likes of Carlito's Way and Panic Room, which demonstrate he can take things a bit darker when required and Spider-Man shows he can tell a story true to the spirit of it's source material.
One other observation I would make is that Paramount has a history (and indeed, policy) of making films with comparatively low budgets that go on to do reasonable, if not spectacular, box office.
Last week, Sumner Redstone announced that he thought Paramount would have to start taking bigger risks by producing more big budget fare. It would be interesting to see what side of that statement this film falls on...
The film will be made, it will rake in at leasta couple of hundred million at the box office, millions more on DVD and many, many people will enjoy it.
You have your book, these people will have their movie. Let them enjoy it.
Isn't it about time we dispelled this notion that actors 'way back in the day' were any good?
Let's face it, virtually every movie made before WW2 is saddled with the most wooden acting conceivable. I don't blame those actors for this, cinema wasn't very old at that time and most actors just thought they could transfer what were effectively stage performances to the big screen. Times have changed, cinema has evolved and over the decades actors have developed the skills for far more realistic portrayals of their characters.
To say that actors and actresses today 'CAN NOT ACT' is just plain ridiculous. Sure, there are plenty who can't but there are many more who can and who are consistenly providing some of the finest performances we've ever seen on screen.
"Would you really say that 95% of people have never heard of Mac?"
No, not at all. I would say though that it doesn't occur to 95% of people to even consider one when it comes to buying a new computer. I guess an analogy would be to say that most people have heard of Mozart, but when they go shopping for CDs they're only going to be browsing the Top 40.
I take your point about people not being able to afford new machines and therefore opting for Linux on their existing boxes, but there are a couple of observations to make on that.
Firstly, many people (and a majority of home users) only change/update their OS when they get a new computer. There are tens of millions of people out there still running Win95/98 and they will continue to do so until their HDs die. I find it unlikely that these people will stray from what they know, especially considering their only real alternative on their existing hardware is an OS the vast majority of them will never have heard of and which (and this will no doubt annoy many) is still nowhere near as user friendly for them as Windows.
I can accept though that the situation may well be different in business, mainly medium and large enterprises where (generally speaking) more importance is placed on heeping up to date and where resources to help staff get to grips with Linux would be more readily available.
"I mean, if I go out to a Honda dealership, while I'm looking at an Accord, they don't tell me the specs of a Camry. They sell me a Honda product with Honda accessories."
You are, however, making the choice to buy Honda. It wouldn't even occur to 95% of people to choose anything other than a Windows PC such is their effective and pervasive monopoly on consumer computing.
"IMHO, if Microsoft is forced to open their source to the European market, they should just pull the plug. Don't sell it anymore, revoke all European lisences, and tell them to install Linux. You know for a fact that the general populus would flip. Most of them would flip at the idea."
Well, they wouldn't go for Linux, they would go for Apple instead because Apple have the muscle to market themselves as a Windows alternative in such a situation, the Linux distros do not. This has obvious consequences for major US tech companies such as Dell and Intel who would see a market of 400 million people disappear over the course of a year.
"OK, last thing. I also don't understand what jurisdiction the European market has over MS. If they are an American based company, how can they order MS to open their source and include other versions of Web Browsers and Media Players."
If I went and murdered some poor sap in Wisconsin, could I claim that the US courts didn't have authority because I'm a European based human?
The reality wouldn't be quite so simple of course.
The main beneficiary of such a move is likely to be Apple. Linux wouldn't stand a chance of filling the void simply because Linux has no marketing muscle to unleash on the public. Apple can easily promote it's products as not being all that different from Windows for Mr Joe Public. Upshot of this is that eventually, Europeans stop buying PC hardware and this affects Dell, Intel et al.
But even before that, soon after the MS announcement, Europeans would dump their tech stock and the share price would fall. This would prompt US institutional investors to get the jitters and dump their stock too, potentially leading to a crash in tech stocks and a major slump in stocks across the board.
Further down the line, money would flow back into stocks with Apple becoming a major beneficiary on the back of it's lucrative new market of 400 million people. At this point they open up the market in Mac clones, the price is driven down worldwide and MS starts to see shrinkage in the PC platform in the US, far east and elsewhere aided by a surge in the amount of software available to users thanks to all those re-tooled European software houses...
Of course things would never get that far. Simple pressure from the US tech industry would prevent MS doing anything rash long before then.
You may not be kidding about the price of a G5, but you're certainly mistaken.
A dual 2GHz G5 costs around $4,400 in the UK and while this is certainly much higher than the $3,000 paid in the US it's nowhere near what you claim.
As for the price of generic x86s, all that you can hope to get for $300 is a barebones PC without useful 'extras' like a hard drive, RAM etc. You'll pick up something useable for $500, but you'll still need a monitor on top of that.
Why aren't they suing BMW for including radios in their automobiles?
Probably because BMW don't have a virtual monopoly on the car market.
Surely not the same, tragic, Jemini that scored zero points in last year's Eurovision Song Contest?
A bar in London? They were probably Australians ;)
Well, hell... the Brits still call the USA "the Colonies"
;)
Maybe we do, in that strange twilight world where we all wander round wearing bowler hats, drink tea at 4pm and where Daphne from Frasier actually has a Manchester accent
Mudweiser?
Well, nobody said stability was the sole preserve of the 'good'.