Had no business model to begin with that was (a) realistic of (b) intuitive?
1) First off, lets look at Pricewatch and the businesses that sell through it... How profitable are they? Do they rely on massive ad banners and annoying popups? Nope... Do they rely on word of mouth amongst geeks? Definately... Are they profitable? Well lets see now, most of the companies that sell through them are definately making some form of profit, ans thusly, so are they... And yet they never blew a budget on TV spots... Which brings me to part 2:
2) Most dotcoms are idiots if they think putting an ad on broadcast TV will bring in new business... Why? Because most of the public that watches TV that have a net connection either knows they don't need the services sold, or the public without a net connection aren't going to pipe up with "Gawrsh, look maw, we gotta get one of them thar $1,000 Dell compooters and order stuff from the supermarket in the next town, instead of driving a few blocks to the store locally!"...
They seem to believe that they can make millions back on billions of advertising dollars wasted... It just doesn't work that way, and they blame the net for their own lack of foresight... Okay, do any history buffs here remember how long it took for other industries to become profitable?
Print media: Technically it took close to 300 years for it to become profitable on a par with what the publishing industry makes today...
Automotive industry: It took close to 30 years for it to become what it is today...
Airline industry: Up until the mid 20's, there really wasn't an airline industry, the shipping industry held a massive stranglehold on travel and tourism, until aircraft became more capable of extended flights and carrying multiple passengers in a reasonable fashion...
Shipping industry: That took almost 200 years to become truly profitable (enough that you no longer required government ownership/funding to operate your business)...
Telephone/telegraph: That's another that took a while to catch on, but more due to the time it took to lay hundreds of thousands of miles in cable and wire to make it a feasable money making product...
Radio: Another 'fringe' industry that took close to 30 years to become profitable, from Tesla/Marconi to the first networks...
Television: Technologically one of the longest media groups running from start to profitability, invented in 1939 and taking 15 tears to just make into a consumer market, television took close to another 20 years to just become profitable enough to justify a TV in every home, and a network in every city...
And yet, here is a new technological product that most dot coms are thinking will be worth billions in less than what, 5 years??? What's wrong with these people It even took Microsoft 10 years to become truly profitable, Apple virtually happened overnight but frequently is insolvent... IBM took almost 20 years to get up to speed after starting with early electromechanics (typeriters, punch cards, et al), and recall that it took them 10+ years just to build the first PC, which in itself also took 15 years to properly become a consumer market...
If some dotcoms got their greedy fingers burned by dipping into the pie too early, then it is in fact their own damnned fault for having unrealistic views and goals of the future... The ones who spent x million on advertising a product that is basically worthless must have been business school dropouts, especially those who blew humongous amounts of their profits on useless nonessentials, deserve everything they get... Just look at some of what's been reclaimed by the repo men, antique pool tables, massive amounts of office space, $10K+ plasma screen monitors, etc... The first rule is, don't count your chickens before they hatch... If you don't know how much money you'll make next year, don't spend the money you don't have!!!
Hell, I'm a high school dropout and even I know this, what's wrong with these guys?
4 line 20 character display? WTF? Not everyone who uses it is going to want to wait til they get to a convenient composite display monitor in order to check if they downloaded a ton of images they want as opposed to tons of renamed goatse.cx pictures... Such as it consumes power, they could at least incorporate a reflective TFT display, I mean jeeze...
We're sorry, your nuclear inventory has changed and Windows Office XP will now shut down. Please contact Microsoft support to obtain a new product activation key.
Wheee, just as Dubbya takes over, the news media becomes exactly as technologically illiterate as the president himself!
"The Russians found that over time, as the computer program is used, some files become invisible and inaccessible to the nuclear accountants using the system, even though the data still exist in netherworld of the database."
Oooh, next they'll tell us that there's no such thing as user or computer error, it's instead the magic pixies in the machine going on strike that brings down the software!
"Kurchatov scientists discovered a fatal flaw in the Microsoft software donated to them by the Los Alamos National Laboratory."
In a word, duh... However, Los Alamos (and a good deal of the military) doesn't *use* Microsoft products, except in the case of laptops, etc, non mission critical machines... Half of them are using Unix or whatnot, OS's that have been time tested as reliable and suited to mission critical applications...
And being that they use software that is essentially time tested, it *has* to be screwups on the part of the Russians, because if such a flaw exists in the software, they would not be a major risk for distribution of weapons grade nuclear fuel, *WE* would...
Whoever wrote that article for the Washington Post should go back to covering dog shows and the occasional visit of pandas to the Washington Zoo... Or perhaps he should take that up as a career revision...
Former Minuteman launch officer and president of the center for defense information? They don't program or use computers other than for entering launch trajectories and confirming launch codes, they just turn the little keys, right?
There's one workaround audio fingerprinting that I haven't seen mentioned... Why not make a plugin for Winamp (or your mp3 player of choice) that allows you to resave your mp3 at a *different* pitch? Of course, make that plugin so that it can do two operations, restoring the original pitch (and allowing you to create some interesting effects with nonmodified mp3's) during playback?
That way, you can circumvent the fingerprinting, case in point, if Napster is looking for a ersatz renamed Metallica mp3, it'll be looking for a straight playback pitch, ie, the original audio playback... However one octave off on pitch can and will throw it off... Considering there's conceivably anywhere up to 256 steps one can take the pitch on an audio file, it would take considerable time and effort for them to check each possible pitch variation...
If somebody came up with a GM cannibis breed that has all the THC of the finest bud, but grows to a maximum height of 2-3 feet and perhaps a yard wide (similar to a tomato plant's proportions), and has an accelerated growth curve, then none of these guys would be whining...
I mean come on folks, we've been genetically engineering livestock and agriculture for millenia, only recently have we decided to do it in a lab and leave less up to chance... GM foods have been researched and experimented on for close to 30 years, if not moreso... Since it's now big news (as biotech didn't become a proper catchphrase until the 1990's), only now they believe this is a "new" thing...
With all the whining, did any of these guys ever stop to think about what would be the alternatives to GM experimentations? Lets see... More animal testing on more species (due to the fact that some animals are genetically modified to actually develop human diseases)... Oh, and they'll have to kill off the first quagga born in 100+ years(primordial zebra species that was rendered extinct during the 1800's), which wouldn't exist today if *not* for genetic experimentation... In fact, we'll just have to throw up our hands and give up on the endangered species, due to the fact that so many of them are inbred to the point where extinction is inevitable, heavens forbid we learn the possible key gene variants to make the individual species capable of developing a healthy, non pathogenic stock...
That is the other side of GM research that many of the handwringers are ignoring(who's parents are probably richer than anyone who reads/., and in such, can support their brats' protest of the week)... As it goes, many of them are relying on junk science for their basis of information... These are the same people who are responsible for the energy crunch, by preventing every attempt at building nuclear power plants (before anyone whines, the technology is MUCH safer now)...
These are the same people who are responsible for food products becoming more and more expensive so that people outside of 1st and 2nd world countries cannot afford it, and the same people who think that rioting in order to get a message across will actually do so...
This is the "Huh huh, anarchy's kewl" generation of activists... No focus, no direction, no sense, and no intelligence...
Heh, I did the exact same thing... Took about 6 months for them to finally get the board to me, so I snagged the proper drivers and installed them the same way...
Meanwhile, I knew they were in trouble the moment I received an e-mail begging me (and others) to install their spyware drivers, and if we did, we'd be entered into a drawing for $100... Woohoo! Yay! Yowzah! My thimble runneth over!
Re:Star Trek similarities unsurprising.
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Well, the two shows were spaced apart by as much as 5 years, the Roddenberry pilot around 1974, and Buck Rogers around 1979...
Heh, surprising that with all these petroleum dependant solutions that the car manufacturers have been coming up with, that nobody gives these a try nowadays...
http://www.wasserauto.de/html/inquirer_article.h tm l
Thiokol made the SRB's used in the Challenger explosion, and still build them today... They also supplied the Landram vehicles used in Battlestar Galactica, and still produce both landrams and specialized motor vehicles today...
The Challenger solid booster flaw was not in itself specifically a defect in the booster design, but instead an o-ring used between booster segments that had a tendacy to fail in temperatures below freezing... A Thiokol employee (I forget his name at the moment) blew the whistle, was punished for it and ignored, the Challenger went boom, and Thiokol took the heat as a result...
Now as for the possibility of defects, I think that will have little impact on sales in the future... Take for example the big three US automakers and their own respective defects, Ford (Edsel, Pinto), Chevrolet (Corvair- Featured in Ralph Nader's book 'Unsafe At Any Speed'), and Dodge (who's trucks recently were fingered for unsafe fuel tank designs... I don't recall seeing any of them in the toilet lately, despite import wars and all...
Another case in point: Boeing, McDonnel Douglas, and Airbus: How many here have seen reports about their planes crashing due to age/defects? Plenty, yes? Does that cut the average amount of air travel (doubling roughly every decade)?
Lets face it, no matter the vehicle, it's prone to human error and there is always an element of risk... Especially when you're ealing with vehicles that routinely gain propulsion via carefully controlled explosions...
Microsoft, AOL, Apple and infomercials have been doing this for years, and all hold patents on devices built to cater to the general public's stupidity/ignorance/paranoia...
How many people here own childproof medicine bottles, without having actual children?
Microsoft, to sum it up, is an opportunistic company... Anyone who's age exceeds the mid twenties can attest to the causes for Microsoft's level of power, and the tech community's contribution to same...
Apple: They essentially invented the term "Personal Computer" with their first computers, then IBM tried their hand at it, the PC market was born... Apple responded to the confusion many non technical computer users experienced with a CLI by recycling (Xerox PARC gave them the technology since they foresaw little use for it, their own GUI system costing more than the public could afford) Xerox's GUI into the Lisa (big shot in the foot one), followed by the Mac...
From 1984 to 1988/89 (Time enough for Commodore to release the Amiga, and shortly after, Atari with the ST, both later killed by horrendous mismanagement), Apple enjoyed an appreciable measure of the market, until Steve Jobs bailed to pursue his vision for NeXT (big shot in the foot number two), and without any clear direction or visionary potential, Apple languished for almost 10 years, on the virge of bankrupcy whilst their management attempted to learn again, just what the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground really was...
Microsoft, on the other hand, not having much of a say in hardware production, took advantage of this to move up in the market... The considerable difference in pricing between Macs and PC's also contributed to the blow suffered by Apple once more, as any semi savvy geek can assemble a PC from piecemeal, while Apple took on an aloof "We'll decide who works on the machine you own" attitude...
IBM: For a short period of time, the PC languished in the realm of the elite, people who understood CLI for the most part, requiring either expensive training, or ownership of a system that they could teach themselves on, still an expensive prospect during the 1980s... There was no Linux, it was purely multiple flavors of DOS, and Unix... Period... Eventually, Microsoft grabbed onto the concept of GUI and incorporated it into the first stumbling versions of Windows... IBM did the same with OS/2, and subsequent generations afterwards... IBM took their sales potential and threw it out the window, expecting massive sales on name alone...
Microsoft, on the other hand, took advantage of this lack of foresight as well... They took IBM's paltry excuse for an advertising budget, and spent up to 10 times that, completely dwarfing their advertising campaigns...
Unix: Actually one of the few competant OS manufacturers today, their software goes almost everywhere Microsoft/IBM/Apple won't, in a multitude of flavors... Unfortunately, much of this includes professional platforms that the general public cannot afford, and lacks the expertise to use... Similarly, this is the case for Linux, FreeBSD, etc... The OS is so complicated for the general public, that Microsoft/Apple are the only viable choices, due to the inability to completely grasp CLI's... And so, Microsoft (and finally Apple) are taking advantage of that again...
And saying that it's the fault of the "Clueless Newbies" does nothing to change that, let alone improve on it... How many Linux users learned how to operate it overnight? How about over a week? How many are still learning today? Are they, therefore, clueless newbies? After all, many of them haven't been using computers half as long as some of those who've been using them since the 1980s...
The truth is, what you are witnessing is the long term result of 20 years (or more) of long term educational and economic failures, dating from 1980 when the PC became available on the market... Most folks above 25 didn't have mandatory computer classes in their schools (excluding colleges), and in the recessive period of the 1970's through the early 80's, the families that could afford a computer of any kind were actually in the minority... They had to choose between food or gas so they could get to work... Myaself, I couldn't afford anything better than an Atari 2600 game or two, receiving the console as a hand me down... Most families were lucky if they could break $10K a year, and spending 3 months salary on a computer they hardly knew was nigh impossible... Which is why for the most part, computers were relegated to professional usage...
When it came to my own experiences in operating computers, the Mac was the first I clicked with, since the retailers loved having me play with them (after all, how better to sell a computer, than showing how easy they were for kids to use) back in 1984... I also remember my inner city high school having a computer course, but the classroom was always empty... Why? Because they had a ridiculous rule that in order to have computer training, you needed to have an A average in your classes, as if such was possible in one of the worst high schools in NYC at the time...
The fact is, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth in regards to Microsoft is denying the actual truth... *WE*, the nerds, the geeks, the taxpayers, and all the companies we love above Microsoft, HANDED them their status... On a silver, albeit a spit bespeckled, platter...
Microsoft also uses extremely aggressive marketing... However, how many here have considered doing alternative OS's on the AOL (the only real competitor for Microsoft advertising wise) model? Create an OS that can kick M$'s ass, for profit, and simply mail off thousands of CD's, only requiring an online registration/payment to be functional? Oh, Windows XP already does that...
However, why not make the OS friendly for the general public, not requiring hours of configuring in order to just go online to access e-mail? I have to occasionally dig into Windows with a garden weasel to clean up the OS, without a completely clear idea of whether some of those repairs would eventually trash the system, but the damages incurred can often be easier to solve...
And for the most part, the market that many of you unadmittedly depend upon, depends upon the non geeks, the simplest of users, and for the most part, many of which didn't have the advantages that you take for granted...
Use CD-R/W for what these folks would consider as "legitimate" purposes, such as backups? I, as an artist, often build up large numbers of high resolution pictures on my HD that I would like to make backups of from time to time, and being the copyright holder, see no reason why I should pay EMI/Roxio for the right to do so...
In addition, what of those who want to back up their HD's who happen to also have mp3's? Does this mean that they will be unable to, until every unsigned audio file (including, ironically, those that install automatically with some games, operating systems, and professional audio applications)is hunted down and eradicated?
Y'know, on the zero tolerance theme, I just had a thought:
Kicking the kids out of school is the best thing that the dept of education can do! In fact, they should give them all the boot! Why?
To pwotect the wittle chiwdwennnnn!
In order to remove all references to guns, violence, and intolerance, they would have to:
Remove history as a course, this is self explainatory, every history class covers US history, which technically was one of the bloodiest histories in the world, second to the crusades! "(expletive deleted) and they signed the declaration of independance in 1776, (lonnnng expletive deleted)"
Remove science, because science is the gateway drug of intellectuals, teaching children how things work, and more precisely, how to make things EXPLODE!!! The same applies to the evil bugaboo that is the internet...
Remove social studies, because social studies introduce a historical basis for intolerance, racism and further violence (see above, history)...
Remove mathmatics, once the moment the kids figure out E=MC2, the cat's out of the bag, and we can't have that...
Remove music, because you could be teaching the next Marilyn Manson, which could inspire future Columbine shooters, aieeee!
Remove cooking, how many here have heard of Sweenie Todd, Eating Raoul, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre?
Remove sports, because it inspires violent aggression, drug abuse, and greed for multimillion dollar contracts...
Remove art, because someone, SOMEWHERE, will draw a picture of a gun...
Therefore, I propose that until the educational establishment can provide a safe learning curriculum for our precious sweetumseses, that they remove our children from the dens of iniquity that are our schools, lest we inspire entire legions of future homicidal lunatics!
If/when I have kids, I'm going for home schooling... Thank gawd I'm self employed, so I can be at home to do it... Those schools aren't getting their hands on my kids, I can do far better, and I'm a high school dropout...
Hawaiian Tropic filed for Chapter 13 bankrupcy today, after their failed attempt to create sensitive advertisements, based on the backlash against the use of attrative women in their marketing. The new campaign involved the display of several weight challenged hair deficient men in thongs playing volleyball.
In a related story, several other companies filed for Chapter 13, including Snap On Tools, the Autoshows of America, Bally Fitness, Coca Cola, MTV, E! Entertainment, the software industries, and others too numerous to count, upon undertaking similar measures.
In closing, the stock market crashed today, with the pit boss plummetting to his death from a 20 story building on Wall St as a finale, screaming 'Smoke 'em if you got 'em, we're (expletive deleted)!!!'
The problem is threefold:
(1) Large solar panels are expensive and extremely fragile, not something you can easily replace if broken... As it goes, the materials themselves are expensive, rare earth metals and compounds that add to the cost... Amorphous solar panels are even more expensive, and inefficient to boot, leading to:
(2) Solar panels are extremely inefficient due to several factors, namely daylight time, clouds and weather, pollution, and that's just the visible culprits... Now I know what you're asking, how can we power the ISS with solar panels but not a city on earth with the same?
(3) The earth's atmosphere effectively screens out close to 1/3-1/2 of full spectrum sunlight, which is why our planet isn't (currently) like Venus, and why astronauts have to wear those kewl gold visors during EVA's... The fact that a solar station can be set for a sun facing orbit at all times also means there is no night, no weather, no pollution... Or so we would think...
The only downfall will be our existing space junk pollution punching holes through the panels, not to mention micrometeoroids and other stellar debris...
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Had no business model to begin with that was (a) realistic of (b) intuitive?
1) First off, lets look at Pricewatch and the businesses that sell through it... How profitable are they? Do they rely on massive ad banners and annoying popups? Nope... Do they rely on word of mouth amongst geeks? Definately... Are they profitable? Well lets see now, most of the companies that sell through them are definately making some form of profit, ans thusly, so are they... And yet they never blew a budget on TV spots... Which brings me to part 2:
2) Most dotcoms are idiots if they think putting an ad on broadcast TV will bring in new business... Why? Because most of the public that watches TV that have a net connection either knows they don't need the services sold, or the public without a net connection aren't going to pipe up with "Gawrsh, look maw, we gotta get one of them thar $1,000 Dell compooters and order stuff from the supermarket in the next town, instead of driving a few blocks to the store locally!"...
They seem to believe that they can make millions back on billions of advertising dollars wasted... It just doesn't work that way, and they blame the net for their own lack of foresight... Okay, do any history buffs here remember how long it took for other industries to become profitable?
Print media: Technically it took close to 300 years for it to become profitable on a par with what the publishing industry makes today...
Automotive industry: It took close to 30 years for it to become what it is today...
Airline industry: Up until the mid 20's, there really wasn't an airline industry, the shipping industry held a massive stranglehold on travel and tourism, until aircraft became more capable of extended flights and carrying multiple passengers in a reasonable fashion...
Shipping industry: That took almost 200 years to become truly profitable (enough that you no longer required government ownership/funding to operate your business)...
Telephone/telegraph: That's another that took a while to catch on, but more due to the time it took to lay hundreds of thousands of miles in cable and wire to make it a feasable money making product...
Radio: Another 'fringe' industry that took close to 30 years to become profitable, from Tesla/Marconi to the first networks...
Television: Technologically one of the longest media groups running from start to profitability, invented in 1939 and taking 15 tears to just make into a consumer market, television took close to another 20 years to just become profitable enough to justify a TV in every home, and a network in every city...
And yet, here is a new technological product that most dot coms are thinking will be worth billions in less than what, 5 years??? What's wrong with these people It even took Microsoft 10 years to become truly profitable, Apple virtually happened overnight but frequently is insolvent... IBM took almost 20 years to get up to speed after starting with early electromechanics (typeriters, punch cards, et al), and recall that it took them 10+ years just to build the first PC, which in itself also took 15 years to properly become a consumer market...
If some dotcoms got their greedy fingers burned by dipping into the pie too early, then it is in fact their own damnned fault for having unrealistic views and goals of the future... The ones who spent x million on advertising a product that is basically worthless must have been business school dropouts, especially those who blew humongous amounts of their profits on useless nonessentials, deserve everything they get... Just look at some of what's been reclaimed by the repo men, antique pool tables, massive amounts of office space, $10K+ plasma screen monitors, etc... The first rule is, don't count your chickens before they hatch... If you don't know how much money you'll make next year, don't spend the money you don't have!!!
Hell, I'm a high school dropout and even I know this, what's wrong with these guys?
4 line 20 character display? WTF? Not everyone who uses it is going to want to wait til they get to a convenient composite display monitor in order to check if they downloaded a ton of images they want as opposed to tons of renamed goatse.cx pictures... Such as it consumes power, they could at least incorporate a reflective TFT display, I mean jeeze...
We're sorry, your nuclear inventory has changed and Windows Office XP will now shut down. Please contact Microsoft support to obtain a new product activation key.
Wheee, just as Dubbya takes over, the news media becomes exactly as technologically illiterate as the president himself!
"The Russians found that over time, as the computer program is used, some files become invisible and inaccessible to the nuclear accountants using the system, even though the data still exist in netherworld of the database."
Oooh, next they'll tell us that there's no such thing as user or computer error, it's instead the magic pixies in the machine going on strike that brings down the software!
"Kurchatov scientists discovered a fatal flaw in the Microsoft software donated to them by the Los Alamos National Laboratory."
In a word, duh... However, Los Alamos (and a good deal of the military) doesn't *use* Microsoft products, except in the case of laptops, etc, non mission critical machines... Half of them are using Unix or whatnot, OS's that have been time tested as reliable and suited to mission critical applications...
And being that they use software that is essentially time tested, it *has* to be screwups on the part of the Russians, because if such a flaw exists in the software, they would not be a major risk for distribution of weapons grade nuclear fuel, *WE* would...
Whoever wrote that article for the Washington Post should go back to covering dog shows and the occasional visit of pandas to the Washington Zoo... Or perhaps he should take that up as a career revision...
Former Minuteman launch officer and president of the center for defense information? They don't program or use computers other than for entering launch trajectories and confirming launch codes, they just turn the little keys, right?
See all that stuff inside, Homer? That's why your robot didn't work!
Just watch out for flash photography...
I mean, "New Ching Shit"? Good lord, sounds like an actor you'd see in a Stile Project Japscat clip...
"Now we just need Buck Rogers to return with that gorgeous sidekick he had"
You mean Twicky?
There's one workaround audio fingerprinting that I haven't seen mentioned... Why not make a plugin for Winamp (or your mp3 player of choice) that allows you to resave your mp3 at a *different* pitch? Of course, make that plugin so that it can do two operations, restoring the original pitch (and allowing you to create some interesting effects with nonmodified mp3's) during playback?
That way, you can circumvent the fingerprinting, case in point, if Napster is looking for a ersatz renamed Metallica mp3, it'll be looking for a straight playback pitch, ie, the original audio playback... However one octave off on pitch can and will throw it off... Considering there's conceivably anywhere up to 256 steps one can take the pitch on an audio file, it would take considerable time and effort for them to check each possible pitch variation...
If somebody came up with a GM cannibis breed that has all the THC of the finest bud, but grows to a maximum height of 2-3 feet and perhaps a yard wide (similar to a tomato plant's proportions), and has an accelerated growth curve, then none of these guys would be whining...
/., and in such, can support their brats' protest of the week)... As it goes, many of them are relying on junk science for their basis of information... These are the same people who are responsible for the energy crunch, by preventing every attempt at building nuclear power plants (before anyone whines, the technology is MUCH safer now)...
I mean come on folks, we've been genetically engineering livestock and agriculture for millenia, only recently have we decided to do it in a lab and leave less up to chance... GM foods have been researched and experimented on for close to 30 years, if not moreso... Since it's now big news (as biotech didn't become a proper catchphrase until the 1990's), only now they believe this is a "new" thing...
With all the whining, did any of these guys ever stop to think about what would be the alternatives to GM experimentations? Lets see... More animal testing on more species (due to the fact that some animals are genetically modified to actually develop human diseases)... Oh, and they'll have to kill off the first quagga born in 100+ years(primordial zebra species that was rendered extinct during the 1800's), which wouldn't exist today if *not* for genetic experimentation... In fact, we'll just have to throw up our hands and give up on the endangered species, due to the fact that so many of them are inbred to the point where extinction is inevitable, heavens forbid we learn the possible key gene variants to make the individual species capable of developing a healthy, non pathogenic stock...
That is the other side of GM research that many of the handwringers are ignoring(who's parents are probably richer than anyone who reads
These are the same people who are responsible for food products becoming more and more expensive so that people outside of 1st and 2nd world countries cannot afford it, and the same people who think that rioting in order to get a message across will actually do so...
This is the "Huh huh, anarchy's kewl" generation of activists... No focus, no direction, no sense, and no intelligence...
Heh, I did the exact same thing... Took about 6 months for them to finally get the board to me, so I snagged the proper drivers and installed them the same way...
Meanwhile, I knew they were in trouble the moment I received an e-mail begging me (and others) to install their spyware drivers, and if we did, we'd be entered into a drawing for $100... Woohoo! Yay! Yowzah! My thimble runneth over!
Well, the two shows were spaced apart by as much as 5 years, the Roddenberry pilot around 1974, and Buck Rogers around 1979...
That alone made it worth watching for me...
Roight! Stop that! Stop that singing!
Heh, surprising that with all these petroleum dependant solutions that the car manufacturers have been coming up with, that nobody gives these a try nowadays...
h tm l
http://www.wasserauto.de/html/inquirer_article.
Thiokol made the SRB's used in the Challenger explosion, and still build them today... They also supplied the Landram vehicles used in Battlestar Galactica, and still produce both landrams and specialized motor vehicles today...
The Challenger solid booster flaw was not in itself specifically a defect in the booster design, but instead an o-ring used between booster segments that had a tendacy to fail in temperatures below freezing... A Thiokol employee (I forget his name at the moment) blew the whistle, was punished for it and ignored, the Challenger went boom, and Thiokol took the heat as a result...
Now as for the possibility of defects, I think that will have little impact on sales in the future... Take for example the big three US automakers and their own respective defects, Ford (Edsel, Pinto), Chevrolet (Corvair- Featured in Ralph Nader's book 'Unsafe At Any Speed'), and Dodge (who's trucks recently were fingered for unsafe fuel tank designs... I don't recall seeing any of them in the toilet lately, despite import wars and all...
Another case in point: Boeing, McDonnel Douglas, and Airbus: How many here have seen reports about their planes crashing due to age/defects? Plenty, yes? Does that cut the average amount of air travel (doubling roughly every decade)?
Lets face it, no matter the vehicle, it's prone to human error and there is always an element of risk... Especially when you're ealing with vehicles that routinely gain propulsion via carefully controlled explosions...
Microsoft, AOL, Apple and infomercials have been doing this for years, and all hold patents on devices built to cater to the general public's stupidity/ignorance/paranoia...
How many people here own childproof medicine bottles, without having actual children?
Microsoft, to sum it up, is an opportunistic company... Anyone who's age exceeds the mid twenties can attest to the causes for Microsoft's level of power, and the tech community's contribution to same...
Apple: They essentially invented the term "Personal Computer" with their first computers, then IBM tried their hand at it, the PC market was born... Apple responded to the confusion many non technical computer users experienced with a CLI by recycling (Xerox PARC gave them the technology since they foresaw little use for it, their own GUI system costing more than the public could afford) Xerox's GUI into the Lisa (big shot in the foot one), followed by the Mac...
From 1984 to 1988/89 (Time enough for Commodore to release the Amiga, and shortly after, Atari with the ST, both later killed by horrendous mismanagement), Apple enjoyed an appreciable measure of the market, until Steve Jobs bailed to pursue his vision for NeXT (big shot in the foot number two), and without any clear direction or visionary potential, Apple languished for almost 10 years, on the virge of bankrupcy whilst their management attempted to learn again, just what the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground really was...
Microsoft, on the other hand, not having much of a say in hardware production, took advantage of this to move up in the market... The considerable difference in pricing between Macs and PC's also contributed to the blow suffered by Apple once more, as any semi savvy geek can assemble a PC from piecemeal, while Apple took on an aloof "We'll decide who works on the machine you own" attitude...
IBM: For a short period of time, the PC languished in the realm of the elite, people who understood CLI for the most part, requiring either expensive training, or ownership of a system that they could teach themselves on, still an expensive prospect during the 1980s... There was no Linux, it was purely multiple flavors of DOS, and Unix... Period... Eventually, Microsoft grabbed onto the concept of GUI and incorporated it into the first stumbling versions of Windows... IBM did the same with OS/2, and subsequent generations afterwards... IBM took their sales potential and threw it out the window, expecting massive sales on name alone...
Microsoft, on the other hand, took advantage of this lack of foresight as well... They took IBM's paltry excuse for an advertising budget, and spent up to 10 times that, completely dwarfing their advertising campaigns...
Unix: Actually one of the few competant OS manufacturers today, their software goes almost everywhere Microsoft/IBM/Apple won't, in a multitude of flavors... Unfortunately, much of this includes professional platforms that the general public cannot afford, and lacks the expertise to use... Similarly, this is the case for Linux, FreeBSD, etc... The OS is so complicated for the general public, that Microsoft/Apple are the only viable choices, due to the inability to completely grasp CLI's... And so, Microsoft (and finally Apple) are taking advantage of that again...
And saying that it's the fault of the "Clueless Newbies" does nothing to change that, let alone improve on it... How many Linux users learned how to operate it overnight? How about over a week? How many are still learning today? Are they, therefore, clueless newbies? After all, many of them haven't been using computers half as long as some of those who've been using them since the 1980s...
The truth is, what you are witnessing is the long term result of 20 years (or more) of long term educational and economic failures, dating from 1980 when the PC became available on the market... Most folks above 25 didn't have mandatory computer classes in their schools (excluding colleges), and in the recessive period of the 1970's through the early 80's, the families that could afford a computer of any kind were actually in the minority... They had to choose between food or gas so they could get to work... Myaself, I couldn't afford anything better than an Atari 2600 game or two, receiving the console as a hand me down... Most families were lucky if they could break $10K a year, and spending 3 months salary on a computer they hardly knew was nigh impossible... Which is why for the most part, computers were relegated to professional usage...
When it came to my own experiences in operating computers, the Mac was the first I clicked with, since the retailers loved having me play with them (after all, how better to sell a computer, than showing how easy they were for kids to use) back in 1984... I also remember my inner city high school having a computer course, but the classroom was always empty... Why? Because they had a ridiculous rule that in order to have computer training, you needed to have an A average in your classes, as if such was possible in one of the worst high schools in NYC at the time...
The fact is, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth in regards to Microsoft is denying the actual truth... *WE*, the nerds, the geeks, the taxpayers, and all the companies we love above Microsoft, HANDED them their status... On a silver, albeit a spit bespeckled, platter...
Microsoft also uses extremely aggressive marketing... However, how many here have considered doing alternative OS's on the AOL (the only real competitor for Microsoft advertising wise) model? Create an OS that can kick M$'s ass, for profit, and simply mail off thousands of CD's, only requiring an online registration/payment to be functional? Oh, Windows XP already does that...
However, why not make the OS friendly for the general public, not requiring hours of configuring in order to just go online to access e-mail? I have to occasionally dig into Windows with a garden weasel to clean up the OS, without a completely clear idea of whether some of those repairs would eventually trash the system, but the damages incurred can often be easier to solve...
And for the most part, the market that many of you unadmittedly depend upon, depends upon the non geeks, the simplest of users, and for the most part, many of which didn't have the advantages that you take for granted...
Use CD-R/W for what these folks would consider as "legitimate" purposes, such as backups? I, as an artist, often build up large numbers of high resolution pictures on my HD that I would like to make backups of from time to time, and being the copyright holder, see no reason why I should pay EMI/Roxio for the right to do so...
In addition, what of those who want to back up their HD's who happen to also have mp3's? Does this mean that they will be unable to, until every unsigned audio file (including, ironically, those that install automatically with some games, operating systems, and professional audio applications)is hunted down and eradicated?
Or The Macarena?
Or Boy Bands?
Or Brittney Spears?
Or Who Let The Dorks- Er- Dogs out?
Y'know, on the zero tolerance theme, I just had a thought:
Kicking the kids out of school is the best thing that the dept of education can do! In fact, they should give them all the boot! Why?
To pwotect the wittle chiwdwennnnn!
In order to remove all references to guns, violence, and intolerance, they would have to:
Remove history as a course, this is self explainatory, every history class covers US history, which technically was one of the bloodiest histories in the world, second to the crusades! "(expletive deleted) and they signed the declaration of independance in 1776, (lonnnng expletive deleted)"
Remove science, because science is the gateway drug of intellectuals, teaching children how things work, and more precisely, how to make things EXPLODE!!! The same applies to the evil bugaboo that is the internet...
Remove social studies, because social studies introduce a historical basis for intolerance, racism and further violence (see above, history)...
Remove mathmatics, once the moment the kids figure out E=MC2, the cat's out of the bag, and we can't have that...
Remove music, because you could be teaching the next Marilyn Manson, which could inspire future Columbine shooters, aieeee!
Remove cooking, how many here have heard of Sweenie Todd, Eating Raoul, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre?
Remove sports, because it inspires violent aggression, drug abuse, and greed for multimillion dollar contracts...
Remove art, because someone, SOMEWHERE, will draw a picture of a gun...
Therefore, I propose that until the educational establishment can provide a safe learning curriculum for our precious sweetumseses, that they remove our children from the dens of iniquity that are our schools, lest we inspire entire legions of future homicidal lunatics!
We must act now! For! The! Children!
If/when I have kids, I'm going for home schooling... Thank gawd I'm self employed, so I can be at home to do it... Those schools aren't getting their hands on my kids, I can do far better, and I'm a high school dropout...
Hawaiian Tropic filed for Chapter 13 bankrupcy today, after their failed attempt to create sensitive advertisements, based on the backlash against the use of attrative women in their marketing. The new campaign involved the display of several weight challenged hair deficient men in thongs playing volleyball.
In a related story, several other companies filed for Chapter 13, including Snap On Tools, the Autoshows of America, Bally Fitness, Coca Cola, MTV, E! Entertainment, the software industries, and others too numerous to count, upon undertaking similar measures.
In closing, the stock market crashed today, with the pit boss plummetting to his death from a 20 story building on Wall St as a finale, screaming 'Smoke 'em if you got 'em, we're (expletive deleted)!!!'
This is CNN.
I will use my orbiting solar power stations of death to destroy the world's cities, unless you pay me 10... Million dollars!
C'mon, throw me a fricking bone here...
The problem is threefold: (1) Large solar panels are expensive and extremely fragile, not something you can easily replace if broken... As it goes, the materials themselves are expensive, rare earth metals and compounds that add to the cost... Amorphous solar panels are even more expensive, and inefficient to boot, leading to: (2) Solar panels are extremely inefficient due to several factors, namely daylight time, clouds and weather, pollution, and that's just the visible culprits... Now I know what you're asking, how can we power the ISS with solar panels but not a city on earth with the same? (3) The earth's atmosphere effectively screens out close to 1/3-1/2 of full spectrum sunlight, which is why our planet isn't (currently) like Venus, and why astronauts have to wear those kewl gold visors during EVA's... The fact that a solar station can be set for a sun facing orbit at all times also means there is no night, no weather, no pollution... Or so we would think... The only downfall will be our existing space junk pollution punching holes through the panels, not to mention micrometeoroids and other stellar debris...
If I can get that fuckedcountry.com domain name? It's starting to look like I'll need it...
Watch Pink Floyd's The Wall... A Lot... Sad how life imitates art, is it not? Especially the school sequences...