Rumors continue to circulate around Redmond, Washington, home of Steve Ballmer's employer Microsoft, that he died on June 4th after returning from Munich, Germany, of a massive FUD failure. Mr. Ballmer had tavelled to the technology hub of Germany in order to prop up sagging preceptions of product value, armed with a full portfolio of buzzwords and authorized to offer significant concessions in order to prevent loss of an important sale and save face in a key facet of the European Market. Drenched with sweat and mumbling explitives, Mr. Ballmer emerged from a company plane and collapsed. A cumpled note in his hand, addressed to Microsoft Chairman, William Gates III, contained only one word, "Rosebud"
So why can't they do something like that here in the States?
It's been tried, but on small scales. Typically you're facing behemoth Bells which, especially in light of their losses over the last years, are content to squeeze as much out of their aging copper as they can. And since nobody is interested in actually competing with them, as most who said they'd bury them are now dot-bombed out, it'll probably still be like this until you're old and gray.
Consider this for a moment. A factor we'll call Q for Quality of Life in the USA, which embodies quality of goods, healthcare, freedoms, expendable income, etc. It's been my impression that this was on steady growth in the USA until the first big recession in the 70's, thanks in no small part to the oil embargo. While there was a revival, briefly, in the late 90's, it wasn't anywhere near as good as it should have been. Many people overlooked the increases in costs, limiting of Q contriubting components, etc. Now things kinda suck and Q looks like it's taken a beating again for most people. Yet, in other parts of the world that Q has grown by leaps and bounds, meaning life has gotten much better for them at a rate faster than in the USA. Will Q increase again? I'm not terribly optimistic, because I think too many people have for too long expected someone else to pull and make it better than do the pulling themselves.
All people exchanging music via MP3's over filesharing have now caught all their music collections up to the point Britney Spears, Ricky Martin and NSync began performing. As nobody actually has the stomach for this music who is intelligent enough to navigate filesharing sites, traffic suddenly fell off.
Now, if Santana or someone else were to release an album in the next week you'd see it spike again.
Also, please consider all this is statistics and probably spun to the RIAA's liking to show their Third Reich tactics actually work. Next week: RIAA to invade Poland on the pretext that 2 poles blatantly exchanged a copyrighted performance of Pop Goes the Weasel.
Probably the best role, IMHO, he's ever had. He's done some good work and all, and on principal he's probably going to survive bad-mouthing a project he has worked in. Especially if it's a real dog or preposterously redone in the awful mode Hollywood often mistakes as what people really want to see.
I skipped Hulk and I'll probably skip a lot more this summer. Some good stuff on DVD and money is being directed toward a more deserving project:-)
Imagine with all the red tape Reagan generated, how big a ship 'W' should get named after himself, for the massive military spending increase and staggering debt he's presiding over.
...probably a giant space walrus, with photon flippers or something...
We were recently awarded a major project. That is, we were awarded a major project someone-else started. No vision for scalability, maintenance, etc. Massive tables (with relationships in varying stages of disorganization), huge catalog of stored procedures, pages and pages all cloned from each other with minor changes, etc.
We're waiting to celebrate this victory. A colleague is adding 1 column to a table and it's proving to be an all day task, possibly running into next week. This is the cost of quick and dirty development.
Don't miss the battle of the century! David versus Goliath all over again as we watch SCO vs Japan! Don't miss this apocalyptical match, and it's only on paaay per viewww!
Just so long as there's no sneak attack on Santa Cruz (as I live there), although, there might have been a mini-sub paddling around out in the Monterey Bay yesterday, which could explain THIS!
Ever Hear of Boralyn? (sp?)
on
Sports Technology?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Univega, several years back, announced a Boron Carbide (that's ceramic for non mat-sci folks) frame. I haven't seen one, having heard these were in the 5 figure range when they were to hit the streets. One bike mag assembled a cycle with all the latest ultra light comps and built a bike which weighed in at ~11 lbs.
Boron Carbide (CB4) was a classified defense material for years, probably for radar invisibility or some such. Lots of neat stuff which used to be classified has made it to the consumer market, which has been very good, for the choices it has allowed.
They haven't. Sometimes, they've made it worse. Sports and challenges in general are best when there's as few things involved as possible.
Sorry to hear this. My experiences have been varied, but mostly when it's bad it's because I don't understand the choices I need to make for new technology to work best. In example, I used to play a wicked game of tennis with a 20 year old wood racket. Then I (stupidly) gave it away when I got a graphite racket. The strings were loose enough in the wooden model to afford greater control at a cost in speed. The lighter graphite model was very tight and I gained a lot of speed, but lost considerable control. Simple solution is just to have the string loosened a little.
My experience with bicycles is much more influenced by larger gaps in technology. My road bike (in pieces atm and soon to be replaced) is an 1988 Fuji Tivoli. CroMo frame, some fussy components, but pretty good for when it sold. It weighs in at a hefty 25 lbs, but is a far cry lighter than its predecessor, a Schwinn varsity which probably was in the 50+ lb ballpark. The Schwinns comp group was so weak I wore it out or mangled it in about 3 weeks of hard pounding. The Fuji fared better, thanks to better alloys and better quality. Cost adjusted for inflation both probably were about the same expense.
About 5 years later I picked up a Cannondale Delta V600, hardtail mountain bike w/headshock. The first real techy set of wheals, aircraft aluminum frame and a decent comp set. I still ride this, after some upgrading and it's still a very competitive bike. The only thing I'd change is more front suspension, as when I bought it I lived in flat-as-a-pancake Saginaw Valley. Now I live in the Santa Cruz area and climb (and descend) real mountains. Santa Rosalia, 2600' vertical gain is a favorite and I wouldn't dream of doing it with a heavier bike. I could strip a few pounds with some carbon/Ti replacements, but for 10 years old it's still a competent ride for a decent climb. Much better with a few of Shimano's advances (though I'm a bit miffed by their 5 to 4 bolt crankset change, goodbye old 5 bolt spares...)
I was looking around for equipment to do-it-myself install a good sound system in my vehicle. I haven't been into mobile audio (we called 'em car stereos in my day) over the past decade and, though aware of some pretty loud cars around town, had no idea what people were putting in them.
Well. Seems in the absence of big v-8's tearing up the streets, it's sound competition which has taken the place of "who's got the biggest prick contest"
I picked up, what I thought was a modest used Orion amplifier, only to find it's some kind of competition amp, capable of driving some serious bass. Maybe I'll get around to putting it into the car, but between 1 farad caps, heavy guage wiring, fibreglass panels and absurdly huge bass drivers, I've finally got a clear picture of what people are putting into these Civics.
I'm just glad I survived my youth with most of my hearing still intact.
There's a practice of typing a phrase into the fish, translating from English to Japanese then translating it back to English to see how fractured it could make your words.
i.e.: "All of your bases belong to us", becomes "Everything of your basis belongs to us."
I could just see the following tho, chatting with a friend in Japan...
Me: "How are you doing?"
Friend: "What you say?"
Me: "My truck requires a lot of expensive repairs."
Friend: "Sombody set up you the lemon!"
Me: "I must be going, time to do laundry."
Friend: "Move 'Biz' for great whiteness!"
But I already have a friend, who speaks perfectly good english, who begins letters like so... "Hallo you, parti greetinks! Em selflessly sempling dekedent kepitalist bourgios fud for parti reeserch rekwirements. Iz terrible, meess borsht!", etc... It all started years ago with some reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle...
I see this time and again in cease and desist letters. A claim that such and such usage will do harm to a good name/image achieved at considerable expense, over time. A fair point, but often (I feel) tenuous at best. A person would have to already be very confused, a mental lightweight, to believe that eating Spam sandwiches could lead to their arrest. OTOH this could lead to economic revival, but pushers selling illicit food products and gangs fighting to establish turf.
Don't they already endanger the goodwill and "good" reputation by calling it a "meat product"?
I've never loved Hormel Spam, my father liked it because it came to prominence during WWII, probably due to rationing. He found ways to prepare it that he liked. It's too fatty for him at his age, so I don't think he eats it much any more, but he certainly did like a bit of fried Spam. People seem to eat far more disgusting (from my perspective) things, like pig's knuckles, fried pork rinds, head cheese, McDonalds hamburgers, etc.
IANAL, but I was under the impression that Hormel had conceded that 'spam' had become to ubiquitous as the term for unsolicited email. A quick look at spamarrest product and website, IMHO, say nothing remotely bad about, or ever refer to, Hormel processed meat products.
Lastly, spamarrest looks pretty weak. I receive occasional automated emails which I *do* want, but ~120-180 pieces of spam along with them, 7 days of holding things and requiring me to sift through it is no better than I do right now, using MailWasher (which could use a *lot* of improvement.)
Just like to add, those drivers work on the 8500 series to 9800 series. Even if they are labled for higher end cards.
Thanks, I wondered about that. I have an AIW 9700 Pro, mostly used for very little atm, but plans down the road, including a Linux partition to move things away from MS Windows.
"Do you mean to send this post?"
"Would you like Post Manager to save this for you?"
"Do you enjoy being second guessed all the time?"
"Reference to Open Source found on Drive C:, reformatting drive..."
Apologies then, apparently only the US copies carry the artwork of Mary GrandPré. The coveres are interesting, but the small illustrations preceding each chapter are nice, even going so far as to give a bit more of an idea what the characters look like.
Side note, on the book covers and illustrations, Harry's scar is pretty much vertical. On much of the merchandising stuff the scar is drawn rather horizontally. Hmm.
I've given up on boycotting the RIAA, not because they're a ruthless hoard of privateers when it comes to the p2p crowd, but simply because so much of the music today is utter crap and I have no desire to buy it anyway. On top of that, I bought into satellite radio (Sirius) and rarely listen to CD's anymore (100 or so decent channels and more music than I could ever buy with excellent audio quality) I surf around the channels when I get tired of one, I switch genres and listen to that for a while. I've found the swing music from the 30's-50's is quite to my tastes at the moment.
It's very hard to sympathise with an industry which robbed performers and music writers for decades (going back to the 1800's) since Edison taught the business world something about poor ethics.
As for Potter vs The Hulk, I have wondered whether the slow draw for the movie had much to do with 5 million kids choosing to buy a 870 page book had much to do with it. I noted sometime last week under a different topic how Potter Smash Hulk, on a conservative estimate of 75 Million $ to Hulk's ~65 million $. Clearly the Hulk doesn't have much appeal to 10 year olds, like Potter does.
Some posters criticized the book as children's fare, yet I noticed the top 1 and 2 books on Amazon.co.uk were the (1) Childrens version (pretty cover, illustrations, maybe bigger print?) and (2) the Adult version (drab cover art, no illustrations, smaller print (766 pages)) Far be it from me (who has read the book) to berate a fine tale. Then I'm also not one to go around belittling people who enjoy comics (e.g. Spider-Man, The Hulk, X-men) and thump my chest and trumpeting what a mature reader I am. Whatever I like, I read. More power to free choice to listen, to read, to buy, or not to.
This means that legislation gets passed to require hundreds of millions of people to have their biometrics encoded onto their passports.
So this means that spotty, streaky photo of me (or is it a dog.. a wombat maybe?) on the back of my CostCo membership card isn't safe! Just about anyone could march in the door, past their regorously trained staff and buy Boca Burgers for half off!
Someone showed me a fake driver's license made by a "novelty" company. The only distinguishable difference was a missing apostrophe in the text on the reverse. It had holograms and everything. Thoughtfully, the company stated, "This is only for amusement value, illegal to use as ID", etc. Yeah, that should cover it.
Re:Yet another for the stack
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 1
I think that the screen writers typicaly cannot adapt the story with out butchering it. That happens more often then not. I will read a book before seeing the movie, otherwise I never want to read the book. Movies typicaly are geared for the lowest common denominator, and I get the feeling that the lowest common demoninator does not understand subtle plot development.
Actually, it's appeared mostly be worked along the following lines:
Ooh, dinosaurs! Let's drop all that boring theory crap, though.
Suspense? Oh, that's what the audience gets after we hype the living sh!t out of this thing for months before opening weekend.
Morals about playing God? This is Hollywood, we only employ sappy morals like, "The bad guy always gets what's coming to him!"
Cannons don't thunder... Have Feeding Frenzy in the CD player in the pickup:-)
I was put in mind of a short, "Good Night, Mr. James " by Clifford D. Simak, where a man has himself duplicated to hunt some dangerous creature only he has the skills to kill. His duplicate, only meant for that purpose begins to think for himself. There was a short film made from this, too, though I like the short better. IIRC it's in an anthology: All The Traps of Earth.
Re:Yet another for the stack
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 1
Wait... you're saying that the Harry Potter books aren't sugar-coated? I think you need to start reading some real books. The Potter books are relatively entertaining (though rather poorly written), but they're still targeted at children.
Which is one of the attitudes I find most disturbing in the US. An adult should read such-and-such. Comics are for shallow minds. etc. etc.
It's actually not a badly written book, well developed characters and so on. Interesting trend, too, that each book is another year in Harry's life, which most publishers wouldn't be fond of "Oh, let's let him stay the same age forever and sell lots and lots of books written by you and a bunch of contracted ghost writers! Now excuse me while I go roll naked in a pile of money."
Of course, you were probably just aching for an excuse to attack the "US conservatives," even though they really don't play much of a role in the books that are published.
There were actual schools in the south where religious conservatives fought (in court) to keep these books out of school libraries. One case settled recently. If it weren't a million selling book you can imagine a publisher saying "Could we keep the devil worshipping to a minimum so we can sell it to conservatives, please?"
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe there's more to their backbone than meets the eyes, it's not like their Bob State College in Kornfield Kounty...
More details to follow...
It's been tried, but on small scales. Typically you're facing behemoth Bells which, especially in light of their losses over the last years, are content to squeeze as much out of their aging copper as they can. And since nobody is interested in actually competing with them, as most who said they'd bury them are now dot-bombed out, it'll probably still be like this until you're old and gray.
Consider this for a moment. A factor we'll call Q for Quality of Life in the USA, which embodies quality of goods, healthcare, freedoms, expendable income, etc. It's been my impression that this was on steady growth in the USA until the first big recession in the 70's, thanks in no small part to the oil embargo. While there was a revival, briefly, in the late 90's, it wasn't anywhere near as good as it should have been. Many people overlooked the increases in costs, limiting of Q contriubting components, etc. Now things kinda suck and Q looks like it's taken a beating again for most people. Yet, in other parts of the world that Q has grown by leaps and bounds, meaning life has gotten much better for them at a rate faster than in the USA. Will Q increase again? I'm not terribly optimistic, because I think too many people have for too long expected someone else to pull and make it better than do the pulling themselves.
Want a better network? Build it yourself.
My thoughts exactly. That and spam. Expect it to explode out of Japan on this kind of service.
Now, if Santana or someone else were to release an album in the next week you'd see it spike again.
Also, please consider all this is statistics and probably spun to the RIAA's liking to show their Third Reich tactics actually work. Next week: RIAA to invade Poland on the pretext that 2 poles blatantly exchanged a copyrighted performance of Pop Goes the Weasel.
Probably the best role, IMHO, he's ever had. He's done some good work and all, and on principal he's probably going to survive bad-mouthing a project he has worked in. Especially if it's a real dog or preposterously redone in the awful mode Hollywood often mistakes as what people really want to see.
I skipped Hulk and I'll probably skip a lot more this summer. Some good stuff on DVD and money is being directed toward a more deserving project :-)
Imagine with all the red tape Reagan generated, how big a ship 'W' should get named after himself, for the massive military spending increase and staggering debt he's presiding over.
We're waiting to celebrate this victory. A colleague is adding 1 column to a table and it's proving to be an all day task, possibly running into next week. This is the cost of quick and dirty development.
Just so long as there's no sneak attack on Santa Cruz (as I live there), although, there might have been a mini-sub paddling around out in the Monterey Bay yesterday, which could explain THIS!
Darl
My Firm Is:
For Sale
Boron Carbide (CB4) was a classified defense material for years, probably for radar invisibility or some such. Lots of neat stuff which used to be classified has made it to the consumer market, which has been very good, for the choices it has allowed.
Sorry to hear this. My experiences have been varied, but mostly when it's bad it's because I don't understand the choices I need to make for new technology to work best. In example, I used to play a wicked game of tennis with a 20 year old wood racket. Then I (stupidly) gave it away when I got a graphite racket. The strings were loose enough in the wooden model to afford greater control at a cost in speed. The lighter graphite model was very tight and I gained a lot of speed, but lost considerable control. Simple solution is just to have the string loosened a little.
My experience with bicycles is much more influenced by larger gaps in technology. My road bike (in pieces atm and soon to be replaced) is an 1988 Fuji Tivoli. CroMo frame, some fussy components, but pretty good for when it sold. It weighs in at a hefty 25 lbs, but is a far cry lighter than its predecessor, a Schwinn varsity which probably was in the 50+ lb ballpark. The Schwinns comp group was so weak I wore it out or mangled it in about 3 weeks of hard pounding. The Fuji fared better, thanks to better alloys and better quality. Cost adjusted for inflation both probably were about the same expense.
About 5 years later I picked up a Cannondale Delta V600, hardtail mountain bike w/headshock. The first real techy set of wheals, aircraft aluminum frame and a decent comp set. I still ride this, after some upgrading and it's still a very competitive bike. The only thing I'd change is more front suspension, as when I bought it I lived in flat-as-a-pancake Saginaw Valley. Now I live in the Santa Cruz area and climb (and descend) real mountains. Santa Rosalia, 2600' vertical gain is a favorite and I wouldn't dream of doing it with a heavier bike. I could strip a few pounds with some carbon/Ti replacements, but for 10 years old it's still a competent ride for a decent climb. Much better with a few of Shimano's advances (though I'm a bit miffed by their 5 to 4 bolt crankset change, goodbye old 5 bolt spares...)
Well. Seems in the absence of big v-8's tearing up the streets, it's sound competition which has taken the place of "who's got the biggest prick contest" I picked up, what I thought was a modest used Orion amplifier, only to find it's some kind of competition amp, capable of driving some serious bass. Maybe I'll get around to putting it into the car, but between 1 farad caps, heavy guage wiring, fibreglass panels and absurdly huge bass drivers, I've finally got a clear picture of what people are putting into these Civics.
I'm just glad I survived my youth with most of my hearing still intact.
i.e.: "All of your bases belong to us", becomes "Everything of your basis belongs to us."
I could just see the following tho, chatting with a friend in Japan...
Me: "How are you doing?"
Friend: "What you say?"
Me: "My truck requires a lot of expensive repairs."
Friend: "Sombody set up you the lemon!"
Me: "I must be going, time to do laundry."
Friend: "Move 'Biz' for great whiteness!"
But I already have a friend, who speaks perfectly good english, who begins letters like so... "Hallo you, parti greetinks! Em selflessly sempling dekedent kepitalist bourgios fud for parti reeserch rekwirements. Iz terrible, meess borsht!", etc... It all started years ago with some reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle...
I see this time and again in cease and desist letters. A claim that such and such usage will do harm to a good name/image achieved at considerable expense, over time. A fair point, but often (I feel) tenuous at best. A person would have to already be very confused, a mental lightweight, to believe that eating Spam sandwiches could lead to their arrest. OTOH this could lead to economic revival, but pushers selling illicit food products and gangs fighting to establish turf.
I've never loved Hormel Spam, my father liked it because it came to prominence during WWII, probably due to rationing. He found ways to prepare it that he liked. It's too fatty for him at his age, so I don't think he eats it much any more, but he certainly did like a bit of fried Spam. People seem to eat far more disgusting (from my perspective) things, like pig's knuckles, fried pork rinds, head cheese, McDonalds hamburgers, etc.
Lastly, spamarrest looks pretty weak. I receive occasional automated emails which I *do* want, but ~120-180 pieces of spam along with them, 7 days of holding things and requiring me to sift through it is no better than I do right now, using MailWasher (which could use a *lot* of improvement.)
Might as well ask motorcyclists why Sturgis, SD
The event can make the place. Also, may be less overhead and better facitilites than trying to compete with these other locales.
Thanks, I wondered about that. I have an AIW 9700 Pro, mostly used for very little atm, but plans down the road, including a Linux partition to move things away from MS Windows.
"Do you mean to send this post?"
"Would you like Post Manager to save this for you?"
"Do you enjoy being second guessed all the time?"
"Reference to Open Source found on Drive C:, reformatting drive..."
Side note, on the book covers and illustrations, Harry's scar is pretty much vertical. On much of the merchandising stuff the scar is drawn rather horizontally. Hmm.
It's very hard to sympathise with an industry which robbed performers and music writers for decades (going back to the 1800's) since Edison taught the business world something about poor ethics.
As for Potter vs The Hulk, I have wondered whether the slow draw for the movie had much to do with 5 million kids choosing to buy a 870 page book had much to do with it. I noted sometime last week under a different topic how Potter Smash Hulk, on a conservative estimate of 75 Million $ to Hulk's ~65 million $. Clearly the Hulk doesn't have much appeal to 10 year olds, like Potter does.
Some posters criticized the book as children's fare, yet I noticed the top 1 and 2 books on Amazon.co.uk were the (1) Childrens version (pretty cover, illustrations, maybe bigger print?) and (2) the Adult version (drab cover art, no illustrations, smaller print (766 pages)) Far be it from me (who has read the book) to berate a fine tale. Then I'm also not one to go around belittling people who enjoy comics (e.g. Spider-Man, The Hulk, X-men) and thump my chest and trumpeting what a mature reader I am. Whatever I like, I read. More power to free choice to listen, to read, to buy, or not to.
So this means that spotty, streaky photo of me (or is it a dog .. a wombat maybe?) on the back of my CostCo membership card isn't safe! Just about anyone could march in the door, past their regorously trained staff and buy Boca Burgers for half off!
Someone showed me a fake driver's license made by a "novelty" company. The only distinguishable difference was a missing apostrophe in the text on the reverse. It had holograms and everything. Thoughtfully, the company stated, "This is only for amusement value, illegal to use as ID", etc. Yeah, that should cover it.
Actually, it's appeared mostly be worked along the following lines:
Ooh, dinosaurs! Let's drop all that boring theory crap, though.
Suspense? Oh, that's what the audience gets after we hype the living sh!t out of this thing for months before opening weekend.
Morals about playing God? This is Hollywood, we only employ sappy morals like, "The bad guy always gets what's coming to him!"
Cannons don't thunder... Have Feeding Frenzy in the CD player in the pickup :-)
I was put in mind of a short, "Good Night, Mr. James " by Clifford D. Simak, where a man has himself duplicated to hunt some dangerous creature only he has the skills to kill. His duplicate, only meant for that purpose begins to think for himself. There was a short film made from this, too, though I like the short better. IIRC it's in an anthology: All The Traps of Earth.
Which is one of the attitudes I find most disturbing in the US. An adult should read such-and-such. Comics are for shallow minds. etc. etc.
It's actually not a badly written book, well developed characters and so on. Interesting trend, too, that each book is another year in Harry's life, which most publishers wouldn't be fond of "Oh, let's let him stay the same age forever and sell lots and lots of books written by you and a bunch of contracted ghost writers! Now excuse me while I go roll naked in a pile of money."
Of course, you were probably just aching for an excuse to attack the "US conservatives," even though they really don't play much of a role in the books that are published.
There were actual schools in the south where religious conservatives fought (in court) to keep these books out of school libraries. One case settled recently. If it weren't a million selling book you can imagine a publisher saying "Could we keep the devil worshipping to a minimum so we can sell it to conservatives, please?"