Oh, come on! That's an easy one! Two words: name recognition.
Some of the largest grossing films of all time employed little know actors and played hardly at all on current popular themes of films. As examples Star Wars and E.T.
We saw this a few years ago when Tri-Star took the internationally-known brand-name of Godzilla and slapped it on the front of a movie in which the monster bore little to no resemblance to the real deal.
And it was gone from the local cinema in 2 weeks, by many accounts it was an expensive flop.
Never underestimate the power of a brand-name. Remember when we were kids and you just *had* to have Pac-Man on your home console?
It would surprise me if they did make a Pac-Man movied after Mario Brothers was a massive flop and awful too boot (like that rushed ending? "Hey! I'm king again!") Many flops have been built around stars or recognizable names. The public is fickle. The Cat in the Hat was horrendous and raked in the dough, even though it made the Bottom 100 on Imdb.
Remember the Rocky series. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and will keep going till Sly Stone is 95 years old and can't do it anymore.
It's called milking a cash cow.
No, that's called beating a dead horse.
Milking a cash cow would be Rocky 0: The Prequel! See Stallone, with considerable plastic work and makeup try to ape himself as a 15 year old getting beat up on the way to school for his lunch money and swear he could take the bully in a rematch.
Minority Report was ok, but I think suffered because of Cruise in the role. Something Hines is doing right is tapping relatively unknown (at least as mega stars) talent, so the focus isn't on "See Tom, See Tom Run, Run Tom Run", but on "See character, See Character Run, Run Character Run".
Check out Spielberg's schedule which doesn't seem to jive with this. Unless they're filming on secret location under a throw-off title, like Jurassic Park VII: The T-Rex vs Alien vs Predator
I read this as: Spielburg's film will include every big name he can sign on, spend more on Special effects than the GP of most small countries, and get his plot from "Rent-a-plot", with a catch at the end for sequels. And let us not forget the merchandising rights. A cute fuzzy alien teddy bear will probably save the world in Spielburgs version.
Whether Spielberg sticks to the original theme of the story or focuses on shock and awe remains to be seen. He is capable of doing a decent prestige film, but when you see Tom Cruise associated with the picture, well, you can kinda see down which sewer it's likely to go.
Granted, we can't speak for everyone, some people actually like Independence Day (with Will Smith) which started as a remake of War or the Worlds, though I found it preposterous and only good for some decent artwork on the alien ships. Smith's acting, as with most of the other acting in the picture was tripe and far below the level required for Victorian Britain (then the world super power) being decimated -- the story is watching the humbling of an empire, not a bunch of flashy weapons and macho talk ('You did not fire that heat ray at me!')
I honestly don't see room for both and expect Spielberg to abandon his plans, which didn't seem to be going anywhere anyway as he's got his hands full at the moment.
The English version is staying true to the original story, which was set in the late 1800's, where as Spielburg's version will be drastically modified to a more modern version.
All I can say is thank goodness! Spielberg, Cruise, modern day setting -- it practically had all the makings of another Battlefield Earth.
One of my little lottery fantasies, for years, was to do a War of the Worlds true to the original book, which I found utterly gripping while reading it in 6th grade (I still find it an excellent read!)
Why doesn't someone sue Microsoft? After all people sue companies all the time even if the product in question has warning labels.
WARNING: The Programmer General has determined that this product may include Microsoft Code which has been proven to be harmful to Aardvarks, Ants, Bears, Boars, Cats, Bats, Dogs, Hogs, Elephants, Antelops, Pheasants, Ferrets, Giraffes, Gazelles, Stoats, Goats, Shoats, Ostriches, Lions, Jackals, Mustrats, Minks, Dingoes, Zebras, Foxes, Boxes, Octopus, Penguins, People, Warthogs, Yaks, Gnus, Newts, Walrus AND ESPECIALLY RABBITS!! Use at your own risk.
So all those times you told your parents/friends that looking at images was safe - well, not anymore."
If there was a way to do it wrong, Microsoft seems to have found it.
. If the Chinese also start to like these ridiculous petrol-lurking SUV's that nobody actually needs, the whole world will probably collapse because it cannot support this kind of energy consumption.
It'll happen. It's happening already. They're banning bicycles on city streets to make way for cars.
Just find a road with some small hills and go fast enough to just become airborne. Always got a kick out of that as a kid in the back of my parents station wagon. May be short lived, but it's cheep!
One question I've never seen an answer to: Why is China attracting so much more foreign investment than India? To an outsider, they both seem to put the same premium on science and engineering, and they both seem to have large pools of cheaper labor. Yet China has several times the dollar amount of foreign direct investment.
Part of it is infrastructure. In India, even in the best tech areas, you should have backup power and a satellite phone connection. India hasn't put the muscle behind bringing the country into the 20th century, let alone the 21st that China has. Even backwaters will have broadband, I'm not making this up! The BBC aired a special on China's push a few months back -- some woman goes back to the farming community she came from (She lives in Shanghai, which is booming) to visit her mother. No running water, outside toilet, but by golly she's got Broadband, even if she could hardly scratch together the money to buy a computer to use it.
Could it be because India is a democracy and at least partially looks after its rural communities and environment, whereas the autocratic Chinese government can promise businesses protection from labor unrest and environmental regulation? Or are the Indians too protectionist with regard to foreign ownership?
Can't say much for protectionism, but China has not just embraced business, but has very high ambitions. While people may grumble, they have opportunity and growth has been so fast, while the rest of the world has stagnated for the last 4 years, they had to cool it down by restricting loans (not jacking up interest rates, just restricting access to loans!) A key difference between India and China may simply be that the leadership of China is aiming high and means advance China. Ok, they're autocratic, but they're actually doing a lot to advance the country. Democracies can do as well, but the people need to be united behind the idea. Half the people in the US can't seem to see the current administration is a pack of thieves and liars, so it's no mystery why the US is falling behind -- though it's still a land of opportunity, so you can bet rich chinese will eventually be buying big chunks of it, same as the Saudi's and Japanese have done in years past.
I just wonder how many of the companies mentioned in this article are falling for the "everyone in our town has a PhD or two" pitch so many of these cities are selling them.
On the contrary, they're there because the chinese market is the last frontier, and it's the big one. To not be a player in China is to say you're comfortable in your niche until they come and take it away from you.
Sure, there will always be fly-by-night doctoral schools. Heck there are in the USA, where do you suppose John Gray (mars and venus) got his Masters and PhD? But that doesn't mean you can't screen them out and out of 1000 candidates find some who really know their stuff (same as in the west, I might add!)
Raise your hand if you were surprised by this. Really.
Over a decade back China placed great emphasis on education in technology, now with a large pool of talent to draw from the country is in a great position to harness it's own technology future, as well as that of other countries.
Meanwhile in the US, students care about being cool, having the latest toys and what others think. Only nerds actually study.
Perhaps chinese youth will catch up to the slovenly and egocentric ways of the west. Some chinese diplomat, back in the 1800's said something to the effect of 'China already has everything and needs nothing, what can Europe offer to China?' Well, the answer was Opium. Maybe the next opium craze in china will be western fashion, television and SUV's.
Gee, how about if we have two levels of support from police and firemen? The paying customers get immediate 911 support, and the regular citizens, well, we'll get to you when we can. You're not important.
It's not that you're important or not, but under this arrangement you're paying the thief or arsonist responsible for the impending mess. Don't like it? Don't reward them for it by buying in. Usually such bargains as this come in the email with headings like:
Considering the way EpI affected me and so many others, I really hope Lucas doesn't have Anakin jump over a lava shark.
If you paid attention to Anakin's whining you'd realize he's expressing fascist ideals -- making people do something or be a certain way. I'm sure young Adolf Hitler expressed a few similar sentiments while serving in WWI.
I don't imagine many kids out there are going to have the same feelings about EP1-3. Most of us are only going to see EP3 out of curiousity, not because we loved EP1-2.
The reality is, once you've been really really impressed, it takes something of a greater magnitude to achieve the same level of awe. That's probably why it was so easy for Lucas to do it in the first place as not much in the genre of Space Fantasy/Sci Fi had that attention given to doing special effects right. (Meanwhile, how many times have you seen a giant orange fireball in movies or TV? Hundreds? Thousands?)
Lament EP1-3 all you like, but if any one of those films had appeared on the screen back in 1977 and you didn't really know much about what you were going in to see, you'd hold the same admiration and fascination for them that you do EP IV, possibly even more, because the special effects and artistry are still top notch (even if Jar Jar and the gungans kinda spoil it for you)
Hasn't done anything for me in a while... Donald Kingsbury on the other hand, he writes a great book!
Someone to add to the stack when I'm done with all the other series on my bookshelf. BattleTech, which I read for years has pretty much died, thanks to FASA going bust after... uh... selling the video gaming rights to Microsoft (seems it happened to another Illinois company, subLogic) and the latest incarnation involved dumping the whole timeline and jumping forward 50 years or something. Bah!
Next I was into Terry Pratchett and have pretty well caught up, though Going Postal will be out in October. The UK (where I get my copies thankyouverymuch) has the usual cool artwork, which bears a striking resemblance to something else.
(Just had and earthquake while typing this, strong one from the feel of it.)
I never had much respect for Niven's writing partner, Jerry Pournelle, who I felt put a lot of crock into his columns in Byte and kinda held it against him. (About 15 years ago I told an anonymous person in a chatroom on GEnie that I thought he was a poo-head for not considering the hazzards of debris in orbit, turned out the anonymous was his wife. I hope she tole him;-)
How cool! Mojave is on the way to Death Valley where I'll be going on vacation in a couple months. It would be spifftacular to stop by there to help out, though the only date
I saw on the sign up was Sept 29th, which is too soon.
When in the neighborhood be sure to check out the huge wind farm on the western side of the Tehachapi Pass, the Tehachapi Loop and all the mothballed aircraft parked outside of Mojave. There's also camping up at Red Rock Canyon State Park (a great place to watch for meteor showers =)
No, I'm not 4 hours a day, but many of the information workers we hire are and they do an awful job -- probably because for the minor pay they don't have much at stake.
If anyone is in Ontario, is a geek, and in IT we must repeal the 2002 regulations putting IT into slave labour jobs!
May be difficult to do. When I was last in Toronto, the largest city in Ontario, you could have easily convinced me that it was in Asia. You know, where people are willing to knock themselves out for a fraction of what workers in the west expect. Heck, some of the imigrants probably see an opening for an IT job and one of their family or relatives is on the next flight from Bombay, China, Philippines, Indonesia or wherever.
Toronto is a cool place to visit, it's like a little bit of everywhere wrapped up into one city, but you have to wonder how it affects the politics for those canadians who have deeper roots in Canada.
Oh.... that's what employers expect you to give voluntarily!
I remember years ago doing that, when I really loved my work and didn't care. Besides,
I liked all the cool stuff I got to play with and the really neat server and top of the line PC on my desk with
a spifftacular monitor and video card and even a cordless mouse. Then something happened, they realized I would do
anything they wanted as along as I had the toys. Eventually I put in 16-18 hours days and began wrecking my health and
I wouldn't qualify for any extra pay anyway because I was salaried, not hourly. The expectations piled up with the work
load and I found I had scant time left to experience the joys of doing neat projects or learning new tools and languages
after work, because I was burning out big time. Then they outsourced the jobs and said, "It was a good thing, win-win"
Well, that might have been true because the contractor, if they signed me, wouldn't allow their employee to be treated like
I had without them getting some really fat zorkmids for the above and beyond. I didn't sign with them and left.
Now it's kinda back to the old thing, hourly and no budget for overtime so don't ask for it, but if something really does
need to get done???
BTW we don't have a lot of positions here where you'd get overtime or benefits for that matter as many are 4 hours/day, which even with a little
overage wouldn't hit the 32 hours where benefits are required to be given. (Rhetorical question-<)The real puzzle is, why can't we find
good workers?
...Can I get folding@home running on those 20 thousand boxes?
Why ask for what people will give you for free?
It would be a bit alarming to see if your own computer is in the list. Should be enough of an epiphany for some to actually do something about their personal computer security.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the largest grossing films of all time employed little know actors and played hardly at all on current popular themes of films. As examples Star Wars and E.T.
We saw this a few years ago when Tri-Star took the internationally-known brand-name of Godzilla and slapped it on the front of a movie in which the monster bore little to no resemblance to the real deal.
And it was gone from the local cinema in 2 weeks, by many accounts it was an expensive flop.
Never underestimate the power of a brand-name. Remember when we were kids and you just *had* to have Pac-Man on your home console?
It would surprise me if they did make a Pac-Man movied after Mario Brothers was a massive flop and awful too boot (like that rushed ending? "Hey! I'm king again!") Many flops have been built around stars or recognizable names. The public is fickle. The Cat in the Hat was horrendous and raked in the dough, even though it made the Bottom 100 on Imdb.
It's called milking a cash cow.
No, that's called beating a dead horse.
Milking a cash cow would be Rocky 0: The Prequel! See Stallone, with considerable plastic work and makeup try to ape himself as a 15 year old getting beat up on the way to school for his lunch money and swear he could take the bully in a rematch.
At least he's given up on trying to do comedies.
Check out Spielberg's schedule which doesn't seem to jive with this. Unless they're filming on secret location under a throw-off title, like Jurassic Park VII: The T-Rex vs Alien vs Predator
Whether Spielberg sticks to the original theme of the story or focuses on shock and awe remains to be seen. He is capable of doing a decent prestige film, but when you see Tom Cruise associated with the picture, well, you can kinda see down which sewer it's likely to go.
Granted, we can't speak for everyone, some people actually like Independence Day (with Will Smith) which started as a remake of War or the Worlds, though I found it preposterous and only good for some decent artwork on the alien ships. Smith's acting, as with most of the other acting in the picture was tripe and far below the level required for Victorian Britain (then the world super power) being decimated -- the story is watching the humbling of an empire, not a bunch of flashy weapons and macho talk ('You did not fire that heat ray at me!')
I honestly don't see room for both and expect Spielberg to abandon his plans, which didn't seem to be going anywhere anyway as he's got his hands full at the moment.
All I can say is thank goodness! Spielberg, Cruise, modern day setting -- it practically had all the makings of another Battlefield Earth.
One of my little lottery fantasies, for years, was to do a War of the Worlds true to the original book, which I found utterly gripping while reading it in 6th grade (I still find it an excellent read!)
s/Microsoft/Government/
You hear a tinny voice off in the distance say, "That's not a bug, that's a feature."
So all those times you told your parents/friends that looking at images was safe - well, not anymore."
If there was a way to do it wrong, Microsoft seems to have found it.
It'll happen. It's happening already. They're banning bicycles on city streets to make way for cars.
The secret to flying is to hurl yourself at the ground and miss. (one of the more amusing ideas from HHGG)
Just find a road with some small hills and go fast enough to just become airborne. Always got a kick out of that as a kid in the back of my parents station wagon. May be short lived, but it's cheep!
Part of it is infrastructure. In India, even in the best tech areas, you should have backup power and a satellite phone connection. India hasn't put the muscle behind bringing the country into the 20th century, let alone the 21st that China has. Even backwaters will have broadband, I'm not making this up! The BBC aired a special on China's push a few months back -- some woman goes back to the farming community she came from (She lives in Shanghai, which is booming) to visit her mother. No running water, outside toilet, but by golly she's got Broadband, even if she could hardly scratch together the money to buy a computer to use it.
Could it be because India is a democracy and at least partially looks after its rural communities and environment, whereas the autocratic Chinese government can promise businesses protection from labor unrest and environmental regulation? Or are the Indians too protectionist with regard to foreign ownership?
Can't say much for protectionism, but China has not just embraced business, but has very high ambitions. While people may grumble, they have opportunity and growth has been so fast, while the rest of the world has stagnated for the last 4 years, they had to cool it down by restricting loans (not jacking up interest rates, just restricting access to loans!) A key difference between India and China may simply be that the leadership of China is aiming high and means advance China. Ok, they're autocratic, but they're actually doing a lot to advance the country. Democracies can do as well, but the people need to be united behind the idea. Half the people in the US can't seem to see the current administration is a pack of thieves and liars, so it's no mystery why the US is falling behind -- though it's still a land of opportunity, so you can bet rich chinese will eventually be buying big chunks of it, same as the Saudi's and Japanese have done in years past.
On the contrary, they're there because the chinese market is the last frontier, and it's the big one. To not be a player in China is to say you're comfortable in your niche until they come and take it away from you.
Sure, there will always be fly-by-night doctoral schools. Heck there are in the USA, where do you suppose John Gray (mars and venus) got his Masters and PhD? But that doesn't mean you can't screen them out and out of 1000 candidates find some who really know their stuff (same as in the west, I might add!)
Over a decade back China placed great emphasis on education in technology, now with a large pool of talent to draw from the country is in a great position to harness it's own technology future, as well as that of other countries.
Meanwhile in the US, students care about being cool, having the latest toys and what others think. Only nerds actually study.
Perhaps chinese youth will catch up to the slovenly and egocentric ways of the west. Some chinese diplomat, back in the 1800's said something to the effect of 'China already has everything and needs nothing, what can Europe offer to China?' Well, the answer was Opium. Maybe the next opium craze in china will be western fashion, television and SUV's.
It's not that you're important or not, but under this arrangement you're paying the thief or arsonist responsible for the impending mess. Don't like it? Don't reward them for it by buying in. Usually such bargains as this come in the email with headings like:
I pity da foo
If you paid attention to Anakin's whining you'd realize he's expressing fascist ideals -- making people do something or be a certain way. I'm sure young Adolf Hitler expressed a few similar sentiments while serving in WWI.
The reality is, once you've been really really impressed, it takes something of a greater magnitude to achieve the same level of awe. That's probably why it was so easy for Lucas to do it in the first place as not much in the genre of Space Fantasy/Sci Fi had that attention given to doing special effects right. (Meanwhile, how many times have you seen a giant orange fireball in movies or TV? Hundreds? Thousands?)
Lament EP1-3 all you like, but if any one of those films had appeared on the screen back in 1977 and you didn't really know much about what you were going in to see, you'd hold the same admiration and fascination for them that you do EP IV, possibly even more, because the special effects and artistry are still top notch (even if Jar Jar and the gungans kinda spoil it for you)
The picture suggests they actually brought back a large armadillo... maybe it broke Genesis' fall.
Someone to add to the stack when I'm done with all the other series on my bookshelf. BattleTech, which I read for years has pretty much died, thanks to FASA going bust after ... uh ... selling the video gaming rights to Microsoft (seems it happened to another Illinois company, subLogic) and the latest incarnation involved dumping the whole timeline and jumping forward 50 years or something. Bah!
Next I was into Terry Pratchett and have pretty well caught up, though Going Postal will be out in October. The UK (where I get my copies thankyouverymuch) has the usual cool artwork, which bears a striking resemblance to something else.
(Just had and earthquake while typing this, strong one from the feel of it.)
I never had much respect for Niven's writing partner, Jerry Pournelle, who I felt put a lot of crock into his columns in Byte and kinda held it against him. (About 15 years ago I told an anonymous person in a chatroom on GEnie that I thought he was a poo-head for not considering the hazzards of debris in orbit, turned out the anonymous was his wife. I hope she tole him ;-)
Look under Carpooling.
When in the neighborhood be sure to check out the huge wind farm on the western side of the Tehachapi Pass, the Tehachapi Loop and all the mothballed aircraft parked outside of Mojave. There's also camping up at Red Rock Canyon State Park (a great place to watch for meteor showers =)
Seems TiVo and RePlay should remain consistent with this potential span.
After all, I need something to pass down to my children!
No, I'm not 4 hours a day, but many of the information workers we hire are and they do an awful job -- probably because for the minor pay they don't have much at stake.
May be difficult to do. When I was last in Toronto, the largest city in Ontario, you could have easily convinced me that it was in Asia. You know, where people are willing to knock themselves out for a fraction of what workers in the west expect. Heck, some of the imigrants probably see an opening for an IT job and one of their family or relatives is on the next flight from Bombay, China, Philippines, Indonesia or wherever.
Toronto is a cool place to visit, it's like a little bit of everywhere wrapped up into one city, but you have to wonder how it affects the politics for those canadians who have deeper roots in Canada.
Oh.... that's what employers expect you to give voluntarily!
I remember years ago doing that, when I really loved my work and didn't care. Besides, I liked all the cool stuff I got to play with and the really neat server and top of the line PC on my desk with a spifftacular monitor and video card and even a cordless mouse. Then something happened, they realized I would do anything they wanted as along as I had the toys. Eventually I put in 16-18 hours days and began wrecking my health and I wouldn't qualify for any extra pay anyway because I was salaried, not hourly. The expectations piled up with the work load and I found I had scant time left to experience the joys of doing neat projects or learning new tools and languages after work, because I was burning out big time. Then they outsourced the jobs and said, "It was a good thing, win-win" Well, that might have been true because the contractor, if they signed me, wouldn't allow their employee to be treated like I had without them getting some really fat zorkmids for the above and beyond. I didn't sign with them and left.
Now it's kinda back to the old thing, hourly and no budget for overtime so don't ask for it, but if something really does need to get done???
BTW we don't have a lot of positions here where you'd get overtime or benefits for that matter as many are 4 hours/day, which even with a little overage wouldn't hit the 32 hours where benefits are required to be given. (Rhetorical question-<)The real puzzle is, why can't we find good workers?
Why ask for what people will give you for free?
It would be a bit alarming to see if your own computer is in the list. Should be enough of an epiphany for some to actually do something about their personal computer security.
w3 0wn y00r pc & w1ll r3nt 1t b@ck t0 y00